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I refer you to the title of the song.

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This moving piece was originally recorded by Crazy Horse, and expertly written by founding member Danny Whitten. He died of a drug overdose seven years before the end of his song was clumsily massacred by Rod Stewart (or, in fairness, whoever arranged it on his behalf).

At the time of writing (2 November 2003), I can reveal that last week I had the, er, "pleasure" of attending a free preview of Tonight's The Night – the new West End "musical comedy" based on the music of Rod Stewart. It's written by Ben Elton, who was also responsible for the atrociously bad Queen musical We Will Rock You. By a curious coincidence, I also managed to catch Rock You (as I believe it is properly referred to), which involved a character called Galileo Figaro (geddit?), who together with his girlfriend Scaramouche (geddit?) has to team up with an outlawed group called The Bohemians (geddit?) to bring about a state called The Rhapsody (geddit?); but they must accomplish all this without being banished to The Seven Seas of Rhye (geddit?) by the Killer Queen (geddit?). The Rod Stewart story, on the other hand, features a character called Stu Clutterbuck, who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for that of his idol – none other than (did you guess?) Rod Stewart – so that he can go out with lots of "leggy blondes" sixty years his junior, or something like that.

Any gear change fans happening to find themselves at the Victoria Palace theatre will not be disappointed. There is a version of "This Ol' Heart Of Mine" featuring no fewer than three key shifts, and towards the end there is a sickening modulation during "Sailing". And, as if that wasn't bad enough, there is a song called (I think) "Infatuation", which I'm not familiar with (I suspect it was written especially for the musical), which also cranks everything up at least once. At each gear change there was a ripple of amused applause from my row of the upper circle...

If I could sell my soul to the devil, I would certainly haggle for a better deal than "becoming Rod Stewart". A much smarter bargain would be "preventing Ben Elton from writing any more musicals". If that leftist-funnyman-turned-establishment-luvvie ever claims to be an "alternative comedian" again, I will go round to his mansion and shove a statue of Margaret Thatcher where the sun don't shine. In fact, I missed my chance to make my feelings known – at the preview, he turned up on stage to introduce the "show", and had I known he'd be there in person I would have come equipped with a selection of rotting vegetables.

The audience loved it, though.