Strange, maybe, to launch this series with a new release, and one to which we've already devoted four pages, but I can assure you it is absolutely, unprecedentedly NUTS. The 84-year-old actor's debut album is an incredibly deluded one, fantastically grandiose, without a shred of self-awareness.

It begins with an unreservedly pretentious version of 'The Impossible Dream', complete with spoken-word intro, a curiously bored-sounding woman telling Lee that "The world is a dung heap, and we are maggots that crawl on it," before he lurches into the song, over the top of what sounds like a 1981 children's Casio.

It perfectly sets the tone for the album, and introduces us to its primary failing, which is that, despite his claims, Christopher Lee cannot sing to save his life. Really, on 'The Toreador March', he barely sings in time to the music, like an elderly French man who's drunk too much wine at a party and has grabbed the microphone.

Later, there's a 'metal' version of the same song, which is just confusing. He slaughters 'Silent Night', which features backing vocals by his daughter, who sounds like Nico on morphine. His American accent on 'Oh What A Beautiful Mornin'' sounds like Michael Palin singing 'The Lumberjack Song' on Monty Python.

The entire album is just barmy. It ends with Lee talking about his vocal talent. "I've always been able to sing", he explains. "It's genetic."

In reality, as a singer, Lee's like one of those comedy pensioners from the X Factor auditions; yet for all his pomposity (and, clearly, tone-deafness), you've got to love the fact he has recorded an album just because he wants to. And even though his singing is abysmal, Revelation's theatricality and unrestrained gusto is joyous. It is magnificently bad - but magnificent all the same.