About Us & Press

Help Us Find The UK Trainwreck Of The Year

Trainwreck Of The YearOsbourne? Winehouse? Katona? Osbourne? Marsh?

Next month, hecklerspray will unveil the first annual UK Trainwreck Of The Year list in conjunction with our new best friends Monsters And Critics. Thing is, though, we're going to need your help.

We want to find the ten British celebrities who have bollocksed things up for themselves in the most spectacular way through drugs, sex, alcohol, illegal behaviour or just good old-fashioned stupidity, crowning the winner Trainwreck Of The Year. And your input is going to be vital. Here's what you need to do…

Email us at hello[AT]hecklerspray.com with a list of your top three UK trainwrecks. Your first choice will be awarded three points, your second choice two points and your third choice one point. Then, at the end of November, we're going to tally up all your scores, add them to the results of our own office survey and, lo, the inaugural UK Trainwreck Of The Year will be born. But who should you vote for?

Will it be Joss Stone for her onstage Brits meltdown? Jim Davidson for destroying his career on Hell's Kitchen? Heather Mills for her garbled rant on GMTV? Amy Winehouse for her drug overdose? Lily Allen for getting banned from America? Pete Doherty for, well, being Pete Doherty? It's up to you, and you have until Friday November 30 to make your choice.

Remember - the world is full of trainwrecks, but we're only interested in the British ones. Happy hunting! 

Self-Referential Narcissism No.2: Hecklerspray On Sky News

hecklerspray sky news stuart heritageThis is for any of you who a) have Sky News, b) will be at home at 7:30 tonight, c) will be watching TV at 7:30 tonight, d) won't be watching EastEnders at 7:30 tonight and e) want to watch someone from hecklerspray on Sky News at 7:30 tonight.

Because at 7:30 tonight, hecklerspray editor Stuart Heritage will be on Sky News as the guest on its Sky.com News show, talking about whatever new story happens to be big on the internet today. On the basis of the last two shows, this could either be the complex inquest into the Blackwater Fallujah deaths of 2004 or a Japanese man who dresses up as a vending machine sometimes. Watch it if you like, either on Sky News itself or live on the internet here at whenever 7:30pm UK-time is where you are. Or just watch EastEnders instead. We hear that Dot receives some shocking news tonight. 

Self-Referential Narcissism No. 1: The UK’s Fifth Biggest Blog

Blogstorm top 100 uk blogs hecklersprayNever ones to blow our trumpet - ahem - it came as quite the surprise yesterday to learn that, according to Blogstorm, hecklerspray is now the UK's fifth-biggest blog.

And, much like other famous fifth-placers like fifth-place 1983 Eurovision Song Contest entry Hoffmann & Hoffmann and the 2007 Venezuelan Softball World Cup squad, we're thrilled. How thrilled are we? Well, this time last year hecklerspray was the tenth-biggest UK blog and now we're the fifth-biggest, so the answer is probably 'twice as much as last year'. In case any of you wanted to know how Blogstorm calculated the ginormity of hecklerspray, here's its explanation:

The Top 100 UK Blogs ranking was compiled by listing over 1400 UK blogs and calculating their popularity using the well known metrics of Alexa Ranking and Technorati Ranking for each site.

See? So we're the Best Entertainment Blog in the UK according to Ask, Metro and a ginger Scottish man and the fifth-biggest overall UK blog according to some complicated calculations. And that honestly couldn't have happened without you lot, so thanks - especially those of you who've been reading hecklerspray for a while and left comments and stuff. Next year we've calculated that we'll be the second and a half biggest blog in the country, so thanks in advance for that, too.

Incidentally, Blogstorm has Belle De Jour listed as the UK's 74th biggest blog. Since we're clearly much bigger than that, we vow not to rest until hecklerspray is adapted into a glossy ITV2 drama about Billie Piper playing us and wanking off a load of blokes in her knickers, too. For it is our destiny.

Read more:

Top 100 UK Blogs - Blogstorm 

Matthew Laidlow’s In Front Magazine Right Now

Matthew Laidlow Front MagazineEvery so often, as a reward for not making basic punctuation and grammar mistakes in stories very often, hecklerspray writers are occasionally allowed to go and explore the big bad world for themselves.

Resident hecklerspray trawler Matthew Laidlow did this recently by working at top men’s magazine FRONT for two weeks last month. If you aren’t familiar with FRONT then you need to know that it’s not owned by a faceless corporation, so it can do what it wants, when it wants - giving it the freedom to shit over its competitors at will. So what did Matt do for FRONT? Apart from making round after round of crap tea and failing to blag free beer, he was mainly there to do bits of research for future articles. However, the highlight came when Matt was made to complete FRONT's 'Workie Challenge'.

