Another return

I always like to ask the big questions. Questions like "where the hell did Ricky Martin go?" regularly pass my lips in the pub. I've asked all the gay guys I know (two of them) in case he was spirited away to some secret place that only they know about. But no-one seemed to know where Ricky was. Some people suggested he might be in Vegas, but no-one was sure.

And it was genuinely bugging me. Maybe not all the time, but it was there in the back of my head and would come to the fore whenever I reached "Livin' La Vida Loca" on my iPod.

And then this week he turned up on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and he really has been out of the public eye for four years or so. The relief was huge. Not that I was worried about him, I was more worried that I was out of touch with the world around me. If Ricky Martin could have a thriving career without me knowing about it, who knows what else I might be missing.

But it turns out that he has been travelling around the world and collecting new musical influences for his new album (his new single sounds a little like a man singing a song by that mad woman (Shabiya? Serena? What the hell was her name? And whatever happened to her, while I'm at it?) anyway, you know the one I mean).

He has also been busy setting up and administering The Ricky Martin Foundation and its offshoot charity People for Children, both of which are trying to stop trafficking of persons and modern day slavery.

Of course, as with all pop stars who claim to be trying to save the world, you wonder how much they're really doing and how much more money they could be giving and still live comfortably themselves, but Ricky seemed pretty serious about it. I was only annoyed that Jonathan Ross stopped him from talking about it. In fact I was very annoyed about it. Ricky wanted to say a little something and get the word out there, but Ross stopped him and asked could they talk about something else, as it was kind of depressing.

RTE should have invited him to come on The Late Late Show (actually, they might well have done, I wouldn't know, I don't watch it). It might be a bit rubbish and flat as a pancake, but at least it's a major Friday night entertainment show that's willing to recognise that Friday night entertainment can be, well, a bit more serious.

Certainly it turns out that Ricky's not very funny, bless him. But he does own four rescued dogs, which makes me like him even more than I did before.

SHAKIRA! That's her name. I knew it would come back eventually. What the hell ever happened to her?