It's quite amazing how even the rich and famous are happy to jump on the Christmas dollar-wagon with a hardy annual of Yuletide soppies.

So it comes as no surprise that even Sarah Brightman has joined the rush for bucks with this collection of "Songs of the Christmas season", as the sticker on the CD cover proclaims.

I have serious reservations about any Christmas album, because what do you do with it once Christmas has come and gone? You are hardly going to invite your friends over for a braai or a dinner party and then entertainment them to Sarah Brightman's version of 'Silent Night', now are you?

So it's always going to be an expensive, once-off buy and even if you buy it for your gran or mother-in-law, they are also just going to listen to it a few times in the build-up to Christmas and the it will suffer the same fate — into the drawer, good-night and good-bye.

And, actually, there is nothing new on this album to distinguish it from anything else on the market, other than Brightman's voice which I, and many others, find too sharp, too clear, too enunciated and, quite frankly, quite boring after listening to three or four songs back to back.

I was hoping that she would give one of my old favourites, 'Ave Maria', some new life in duet with Fernando Lime, but no such luck. (As a "special treat" she also sings it later again, on her own, and it really is not much better.)

Technically she has a superb voice, but there is something strident and monotonous in her style that irritates — maybe it's because her singing is so totally and utterly lacking in warmth and emotion.

And that's no help when she's tackling old chestnuts like, wait for it, 'Silent Night', 'Amazing Grace', 'Child in the Manger', 'Jeus', 'Joy of Man's Desiring' and seven others of a similar, hardy wildly exciting or entertaining ilk.

Even the pictures of Brightman trying to look her prettiest best in a snowy forest on the CD cover shouldn't entice you to buy this album — unless you are a totally besotted Brightman fan, of course.