David Hasselhoff used to have it all. The car that could talk, the hair that even made women jealous. Not to mention his smash hit drama series about disturbed young lifeguards trying to make it through life, without falling foul of the hideous daily flashbacks of having to hoik limp, dripping bodies from an angry ocean, or breathe air from their own beautiful lungs into the dribbling mouth of an old lady who thought she’d take up surfing. Damn it, the man made these sea police beautiful again!

Unfortunately, like Achilles with his rotten heel, The Hoff has a weakness – mainly being that he can’t resist throwing back a few sweet shots of the strong stuff, and making a complete tit of himself. It’s a symptom of his massive celebrity, some might argue. But then again, perhaps not? After all, how would those very same people explain the smelly demise of street people, slurping cooking sherry from bins? Were they once famous? No they were not. They just couldn’t resist the tempting aroma of a cheap head-rush.

Hence, it’s with a rather downtrodden sign, a very upset shrug, combined with a particularly dramatic skyward glance to the heavens, and topped off with a furious fist slam onto any nearby table, that we report that The Hoff has been drinking himself ridiculous again. This time, it was vodka’s turn to flow down his meaty throat, and make acquaintance with his legendary insides. He ended up in hospital with alcohol poisoning.

Of course, it’s not the first time that Knight Rider has astounded the world with his total incapability to style things out, and make like he’s sober. Not so long ago, a video did the rounds of him toplessly picking up fistfuls of a late-night cheeseburger and chips from the floor of his snazzy house. Wasted. And this time, he reportedly lurched clumsily into a massive vodka binge after wrapping up another excellent season of America’s Got Talent auditions. Unfortunately, one thing led to numerous others, making for a rather stumblesome trip to the local infirmary. It sounds like a stone cold case of celebrations-gone-wrong. 

According to the good people of Daily News:

At the point when paramedics were called to his home in Encino, CA on Sunday, the Hoff had reportedly already been on a bender for more than a day. The actor was at home with his 17-year-old daughter Hayley and a male assistant at the time.

He was later discharged from hospital, with his put-upon daughter apparently weeping hysterically as they went.

Like this do you? Then read more of Josh’s stuff at Interestment.

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Week 274 of Ameria’s Got Talent, and the ten remaining acts audition again, for your votes.

Well, either your votes, or else the approval of the goat’s entrails which the judges seem to have been relying on these past few weeks to tell them which act gets their discretionary nod.

If you, like us, are getting a little tired of this season’s judges’ decisions – which they apparently make by asking themselves “Which of these acts is worst at delivering the one, simple, specific thing which they claim as their whole reason for being here?” – then take heart! After the jump, we introduce you to the awesomely majestic mighty magnificence which is… the AGT Drinking Game.

Yes, it’s been an odd season. Despite being humiliatingly told off on an aeroplane by Simon Cowell – sat, sulking, like naughty toddlers being denied their playtime – the judges have still continued with their ploy of putting contestants through based solely on their astrological chart, mother’s maiden name or extremely homosexual facial hair (at this point, please indulge yourself with a little Susan Boyle gag).

How else, after all,  to explain Tony & Rory getting through a couple of weeks ago? You remember them: the man who sported the very dictionary definition of “that moustache what is worn by middle-aged gay men” threw frisbees for his insane dog, which decided that its job was to headbutt them into the audience and then stand at the front of the stage, menacing the crowd with its mad, mad eyes.

Well, we’re sick of it. And how do we deal with that? Why, just like everything else in our lives which annoys or depresses us: by pouring alcohol down our gullets until the hurt goes away.

It’s an AGT drinking game, and here are the prescribed doses for various scenarios:

Hoffisms: each time David Hasselhoff clumsily replaces a syllable from an everyday English word with Hoff – Hofftastic, Hoffnificent, Hoffaleujah -  the drinker shall chug one half pint of beer.

Special Circumstances: if the Hoff is inserted in an uncomfortably jarring way – Hoffazing, Unbehoffable, Hoffcredihoff – then the forfeit shall be one whole pint.

Osbourneos: players shall maintain careful vigilance of Sharon Osbourne’s tightly-strung facial muscles. Any participant observing the tiniest of movements between the hairline and the lips shall drink a Lemon Bacardi Breezer (Tia Maria and Coke is an acceptable substitute).

