Las Vegas: shimmering sin-capital of overblown gambling, legalised prostitution and neon lights burrowing their ever-so-bright way into your retinas.

All well and good, but there’s something missing. Know what that is? A mildly psychotic pop star who enjoys shaving her head and displaying her vagina, that’s what.

Thank the sweet weeping lord, then, for Britney Spears. She’s apparently decided to use Vegas – or, more specifically, the Palms Hotel and Casino – as the jumping point for a ’spectacular comeback.’ Given that her last ‘comeback’ involved bobbing around onstage like a confused autistic sealion in front of millions of TV viewers, it’s safe to say that this is gonna be an interesting situation to say the least.

What kind of story do you tell your kids?

The one about Goldilocks and the Three Bears, maybe? The timeless tale of Jack And The Beanstalk? Or that really silly, utterly implausible one about the guy who created the entire Earth in six days, can read your thoughts at all times and will strike you down with lightening if you touch your winky too much?

All very good. But none – none – are up to the standard of the Curtain Factory Outlet parable, as recited by this mother to a bewildered youngster.

Nice to see Matt Dillon still getting work, eh?

If you know Tindersticks, you’ll be more than familiar with the world they inhabit.

It’s a sonic landscape of occasional desolation, soothing melancholy and introspective melody, all hazed out through a 3am red-wine-and-cigarettes blurry filter. In short: if you’re looking for an album to soundtrack the million-plus hours of GTA IV rampages you’re going to be enjoying from Tuesday, you need to search elsewhere.

If, however, you’re looking for a haunting, swelling, oddly fitting mixture of the stripped-back and the orchestral, then The Hungry Saw – Tindersticks’ first album since 2003’s Waiting For The Moon, and the seventh in their catalogue so far – may just float your boat nicely.

Sometimes it seems like everyone is a high flyer.

Just take a look around you. Everyone has their own PA or dog-walker or dead-prostitute-hider. Why, hecklerspray confidently expects that you’re not even reading this yourself – you’re simply having it droned out loud by some migrant worker while you lie in bed, encased in satin sheets and whispering sweet nothings to Jessica Alba and the Irish girl who used to be in that contact lens advert.

Don’t you ever want to taste the life of a simple man? Course you do. And here’s your chance – with the revolutionary McDonalds Employee Simulator. Much like a real job at McDonalds, it’s essentially aimless and unrewarding, but creator Garnet Hertz isn’t trying to soften the harsh reality of things, you know.

Actually, this was made in 1997. For all we know, Garnet Hertz could be dead by now.

Sorry.

McDonalds Employee Simulator

The latest project to emerge from the Judd Apatow stable, Forgetting Sarah Marshall has – for UK audiences – one defining aspect that may well put you off seeing the film altogether: Russell Brand is in it. Yes, that Russell Brand – the gurning, repetitive Beetlejuice tribute act who just won’t go away no matter how much we pray to Baby Jesus.

But… wait. There’s more.

If you were to avoid the movie because of his appearance, you’d be making a mistake. Why? Well, two reasons. A) Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a well-acted, superbly observed, snort-into-your-popcorn comic romp that intertwines both sharp characterisation and penis gags with winning effect. B) Russell Brand isn’t actually that bad in it. No. Seriously.

We’ve all been in boring situations.

Mathematics exams, for example. Or being subjected to a slideshow of holiday snaps. Or wading through the 746,983 comments along the lines of ‘OMG, OMG, why r u such haters, Pete Doherty is a legend, I luv u Pete !!!!!!!1111′ that hecklerspray receives every single day.

Nothing, though, matches the sheer soul-crippling nightmare you’re about to see. Footage has only just been released of a peculiar event in 1999, in which magazine writer Nicholas White popped out of his high-storey New York office for a cigarette. He took the elevator. It stopped. And he was stuck.

For forty hours.

Want to see that condensed into three minutes? Hell – we don’t care if you do or not. Here it is anyway.

http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/doherty%20to%20work%20on%20new%20album%20from%20jail_1065453