Rating: two stars

IT'S easy to get snobbish about acts like Steps - very easy.

So if you were to avoid such a social outrage you might, for example, avoid words like pap and inane.

But here it is - a greatest hits album from five annoying dancers who can't leave home without some facile dance-beat or another.

You have to hand it to their puppeteers though.

They certainly know a thing or two about manipulating a teenybopper audience while extracting £14 with consummate ease out of their pockets.

Gold includes 15 top 10 hits from the act's four-year career, including One For Sorrow, 5-6-7-8, It's The Way You Make Me Feel, and Tragedy.

Played back-to-back, they all become rather tiresome really.

Three or four new tracks are also cunningly included, just in case any young fans were going to slip through the net.

It is, of course, meant to be a bit of fun but Bob the Builder's new album is still better.

JS