When Nadine Coyle, Kimberley Walsh, Cheryl Tweedy, Sarah Harding and Nicola Roberts won the girls’ section of the U.K. reality TV talent contest Popstars: The Rivals in 2002, and then formed a group called Girls Aloud, I don’t think anyone was really expecting much from them.

After all, the last U.K. band formed via a reality show, Hear’Say, had gone spectacularly to pieces, with public backlash and rapid disintegration within 18 months. The twist to Popstars: The Rivals was that it put together not one but two bands: Girls Aloud, and a boy band called One True Voice, who were then expected to battle it out for that year’s U.K. Christmas No. 1. Public money was on One True Voice: After all, teenage girls always have room on their walls for another boy band, whereas everyone in the U.K. knew that there hadn’t been a successful five-piece girl band since ... well, since the Spice Girls.

In the end, One True Voice came up with an awful piece of drivel called “Sacred Trust” for their first single, and Girls Aloud beat them to No. 1 with their first release, “Sound of the Underground.” Since then, the Aloud have been more successful than anyone would have predicted, achieving 17 consecutive top ten singles, three of which reached No. 1. Although not a global phenomenon like the Spice Girls, they’ve held on to success steadily for five years, without any major upsets like the loss of a band member.

In that time, although they’re not my favorite band, they’ve also come up with several songs that I like. There was their second single release, “No Good Advice,” in 2003: … continue reading

If I told you that the new British boarding-school comedy St. Trinian’s, released in the U.K. on Dec. 21, has aspects of the Kristy McNichol film Little Darlings crossed with Tina Fey’s comedy Mean Girls, you might think that you ought to be excited about seeing it. Unfortunately, it’s nowhere near as good as either of those movies. But it does begin with a similar premise: the female of the species — and particularly the teenage female — is much, much more deadly than the male.

Although I don’t think they’re really known of in the U.S., the fierce and fictional schoolgirls of St. Trinian’s have been iconic in the U.K. for over half a century. They first sprang from the brain of the cartoonist Ronald Searle, who in 1941 was a soldier stationed in Scotland near a friendly family whose daughters attended a school named St. Trinnean’s. Encouraged by the success of his early cartoons within the family, Searle sent them off to a magazine. By 1947, the series was a national hit, being published in book form as Hurrah for St. Trinian’s! … continue reading