I is for INXS

Let's face it possums, as Dame Edna might say, we all want to visit Australia. But has anything cool ever come out of the place?

Although cities like Sydney may be cosmopolitan, it seems to be an exception to the rule. The stereotypical view of Australia involves red earth, flies, spiders that attack you from the toilets in the outback and Crocodile Dundee types who don't take kindly to Sheilas in their bars.

INXS were clearly an exception to the rule, although they started off life with the less than cool name the Farriss Brothers.

A name change and the lead singer Michael Hutchence changed all of that. "Hutchence was the archetypal rock showman. He exuded an overtly sexual, macho cool with his flowing locks, and lithe and exuberant stage movements," commented rock music historian Ian McFarlane.

When he dated Kylie Minogue it was the nearest Australia had to a celeb couple. He also dated the model Helena Christensen.

Hits included Need You Tonight, Never Tear Us Apart, Disappear and Suicide Blonde.

The band, or at least the volatile Hutchence - was undone by a suicide blonde. Paula Yates, the infamous British TV presenter and rock chick first met him on her sofa on Channel 4's rock magazine program The Tube in 1985.

Being married to Bob Geldof didn't stop Paula stalking Hutchence with a vengeance for a decade until she finally got her man.

Geldof and Paula already had three kids - Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches Honeyblossom and Little Pixie. Paula and Hutchence felt they had to have their own daughter with a silly name and Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence (known as 'Tiger') was born in July 1996.

There was no happy ending. Apparently, missing his child Hutchence committed suicide in 2007. Yates bitterly contested the verdict, arguing Hutchence was seeking sexual gratificaiton by hanging himself with a belt in his hotel room - perhaps the first time in history somebody has tried to argue auto erotic strangulation as a more preferable way to go.

It seems that rather a lot of the artists featured in this A-Z challenge have met premature ends. Inevitably Yates later died of a drug overdose.

Curious fact about INXS - The name INXS was inspired by the English band XTC and Australian jam makers IXL. Which is only slightly less glamorous than being named after a fish canning company. See A is for ABBA.