The competition was fierce, but a song by Nineties star Des'ree has been voted the worst ever pop lyric.

"I don't want to see a ghost/It's the sight that I fear most/I'd rather have a piece of toast/Watch the evening news," she sings on Life.

It was the runaway winner in a listener poll for BBC6 Music's Marc Riley show. Second was the astonishingly awful lyric from Snap's Rhythm Is A Dancer: "I'm as serious as cancer/When I say rhythm is a dancer."

Current chart darlings Razorlight were third.

On their 2005 hit Somewhere Else, Johnny Borrell sings: "And I met a girl/She asked me my name/I told her what it was."

Riley counted down the top 10 on his radio show tonight. Listeners had voted for the past three weeks. Other entries included Champagne Supernova by Oasis: "Slowly walking down the hall/Faster than a canonball/Where were you when we were getting high?"

U2, Duran Duran and Black Sabbath also earned a mention.

"Bad lyrics can come in all forms - some acceptable, some less so," Riley said. "For instance, in the right hands, defiantly dumb lyrics such as Manfred Mann's Do wah Diddy Diddy can be more than acceptable as part of the pop idiom. In fact, we embrace them - let's not forget it was a number one smash.

"But imagine the same words streaming from the crown prince of gloom, Leonard Cohen, accompanied only by a forlorn expression and a battered banjo. It would, quite rightly, be mocked and held up for much ridicule.