His task was to simply get a fake tan. Sound like fun? Well, look at it this way - the average person receives two sprays on medium setting, and Matt had six sprays on the highest setting. Two weeks of looking like the hideous radioactive lovechild of Dale Winton and David Dickinson kept everyone laughing. Not just people in the office who found it hilarious - the builders across the road and random strangers frequently pointed and laughed, too. And if seeing semi-naked bright orange hecklerspray writers in print isn't enough to get you investigating FRONT, perhaps its shared dislike of Lee Ryan will convince you - he's taken the prestigious FRONT 'Number One Cunt' title this month.

Issue 111 of FRONT featuring Matthew Laidlow is out now from all good and bad newsagents. For God’s sake, they're even giving away free beer with this issue! What more could you want?

You! Win A Mercury Prize Compilation CD! Now!

Mercury Prize compilation CDOn Tuesday the 2007 Mercury Prize will be handed out to one of 12 mostly quite exciting bands. And Amy Winehouse. And The View. OK, 10 mostly quite exciting bands.

The winner of the Mercury Prize hasn't been decided yet - that all lies in the hands of a panel so painfully contrary that they'd give the Mercury Prize to a CD of your granny farting into a funnel if they thought nobody would expect them to - but, as with most Mercury Prizes, there are probably a bunch of nominees you've never even heard of. And that's where we come in. We've got five copies of this year's Mercury Prize compilation CD to give away. We're going to give them away to you, you know.

The 2007 Mercury Prize compilation CD is a pretty nifty sampler, too. Between Fionn Regan's disarmingly lovely Be Good Or Be Gone, Jamie T's breathtakingly daring Salvador or Maps' intimately fuzzy Lost My Soul, there's an awful lot to love. So, to win a copy of the 2007 Mercury Prize compilation CD, all you need to do is answer the following question:

Which act won the Mercury Prize last year?

Email your answers along with your name and address to hecklerspray[AT]gmail.com and we'll pick five winners at random at some point tomorrow. And then the Mercury Music Prize compilation CD will be all yours. And yours. And yours. And yours. And, yes, yours. Good luck!

Hecklerspray Interviewed For 11th Commandment! Look!

11th Commandment OJ Borg Podshow hecklerspray Stuart HeritageGod's really been letting his game go lately. His first ten commandments all work well enough in a universal sense, but his 11th commandment - go down the pub, talk to a boy about poo dimensions and film it - might need a bit more work.

And we should know what the 11th commandment is, because we are it. There's a brand new Podshow series out called 11th Commandment that sees intrepid presenter OJ Borg being sent on a mission by God to go out and interview a lot of people who are big on the internet. And - somewhat confusingly - first on OJ's list was hecklerspray. Yes, hecklerspray is officially bigger on the internet than the mental German kid. We are proud.

So OJ Borg recently kicked off the 11th Commandment series by going to Camden and interviewing hecklerspray's Stuart Heritage in a wide-ranging discussion containing at least two derogatory terms for female genitalia, one of which is so offensive that it actually needed to be bleeped out. 11th Commandment looks set to be a must-watch Podshow in weeks to come, and this episode should be of special interest to those of you who like to see slightly self-conscious blonde boys being interviewed about faeces by someone obviously more handsome, confident and intelligent than they are. Click the image or the link below to see.

Watch the hecklerspray 11th Commandment episode now

Join The Great hecklerspray Facebook Graffiti Competition

Facebook Graffiti competition Paris HiltonFacebook is the social networking website that magically lets you know a) what your friends look like and b) what their names are. How we ever managed to survive without Facebook is a solid gold mystery, that's for sure.

But now Facebook lets you do more than just obsessively reduce valuable friendship into a worthless collectible commodity - now you can draw pictures and win stuff that we've got laying around in the hecklerspray office too. We're launching the inaugural hecklerspray Facebook Graffiti Competition, and to be in with a chance of winning a couple of the promo CDs that we've been sent - or whatever - here's what you need to do:

1 - Join the Hecklerspray Am Great Facebook group

2 - Visit Stuart Heritage's profile

3 - Use the graffiti tool to draw a picture of whatever you like

Be warned, though, the standard of entry is already ridiculously high. Not only have we received this highly topical picture of Paris Hilton complete with wonky eye and house arrest leg bracelet from six-year-old Leslie Boatman, but we also have the nightmarishly literal Naomi Campbell Bites Off Calum Best's Leg In A Cloud Of Hair by Alison Jewitt and a sort of worrying tentacled pirate skull saying "Yaar" by Carina O'Reilly. Think you can do better? Go right ahead.

The competition closes in either a couple of weeks or whenever we get round to it, the judge's decision is final and you may need to add Stuart Heritage as a friend to actually participate so don't be so weird that he feels violated please. Good luck!

Read more:

Hecklerspray Am Best Facebook Group 

Come And Join The Hecklerspray Facebook Group

Facebook hecklerspray am bestFacebook is the newish social networking phenomenon that's sweeping the parts of the world that wants to leave all sorts of important information about itself lying around on the internet for everyone to see.

And now hecklerspray's a part of Facebook too - whoopy doo. Just like you came in your droves when the hecklerspray MySpace page was created, now we're inviting you to join the Facebook group entitled Hecklerspray Am Best. Why the pissing flip would you ever want to do that, you ask? Well, for a start you can engage the readers and writers of hecklerspray in all sorts of discussions - like the super current one about Naomi Campbell beating Pete Doherty in a fight that only exists in a handful of people's brains.

