For the benefit of the last desert-dwelling hermit who hasn’t heard the news already, the much-anticipated video for “Telephone”, the Lady GaGa / Beyonce collaboration was released this morning.

So if you were woken up at dawn by a loud and unexplained noise it was probably the sound of millions of gay men exploding with glee about this. You see, among we “gentlemen who can’t catch” this is big news. The Beyonce/GaGa collaboration is the Donna Summer/Barbra Streisand moment of our times – except clearly better because Telephone contains 0% Barbra “she-gave-the-spare-a-in-her-name-to-SATAN” Streisand.

Telephone smashes two of pop music‘s biggest stars into a hugely expensive 10 minute face-off  video that is – in the words of the northern hairdressers who will still be dancing on tables to it at their Christmas parties in Jongleurs -  “proper mental”. GaGa herself has suggested it’s a post-modern critique of today’s “always-on” communications culture. Personally I think it’s more like a cross between Prisoner Cell Block H, Thelma and Louise, Faster Pussycat Kill Kill Kill and (bizarrely enough) Nigella Lawson‘s Forever Summer.

It’s also an example of something that’s been rarer than Siberian tigers for some years now: the event pop video. Whether you blame the internet or, like me, Jennifer Lopez, record company promotion budgets have been in tailspin for years now. The days of the Fugees blowing millions on helicopters to drown out the sound of an Enya sample are long gone, and instead we have the Girls Aloud approach to music video-making. This is where you secure your production budget by shaking out the sofa cushions for spare change.

Lady GaGa, however, has changed this – at least temporarily – by being a good Christian and “rendering unto God what is God and to Caesar what is Caesar’s”. Wise to the fact that a truly great pop video is both an artistic and commercial statement, Ms GaGa justifies the astronomical production costs of videos like Telephone by selling product placement space within them to the highest bidder. This is why Telephone might amaze you on one level, but also make you want to buy a Virgin Mobile and go to Subway for your lunch.

Purists may object but, hell, Lady GaGa cannot live on latex alone. Besides, anyone who persuades Beyonce to use a four letter word and poison her boyfriend has to be doing something right.