A PHOTOGRAPH of the Rolling Stones made me smile.

It looked as if they had made a rock and roll pact with the devil in 1962 and had packed a century of hard living into the last 50 years.

The picture was with a newspaper report about their forthcoming tour. Apparently, it took seven minutes for them to sell out two concerts at the 02 Arena.

Demand was so great that, soon after, tickets were online at £15,000 each.

In the same paper was a photograph of One Direction, the boy band manufactured by Simon Cowell that failed to win X Factor. All bubbly and fresh faced.

One even still wears braces on his teeth.

And a headline that hailed them as being bigger than the Beatles.

That was when I fell out of my chair laughing.

To put it into perspective, the Beatles set the template for rock and roll groups, gigging non-stop at the Cavern, around the country and in seedy clubs in Hamburg.

Three of them also produced classic songs that are among the greatest of modern times.

The Stones made rhythm n blues mainstream and added their own classic catalogue of music.

And then there is One Direction.

(Pardon me while I yawn).

At the weekend, I was standing in a Chinese take away with a line of other blokes waiting for my supper and watching a small TV in the corner that had the sound turned off.

We were watching X Factor with subtitles. This was a vast improvement on the real thing.

Already, it seems Cowell has the next boy band on the conveyor belt with Union J gathering headlines for being pretty. Well, they are with the sound off.

Comparison with the greats is fatuous.

It would be interesting to know if anyone will remember One Direction – or Union J – in 50 years time. Or five.