"Oooh," you hear people coo on the tube, at the bus stop, in the self-service aisle at Tesco's, "She's mad as a hatstand."

That's as maybe, but it shouldn't be allowed to obscure the fact that Stefani Germanotta is a damn savvy pop operator. Where Beyoncé wasted the Lady on a middling album track  GaGa's got Bouncy to contribute a swaggering cameo to 'Telephone', a Darkchild-produced cracker with no fewer than three bits that sound like choruses and an infectious 'Eff off text pest!' message. You know what, if we had a tune as good as this to promote, we might just turn up on a chatshow with a telephone on our head.