Marc Anthony probably gets sick of only being known as Jennifer Lopez’s husband, so he’s branched out.

He’s his own man now. His own man with his own stake in the Miami Dolphins, which is like a basketball team or something. Being a part-owner in a gigantic sport franchise like the Miami Dolphins will allow Marc Anthony to come out of Jennifer Lopez’s shadow. It’ll let him be his own man. It’ll allow the world to see that he’s not just a henpecked, put-upon husband to a frighteningly dominant woman.

Marc Anthony announced the news yesterday with Jennifer Lopez. Naturally.

At the start of the year it was rumoured that Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez were on the verge of splitting up, and that they’d announce their divorce on Valentine’s day. And that didn’t happen. If you ask us, it’s just another sign that the lazy media is only interested in distorting the truth and creating ugly lies for maximum attention, no matter whose lives get destroyed in the process. And we’ve had enough of it. We’ve had enough of these vultures preying on Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony with their little boxes of evil lies. We’ll have no more part in it.

And so no, despite the ‘rumours’ you may have heard perpetuated in the so-called ‘media’ that Marc Anthony has bought a minority stake in the Miami Dolphins, we’re here to tell you that they’re all lies. All vicious lies designed exclusively to rip poor Marc Anthony apart. You make us sick, media.

Now admittedly they’re lies backed up by several photos of Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez happily waving Miami Dolphins shirts around at a press conference, and recorded footage of Marc Anthony and Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross announcing that Anthony had purchased a stake in the team, and the unequivocal fact that Marc Anthony has definitely, without question, bought a stake in the Miami Dolphins. But they’re still lies. We hate the media. Ugh, the media.

Look at this collection of lies that the Miami Herald has stitched together as a quote attributed to Marc Anthony from yesterday’s press conference:

“I could quite possibly be staring at the first day of the rest of my life. That’s quite exciting at this stage of the game. I’m a little nervous. I’d rather sing. That’s much easier to me. It’s a storied franchise, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’m going to try to make it to my seat because my knees are a little weak.”

Ugh. Just because Marc Anthony definitely said those exact words in that order into a microphone at a press conference yesterday, it doesn’t mean any of it actually happened. God, the media makes us want to vomit blood sometimes. There isn’t even a team called the Miami Dolphins. We checked. It’s all lies.

Then again, on the off-chance that it is true, we’d like to congratulate Mr Anthony on his wise investment. May your part-ownership of the Miami Dolphins be a profitable one. Now hurry up and get divorced.

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Well, he hasn’t. Although the IOC has forgiven Michael Phelps for smoking pot at a student house party, USA Swimming has been a little bit tougher on him, slapping him with a three-month ban.

In effect, this means that Michael Phelps will have to spend 12 of the coldest weeks of the year far away from a freezing swimming pool, while wearing more than just a tiny pair of Speedos. We don’t know how the poor boy’s going to cope, we really don’t.

Everyone knows that Michael Phelps is a winner. He’s the greatest Olympian of all time, his dedication to training is unfathomable and the fact that he’s managed it while looking like the distressed offspring of Brundlefly and Peter Beardsley surely puts him in the league of the greats.

And if you need any more proof of what a winner Michael Phelps is, just go and visit him at the beginning of May. Not only will Michael Phelps know more about daytime TV than anyone else on Earth, but he’ll have also memorised the Dominos Pizza delivery leaflet off by heart and become the world champion of looking exactly like Fat Orson Welles.

Yes, the inevitable has happened. Following this weekend’s photos of him smoking a bong at a party in house decorated by a blind tramp from the 1970s, Michael Phelps has been banned from competition for three months by USA Swimming. It could have been a lot worse – had the IOC decided not to accept his apology like it did, the ban could have been for anything up to two years – but the three-month ban is still going to sting.

After all, what’s going to stop other aspiring swimmers from freakishly beefing themselves up and winning eight Olympic gold medals of their own in the next three months? Nothing, that’s what. Yahoo reports:

“This is not a situation where any anti-doping rule was violated, but we decided to send a strong message to Michael because he disappointed so many people, particularly the hundreds of thousands of USA Swimming member kids who look up to him as a role model and a hero,” the federation said in a statement.

But it gets worse for Michael Phelps – not only is an over-zealous local sheriff threatening to arrest him, presumably because this is the most exciting thing to happen on his turf since Old Man McDingle got his pickup stuck in a ditch in the summer of 78, but he’s also starting to lose sponsorship deals, too.

And which company has decided that Michael Phelps no longer fits its image? Visa? Speedo? Omega? AT&T? No – Kellogg. That’s right, the company that would have gone bust decades ago if it weren’t for all the potheads eating bowl after bowl of dry Frosties in their dressing gowns at 3pm is no longer endorsing Michael Phelps because he may have inhaled some marijuana once. What next – will Phelps lose his valued Hacky Sack sponsorship, too?

