Girl band armageddon?

WITH each passing day, the feud between Lily Allen and Cheryl Cole threatens to suck all manner of other female singers into it, like some black hole of playground badinage that reminds us how many million light years away we are from being able to give the slightest toss about it.

Here follows a brief transcript of the hostilities, which on Friday were rocked by a salvo from Amy Winehouse: "In your face, tuneless cow!" "No, in YOUR face, masculine cow!" "Get used to touring, weak cow!" "No, leave her alone, thick cow! And I speak as a fat cow!" (I paraphrase slightly...)

What the hell does Camille Paglia think she's doing keeping her silence? In your face, old cow!

Latest to weigh in - can you say "weigh in" without risking being taken down by whichever members of Girls Aloud are not already engaged in some kind of body mass index arms race? - is Beth Ditto, who this weekend came out on the side of Lily, declaring that: "I'd rather be a fat chick with a dick than an asshole".

Thanks for clearing that up... But is it OK to find both options spectacularly juvenile?

Whatever, it becomes clearer by the minute that World of Female Singers hovers on the brink of all consuming conflict, much as the World of Stuff that Actually Matters did in early 1939. At this stage, it seems pretty obvious to divide our ladies along Allied and Axis lines, with Lily as Britain, Beth as America, Winehouse making early but ultimately reversible choices in the Russia role, and Cheryl as... I don't know, somewhere slightly more "central European".