Regular readers of hecklerspray will be aware of our campaign to help our esteemed writer Chris Laverty win the Empire Thunderdome competition – sort of like American Idol only without all the abuse towards mentally ill people.

And goodness gracious us, did you ever respond to our campaign in a hardcore way. Thanks to you, hecklerspray readers, Chris Laverty received thousands of votes. Millions. So many votes, in fact, that he’s been, um, booted out of the competition. For cheating. Oh…

To spice up the Thunderdome, Empire had a double eviction in this month’s issue. One poor sap – ironically the best of the non-hecklerspray, non-pretty Danish girl bunch in our opinion – was eliminated for gaining the least amounts of votes. And then there’s Laverty, eliminated because you lot all voted for him so much that the competition became abnormally skewed in his favour. So, um, sorry Chris. We did tell you that you’d never leave us, though. Listen next time.

Chris Laverty himself will be here next week with his final Thunderdome Diary entry to give his version of events, but if you want to read his loser’s interview – and see the word ‘hecklerspray’ printed in an unusually small font in a national movie magazine – be sure to buy a copy of this month’s Empire. Or at least stand in Tesco Express reading it until a security guard tells you to bugger off. Like we did.