As everybody on the planet would no doubt agree, the world’s single most urgent need is for a five-hundred-millionth instalment in the Heart-Warming Smalltown Triumph-Over-Adversity series, and Blow Dry (a movie about a hairdressing competition: what next, three-legged egg-and-spoon races?) fits the bill perfectly.

Set – you’ll never guess – in the deprived north of England, this thrilling yarn’s only achievement of any note lies in somehow managing to out-camp Billy Elliot: it’s innocuous enough, but extremely irritating nonetheless, and with any luck, it might serve to hammer the final nail into the genre’s coffin.

Plot: the shithole Yorkshire town of Keighley is selected to stage the British Hairdressing Championships. A morose, miserable eyesore named Phil (Rickman) runs the town’s

barbershop with his son - he has been a sad sack of misery for ten years since his wife Shelley (Richardson) left him for another woman, and given that the lesbian lovers

now run a salon named A Cut Above, the

stage is set for all manner of bitter recriminations.

Meanwhile, a thoroughly evil bastard named Ray Robertson, who has been Phil’s lifelong rival, is odds-on favourite to win the contest. At this point, Shelley approaches Phil with

a tentative suggestion that they enter as a team: he isn’t interested, but their son likes

the idea, thus setting in motion a horrendously predictable sequence of events which lead, inevitably enough, to ‘feelgood’ hell.

Although the slightly deranged, none-too-serious tone of Blow Dry renders it a shade less excruciating than the likes of Billy Elliot, genuine laughs are extremely thin on the ground, and the thoroughly ridiculous premise ensures that the finale is more farcical than nail-biting. Rickman’s performance, though possibly of some appeal to connoisseurs of camp, is an extremely undignified spectacle, while Richardson and the eternally unappealing Rachel Griffiths don’t exactly do a great deal to redress the balance.

The English language undergoes several degrees of savage butchery throughout (by ‘eck, there’s nowt so funny as Yorkshire folk!) and, in general, Blow Dry is about as amusing and enjoyable as having delicate dental surgery performed by a sadistic six-year-old.

Heartily recommended to masochists.