Gary Go? (Chocolate free...)

This isn't about chocolate, it's about Gary Go.

You see, I'm still not quite sure what to think of him. I've only seen him live once - supporting Take That in Sunderland - and I thought he was competent and professional, although he did a really odd, pumping hand/arm gesture a couple of times which looked as if he was trying to milk a mechanical cow. Admittedly, I also wanted to rip his clothes off, but that was because they looked nice and warm and dry ... and I was so cold I wasn't sure if my toes had fallen off.

One of my issues with him is that he looks like a young conservative from about 1984, who has found himself stuck in the wrong decade and is trying not to get found out. I can imagine him being a bit like a (hairier, less northern) version of William Hague, or a (taller, less confused) version of John Bercow.

The other issue is the songs. For about half an hour, a couple of weeks ago, I thought that they were wonderful (no pun intended) - but I was on a bus at the time, and I generally hate buses, so it may just have been the fact that they were taking the edge off the whole bus scenario. Or just the fact that they make good background music if you are in (relatively slow) motion. In general, I like songs which have complicated lyrics - so by rights I should like his stuff. But they sound like they have been lifted out of some kind of executive coaching manual. I used to work at a firm which had a sales process called 'Refuse to lose' - and a lot of the rest of the songs sound as if they were written to become the soundtrack if anyone ever tried to turn 'Seven Habits of Highly Effective People' into a film. There is a tinge of vaguely psychologically-based sub-clinical self-affirmation about all of them which I find slightly disturbing.

I have half a suspicion that he probably doesn't even like chocolate. There was some footage in one of his video blogs where he was getting unnecessarily excited about a banana cake.

The result is that in ten years time, I kind of find it easier to imagine him as a shrink, a management consultant or a show-man hypnotist than as a chart-topping musician. Which presumably means that he is going to be the biggest thing that the music industry has ever seen...