Last updated 21:44, Thursday, 27 March 2008

THIS week I have been reading about an Australian woman who stabbed her boyfriend to death.

She didn’t do it because he had taken up with someone else, or squandered the housekeeping money on gambling, or because he had treated her badly; she did it because he wouldn’t let her listen to her Bruce Springsteen CD.

The woman, who was a mature 49, readily admitted grabbing the knife from the kitchen and stabbing the man, presumably after he’d had as much of Born In The USA as he could stand, and she asked police: “I mean, who doesn’t like Bruce Springsteen?”

Well, now she’s got eight years in prison to find out.

Most people will be able to identify with this. You can love your nearest and dearest to bits, but if their musical tastes mean that you have to listen over and over again to Dolly Parton begging Jolene not to take her man, then you have to fight down an urge to plunge a knife deep into their chest.

I know a couple who met at a party; he said he was a big fan of the Four Seasons, so she accepted his invitation to meet up again.

When they did, she found that when he said the Four Seasons he meant Frankie Valli and The and not the popular violin concertos by Vivaldi. Happily, they are still an item and presumably listening to Frankie Vivaldi together.

I think it’s only fair that the driver gets to choose in-lots car music and so I have been forced to travel miles while Willie Nelson warbles on about railroad tracks and hound dogs.

My passengers can enjoy Eddie Reader singing the songs of Robert Burns. They don’t; but while I am driving they have to put up with it.

In the kitchen we have Lonnie Donegan and a rather good CD of 50s and 60s favourites which is, fortunately, common ground and a good singalong too.

All together now - "Dad’s gone down the dog track, mother’s playing bingo. . ."