Lil Chris dead: An ode to 'Checking It Out', a genuine pop banger from Chris Hardman

Any song that announces a solo with 'Guitar, ow!' is a winner in my books

Lil Chris, real name Christopher James Hardman, died today aged 24, no-one really knows how yet, but there's more on that here.

He was one of a host of British teenagers hoovered up by the burgeoning reality TV market in the mid-2000s, chewed up and spat out after the second single inevitably doesn't do as well as the first.

But Lil Chris' hit, 2006's 'Checkin It Out', will go down in the annals of music history, or at least will remain on semi-rotation in my Spotify queue when my friends are drunk.

There's a lot to love about it. The pop punk guitar riff that sounds like it was invented by a Blink 182 randomizer, the inexplicable vibrato on the line 'I can't forget about it', the catchy chorus line that sounded like a washing machine blowing, the backing 'woooooahs' straight out of a 90s teen drama theme. Plus any song that announces a solo with 'Guitar, ow!' is a winner in my books

The lyrics focus on first teenage dalliances into love (including 'This is my golden opportunity / To take a cherry from her apple tree-tree-tree', presumably referencing some deviant sex position) while the music video saw him dragged around a house party with a mixture of excitement and reluctance, much like he was in the music industry.

RIP Lil Chris. Tonight I'm ch-ch-checkin' my chances for you.