There's only one thing worse than love gone sour, and that's love gone sour between a pregnant obnoxious former pop star and a man who does the voice of a donkey in films for a living who denies that the baby is his. At Christmas.
It just so happens that this very situation is taking place right now between Scary Spice Mel B and him out of Beverly Hills Cop Eddie Murphy. While Mel B says that she's pregnant with a teeny weeny Eddie Murphy, the adult-sized Eddie Murphy says that someone else must have knocked her up instead. In the real world this would call for an appointment on a DNA test episode of Trisha, but in LA it means that both parties hire $500 an hour lawyers to yell at each other instead. So that's what Mel B has done – and soon it'll be bigshot lawyer Don Engel doing all her baby-related doidy woik.
Until Sharon Stone started doing it with Christian Slater, Mel B and Eddie Murphy were our favourite bewildering celebrity couple by a mile. Their story was like a fairytale – albeit a fairytale starring a single mother who married a man she thought was gay and a divorcee who was arrested for picking up transsexual prostitutes on the street. When Mel B and Eddie Murphy met, they immediately got tattoos of each other and then – just in case having Axel Foley's gurning face printed on her body forever wasn't sign enough that this was a union for life – Mel B let Eddie Murphy get her pregnant almost within days of meeting. With copper-bottomed planning like that, how could anything possibly go wrong?
But then the unthinkable happened – Eddie Murphy split up with Mel B. Sort of. What actually happened was that Eddie Murphy started seeing film producer Tracey Edmunds for a month without telling Mel B, then accidentally told a Dutch TV show that he wasn't with Mel B any more and Mel B's baby wasn't his and he wanted a DNA test done. Meanwhile Mel B is quite sure that her unborn baby belongs to Eddie Murphy, even though she was pictured with some guy on holiday just before she got together with Eddie Murphy who could have feasibly knocked her up just as well. Sounds like a storm's a-brewin'…
And it is. The Mirror reports that Mel B has hired a ludicrously expensive lawyer – Don Engel – to 'fight' her side of the 'case':
A pal of the former SpiceGirl said: "Mel is refusing to lie down and let Eddie walk all over her – and this is reflected in her choice of lawyer. She wants to hit him where it hurts… in the pocket and they don't come much better than Don." Sources suggest that Mel may be able to get as much as £15million in lifelong payments for their unborn child. Yorkshire-born Mel – real name Melanie Brown – interviewed a raft of Hollywood lawyers before she plumped for Don's services. A law insider said: "Don's services don't come cheap but he is one of the best lawyers around. Most lawyers would relish taking on an A-list star and Don will surely be no exception."
It seems a little bit ridiculous to hire a $500-per-hour lawyer like Don Engel when Mel B still has about three or four months of baby-gestating left. And anyway, what exactly does Mel B even need a lawyer for in the first place? As far as we can see, this is the argument going on between Mel B and Eddie Murphy at the moment.
Eddie Murphy: "That baby's not mine! I want a DNA test, Mel B!"
Mel B: "That baby is yours, Eddie Murphy! I want a DNA test!"
Eddie Murphy: "No, I want a DNA test!"
Mel B: "No, I want a DNA test!"
Repeat until dead.
Wouldn't it be simpler to wait for the baby to be born, swipe some of its DNA – since that's what they both want – see if Eddie Murphy is the father of the baby and then start chasing him for money if he isn't? Who the hell cares knows? Or, even better, swipe a little bit more DNA than you need from the baby, and start breeding a Jurassic Park-style adventureland filled with gigantic bloodthirsty dinosaur clones of both Mel B and Eddie Murphy. We'd pay to see that. Well, maybe we wouldn't pay. And we aren't too fussed about actually seeing it. But you get the idea, like.
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pugh says
oh God, someone make it stop! You wouldn’t get this from Bunton…