Signs were not good for the second Maximo Park album. Following on from the success of debut A Certain Trigger, members started ringing alarm bells by saying things like "people will see more of what we’re capable of as musicians" when discussing their new songs.

Then Maximo Park hired Gil Norton as a producer; a risky move since he's overseen records by both The Pixies (a good thing) and Feeder (very obviously not a good thing). And then there was the title of the new Maximo Park album - Our Earthly Pleasures. Other bands have spent their entire careers trying and failing to come up with an album title as overbearingly pretentious as that, let alone coupled it with a sleeve that looks like it was stolen from a Gap photoshoot that was binned for being too miserable. Seriously, Maximo Park may as well have just called Our Earthly Pleasures WE ARE A SERIOUS BAND and have done with it. But is Our Earthly Pleasures by Maximo Park any good? Let's find out...

This is a mark of how famous Michael Jackson is: the announcement that Michael Jackson doesn't have pneumonia has made the news all over the world, but we've never even come close to getting pneumonia and where are our bloody headlines, eh?

Still, maybe if Fox News had mistakenly announced that we were seriously ill in hospital with pneumonia too, we'd be getting the sort of attention that Michael Jackson is. Handily, though, Michael Jackson has trundled out one of his slaves to say that - rather than being struck down with full-blown pneumonia like Fox said - Michael Jackson is just feeling a little bit poorly with a mystery bug. Everyone's fully expecting Michael Jackson to be up and at 'em again in the near future, though, since Jackson knows more than anyone that nothing kicks illness in the head like a litre of Jesus Juice and a quick wank.

Break-ups are hard enough for most people to deal with at the best of times, so full credit to Britney Spears for sorting out her divorce with Kevin Federline just a few short weeks after having a loopy-doo cuckoo berserkoid meltdown and going to rehab.

It's been reported that Britney Spears has officially signed a divorce settlement with Kevin Federline that was thrashed out in a five-hour meeting at the offices of Britney's lawyers. The terms of the Britney Spears divorce settlement were not revealed - and a judge still has to formally agree to it - but we imagine that the meeting between Britney Spears and Kevin Federline was intense. Among the possessions to be divided up were the two children Britney Spears and Kevin Federline had together, the property they owned, money earnt during the course of the marriage, all the copies of Playing With Fire that Kevin Federline couldn't even manage to give away, Britney's collection of cheap wigs, stuff like that.

Halle Berry's inevitable biopic just got a good part. In about 40 years when Jamie Foxx finally gets to play her, he won't have to act the part of a fashion model that was sad because she was shorter than all the other fashion models. No longer will that film need to revolve around a woman playing a boring superhero perplexed because she was getting so much less screen time than Frasier Crane.

Because the crux of that movie can now be about the time Halle Berry literally tried to kill herself in a car full of toxic farts. Yeah, read that last line again. Is it setting in? Now 'toxic farts,' for those confused, is how rich people say 'pooping stank air.' It's likely a very liberal interpretation of Berry's exact quote, but when she's dropping lines like 'I knew the gas was coming', you tell us - how's an immature website supposed to interpret that sort of thing? In the future when Berry details her all-too-real suicide attempt she should choose her words more carefully. That's all we're saying.

So let's get you up to speed. Simon Cowell recently sacked Kate Thornton as the host of X Factor - possibly because she was rubbish at it, possibly to spook out Ryan Seacrest and possibly because all the dresses she wore made her arms look a bit

Call us paranoid, but we can't help suspecting that giving a knighthood to Bono from U2 - even an honorary one - means that Bono is going to start riding a white horse around in a suit of armour while trying to chop his servants' heads off with a sword.

But it's too late to worry about any of that, because yesterday Bono was given an honorary knighthood by British Ambassador David Reddaway in Dublin. Bono received his knighthood in recognition of his services to bleating around all the time in an unbearably self-important way. Just kidding - Bono received his knighthood in recognition of his services to being in a band that has made a successful career out of only really having two songs. Just kidding - Bono received his knighthood in recognition of his services to going "doo doo doo" on adverts for iPods. Just kidding - Bono received his knighthood in recognition of his services to wearing sunglasses indoors on overcast days like a bell-end. Just kidding - Bono received his knighthood in recognition of his services to probably something to do with charity or something.

Good mother of Moses, England are crap at football at the moment aren't they? The only thing even vaguely comparable to watching an England match these days is shitting drawing pins - and we're all out of drawing pins.

So we say this - screw the England football team. Actually, screw football