But anyway, we’re sure that Michael Phelps will come back harder than ever after his suspension time to prove the world wrong. It’s just like Rocky, if Rocky had been about a champion boxer who got shitfaced on drugs and ended up spending quarter of a year sitting in his pants watching I Dream Of Jeannie DVD boxsets all the time.

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That way, they could win the game, celebrate it, then drift slowly into crippling alcoholism. It worked. But, as with every successful system, a few young rebels felt it necessary to buck the trend, and now Gary Lineker has made it perfectly acceptable to have a successful career running in tandem with your sportiness. Even this weekend, Rio Ferdinand thought it time he showcased his magazine editing skills, taking over Observer Sports Monthly for a one-off – no one even knew footballers could read five/ten years ago.

And it’s not just the media that has benefited from this sudden surge in multi-talented centre forwards. No sir.  The hardcore rap scene is having a field day. Below are the four greatest examples of sporting rap stars…

1.  Andy Cole, centre forward

Anyone who supported football in the 1990s already knows everything about Andy Cole. He was the goal scoring machine, who was ruthless on the pitch, yet shocked the world with his strange nasal, almost childlike, voice during post-match interviews. It didn’t match the face – like when James Blunt opens his mouth, and The Queen’s voice comes out. Still, none of that stopped Andy enjoying underground success in 1999, with a Hip Hop masterpiece called Outstanding. On the track, he pioneered simple rapping, rhyming words like “Cole” with “goal”, and – ingeniously – “hard” with “hard”. It just missed the top 40, which makes it a cult classic.

2. Ryan Babel, Winger

It can be petrifying for foreign players arriving at Liverpool Football Club. On their very first day, they’re confronted by crowds of men coughing, sniffing, snorting, hacking – but they needn’t be afraid, it’s just the way Liverpool locals speak, they’re saying “hello”. Luckily Ryan is from Holland, where the throat is equally important when chatting with friends. Or, indeed, rapping. In his native land, he’s been known to rock the mic whenever he’s in town – using the ghetto moniker, Rio. And judging by what we’ve heard, there is no Dutch translation for “motherfucker”. Which seems weird.

3. Anton Ferdinand, defender, and Nigel Reo-Coker, midfielder

Hey man, rapping isn’t just about huddling with a group of your closest friends telling one another poems that you wrote, it’s also about drawing pictures on train tracks, and, most importantly, dancing. Anton and Nigel are both tremendous rap dancers. So good, in fact, that they thought it completely worthwhile to film themselves bouncing around to some tight beats, then stuck the results on YouTube. They look fly, baby.

4. Liverpool FC

Back in 1988, the Hip Hop world was brought to its knees by The Anfield Rap. Featuring hardcore MCs like John Barnes, Alan Hansen and Steve McMahon, it took what The Beastie Boys and LL Cool J were doing at the time, and took it up to a whole new level. The video caused a major stir as well, mainly because of Bruce Grobelaar’s terrifyingly huge hands. It made it to number three in the UK charts.

This slice of genius has been a guest blog from the mighty Josh Burt from Interestment.co.uk

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Or perhaps you are American, but one of those weird 600lb ones, in which case you’re unable to produce a molecule of thought which doesn’t just consist of the words “Cookies fries cheese fries cheese fries cheese cookies fries cheese fries cheese fries cheese” in an unending, hypnotic mindchant.

Well you all need to GET interested in gridiron, because each game is now being broadcast with a free porno. Sign us up for ESPN immediately!
American football, like soldiering, is 90% boredom and 10% adrenaline rush. Unlike soldiering, the promise of an upcoming adrenaline bit is the only thing stopping viewers trying to choke themselves on the TV remote in futile suicide attempts during the boredom bits.

The problem up to now has been how to keep those viewers interested in this slow-moving setpiece sport during those long, tedious periods of soul-draining nothingness. Traditionally, the TV stations have been forced to  run lots of ‘amusing’ advertisements to try and stall their viewers from eating their own feet in attempts to relieve the monotony.

Well, no longer. A man who we want to be our new best friend, working at football headquarters, has thought of an even better way to maintain viewers’ attention through prolonged breaks: hardcore porn.

During the final quarter of yesterday’s Super Bowl game, some lucky viewers in Arizona were treated to a 30-second clip from a skinflick. Sadly, we did not witness this brave new world of sportscasting, so let us go to the readers of the Arizona Daily Star to describe the incident:

“Callers said that the clip showed a woman unzipping a man’s pants, followed by a graphic act between the two.”

Oh come on, callers. That’s the best you got? Nobody outside of Arizona saw this thing and, to be honest, we’re all pretty desperate to know exactly what the ‘graphic act’ was. Bumming? A titwank? Axillism? Pfft, forget it, we’ll just use our imagination.

