Katie Melua's Journey to the Centre of the Earth

After a busy 2006 which has seen album sales of over 7 million worldwide, and her successful world record attempt at consecutively entertaining the most oil rig workers in one sitting, Katie Melua has taken on perhaps her biggest challenge to date, and maybe the ultimate challenge in pop - she is attempting to become the first pop star to journey to the centre of the Earth.

 Speaking to Windypops via Satellite phone from the equator (the point on the surface of the earth that is nearest to Earth's core) she told us more about the expedition.

  "Since 1953, when it first started, with a team led by Gracie Fields, Vera Lynn and Pearl Carr, this annual event has grown into perhaps the Crown jewel in the pop year. This year I have been given the chance to lead a team of pop friends, with the hope of achieving what many people can only dream of; being the first pop stars to successfully journey into the Earth's core."

 "I have assembled a crack team of female pop stars to join me on this adventure. I have K T Tunstall, Kathryn Jenkins, Kate Rusby, up and coming folk artist KTB and Alice Nutter from Chumbawamba (coming in as a late replacement for Caitlin Moran)."

 "The team will be using the most up to date Carbon Tungstide drill technology and the six of us will be employing the same shift patterns that were used by the joint Terrorvision/Nolans attempt in 1992 - i.e. 3 of us will be sleeping whilst the other three drill, shovel and excavate and vice-versa. We hope all to do an equal share to reach our goal, though we are expecting Kate Rusby to be the real workhorse of the team."

 "We also have a support team, who play a vital part in the expedition, throwing down mars bars into the hole, charging up mobile phones etc. For this task we have hand picked from some of the cream of Female British pop talent from the last thirty years and I can now exclusively reveal to Windypops the names of the five permissible members of the support team. They are Lyndsey De Paul, Sharon from Girls Aloud, Myleene Klass, Tracy Tracy from The Primitives and Barbara 'Its My Party' Gaskin."

 With recent advances in the world of drilling technology (pioneered by those boffins at NASA) Katie's team is reputed to have the best chance of reaching the earths core since the Welsh team led by Cerys Matthews and Gruff Rhys, who came within an estimated 7 miles of the centre of the earth during their 2002 attempt. Indeed, had it not been for the fact that Maggot from Goldie Lookin’ Chain got a blood blister under his fingernail when attempting to open a tin of Corned Beef using a rogue key (which unfortunately meant the whole expedition had to turn back), the team looked more than capable of achieving this goal.


 Katie is at pains to point out: "Obviously the Welsh team did tremendously well, but you have to remember they had Tom Jones and Bonnie Tyler on their team, both of whom had been Coal Miners for very many years. In our team it is only KT Tunstall who has any experience of subterranean multi-strata carbon based drilling techniques. But we are confident, and if the next few weeks' weather is kind to us, we hope to reach the Earth's core in approximately 40 days."

 Finally we asked Katie, given the daunting and arduous expedition facing them, what is she most scared of? "A couple of the girls are concerned about the effects on our nervous system of the weeks of light deprivation, and also the risk of the tunnel collapsing. I am most worried about giant moles, mutated by the prevalence of Hydrogen and Helium gases, attacking/mocking us. But whenever we get scared Kate Rusby just shows us her tattoos - and the final space she has left on her body for a tattoo saying "Centre of the Earth 2006" - and that is what gets us through."