It’s becoming clear that Eminem and Mariah Carey are the Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor of pop.

No, wait, that’s wrong. We meant to say that Eminem and Mariah Carey are the honking, toothless, meth-addicted, redneck, laundry-airing Jerry Springer guests of pop. Yes, that’s better.

So far, Eminem wrote a song about having sex with Mariah Carey, then Mariah Carey wrote a song calling Eminem obsessed, and now Eminem has written a song threatening to release voicemails and nude pictures of Mariah. Coming soon, Mariah says that Eminem runs like a girl and has fleas and wets the bed. IDST.

Not since Hilary Duff said something vaguely obtuse about Faye Dunaway’s age has a celebrity spat gripped the world like this. Mariah Carey (a woman who’s about to bring a new album out) and Eminem (a man who recently brought a new album out and has a bit-part in a new movie that just happens to be released in America today) are at each other’s throats.

It’s thrilling. Eminem and Mariah Carey don’t care any more. They don’t care if they hurt themselves, they don’t care if they hurt each other, they don’t care if all of this tedious bickering helps to mutually raise their profiles and spur on dramatic increases in the number of records that they both sell. It’s crazy – they’re literally out of control.

It all stems from the relationship that Eminem and Mariah Carey had back in 2001, during one of the brief windows where Mariah wasn’t having a mental breakdown and Eminem wasn’t busy divorcing and remarrying his wife. Eminem referred to the relationship in his song Bagpipes From Baghdad, which we haven’t heard because it’s got the words ‘bagpipes’ and ‘Baghdad’ in the title and therefore probably sounds like a goat having its diaphragm pummelled.

But anyway, whatever Eminem said in the song, it was enough to make Mariah Carey dress up as a man and call Eminem a liar in her new song, entitled Obsessed. And this, somewhat inevitably, has caused Eminem to write another song about Mariah Carey, The Warning, in which he variously:

* Threatens to release a number of intimate phonecalls and photographs from their time together

* Describes an encounter where he accidentally ejaculated onto Mariah Carey’s stomach

* Calls Mariah Carey an ‘alcoholic’, a ‘liar’ and a ‘whore’

* Inevitably opens the door for Mariah Carey to release yet another song about Eminem – possibly accompanied by a video where she’s dressed up as a monkey or a unicorn or something – that goes on and on and on and on and on and forces Emimen to write yet another poxy bloody song about her.

But we’ve teased you for long enough – here’s The Warning by Eminem…

Now, whoever you choose to side with here, it’s probably fair to say that neither Eminem or Mariah Carey comes out of this looking particularly good. If you ask us, there’s nothing more pathetic than when someone starts publicly insulting another figure for no other reason than to boost their own warped desire for attention.

Which reminds, us – that Robert Pattinson, eh? What an arsehole.

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