We continue our week-long tribute to Steven Wells, who died last year, with another previously unseen blog from 2008. This time Swells lays into Coldplay, who have become the new Phil Collins

First Phil Collins quits. Then Coldplay fill the yawning cultural chasm with a new album that some critics shockingly think does not suck utterly.

Now the gibbering hipster chimp cognoscenti are falling over themselves to write blogs claiming that it no longer rocks to mock the 'Play. Is this a coincidence? Are Coldplay the new Phil Collins? Is an affection for their music still a sure-fire and universally recognised benchmark of rotten taste, social incompetence and terminal uncoolness? No. It's way too late for that. Try and keep up.

Flashback: I'm on a packed train from London to Manchester, engaged in a slightly stilted conversation with my suit-and-tie wearing travelling companions, all of whom are strangers. When the conversation wanes, one of the suits reaches into his briefcase and pulls out the latest Jeffrey Archer.

"Are you reading that for a bet?" I quip. He stares at me. His companions stare at me. The whole carriage stares at me. Middle England – sick to the bloody back teeth of being mocked and caricatured by coke-snorting, sexually promiscuous, strangely trousered Private Eye and NME-reading Soho sophisticates – turns and stares at me.

Oh my God. I have fallen among Tories. So softened have I become by my decades-long marination in the hip consensus that a) Jeffrey Archer is shit b) Phil Collins is the root of all evil and c) Margaret Thatcher is the worst thing to have happened to Britain since the Norman conquest that – finding myself among barbarians – I am defenseless, helpless, and completely unequipped to explain to these rough-hewn thickies exactly why it is their every opinion and cultural choice marks them as beyond the civilised pale.

I turn and look out of the window. I make myself small. And I shudder.

Archer and Collins have long been thought of by us groovy types as benchmarks of shitness. So universal was this opinion that no discussion was necessary. One simply never met people who didn't think they were both utter rubbish. And so – like the origin of some ancient blood feud – the passion that fuelled the original hatred had decayed and fossilised into lazy habit and petty cliche. Soon to even mention these hoary old bugbears was considered déclassé – the mark of a lazy or inexperienced writer in search of an easy target.

Other Aunt Sallies have been hoisted up as potential replacements. For many years NME regularly gave Northside, the Inspiral Carpets and the Beautiful South brutal kickings on the assumption that they were loathed by people of taste. They were, of course, wrong. "Who buys this rubbish?" NME asked of a Beautiful South album. People who actually like good pop music, rather than the tired Manc indie crap you peddle, came the reply.

On those music websites consumed for the most part by mildly autistic and women-hating white males (which is to say all music websites) there has been a concerted attempt to turn Jet and Lily Allen into red-headed step-children to be beaten and abused and locked in the cellar. But this has failed because a) both Jet and Allen rock and b) a groin-clutching fear of sexuality is no way to build a consensus within a medium that prides itself on its liberalism and licentiousness. Just ask any fascist and/or born-again Christian rock band.

And then – just as the hip establishment despaired of ever again having a target as good as old uncle Phil – along came Coldplay and, at last, the cool massive had an Aunt Sally worthy of its scorn. Coldplay sorted the square sheep from the groovy goats. If you hated Coldplay, you were OK. If you liked them you probably also liked leather sofas, sweet German wines, T.G.I. Friday's, golf, the royal family, Top Gear and Terry Wogan. In short, you were Alan Partridge.

But this year – as the rumbling hype about the new Coldplay album annoyed the alphas and made the epsilons drool in anticipation – all the signs that Coldplay had reached Phil Collins-esque, so-synonymous-with-shit-that-they're-simply-not-worth-slagging status were there.

Journalists who wrote Coldplay-are-rubbish articles were howled down for being lazy and obvious.

Two usually stroppy writers of my acquaintance wrote tongue-in-cheek articles defending Coldplay (always sign a band are no longer worth kicking).

"How could anyone hate a band this bland?" agreed one hip punter. "They are audio gruel." And, sniffing the air, those of us who scrape a living by firing rocket-propelled grenades at safely tethered sacred cows, backed off. Coldplay are now officially too easy, too obvious and therefore out of bounds.

Chris Martin and his cardigan-rock-purveying colleagues are in that great flogged-to-death horsey-filled paddock in the sky – endlessly eating and regurgitating their own fetid dung, alongside all those other rubbish musos who we once hated with a passion but now can't be bothered to even think about. Hi, Sting.

I come not to slag Coldplay, but to bury them. And then dig them up, suck the marrow out of their bones and then bury them again. Alas, poor aural porridge, I fear we shall not hear their like again.

Steven Wells tributes and memories can be found at thestevenwells.com and also on Facebook here and here, where contributions and suggestions for Swells pieces to be included in a forthcoming anthology are welcome