Comcast, the cable company which broadcast this great leap for mankind, tried to pretend that this was something other than an inspired vision of the future:

“It is still unclear how many viewers saw the clip, from a porn movie being shown on Shorteez, an adult cable channel offered by Comcast on a pay-per-view basis. Only Comcast subscribers who received a standard definition signal could see the clip, while those who watched the game on high-definition televisions were not affected.”

Say what? Shame on you, Comcast. This is the first ever union between televised sports and pornography (let it be known as “spornts”) and you deny it to the HI-Def viewers?

[story by Gibbo]

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But Michael Phelps’ Olympic career has taken a massive blow. It’s all thanks to that pesky picture of him filling his ridiculously oversized lungs with drugsmoke at some sort of awful-looking teenage party.

Usually this behaviour comes with a two-year IOC ban, but Michael Phelps has got away with it. The IOC has said that the matter will end because Phelps looks ashamed of what he’s done. Silly IOC – that’s not shame, that’s just what Michael Phelps’ mangled-up face normally looks like.

There’s no doubting that Michael Phelps is an athletic legend. Not only is Phelps the greatest Olympian in history – a monster forged through hard work and technology who needs to consume a week’s worth of food every single day just to keep his stupidly-proportioned body moving – but he’s managed to achieve that despite being a gigantic pothead.

Yesterday Michael Phelps was forced to apologise after a picture of him smoking a bong at a grotty party in a house with nasty wallpaper was published in a Sunday newspaper. The photo had potentially serious consequences – cannabis is a substance that’s been banned both by the IOC and the World Anti-Doping Agency, and usually comes with a two-year ban.

Admittedly that’s not all bad news – a ban would mean that Michael Phelps wouldn’t be able to win any more gold medals, which means he’d have fewer to wear in all his shameless product endorsement photo sessions, which means the weight of them all would be less likely to pull his head off and spurt blood out of his neck everywhere as he staggers around like some sort of hideous bloody lycra-clad oil rig – but that’s not something we have to concern ourselves with right now.

Because the IOC has decided that, so long as Michael Phelps is sorry for what he’s done, he can keep being in the Olympics. Reuters reports:

“Michael Phelps is a great Olympic champion. He apologised for his inappropriate behaviour,” IOC spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau said on Monday. “We have no reason to doubt his sincerity and his commitment to continue to act as a role model.”

That’s definitely good news – not just for Michael Phelps but for all of those who see him as a role model. Those people, incidentally, include Snoop Dogg, Afroman, everyone in Phish, the cast of Dude, Where’s My Car and both Harold AND Kumar.

However, we see what the IOC is doing here – it’s clear that it chose not to punish Michael Phelps because his Olympic career is as good as over anyway.

Not only does all this pot smoking mean that Phelps now has a resting heartrate of, say, one lonely thump every two or three months, but it’s a scientific fact that growing a ratty beard and wrapping brightly-coloured elastic bands around it can severely cut down a swimmer’s stroke efficiency. And, let’s face it, that’s going to be Michael Phelps’ next step.

But let’s take Michael Phelps at his word anyway – if he says he won’t smoke any more pot, then we have no option but to believe him. And we’re certain that we’ll be seeing him winning even more gold medals at the 2012 Olympics, to be held in the notoriously drug-free environs of east-end Londo… uh-oh.

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But they do watch the Super Bowl for one thing – boobies. Across the world yesterday, hundreds of millions of people tuned into to the Super Bowl to see who’d accidentally flop a knocker out during the halftime show. Sadly, all we got was Bruce Springsteen.

Bruce Springsteen yesterday performed a Super Bowl halftime set that was as flat and lifeless as any in recent memory, and he’s received lukewarm reviews for it at best. Plus, let’s be honest, his tits are terrible.

Aside from the actual football – which couldn’t be more dreary if it took place between two different gangs of nearly-dead emphysemic pensioners – people tend to watch the Super Bowl for either the ads or the halftime show. And usually one of those will have something going for it.

Not this year, though. As far as the Superbowl commercials went, we were spared Kevin Federline and adorably violent homophobia and instead got two things that made us instinctively dry-heave – the first was Bob Dylan doing a duet with Will.i.am in an advert for Pepsi, and the second was that 3D promo for Jay Leno’s new show where he drove around, tried to poke us in the eye with his chin and pulled a horrifyingly smug face all at the same time. Never say Jay Leno can’t multitask.

As for the music, the Super Bowl halftime show continued its dull tradition of violently eschewing sexiness and showmanship in favour of ground-out craftmanship. Bruce Springsteen was the performer last night, and in his 12-minute slot he avoided recent controversies like the Janet Jackson nipple-slip or the Prince devil penis so that he could concentrate on belting out some of his biggest hits.

