It’s taken seven long years since the singer’s untimely death, but Mercury may just have unearthed Kirsty MacColl’s true musical heir. Sharing MacColl’s black humour, 19-year-old Amy Macdonald pens lyrics that bite. And the Glaswegian university dropout who first picked up a guitar aged 12 would win any Kirsty MacColl soundalike contests. Hands down.

‘Poison Prince’ is the first single to be taken from Macdonald’s forthcoming debut album, This is The Life. It’s also an attack on artists whose spiralling drug use transforms them from heroes to zeroes. She might as well have called it ‘Dear Peter’, so thinly veiled is the object of her disdain.

You’ll find Macdonald’s ‘Poison Prince’ “knocking on heaven’s door”. It’ll be a while yet, you think, before Amy’s rapping her knuckles against that particular portal. For her time is undeniably now.

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