Special Circumstances: if there be an act which Sharon deems to have performed less than “stellar”, “amazing”, or “absolutely fantastic”, then all players shall consume an amount of gin sufficient to render them less coherent than Ozzy.

Morganites: players should pay close attention to the sounds formed by Piers Morgan’s lips during each show (Safety Note: in order to accomplish this without mental distress, we recommend three fingers of strong rum be consumed prior to start time). If at any point an observer believes they have heard an actual human language word emitted – which does not, of course, include the sounds made by a melting snowman, a gurgling baby or The Elephant Man speaking through a toilet-paper tube. Underwater. While chewing a marshmallow – then they should…

Actually, the rules are rather unclear about this. We suggest seeking psychiatric assistance as soon as possible after flushing the ears with bleach, hydrogen peroxide and gunpowder.

Special Circumstances: should a gamer spot the thin line of drool beginning to emerge from the corner of Morgan’s mouth before the show’s producers manage to cut away, they shall be allowed to retire from the game (Mental Disturbance Rule, outlined in Rules, 3.1.5).

What’s that? You also want to hear about last night’s winners?

You perverts.

Drew Stephen: man who can’t sing, but who looks a bit like Ryan Seacrest somehow mated with Brad Pitt, and will therefore go further than he should.

Barbara Padilla: woman who sings opera really rather well. So, a bit like Neal E. Boyd, last year’s winner. Only female, somewhat-physically-attractive, and doesn’t-look-like-a-sculpture-of-The-Thing-from-The-Fantastic-Four-made-out-of-biscuits-and-butter.

Erik And Rickie: two dancing kids who you’ve probably accurately summed up by looking at how they spell their names. Unintentionally hilarious homepage seems to reveal the pair as being a horribly inbred little smugwad, and an alien’s attempt at being a human girl but with the head on backwards.

Recycled Percussion: Now then. We’ve spent many weeks mocking America’s blobby little phone-pokers and their absurd choices of acts to send through.

This one, though, was beyond our ability to compute: Recycled Percussion, a group of alarmingly ugly blokes who use bin lids and discarded syringes as drums/drumsticks, go through instead of the sexy, charming, delightful, sexy, loose-limbed, sexy, SEXY Ishaara?

You wanted literally rubbish, and grotesquely hideous, drummers instead of massively talented, and sexily sexy, Indian dancers? Hey, America: we’re a bit miffed.

We shall see you next week, when…oh, God alone knows. It is revealed that there will be a special-mystery-surprise-celebrity act in the final, which turns out to be David using his nose to push an errant hamburger around the stage?

We live in hope.

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Let’s not try to pretend it’s making anything approaching sense any more.

The only way that the decision-making on this season of America’s Got Talent could be any screwier is if the producers went into a ward full of pneumonia patients, asked the coughiest one to chub his phlegm up into a paper cup, and then got Paula Abdul to decide which act looked most like the bloody lung-biscuit.

Honestly, any more of this and we’re going to have to consider Plan B: sticking a photograph of Susan Boyle on the end of a lollipop stick and then holding it in front of the TV as each act performs. That’ll calm us down.

She’s dreamy.

Absolute insanity ruled on Wednesday night’s America’s Got Talent, as the judges apparently decided to abandon any pretence that the acts competing for $1,000,000 actually need to be able to do the one thing they claim they can do.

Thus it was that Tony & Rory (in theory: man throws frisbee, dog catches it, repeat) got a special judges’ pass to the next round despite the fact that they were utterly rubbish (in reality: man throws frisbee, frisbee bounces off dog’s face into audience, dog walks to front of stage and spends several seconds staring threateningly at poor sucker in third row who has suddenly found himself holding dog’s favourite toy).

We haven’t yet worked out which is Tony and which is Rory. All we know is that one looks like a gay army instructor and the other has the craziest eyes ever put into a dog’s head.

To be fair to granny-faced judge Piers Morgan, he at least had the decency to look miffed about the decision. He also tried to say some angry words, we think, though sadly all we could hear was the sound of a slug drinking maple syrup through a straw.

Next, the dancers. Quite how America could vote through the tapdancing Utah robots who are Fab Five, and ignore the super-talented acronasts of The Beale Street Flippers is beyond us. But then, the idea of looking into the minds of people who would make a phonecall in support of these shiny-smiled housewives genuinely terrifies us. We’d guess there’s probably a lot of apple pies, picket fences and ‘Whites Only’ drinking fountains in there.