Well, some of his biggest hits and a new song. A new song that sounds like it was written by a cynically-minded internet Bruce Springsteen song generator that’s on the fritz. And, because of that, the reviews of Bruce Springsteen’s Super Bowl halftime show haven’t been all that amazing. The New York Times reports:

The final discomforts were all Springsteen’s. At the end, he shouted inexplicably, “I’m going to Disneyland!” A moment earlier, a man dressed as a referee appeared on stage, threw a yellow flag and crossed his arms in front of Springsteen, the signal for delay of game. Springsteen mock fretted about the ticking clock, and Van Zandt protested, screaming, “It’s Boss time!” Except that it wasn’t, and everyone knew it.

Maybe it’s a little harsh to criticise Bruce Springsteen for his performance – a 12-minute Super Bowl halftime show didn’t really give him the chance to show off what he does best, which is a) playing concerts that go on for such incalculably long periods of time that members of the audience routinely end up developing spinal fusion, full-length beards and elderly incontinence, and b) singing songs about bumming prostitues.

But, hey, at least nobody saw any nipples – even if we do suspect that if the Super Bowl continues to book halftime acts based on their sturdy reliability, then next year we’ll be treated to a 12-minute set by an actual sack of potatos.

And, you know. At least it wasn’t Tom Petty again. That’s something to be thankful for, at least.

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Yesterday a newspaper published pictures of Michael Phelps apparently smoking a bong at a house party. And, since science proves that marijuana is at least as performance-enhancing as loads of steroids, it could lead to a competitive swimming ban for Phelps.

That’s disastrous. Take competitive swimming away from Michael Phelps and what have you got? A freakish man with a face like a clubbed seal who sort of seems like he’d be a bit of a tosser if you met him, that’s what.

When he won all those gold medals in the Olympics last year, just about every newspaper in the world ran a story about how he consumed 12,000 calories every single day. At the time it seemed like a testament to his professional dedication and unrelenting training. Now, though, we’ve woken up to the fact that it’s probably because Michael Phelps is always shitfaced on drugs.

OK, not ‘always’ shitfaced on drugs – Michael Phelps was pictured yesterday in a newspaper appearing to smoke a bong in what could very well be a one-off incident. And possibly not drugs, either – nobody can be completely sure what was in that bong. There’s just as good a chance that Michael Phelps was inhaling a nutritious infusion of steamed asparagus through the pipe. But, hey, let’s chance it and go with the drug thing anyway.

Obviously – since smoking cannabis naturally makes individuals more energetic, driven and liable to take the participation in professional sports more seriously – these pictures could well lead Michael Phelps to a ban from competitive swimming. Cannabis is banned by both the Olympics and the World Anti-Doping Agency, and a first-time offence usually results in a two-year ban.

And that’s why Michael Phelps wants you to know that he’s very, very sorry. About everything. Bloomberg reports:

“I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner that people have come to expect from me,” the record 14- time Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer said in a statement through his representatives, Octagon. “For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public — it will not happen again.”

It’s a shame that Michael Phelps was forced to make an apology like this. As a child he was teased at school for his awkward shape, lanky frame and clumsiness on dry land, but by winning all the gold medals at the Bejing Olympics last year Michael Phelps was able to teach those bullies a lesson – now people only treat him with the utmost respect, calling him names that reflect his success like The Human Fish, Captain Penguin, Mr Olm and That Freaky Mutant Mer-Man Bastard. But now those days could be numbered.

Of course, a ban isn’t guaranteed – Michael Phelps hasn’t tested positive for drugs yet – but if Michael Phelps is banned from swimming, it wouldn’t be all bad. Give him a few years in the wilderness and we’re certain that Michael Phelps will come back stronger than ever, with a fairly good autobiography, an extensive Marion Jones-style Oprah interview and a near-professional Xbox skill level.

True, they might not be achievements on the scale of being the most successful-ever Olympian, but at least they’ll distract people’s attention away from thinking that Michael Phelps looks a bit like the inbred banjo kid from Deliverance. And, if he’s going to do anything with his life, it should probably be that.

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It ended with Sylvester Stallone’s Get Carter remake. Ugh. But Mickey Rourke isn’t a man who repeats his mistakes – apart from the mistake involving him having haphazard cosmetic surgery procedure done on his face. And that’s why Mickey Rourke has decided he’ll no longer fight at April’s Wrestlemania.

We’re appalled. Without Mickey Rourke, who at Wrestlemania will provide our fill of tragic, borderline-decrepit ageing beefcakes who essentially make their living as performing monkeys? All the other wrestlers? Oh.

Mickey Rourke is the king of bad ideas. Giving up acting at the height of his fame to become a largely rubbish professional boxer, apparently having all his plastic surgery performed by an angry gibbon with scalpels for hands, Another Nine 1/2 Weeks – these are not the actions of a man with a long-term goal.

