There are quite a few people who dislike karaoke with a passion, however, that hatred of listening to awful renditions of beautiful songs does not usually run to murder, but it has been known. In Thailand, for example, a man shot eight of his neighbours who were knocking out terrible renditions of ‘Country Roads.’ Then there is the Philippines, where Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ has had to be removed from karaoke events after several people were killed… directly after murdering the song.

This story however concerns a restaurant owner, Mr. Yun, in China, who invited a few of his family out for a karaoke evening to celebrate their version of Valentine’s Day in the city of Xi’an. Things started to go wrong when the host let his four-year-old son have a go on the microphone. The trouble being that the Chinese take their karaoke very seriously and two of the boy’s uncles felt the host was just over indulging his son, using the local expression of ‘Little Emperor’ to describe him.

Needless to say, the argument turned into pushing and shoving, then it escalated when the two uncles started kicking and punching Mr. Yun. This was seen by Yun’s nephew, Mr. Hui, who then went off and armed himself with a meat cleaver from his uncles restaurant and proceeded to hack the two men to death.

On the downside, Mr. Hui was arrested for murder and the evening was completely ruined. However, on the upside, it did get the spoiled, squealing little brat off the sodding microphone!