Dollies, rocked

In the back-stabby, bitch-fighty world of girl bands, it’s customary to compare each new genre arrival to the group that came before.

Girls Aloud were originally considered the poor man’s Sugababes, The Saturdays were the poor man’s Girls Aloud, and Girls Can’t Catch were the poor man’s Saturdays. By that logic, the Dolly Rockers were pitched at the man lying in a pool of his own piss outside Ladbrokes.

Haven't heard of the Dolly Rockers? Hardly surprising, given that they've so far achieved a level of fame that makes Kandy Rain seem like Destiny's Child. Their first official release was modern pop classic Je Suis Une Dolly, which displayed the kind of Gallic sophistication that we haven't seen since Kylie's 'Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi' (music by Stock/Aitken/Waterman, lyrics by Jean-Paul Sartre).

They followed that with a proper debut single, Gold Digger, which scaled the heady heights of number 46 in the charts. With a limited marketing budget to work with, they had to rely on a more ingenious publicity strategy, which mostly involved slagging off The Saturdays in the press.

Their sharp-tongued demeanour, combined with outfits that looked like they'd been acquired from a fire sale in Victoria's Secret, didn't win them many fans, with the Saturdays retaliating by describing them as "chavs". The public were even less impressed, raising a collective eyebrow of indifference in the girls' general direction.

Now it seems that they've been dropped by their record label EMI, although the Dolly's maintain that their career is alive and well. According to their Twitter account, "We haven't been dropped or split up. Our A&R is changing labels and we are going with him." For the unfortunate A&R man, that must be a little like turning up for a new job with halitosis that could anaesthetise a racehorse.