Coldplay.

Coldplay are the biggest selling band from the UK, more is the pity.

The singer, pianist and frontman is Chris Martin, married to Gwyneth Paltrow and father of the absurdly named Apple. What a name to give a child, eh?

The band has a new album out, X&Y, which is a reasonably pathetic title. What, you mean that they are the first people in all history to think that both male and female have a part to play in life? Have they never heard of Yin and Yang? How on earth do they think they got here themselves if there was not some form of co-operation between the two sexes?

Obviously macrobiotic diets cause a loss of intelligence.

The official Coldplay site is here, a fan site is here.

There is also a subset of the MTV site dedicated to Coldplay and something from Rolling Stone here.

Quite the best description of the band is here, at the Telegraph.

As a measure of the menace that Coldplay represents to the listening public consider a poignant letter published in The Daily Telegraph last week: "They ruined what my wife and I had hoped would be a convivial evening at a riverside pub," fumed Graham Vine, of Close Borden, Hampshire. "On arriving we wondered why so many customers were sitting outside on such a chilly, breezy evening. It didn't take long to find out why. Whoever had charge of the pub's sound system inflicted upon us one dismal dirge after another from the Coldplay album, one of the most depressing I have heard."

And this rather damning comment:

British rock hasn't found a new angle in years. Thriving at one end of the business are the dinosaur -rockers of the 1960s and '70s, while flourishing at the other are the made-for-television, boy-and-girl groups. Coldplay have quietly bagged the middle ground. They may be unoriginal, but at least they are an unoriginal version of Radiohead. Imagine, or, rather try not to, the unoriginal version of Busted.