Schtumbleword Verboten!

Sometimes I think the whole of humankind can be separated into two types: those who pay attention to song lyrics, and those who don't. And those who don't should be rounded up and throttled to death. By robots. With merciless strangling hands says Charlie Brooker.

I'm exaggerating, but only slightly. I love lyrics. If you don't listen to the words, you're no friend of mine. The words are where 50 per cent of a song's meaning resides, and it's shocking how many people just don't seem to hear them, even when they're startlingly clear. I once had to explain to someone what 'Common People' by Pulp was about, even though they'd listened to it a billion times. How wilfully dumb can you get?

Perhaps I find it frustrating because I've been cursed with an almost autistic ability to memorise song lyrics after one or two listens. But rather than recall them accurately, I tinker about and replace them with new words for my own amusement; and it's these re-written versions which ultimately remain lodged in my mind. I can't hear 'Thinking Of You' by Sister Sledge, for instance, without assuming the chorus goes: "I'm thinking of you/And the things you do to me/That make me love you/Now I'm livin' in Exeter".

My current favourite internalised mental replacement lyric is a disarmingly basic one in which I simply substitute the name Eleanor Rigby with "Robert Mugabe", because it scans. Every time I watch the news and something about Zimbabwe comes on, I hear Paul McCartney lament that Robert Mugabe died in the church and was buried along with his name. Nobody came. This is why I'd be hopeless on Don't Forget The Lyrics! (Sun, 7pm, Sky One), a new Shane Richie gameshow whose primary game mechanic is explained in its title.

And it's quite bossy, that title. It sounds like the sort of thing an insane Nazi commandant forcing a yard full of PoWs to perform a musical at gunpoint might bark at the top of his voice just before shooting someone for fumbling the chorus of Frosty The Snowman. They should've called it "Nicht Forgetten Das Lyrics!", or "Schtumbleword Verboten!". Or "Don't Forget the Lyrics, Mofo!", which isn't very German, but accurately conveys the urgency of the situation.

Anyway, the show is just like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire only with karaoke instead of questions. Each week, an annoying member of the public comes on and jumps up and down and says how excited they are until you want to punch them all the way to Barbados and back. Then Shane asks them to pick a category of song: pop, say, or glam rock, or TV theme tunes; we're talking crowd-pleasers, OK, so there's no Joy Division or anything. Then the in-house band starts playing, the lyrics come up on a big screen, and the contestant wails the song as cacophonously as possible while maintaining the beatific grin of the thuddingly stupid.

And then! Suddenly! The on-screen lyrics are whisked away! And the singer has to finish the next line FROM MEMORY! If they get every single word right, the pot increases and they proceed to the next round, eventually hitting a jackpot of £250,000. If a contstant gets it wrong, Shane leads them to a desolate, snowblown corner of the stage, commands them to get down on their knees and unloads a single bullet into the back of their head. The body is left in plain sight for the remainder of the programme as a warning to others of its kind: DON'T FORGET THE LYRICS!

Yet another superb episode of The Apprentice (Wed, 9pm, BBC1) last Wednesday, although for some reason no matter how many people Sir Alan ejects, it feels as though their overall number fails to dwindle. Two got the chop last week, and there's still eight of the bastards in there. Still, at least this means you can pick more than one favourite: for me, it's got to be Raef, Sara or Lucinda.

Them to win. Go them. Go them.