This is getting ridiculous. Michael Jackson has dominated the news to such an extent that there’s no other news.

Honestly. No news. The Iranians have stopped demonstrating to do a mass moonwalk in honour of Michael Jackson, Bernie Madoff only got 150 years in jail to commemorate a dance remix of Smooth Criminal that runs at 150bpm and even climate change is too traumatised to kill any more polar bears this week.

So what news is there? Well, Britney Spears hasn’t died. Yes, it’s just like when Jeff Goldblum didn’t die on Friday but, well, about Britney Spears. It’s news, honest.

As shocking as Michael Jackson’s death was, it’s important to remember that he’s not the only person to have died recently. David Carradine snuffed it. Farrah Fawcett snuffed it. Ed McMahon snuffed it. Steven Wells snuffed it. Some beardy bloke from an infomercial snuffed it. Fred Travalena snuffed it. That’s how bad things are – even celebrities who we’ve never heard of have died.

Such a tsunami of celebrity death is bound to affect people in different ways. Some will cry, some will realise that they’d never actually met any of these people in real life and just get on with things, some – in particular anybody who’s ever even briefly been on television for more than five seconds within the last 20 years – will take to their panic rooms with stockpiles of tinned food and Tamiflu and stay there until all the famous people have stopped dying.

And some will do the decent thing and tell everyone that other celebrities have died.

It’s what happened last Friday when Jeff Goldblum had to politely remind the world that he was still alive after a hoax, and it’s what has happened to Britney Spears, after someone hacked into her Twitpic account and told everyone that she’d karked it too. NME reports:

The message read: “Britney has passed today. It is a sad day for everyone. More news to come.” The message was followed up with another Twitter posting saying, “Britney’s Twitter was just hacked. The last message is obviously not true. She is fine and dandy spending a quiet day at home relaxing.”

We’ve got mixed feelings about this turn of events, to be honest. Obviously we’re pleased that Britney Spears isn’t dead – simply because we probably wouldn’t be able to take five full days of radio stations playing nothing but I’m Not A Girl Not Yet A Woman directly after five full days of hearing radio stations playing nothing but Man In The Mirror – but ‘Britney has passed today’ just reeks of missed opportunity, doesn’t it?

The problem is that it’s not very realistic. Now, several close-together Twitpic updates reading ‘OMG, Britney’s got the scissors! Call for help!’, ‘No Britney, not the face! Not my precious face!’, ‘This is the voice of Britney’s vagina. I have overtaken her body and will use it for evil!’ and ‘No, my vagina, put the petrol can down! Stop it! Oh, it burns! Oh, I’m burning to death! Arrrghhh!’ would have been much more in keeping with Britney’s character, and it would have probably fooled a lot more people, too.

Oh well. Congratulations for not being dead anyway, Britney. Our records show that not dying yesterday was the greatest thing to happen to you for about 18 months. So, really, well done.

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