Not only that, but you can also sneakily look at the friends lists of other Hecklerspray Am Best group members, giving you unprecedented access to the faces of up to three of one of hecklerspray's cousins. And not only that, you can become friends with the hecklerspray writers* and really feel like you're very chummy with us even though the only real interaction that we'll ever have is a couple of mouseclicks at best. How could you possibly say no? Join us.

Sign up for the Hecklerspray Am Best Facebook group now

*Anyone who does this must agree to have "I am hecklerspray's bitch" as the answer to how we know each other. 

See hecklerspray On Buzz TV Again

hecklerspray technorati buzz TV shittingIf there's one thing we love here at hecklerspray, it's people talking about hecklerspray. If those people happen to be doing it on some kind of web TV show with a pair of headphones casually tossed around their necks, then that's even better.

You guessed it - hecklerspray has notched up another mention on Technorati's Buzz TV show, where a man reads choice stuff off the internet for you because your eyes are too tired from looking at all that porn or whatever. Anyway, what earned hecklerspray this valuable Buzz TV mention? Our constant commitment to providing you with the latest sarcastic celebrity news? The fact we won a bastard award yesterday? No, it's because we said something about shitting into a pipe a few days ago.

Our mothers are so very proud of us, you know.

Watch the shitpipe edition of Technorati Buzz TV here  

Metro Brit Blog Awards: Bloody Hell, We’ve Won

winnerRemember those Metro/Ask Best Of Brit Blog Awards that we've been sporadically mentioning to you over the last few months? Well guess what, hecklerspray's only gone and titting well won one of them.

That's right, you're now reading what's been picked as the best Arts & Entertainment blog in the country by Alan McGee - the man who discovered Oasis and, to a lesser extent, 18 Wheeler - and possibly some other people. Needless to say we're all dreadfully surprised to have won the award, since the only thing we've ever really won in the past was chlamydia, and that was probably more 'contracted' than 'won' now we think about it.

The Arts & Entertainment category was an especially tough one - among our competitors was Richard Herring's must-read blog and the gorgeously-designed TrackFeeder - so winning the award is a genuine rare honour for us.

New readers from Metro: Hello, stick around, we hope you like us.

Existing readers: Don't worry - this new-found attention won't change us. Just don't look us in the eye when you talk to us from now on. And make sure our mineral water is room temperature. And, when you refer to us, prefix our names with the title 'Mega-Destructo Emperor'. Room temperature, you hear?

Finally, to those of you who nominated hecklerspray for the award: Huge huge gigantic thanks. We couldn't have done this without you. Actually we probably could but, you know, thanks anyway.

Also - you can now hear hecklerspray editor Stuart Heritage giggling like a confused village idiot about winning the award on the Channel 4 Radio show The Morning Report. Near the end. After all the important news. 

Read more:

Blog Awards: The Winners - Metro 

Hecklerspray On MySpace - Come And Be Our Friend

For months now we've been digging through the murky world of MySpace as part of our MySpace Trawl feature, but we always did so from a safe distance - well not any more. Hecklerspray now has its own poorly-designed, occasionally-updated MySpace page.

Go to MySpace.com/hecklersprayuk right now and you will literally be able to see the hecklerspray logo, a very self-conscious profile and not much else. Oh, and a video of a Japanese children's TV show about a crazy octopus that we like. In the fullness of time we're going to overflow the hecklerspray MySpace page with pictures, blog entries, songs, those bulletin things that teenage girls seem to be so bloody keen on and whatever else we decide to do on the rare occasion that we remember it exists.

So if you have a MySpace account, please come and be our friend. We only have three so far. And one of them is Tom. Tom gives us the creeps.

MySpace.com/hecklersprayuk  

hecklerspray On The Radio… Listen

hecklerspray radio The World Sting AmericaOne of the best things about working for hecklerspray - apart from the misspelled threats of violence by people who like 30 Seconds To Mars - is that from time to time big media organisations call us up to be experts on celebrity culture.

And this happened earlier today, when Marco Werman from the BBC/ PRI/ Boston WGBH co-production news show The World asked us (well, Stu) to go on air and basically slag off Sting for getting nominated for a Classical Brit Award a bit. That'd be the same The World that's syndicated to hundreds of American radio stations and the same The World that's listened to by two million people, then. Lucky we discovered that after we did our piece, otherwise we'd have been even more cripplingly nervous than we already were.

Anyway, big thanks to Marco for editing our spewed-out semi-comprehensible ill-informed garble into something almost normal-sounding. You can listen to Stu's Sting rant on The World here or, if you have a little more time, you can listen to today's edition of The World in its entirety here - and you really should, because it's a peerless, remarkably even-handed and wide-ranging look at global current events. With a confusing attack on Sting by an sarcastic-sounding British boy tagged onto the end.