Also through this week: Paradizo Dance (tiny lady lifts up fat man. That is all.); Voices Of Glory (kids with harmonies. Oh, and the useful visual prop of mother in a wheelchair.); Texas Tenors (”We’re just three Southern, Mid-Western boys.” Way to go with the multi-region shoutouts, Cute One, Goatee One and Fat Goatee One).

There you go: your weekly dose of crazy.

Do come back next week, when the judges decide to put through an act based on… oh, we don’t know, it could be anything quite frankly.

Invite all of the acts’ grandmothers on stage and have them wrestle in a paddling pool filled with donkey spunk and razor blades?

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Tuesday night saw the re-auditioning of some of the season’s losers, per the orders of Godfather Simon Cowell.

Last week, America’s Got Talent brought  a couple hundred of its remaining acts to Las Vegas. More specifically, to a Las Vegas airport hangar. Upon their arrival David Hasselhoff appeared, dressed as a homosexual 18th Century plantation owner, to tell all of the best acts that the whole thing had been a con and they were going straight back home.

The foolishness was halted by an unexpected phonecall from the ultimate boss, Simon Cowell, telling the moronic judges they had to reconsider their choices. So, who would be back in? Let’s see…

Yes, the ending of last week’s AGT showed the judges receiving a threatening call from Cowell while they were midair in their private jet – nice sadistic touch, Evil Overlord – to tell them:

“Hi guys, it’s Simon here. I’ve just had a look at your choices for the top 40… we have a very, very serious problem here.”

Cut from the show was his follow-up statement:

“I am holding your closest family members in a New Jersey lockup. I suggest you reconsider your choices, because in twelve hours your loved ones’ oxygen will run out and they will die slowly. Painfully.“

Having been chastised like naughty five-year olds by the one man who actually has power, the judges had to spend last night pretending that, honestly, they kind of liked the acts they had previously discarded.

It was like that awkward moment during every high school reunion when someone asks a buddy they haven’t seen in years, “Hey, do you remember that fat chick with the bad breath that you used to date? Denise Something?”

And they reply comes, “Yes, we got married six years ago“.

Here’s Sharon Osbourne’s critique of the fight-for your-life performance by Thia Megia, the big-voiced tiny girl from California who had previously been kicked off the show by the knowledgeable judges:

“I can’t wait to see you grow each week on this show, because you’re fantastic. You really are.”

And David Hasselhoff’s:

“Thia Megia, you really got to me-a. You are a huge star, baby… You’re going to go a long way in this competition.”

Piers Morgan also tried to comment on the young lady, but all we heard was the sound of an eel swimming through jam.

The entire show was a terribly executed exercise in backpedalling, ordered by Cowell and which was necessary only because he had in the first place chosen the three most inappropriate people in the entire world to judge the thing (next time, we suggest he goes with John Madden, the Crying Girl from last season’s American Idol, and Helen Keller’s ghost).

The only surprise of the night was that Kari Callin didn’t make it through to be mocked a second time. We’re guessing it’s because after seeing the emotions generated by her departure, the producers realised that to reintroduce her would be like sticking Barry Bonds into the Minnesota T-Ball league.

Oh, we could go on and detail all of the painfully obvious audience-manipulating tricks. Like how yodelling sado-milf Manuela Horn’s act sounded as if it was being broadcast through a collection of plastic cups and seashells, while singing douchebags Mosaic’s performance was as slick as buttered ice.

It doesn’t matter: America has been subliminally instructed who to vote for, and they will. Results show tomorrow, when Kevin Skinner, Thia, Mosaic and some others go through.

The whole thing stinks.

And we love it.

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Here it is, then. Enough of the freaks, losers and oddbods. Time now for the, you know, perfectly normal talented folk.

LOL, whatever! It’s the AGT quarter-finals. In Vegas, baby!

Las Vegas: home to sexually-desperate bachelor parties, the nasty ladies who satisfy their carnal needs and, now, 40 of America’s most talented groups of people to… entertain them? That doesn’t seem quite right. Ah, yes: to send them running and screaming back to Asswipe, Montana while gibbering about singing seniors, precocious juniors, and English talent judges who speak only the language known as “Dribble“.

More details about the whole painful mess of post-auditions week after this little jump.

