THE LADY IN BLACK

Iran's president has been getting a bit above himself recently, what with claiming that homosexuality doesn't exist in the country, rolling out a burgeoning nuclear facility and training terrorists for cross-border raids into occupied Iraq. But he didn't see this one coming. Oh, he can plan all the atom bombs he wants, because we have something far more terrifying, and it's heading towards his capital very soon. It's our very own Weapon Of Mass Desolation, Chris De Burgh.

Plans are afoot for the Hobbit-faced Irishman to play to 12,000 people in Tehran next summer, which would make him the first Western act to play there since the revolution in 1979. Famously, Wham! were able to play China but not Iran, perhaps because if the president's comments are to be believed then George Michael would have ceased to exist the minute he stepped off the plane.

Chris plans to take to the stage with the Iranian group (music group, not fundamentalist group) Arian, with whom he recently recorded a single which did a faster disappearing act than Salman Rushdie.

How delighted the Iranian youth must be! Their law still forbids Western-style songs with lyrics and anyone wishing to form a band must be granted a licence by the government, which sounds like an eminently fine idea, because it would have stopped the likes of The Ordinary Boys from fouling up our airwaves. As for Chris's set list...

Ayatollah Lately That I Love You? Sweet Tehran-svestite? I Can See Farsi Miles? I Guess Fatwa They Call It The Blues? Well, you do better...