They're back - smurfing the Internet and running for the American presidency. Stephen McGinty looks at the Smurf revival.

WHEN Liam Gallagher lies back on the couch of his psychotherapist and broods on his childhood demons it wouldn't be surprising if a little blue man with a big white hat were to appear. The Smurfs were always described as the height of just three apples, but today the denizens of Smurfland have now reached the height of nonsense.

Their new album, Smurfs Go Pop, released in June, has sold 300,000 albums, a new single just released threatens to rocket straight to number one, with no help at all from Astro-smurf. Across Europe the little blue band have notched up three million sales and hit

singles in Germany, France, Holland, and Spain.

A late bid has even seen Papa Smurf stand for American President. The news was announced on their web site, with a media spokesperson Smurfette announcing his agenda: ``Papa Smurf is back and it's exactly what the American people have been waiting for in this political race! Finally we've a candidate who truly understands the people. And it's about Smurfin' time!'' His election promises include a bright

blue SmurfMobile in every garage and a Smurf Sauna in every home.

Ross Perot, at the height of six apples and twice the height of nonsense, is bound to be troubled; while the Republicans are panicking, as even Papa Smurf is younger than Bob Dole. Chelsea will no doubt suggest the little red leader as a running mate for her dad. Belgium born, Papa is at least bound to have inhaled.

And now they're out to drown Oasis in a flood of raspberries, simply because the band refused permission for a cover version of Wonderwall. Wondersmurf fell at the

first fence.

``We hated the Smurfs as kids. I've no intention of letting a bunch of blue men in white hats do our stuff. Not little blue Belgian geezers in divvy white hats who sound like Suede,'' said Noel Gallagher. However, it's ``the little blue Belgian geezers'' who have a gross income of #100m and can afford to get another few songs together.

On Smurfs Go Pop the boys in blue have reworked Wet Wet Wet's Love Is All Around as Find The Smurf; Supergrass's Alright becomes We Are Smurfs. A debut hint at a Smurf's sex life is found on Mr Smurftastic, adapted from Shaggy's Mr Bombastic, where the line goes: ``I'm a smurf with a wonderful physique'' to an accompaniment of gasps and groans.

A desire for the presidency of the United States and smash hits which mix club tracks with synthesisers and drum machines - have the Smurfs sold out? A former collaborator thinks so. Father Abraham, who sang so sweetly on the hits of the seventies, which included The Smurf Song, Dippety Day, and Christmas in Smurfland was not invited back when they last exited the charts in 1978.

Father Abraham, alias Belgian singer Pierre Kartner, was not, as everyone believed, a monk. In a recent interview his son, Walter, said: ``He had a beard, a hat, and a long robe so that was how the story got about.'' Walter explained how his father was not pleased with his old band's new direction.

``My father is disappointed in their music now. It's too hard and beaty, made for the dance floor . . . They're just not children's songs anymore.'' But they go down a treat at straight and gay discos across the country, where the Smurfs have been embraced as the latest gay icons.

They remain, however, a favourite with kids, revelling in the cartoon series, currently running on the BBC. Yet obviously childish adulation and hits on the Continent were not enough to satisfy the band's desire to break into Britain. So they've ditched cuddles for pop star lip and attitude. Their new single, I've Got a Little Puppy, may be full of cute lines about: ``He lives in my home/and I take him for a walk'', but it's sung in a voice pickled in alcohol and roasted with Marlboros.

So just who launched these contemporary Gremlins on our ill-prepared pop chart? It was the Belgian cartoonist Pierre ``Peyo'' Culliford who first created squads of Smurfs and named them after the word schtroumph, Flemish for thingumabob. Created over 40 years ago in a comic strip, they first lept into action in a feature-length cartoon called The Magic Flute in the seventies.

Here, Papa Smurf and all his little smurf pals were smurfed repeatly by the wily villain, Gargamel, now re-read as heroic champion, but never snuffed out. So they lived to use the word ``smurf'' as adjective, adverb, and noun in

every episode of a popular television series, thus encouraging poor viewers to ignore the laws of grammar.

Curiously, adults seemed to prefer the small silent types and so a best-selling collection of figurines, which now comprises 309 different smurfs, sprang up. Today, avid members of the British Smurf Collectors' Club will pay #1000 for rare models such as the Neil Armstrong Moon Buggy Smurf. Quite a rise in interest since BP once sold 250,000

figures per week in the seventies, at just 36p to customers buying its National Benzol brand petrol.

Interest has spread like an infection. The market in Smurfabilia alone is pegged at around #67m, while C&A is about to launch a line in Smurf clothes, no doubt catering to every size.

It's these little plastic figures that bond hundreds of thousands of fans across the globe who communicate by smurfing the internet. The Ultimate Web Smurf Club is littered with messages from people wanting to know why the Olympic figurines are merely re-releases of sporting smurfs from the past and requests for fans to pass

on duplicate smurfs to other good homes.

A recent addition was pages of Hello!-ish smurf weddings complete with monk smurfs and a photographer taking smurfy pictures.

God, it's almost a relief to reach the Official Anti-Smurf page, which consists mainly of a list of reasons why the smurfs are annoying. ``They are blue. What can I say, throughout history blue creatures have been blamed for the world's troubles.''

Hardly a stinking rebuke.

Yet as the little blue creatures are intent on dominating the music charts it was at

least hoped that arch-cynic Jonathan King would re-form his classic seventies band Father Abraphart and the Smurps.

At the time of the last

Belgian invasion King rounded on the little people with a stinging parody entitled: Like a Smurp for Christmas. Unfortunately the single only reached number 58 and disappeared after four weeks.

Were there any plans for a new single?

``Sorry, Jonathan's not particularly interested in The Smurfs at the moment. It's not something that captures his imagination,'' said a friend.

Then all is lost. Pass the hat and paint me blue - if you ain't smurfin' your hurtin'.