And even now that Mickey Rourke is the toast of Hollywood after playing himself in the movie Look, It’s Mickey Rourke In A Blonde Wig, he still doesn’t seems to have given up his old addiction to bad ideas. That’s why he’ll soon be starring in the latest Sylvester Stallone film, why he’s officially become the face of amputated dog testicles, and why he’d been planning to have his face beaten into a concave plasticine pizza at this year’s Wrestlemania.

Earlier this week it was announced that, to pay tribute to those who inspired his role in The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke would be appearing at Wrestlemania this year, possibly by fighting Chris Jericho. And it would have been must-see entertainment, so long as your definition of ‘must-see’ involves an old man, two pairs of borderline-obscene lycra unitards, tens of thousands of rednecks and at least one career-threatening injury.

But now, we’re sad to report that Mickey Rourke has now backed out of Wrestlemania. Access Hollywood reports:

“Mickey was very honored to be asked as he has the greatest respect for WWE however he will not be participating in ‘Wrestlemania,’” the actor’s rep said in a statement to Access Hollywood. “He is focusing entirely on his acting career.”

This isn’t a huge surprise – if you saw this painfully awkward showdown between Mickey Rourke and Chris Jericho on Tuesday’s Larry King, you’ll know you may as well have spent three minutes watching a giant flashing sign reading ‘UNCOMFORTABLE SECOND THOUGHTS’…

Some are saying that Mickey Rourke is backing out of Wrestlemania because it would have been the quickest way for him to lose his Oscar. Playing a wrestler in a story that uncomfortably mirrors your own life is one thing – but actually being a wrestler for a night, without the opportunity to launch into a desperate tear-filled soliloquy at the end to show your emotional range? Piss off.

Would Sean Penn do that, huh? Would Sean Penn stand in the middle of an arena and have a chair smashed into his face by a seven-foot monster who’d been pumped full of steroids? No. No he bloody well wouldn’t.

Nice thought, though, isn’t it?

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But not us. We’d say that Mickey Rourke’s face doesn’t look enough like an uncooked hamburger patty that’s been trampled by a marching band. And we think Mickey Rourke agrees with us.

Why? Because it’s been hinted that Mickey Rourke – from The Wrestler, remember – will wrestle Chris Jericho at Wrestlemania in April. One-sided? Relax! After Wrestlemania there’s going to be a rematch to see who can sob the most incoherently on a beach, a bout that Rourke will easily win.

You know what there’s not enough of? Actors promoting their work by taking on the real-life job of the characters they play. It’d be great – George Clooney could market his return to ER by literally slicing a man open and fumbling around inside his guts until he yanks out what he assumes is a spleen, while Julia Roberts could have easily improved her Oscar chances for Pretty Woman by literally having grubby, meaningless sex with a string of lonely men for cash.

No, of course we’re just joking. Only an idiot would take on a job that they’ve only really done before for the sake of a movie. It’s probably the stupidest thing that anyone could ever do. It’s not just stupid, but arrogant too. So it’s a good job that actors aren’t either stupid or arrogant, isn’t it? Oh, hang on a minute…

We forgot about Mickey Rourke. The Wrestler has been good to Mickey Rourke – it’s established his position as an acting behemoth, plus it’s allowed him to take on other challenges as varied as being in Iron Man 2 and pleading with the public to smash off their pet’s testicles with a hammer. Or something.

And because of this, Mickey Rourke wants to give something back to the people that inspired his character in The Wrestler - the old, beaten-down, injury-ravaged former wrestlers who are all guaranteed to die tragically young in poverty-stricken agony. And it looks like Mickey Rourke is going to accomplish that by becoming one of them himself.

That’s right, as E! Online reports, Mickey Rourke is going to Wrestlemania:

“The nicest thing has been the whole wrestling community embracing us. The movie was about their world and so I think maybe I’m gonna do Wrestlemania in Houston. I had some dialogue with Vince McMahon and Ric Flair, Roddy Piper and all the rest of them and they’ve been really supportive… Chris Jericho, you better get in shape, because I’m coming after your ass.”

It might seem a little strange at first – The Wrestler carries an unsubtle anti-wrestling sentiment at times, so Mickey Rourke promoting it by appearing at Wrestlemania is a little like Reese Witherspoon promoting Rendition by kidnapping a stranger, flying him to Egypt and then booting him in the balls for eight months until he confesses to a crime he didn’t do.

But you know what? Good for Mickey Rourke. If he thinks his body is up to the rigours of professional wrestling, then all the best to him. And if worst comes to worst, it might take a doctor up to three minutes to remould his face. His skin is like Play-Doh, we heard.

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Actually, let’s be a little clearer. Don’t you ever say anything mean about Elisha Cuthbert if you’re a professional ice hockey player who used to have sex with Elisha Cuthbert. Because if you do, you’ll pretty much be banned from ice hockey forever.

Just ask Sean Avery. He’s been suspended indefinitely from the NHL, and all because he called Elisha Cuthbert his ’sloppy seconds’. That’s not only obscene, but inaccurate – technically Cuthbert is Avery’s ’spunky doubledip’.

