In September 1994 a song called Love And Tears reached number 40 in the hit parade. The next week it disappeared from view and it has now probably been deleted - although if you mounted a quixotic search of the world's second-hand record shops you might pick up a copy for about 15 cent.
Love And Tears - which was dire, but more banal dire than anything else - was sung by Naomi Campbell. It was the first single off her Babywoman album.
Campbell's musical career, however, proved to be even less successful than her literary one.
More than 10 years on and Campbell has actually made a name for herself in the music business. And quite literally so. She has given us The Naomis - a now annual award ceremony that celebrates the worst musical achievements of the past year. One of the ultimate 'Must Do' events of the season, The Naomis are held in a pub. A specially invited audience convenes to shower abuse on all that is woejous in the music world. There are 15 categories and the winners are decided by a panel of 100 journalists and music industry types with the main award of the night - The Outstandingly Bad Contribution To Music award - coming with a trophy: a silver platform shoe in honour of Campbell.
The Naomis are the perfect antidote to the back-clapping, unit-shifting rewarding love-in that is The Brits. To be fair, as bad as The Brits are, the real egregious stuff begins with the Grammys and continues over what appears to be an infinite amount of MTV award ceremonies: MTV, then MTV Europe, and MTV Asia, then the MTV Video Awards, etc, etc.
The fact that alcohol has been banned for the last three years from the Brits says it all. At least when the excitable pop stars were allowed access to a free bar you'd get something worth watching - Chumbawamba throwing a bucket of water over John Prescott or Jarvis Cocker doing his "interpretative dance" to a Michael Jackson song.
This year's host at The Naomis was TV presenter Iain Lee, who delighted many by announcing that the winner of The Worst Live Act award was Pete Doherty. The ex-Libertines man came through a difficult category, as also nominated were Duran Duran and Rachel Stevens. Doherty won out, though, on the basis that "he's always off his head and always late".
The Worst Male Artist award was awarded to Daniel Bedingfield for the simple reason that "he's a fat, pie-munching, born-again Christian". Sadly, neither Doherty nor Bedingfield were present at the ceremony (and didn't even send anyone along to pick up their award for them). In Doherty's case it was excusable because he was banged up in prison, but Bedingfield won't go far in the music business with that sort of attitude towards important award ceremonies.
The Worst British Group was always going to go to Blue, so no surprise there, but there was a lot of fevered speculation and last-minute betting on who would carry away the coveted Worst British Attempt At Rock award. It was a close call, but it went to Busted. And rather neatly, the next award - that of Worst British Breakthrough Act - went to their clones, McFly.
The Worst British Male was Jamie Cullum, the worst British Female was Rachel Stevens and there was a bit of shock when the winner for the Worst British Album was announced. This was a heavily subscribed category and it was won by the dark horse contender - Michelle McManus for her The Meaning Of Love work. There was never any doubt about the winner of the Worst International Album - Peter Andre walked it with his The Long Road Back while The Least Convincing Urban Act award went to Blazin' Squad for the second year in a row. Now all we need is a "Worst Music Award Ceremony" category.
