Smack My Holy Bitch Up

It has been announced that Christian crooner Cliff Richard, inspired by the late Johnny Cash's late successes with his versions of numbers by acts as diverse as Nine Inch Nails and Motorhead, is to release an album of Prodigy covers. "This is the perfect way to revitalise his career and get him in touch with a new generation of fans," opines top rock critic Rick Wedge. "Just look at the way Johny Cash is revered by punk and metal fans now - they really appreciated the way he used those covers to reveal his inner anguish." However, many critics doubt that teetotal celibate Cliff Richard has sufficient inner anguish to do full justice to such numbers as 'Firestarter' and 'Smack My Bitch Up'. "There's actually something quite disturbing about the sight of a man of pensionable age with a stud through his nose and sporting a mohican singing 'I'm a firestarter, twisted firestarter'," says Mary Skank of the Basildon Music Digest. "As for his rendition of 'Smack My Bitch Up', I doubt he's ever had a bitch, let alone smacked her up. The video, which features him punching out a nun, misses the point completely and is risible rather than outrageous."

The Prodigy's Keith Flint, meanwhile, is reportedly preparing to retaliate for the desecration of his greatest hits by covering Cliff's 'Summer Holiday'. "The video's going to be a parody of the classic film," claims Wedge. "It will feature Keith and the rest of the band as a bunch of English football hooligans on a pan-European coach trip, getting drunk and trashing various historic cities. The highlight is when Keith pukes off of the op of the Eiffel Tower." In contrast to Cliff's efforts to appear hip and up to date by covering a more modern artist, Motorhead's Lemmy is taking the opposite approach, having just announced his plans to have his veteran heavy metal outfit produce an album of George Formby covers. "Lemmy has long been a Formby fan, and feels that this is the ideal way to bring one of is musical idols to a new, younger, audience," explains Skank, who has reported this development exclusively in the Basildon Musical Digest. "He was inspired to produce the album after the tumultuous response to his head-banging version of George's 'When I'm Cleaning Windows' at last year's Leeds' Festival."