Pop Life: A Journey by Sofa

What's not to like in a world gone pop? Caspar Llewellyn Smith has always had impeccable taste in music. Some might say he's a pop music snob. When his sister and friends were all into Wham!, he was wearing a Jesus and Mary Chain t-shirt, and when everyone else at school was still in their goth phase, he was giving props to Public Enemy. By rights Caspar should have hated Pop Idol - and the culture it represents. In the canon of cool, there's no room for the artificial and cynical. But on a journey by sofa through reality TV and manufactured pop, he fell in love with the world of Will Young and his friends. Fifty years on from the appearance of the first pop charts, "Pop Life" explains how pop culture has laid waste to everything before it - and why we should all happily surrender.