Bitty McLean: “Just To Let You Know” (Brilliant)

Bitty McLean, the man with nearly everything: the sharpest of suits, the smoothest of falsettos, the coolest of names and the very winningest of smiles. It’s a pity, then, that at a time when good blokes whose faintly amused grins can light up entire countries are needed more urgently than ever, that he is headed straight back to obscurity: Just To Let You Know, his self-produced, self-mixed and even self-engineered debut album is, I’m sorry to say, the shoddiest of cash-ins.

Bitty McLean (real name Del, by the way, so he doesn’t even have his superb moniker to fall back on when no-one at all buys this) is a close friend and studio accomplice of UB40’s. The influence is overwhelming.

The credit “Produced, engineered and mixed by Bitty McLean” is impressive until you actually listen to the thing and discover that there is but one backing track to be heard, the reggaefied piano on the offbeat and occasional punctuating saxophone backing track, that is, but on a budget (the drum machine and synth both sound like they were bought during a half-price closing down sale in the Pound Shop).

The UB40 if-you-can’t-write-songs-then-fuck-someone-else’s-up ethic is also to the fore: ‘It Keeps Rainin’’ you all know and have bopped drunkenly to, while ‘Dedicated To The One I Love’ is the most appalling demolition of any song I have ever heard, ever. The theory that the L.A. earthquake was caused by Mama Cass turning in her grave after hearing this is not without its merits.

Bitty McLean does have an excellent voice and serious pop star appeal, and he should be as annoyed as anyone that this is such a rush job. In the fickle world of pop, you rarely get a second chance, and with Just To Let You Know, an album with five or six enjoyable minutes and thirty or so of clinical and cynical teeny exploitation, it looks like Bitty has bitten the dust.

• Niall Crumlish