The world of celebrity and the world of sport don’t mix. They just don’t. In fact, we’ve tried as hard as possible and the only vaguely happy celebrity/sports couple we’ve managed to think of is world-renowned celebrity David Beckham and his wife Victoria who, as we all know, is a javelin.

But for further proof that you should never throw a celebrity into the sporting world, let’s look at Elisha Cuthbert. You may remember falling in love with Elisha Cuthbert when she starred as Kiefer Sutherland’s trouble-prone, bosom-heaving daughter in 24, or maybe you remember her from one of the countless terrible films she’s made subsequently. No, of course you don’t – those films are all so bad that people can’t even watch them ironically.

But if you’re Canadian, then there’s a chance you know Elisha Cuthbert for something else – her love of ice hockey players. Honestly, there’s just something about toothless, prematurely-aged, bemulleted rednecks who look like they can barely string a sentence together that just gets Elisha Cuthbert going.

For instance, Elisha used to be romantically linked with Sean Avery, an ice hockey player who can only really be described as looking like an inbred scarecrow with leprosy. But, for whatever reason, Cuthbert and Avery broke up and Elisha started seeing a man called Dion Phaneuf who, incidentally, is the only ice hockey player on earth with a surname that you can only pronounce properly if you pull your bumcheeks apart and gently fart.

So how did Sean Avery react to Elisha Cuthbert moving on so quickly? Well, by going on TV and saying:

“I’m really happy to be back in Calgary, I love Canada and I just wanted to comment on how it’s become a common thing for guys in the NHL to fall in love with my sloppy seconds, I don’t know what that’s about.”

The statement wasn’t really a surprise – as a man who gets paid to wear metal blades on his feet and clatter into other people on purpose, nobody would ever expect Sean Avery to be particularly eloquent – but he forgot one thing when he called Elisha Cuthert his ’sloppy seconds’. And that’s that the NFL really bloody loves the 2005 remake of House Of Wax and will therefore never hear a bad word spoken about Elisha Cuthbert.

Which explains why Sean Avery has just been banned from ice hockey forever for saying it. Literally forever, as the New York Daily News reports:

The NHL rarely is amused by anything Sean Avery says or does, and proved it again by suspending [him] Tuesday night for what the league termed “inappropriate” comments and conduct “detrimental” to the game of hockey. Avery was banned indefinitely pending a hearing with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman for making derogatory comments about his former girlfriend – actress Elisha Cuthbert.

Yeah, that’ll teach Sean Avery! How dare he bring the NHL into disrepute by calling Elisha Cuthbert his ’sloppy seconds’! Everyone knows that ice hockey players live by a code of conducts that requires them to be polite, courteous and willing to knock up the unmarried teenage daughter of prospective American vice presidents at a moment’s notice. Avery was way out of line.

So how will this ban affect Sean Avery and Elisha Cuthbert? Well despite apologising for the remarks Sean Avery needs to look for a new job, possibly as a model for the ‘before’ picture in cosmetic surgery adverts. And now that everyone knows her as Sean Avery’s sloppy seconds, Elisha Cuthbert will probably find herself only making cheap, unpopular movies about subjects that nobody could ever find interesting.

So no change, really.

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Those skills are naught compared to the mighty skill held by Mr Joey Chestnut, a man who we wish to emulate in every single way possible. Why? Because Joey Chestnut – our favourite competitive eater – has just eaten 45 slices of pizza in 10 minutes during an event in New York, smashing the previous world record.

By doing so, Joey Chestnut instantly won a place in our heart. How big? Easily as big as the impacted chuck of bone-dense cholesterol that we presume is lodged in his ascending aorta and will zap him off to an early grave before too long. Hooray for Joey Chestnut!

To train for his impressive eight gold medal haul in the Olympics this summer, Michael Phelps worked his way through 12,000 calories a day – 10,000 more than the recommended average. In short, Michael Phelps is a pussy.

That’s because competitive eater extraordinaire Joey Chestnut yesterday smashed the world record for eating slices of pizza, blasting through 45 in the space of 10 minutes. That’s 11,700 calories. And 450 grams of fat. In 10 minutes. We love Joey Chestnut.

We love Joey Chestnut so much that we’d hug him, but we’re scared that the embrace would trigger some sort of retroactive gag reflex inside him, leading to him belching up endless wads of mashed-up dribble-covered pizza into our faces. Just getting the melted cheese out of our hair would be a nightmare.

Joey Chestnut first came to our attention last year, when he bravely stole the competitive eating crown away from Japan by forcing reigning hotdog-eating champion Takeru Kobayashi into gruesome fits of convulsive puking while putting away 66 hotdogs in 12 minutes at a Coney Island eating competition. Kobayashi didn’t go down without a fight, though – so determined was he to maintain his title that he even started eating his own vomit at one point. Honestly, it’s on video. But not even a majestic act like that could stop Joey Chestnut from taking his rightful crown, and a star was born.

