It's with a heavy heart that I turn to the subject of this week's Pops. Because now Lady Gaga is not just a pop star, she is some kind of post-post-modern meeting point between popular music, performance art, celebrity culture and fashion. Which means that now everyone's dissecting her videos. So everything that could be said about the symbolism, artistry, literal meaning and literary allusions contained within has already been said. Bah!
Luckily, there are other furrows not yet ploughed. For example, Lady Gaga has spoken often about the importance of fashion in influencing both her music and style. But who among us can afford to wear the haute couture sported by Gaga and her gaggle of fashion mavens here?
None of us, that's who. Luckily, Pops is on hand to provide you with a guide to recreating the looks sported by her Ladyship in this video, but at recession-friendly prices.
Yes! It is the Budget Bathhouse De Gaga collection!
Here, we start with one of the simpler looks to recreate:
Gaga (centre) demonstrates what can be done with a white leotard, some ballet tights, a pair of wellies and a gold marker pen.
Her headpiece can be easily replicated using a piece of plain card and some sticky-backed plastic, though if you are considering wearing this out, perhaps to work, you may want to punch some eyeholes in the front using a pair of scissors or a pen (probably not while wearing it).
This is essentially the same outfit, but in black. If you do not own fashionable opaque sunglasses such as these, the same mysterious effect can be obtained by wearing two pirate eyepatches at once – one on each eye.
One of Lady Gaga's more attractively pared-down looks for this video, her bathwear collection comprises a simple white dress (a hospital gown would do), a comedy clown wig, and eyes three times larger than normal. Photographs of your own eyes, blown up on a photocopier and attached to your natural eyelids with glue (not superglue!) will suffice.
The outfit worn by Gaga in the lapdance scene is not the difficult recreation in question here – that's just a case of unstringing your parents' prized dining-room chandelier and draping it ingeniously so that it only just covers your nipples, dangly bits and/or dignity.
The real question here is about how to approximate the piece worn by the lapdancee, in the shape of a strap-on golden beard. This look can be achieved on a budget by taking your normal, everyday casual strap-on beard, and painting it gold.
What do you mean you don't have a strap-on beard already?
Obviously, it would be environmentally disastrous if everyone started shucking polar bears to make their hides into dressing gowns. It might not be so bad, though, if you choose to skin something that wasn't quite so endangered. Like pigeons (which would not cover much modesty) or old mattresses (which you would need to paint a smiley face on to get the polar bear effect).
Buy several hula hoops (the exercise ring/toy, rather than the potato-based snack), cover in tinfoil, attach to midriff with electrical tape ... voila! Instant Gaga.
When anyone asks where all the special shiny red sellotape they bought for wrapping Christmas presents has gone, you will be able to de-robe to demonstrate your Budget Gaga genius with this attractive little stationery-wasting number.
Skinning fish is another environmentally painful process. However, as a by-product, fish skins are freely available on the floor of early-morning markets up and down the country. By laying them on the floor and covering yourself in a mixture of flour and water, an exact facsimile of Lady Gaga's outfit can be attained. The shoes can be reproduced by dipping two oven gloves in concrete and getting a large mammal to sneeze on them.
Yes, it means losing your oven gloves – but burning your hands on a casserole dish is the price one must pay for high fashion.
By the end of the video, you realise that most of her ladyship's final outfit can be replicated with any old lingerie, a box of matches and some powerful accelerant.
The only remaining piece for you to create is the explosive bra. And c'mon, if you can't work out a way to combine one of your nana's old corsets, some sparklers and a small amount of black market semtex, then the fashionable end of the Lady Gaga fanclub has no place for you.