2 Happy Mondays (1999)
Stupid, crooked and unpredictably brilliant, Happy Mondays reformed when the taxman came a-calling. The reunion gigs were a drunken disaster - Ryder mumbling lyrics off a teleprompter and squaring up to band members during agonisingly long breaks between songs - and the comeback single was a 'flailing, half-arsed dog's breakfast', a limp cover of Thin Lizzy's 'The Boys are Back in Town'. Call the c-c-c-cops.

3 Velvet Underground (1993)
Always a volatile mix of individuals, it didn't take long for the Velvets' old animosities to resurface when the band misguidedly reformed. Laugh-a-minute Lou Reed - now resembling a molecular biology lecturer- fell out with viola player/bassist John Cale during sessions for a new album; Cale disappeared in a fug of avant-garde smoke, and the story of one of the truly great bands of the past 50 years dribbled to a grim close.

4 The Alarm (2004) Earlier this year Mike Peters decided to give his deeply unfashionable band a revamp, so he sent out their new single under a pseudonym - the Poppyfields - accompanied by a video featuring younger men singing the song, '45rpm'. The Trojan Horse scam worked. The song blasted into the charts and Peters's gang hit the road once more, this time as the Alarm. Cue sweaty anthems about guns and storms.

5 Five Star (2000)
Romford's very own slushy-haired version of the Jackson Five reunited minus two Stars ('The five stars meant the quality of our music, not the number of people in the band') in 2000, to tour the cabaret circuit in the US and make lots more money for their manager father, Buster. Doris and Delroy are pursuing their own projects. Lucky them.

6 The Beatles (1995)
A travesty of bad taste, the 'Threetles' phemonenon of 1995 spawned the spectacularly bad singles 'Free as a Bird' and 'Free Love' - mediocre Lennon demoes brutally refashioned as ELO B-sides by Jeff Lynne - as well as a TV series, CDs and a very expensive book. Beatles producer George Martin gave the dismal 'new' songs an extremely wide berth. Canny man.

7 Jesus Jones (2002)
A defiantly bland early Nineties electro-guitar band, Jesus Jones recently reformed to play motivational conference gigs in the States for vast sums of money ('We came on after a film featuring a businessman searching sand dunes for a buried laptop'). They currently have a set list of one song - 'Right Here, Right Now' - played twice. Great value for their new clients, sorry, fans.

8 Fleetwood Mac (1993)
Proof that Slick Willie Clinton's musical tastes are as dubious as his Italian traffic jam-influenced saxophone playing. Clinton was responsible for bringing Fleetwood Mac back from the dead in January 1993 when he booked the famously ill-tempered band to play his campaign song, 'Don't Stop (Thinking about Tomorrow)', at the Presidential inauguration in Washington.

9 Musical Youth (2004)
A distressing enough proposition when they first emerged in the early Eighties, this former chart-topping child group are about to re-enter our lives, fatter, older and, clearly, a good deal poorer. The Youth were nippers when they recorded 'Pass the Dutchie' in 1982, but they're big lads now, tackling 'big' tunes: in this case a reggaefied cover of Roy Orbison's 'Pretty Woman'.