Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street: The song with a high suicide quotient

63 is still a bit too young to die but not young enough to elicit self-worried scorn (as in: "That's no age!"). Had Gerry Rafferty died at 61 or perhaps 59, reports would have used the word "untimely" or "premature". But 63 is just inside the Anytime Now zone. And considering his prodigious boozing, 63 was not a bad age at all to pass away. That's what we think without saying.

Another thought that goes unsaid is that Rafferty's Baker Street helped kill off the Smashie and Nicey-type DJs that infected Radio One years ago. Once upon a time any random switch-on to the station risked yet more exposure to Baker Street's "unforgettable sax line" whine.

It was probably the last melodic thing a whole generation of young female suicides heard before the one-way ticket ride to Beachy Head. Baker Street is a hymn to self-pity, ambient moooozak to sultry afternoon cider-cide. Smashie and Nicey always played it after the telling of some  listener's sob story - I can hear simpering Simon cunting Bates even now - to turn a sentimental tear into a lemming tsunami. Such monstrous behaviour could not continue forever. Satire came to the rescue and Radio One got down with the kids.

Baker Street was Smashie and Nicey's, their song. Heartburn's extended jingle, long enough and loud enough to disguise a long studio fart or the screams of a Baker Street fan facing death by garrote at the hands of her tone-sensitive lover. Baker Street summoned up middle-aged scrotes and their alimony problems, greying nose tufts and unwashed Y-fronts. Then came... Chris Moyles.

Mr Rafferty has much to answer for.

Bret Easton Ellis: Does Susan Boyle get Perfect Day?

Bret Easton Ellis writes on Twitter: 'Does Susan Boyle really understand her version of Perfect Day? I guess it doesn't matter. It's the best cover of the song I've ever heard.'

I suppose he means, does she understand Lou Reed's version of his song. 'You made me forget myself, I thought I was someone else, someone good,' she sings, as the camera journeys over Loch Lomond, fog-shrouded in one scene, clear in another. It's hard to imagine how the transformative power of love (or heroin) could apply to one so clearly good, in the untouched sense, as Susan Boyle; whereas, with Lou Reed and all his advertised demons....

Intentionally or not she has converted the nostalgie de la boue of Perfect Day into romantic timeless joy, grafting it onto a memoir unrooted in experience: a dream of a recalled moment of love (but not heroin) in a landscape familiar to connoisseurs of whisky labels. As a result, I do not feel I want to kill myself after listening to Perfect Day. I share her fantasy unrooted in experience, though the sea (the sea) would be my preferred backdrop. Yes, her cover is the best. [Click here to listen]

I don't think that answers it, Bret.