“There’s a rat in mi kitchen, what am I gonna do?” sang UB40 in 1987, putting the least romantic chorus ever invented into our heads for the next 20 years and leaving it there. In that same year, Madonna was the glamorous alternative in our charts, filling them with the dreaminess of La Isla Bonita and The Look of Love instead of domestic rodent queries. Well, that was then. Now, decades later, it’s Madonna who has got a rat in her kitchen. Or rather, in her bathroom, as was unfortunately revealed when she did a live webchat with her fans.
Listeners of an online radio show called Saturday Night with Romeo sent in questions for the queen of pop, who answered them on camera, while seated at what appeared to be a dressing table in her luxurious bathroom. Behind her are lavish gold mirrors, beautiful bouquets of flowers, and personalised cushions to tie in with her album launch.
And a rat, scurrying across the back of the room halfway through the 19-minute video (at about 9mins 55secs). All right, so we don’t know that it is a rat – having watched the clip several times, we now concede that the furtive, tailed creature may in fact be a mouse. What it isn’t is an adorable pet, small child or anything you’d want to cuddle up to without calling pest control first. In fact, it made us feel quite sick the first time we saw it, although by the eighth consecutive viewing it had got an awful lot funnier. Celebrities, they’re just like us – so might we advise Madonna that traps are quite a faff, and humane devices a nice idea, but sometimes you just have to poison the little blighters.