Joey Chestnut was won competitive eating titles since then, but yesterday saw his legend take another leap skywards – for that was when Joey Chestnut broke his pizza-eating world record during the Famous Famiglia pizza-eating contest in Times Square yesterday. Here’s a snatch of The New York Daily News‘ report on the event, but we’d like to prepare any male readers first – you’ll never feel more impotent than you will during these next few lines:

He folded the slices – very quickly – and shoved them into his mouth. He jumped around some, to help them go down the hatch, or knocked back water from paper cups. He never appeared to chew… The morning of the pizza matchup, he had coffee for breakfast – and a gallon of water to stretch his stomach muscles. He hadn’t had anything but protein supplements for two days before that.

Honest to God, Joey Chestnut is the David Blaine of eating until everyone watching starts sobbing and dry-heaving everywhere. Men want to be Joey Chestnut. Women want to be with Joey Chestnut. Doctors want to slap Joey Chestnut around the face while screaming “Look what you’re doing to yourself!” He’s a hero, and we should all be proud of him.

You might think that a man eating 45 slices of pizza for sport while the world is on the brink of economic collapse falls into a category somewhere between ‘frivolous’ and ‘offensive’ but you’re wrong. We want Joey Chestnut to be our adopted father. Even though we’re older than him. You wouldn’t think it though – seriously, he looks like he’s going to die any minute.

He’s good at swimming, isn’t he? And – boy – does he ever have a lot of gold medals.

Sorry. We’re trying our hardest to think of something amusing to say about the record-breaking Olympic champion, but to be honest we just came up with a big list of puns like Phelp, I’m A Fish. And then slapped ourselves.

Instead of straining our imagination glands, then, we’re just going to show you a remarkable video. Many of you will have gawked in amazement at what Phelps eats for breakfast every day in order to keep his strength up … something in the region of sixty million billion calories (or a ‘Chris Moyles’, as it’s known in the business). No-one has ever tried eating the same amount in five minutes, though.

Apart from this man.

The man with a head that is home to a hair island and a face that wears a frighteningly creepy smile at all times has been spotted in the wild at his new job in the Netherlands, attempting to talk to the press.

Now, far be it from us to mock the man, but, well – we had enough ammo to go on before this, and now he’s just gone and set us up for life. He’ll never have to behave like a twit again, he’ll never have to do an awful job as England manager then blame it on everyone/thing else and he’ll never have to talk utter, utter tripe ever again.

Because this clip says everything about Steve McClaren you would ever want it to. The man is clearly deranged – there cannot be any other explanation for his decision to adopt such a stunning ‘Dutch’ accent. He actually sounds like your dad on holiday, trying to talk to a waiter who can only manage broken English.

Yet this is a man who has – presumably – had endless training on how to conduct himself in public, how to speak and how to behave. Obviously the training fell on deaf ears.

Ol’ Steve also seems oblivious to the fact that most Dutch people have a far more refined English vocabulary than most English people. Either that, or he thinks the woman interviewing him had just arrived from special school. Either way, he’s not helping himself.

Watch for yourselves:

Honestly. “ME. COME TO HOLLAND. VERY GOOD SIDE. CHAMPION AND IS LEAGUE. ARSE. NAL. LIVERPOOL. WE PLAY. MAYBE. WE SEE!”

He’s a loss to the English game, that’s for sure.

More then likely because it’s not real.

But for once we have to hold our massive hands up and admit that someone does actually know where the sodding place is. Would you believe it, the person in question is the most unlikely of sources; none other then publicity-seeking semi-celebrity and occasional footballer David Beckham.

Perhaps he stumbled on the Street after getting lost on his journey back from training to his fifty-seven bathroomed mansion. You do have to feel sorry for the poor kid, seeing as he has probably just learned the difference between left and right.

The new football season is yet to kick off, meaning it must be the kind of time when all professionals in the game are looking for something to do – if it isn’t polishing up on their roasting skills, then its whoring yourself out for bread-based rewards.

So what are the UK’s finest footballing export and pointless wife thinking of doing to dominate every media opportunity available? Clashing our heads together, we’ve come to realise that the only realistic TV appearances Becks could make would be for his personal mental development – a journey of educational discover in one of America’s fine learning institutions. But which one?

Let’s face it; do you really think that he could turn up to some fancy looking high school like in One Tree Hill without looking out of place? No. In fact, the only place he could squeeze in and almost look like he fit in would be at Bayside High with AC Slater and the gang, as David donned Lycra to try out for the homoerotic wrestling team. Though that’s not really an option now, with most of the Saved By The Bell cast (read: Screech) off doing porn and things.

