'Life Advice: Amy Winehouse

Manufactured pop groups – the successful ones, anyway - tend to record three albums, shove out a Greatest Hits collection and then bid a teary-eyed adieu to their hordes of hysterical fans. The botched solo careers come next, followed swiftly by interviews with Closer in which they reveal that they've had a third nipple all along but decided to keep it quiet, and the inevitable six-week run in Chicago. But Westlife are on their eighth album – that's seven more than The La's, four more than the Pixies and 14 fewer than the Stones – and we're yet to hear the merest whisper about Nicky's nubbin. We reckon that makes them more than qualified to offer advice to popstars who've found themselves in a spot of bother recently. The Irish agony uncles' first client? Amy Bleedin' Winehouse.



Obviously The Sound's nagging mother doesn't condone the fact that Shane had his feet on that disgusting green sofa for the entire three-and-a-half minutes.