No, the typical American school (off of TV) is no place for thirty three-year-old bloke with such a hectic lifestyle. As we all know, he’s too busy when he isn’t playing football, looking after his wife and pretending to care about her latest trauma when she doesn’t get the latest pair of six inch Jimmy Choo heels in custard yellow.

So what is the best alternative place of learning for an American? If you haven’t realised already, it’s Sesame Street. The show has been running for thirty nine series and is still going strong – though sadly for the UK, we never recieved the full benefit of the program like our American counterparts, with the show ceasing to be aired in favour of The Hoobs. Strangely though, despite their extra years of education, our friends across the pond still sometimes come across as a bit slow.

Show bosses have picked up on David Beckham’s fascination with Sesame Street, and though there is the distinct possibility that his young children know better than daddy does that Bert, Ernie, Big Bird and Elmo aren’t actually real, we aren’t about to ruin the illusion. After all, we don’t want tears before the bedtime milk and cookies are served. A source told Closer magazine:

“David has always been a huge fan. When he was a kid he watched it and knew all the characters.”

See! He knows all the characters! All of the people who said that a bag of spanners were more intelligent than David Beckham can just leave the building now.

So what’s he actually going to be doing? Because the show is educational and all that, there isn’t going to be a special football-based version of the programme with David demonstrating his flicks, kicks and other fancy tricks. Closer again informs us that he’ll:

“Teach Elmo how to spell his favourite word. And you never guess what it is! Not posh, foot or ball – it’s persistent.”

Persistent? We thought that ‘ball’ or ‘goal’ would be obvious, but persistent? Could that be used in a sentence commonly uttered by Becks? “My wife is persistent in grabbing limelight for herself” or “My wife is persistent in her quest to not just be written off as a footnote in the history of celebrity.”

Besides, we thought Elmo’s favourite word would be hamburger. You learn something every day it seems.

Part-time granny-lover and occasional striker for Manchester United and England, Wayne Rooney, has put pen to paper on a new £150,000 deal. Fortunately for Wayne, he’s not being paid to stay away from the finest pensioners that various brothels up and down the country have to offer, he’s instead going to try and concentrate on tucking into a portion of bread.

We mean with his teeth. Not his winky. You perverts.

What bread and Wayne Rooney have in common is beyond us, but somebody at the Hovis bakery seems to think it will help their slumping sales.

Maybe they’ve forgotten about the ferocious CREDIT CRUNCH, meaning people are simply buying less? In fact, they would be better off just trying to get Wayne to spend £150,000 on bread. But then again, he probably wouldn’t know what to do with all that yeasty goodness.

Using all the experience garnered from our Badvertising feature, we’ve thought of a few ways that bread and Wayne Rooney could be connected:

1) He could explain to children that his brain resembles the mush left over after dipping Hovis’ finest in a soft-boiled egg 152 times. As a result, he decided to get the world’s stupidest tattoo.

2) It could be some sort of crap football advert to encourage kids to get fitter and not shove pie and chips down their gullet at all hours of the day. Using his croaky voice he’ll utter: “Hey children, if you want to get ahead in life then use your loaf like me Wayne Rooney!” Following that speech – which would probably take around 10 hours of filming to get right – he’ll head a loaf of bread past a small child and make them cry.

3) Maybe it’s a subtle education drive to encourage people to attend school: “If you don’t visit the classroom, you’ll end up in a bread factory with the morons like Wayne Rooney.” That tagline alone is enough to scare children more than the Bogeyman, the monster under the bed and Michael Jackson.

See, we should become advertising executives.

Unfortunately, it appears that Hovis aren’t going down the same line of thinking as us when it comes to using the human equivalent of Shrek to sell their sandwich-creation tool. A source told the Daily Mirror:

“They want to revert to the more classic commercials for the traditionalists. With Wayne being a national icon, they can return to the iconic Hovis style, while still appealing to the younger generation. The new advert will be in the spirit of the 1973 Hovis ad – voted Britain’s favourite TV commercial – of a boy pushing a bike laden with Hovis loaves up a steep hill.”

Um…unless we’re mistaken, we always thought that the original Hovis advert was filmed in Yorkshire. So why they want to transform the famous cobbled streets of Yorkshire into the potholed streets of Liverpool, where he’ll just get his bike stolen, is beyond even hecklerspray.

It’s a travesty, we tell you! Just like when Opal Fruits changed to Starburst. The loveable voice of a Yorkshireman is set to be replaced by the screechings of a Scouser. If he had an angelic voice, we wouldn’t mind.

But at the best of times, it’s hard to understand what he says, and it usually sounds like he’s going to break your kneecaps when you can hear him.

“If it ain’t from Yorkshire, it’s rubbish,” is a common utterance of local Yorkshire types. We presume this phrase will take on a new lease of life when the advert airs. If Wayne can get his lines right, that is.

Don’t hold your breath.