Approximately two thousand of the nationwide auditions’ best/most-comically-deluded acts made it to the point where they could still be cruelly thrown from the competition without being allowed to reprise their gay homage to David Schwimmer from Friends. And yet, only 40 of them could proceed to the real finals in California. So, how best to begin the whittling process? Hmm…

Oh, but of course: by flying them all to Las Vegas, standing them in an airport hangar like a flock of dispirited sheep set for slaughter, then dressing David Hasselhoff up as a 1980s Miami pimp and asking him to deliver the news to the painfully self-deceiving wannabes.

First to be cut were acts including The Fifty Kids In Ginger Wigs For Some Reason, The Boy Who Plays Guitar Better Than Someone His Age Should (have they thought this through?) and Kari Callin (now hang on, this was supposed to be the next Susan Boyle! What the hell are they doing?).

We have no idea what they can possibly bring into the finals to top the bilaterally-hairlipped chanteuse, but this is fact: YOU CRAZY MORONS! How the hell can you take away the most mutant wannabe celebrifreak you have, and then expect us to write amusingly scoffing words about what’s left? Are you crazy in a bad way?

Well, let’s look at who’s through. Possibly.

Although childishly disjointed editing made us begin to lose track of what was real and what was merely the effect of the calming hallucinogens we take each week to make it through the show. Anyway:

Recycled Percussion: blokes who use ladders as drums. Twice as bad – plus a thousand percent – as it sounds. Sharon Osbourne made some water  from her eyes at them (presumably in an attempt to look more like an actual human and less like the Terminator’s mother) and they got through.

Kevin Skinner: Chicken catcher from Mayfield, Kentucky. We should probably repeat that: he’s a chicken catcher from Mayfield, Kentucky.

Chuckle.

But, though he looks like the offspring of Toby Keith and a pile of dead leaves, he sings like the offspring of Toby Keith and a jar of honey. He’s set to go far, so long as they can get Alabama hooked up to the telephone network before voting begins.

The Comic Bots: some kind of dancing act in professionally-elaborate robot suits?

Look, we have never been allowed to see these guys do their thing, and tonight their fate was kind of ambiguously hinted at but never actually expressed.

So are they through? Are they any good? Should we be stacking our weekly allowance from the girlfriend on them?

Not a clue. All we know is we want to see these boys/girls/actual robots shaking their titanium asses to some funk ASAP. Do you hear us, Hasselhoff? ASAP.

We will see you when the real stuff starts: it’s going to be so awesome!*

*Won’t be at all awesome.

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The final week of auditions showcased people who had auditioned through MySpace.

So we settled down to watch, fully expecting the acts to be pimply boys showing off their collection of Dungeons And Dragons figurines, recently divorced women with a pitiful lack of self worth trying desperately to get laid, and 15-year-old girls pulling up their t-shirts to show a bit of their bra.

Nope. So what did we get instead?

Only Susan bloody Boyle giving an interview to Today Show semi-milf Meredith Viera, that’s what.

Ah, the America’s Got Talent Auditions have ended. No more crazy Asian ladies putting their long hair into a fire with predictably hilarious results. No more confused pensioners being prodded onto the stage so that they can shuffle around a bit in the puddle of wee forming at their feet while mumbling the words to Don’t Cha Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me. No more gay David Schwimmers who, essentially, just throw a lit Zippo around for a bit while smiling at the judges like a Cheshire Cat that’s just been elected mayor of Mousetown (salary: The Cream).

So, before we get to the week’s biggest news, let’s review the runners, riders, and rejects from MySpace week:

Least Annoying Street Dance Act: comin’ atcha from Memphis, Tennessee, it’s The Beale Street Flippers. Not – as we expected when we heard the name – a collective of dancing dolphins, but a group of lads who were using the power of gymnastics to “escape from the hood”.

The Hoff loved them; Sharon Osbourne’s porcelain face tried to contort itself into a smile; and Piers Morgan made an attempt at coherent communication. We have no idea what he was trying to say though, as all that came out was the sound of a slug making its way across an oil-covered linoleum floor.

Good luck to you, Flippers. May you go on to wipe the memory of Diversity from the world’s collective conscience.

Most Frighteningly 1980s Eastern Bloc Men: have you ever wondered what a game of Jenga in which the wooden pieces were replaced by bald Polish blokes would look like? We’ve all thought about that at some point in our lives.

Well, here it is: Duo Design. Jaroslaw Marciniak and Dariusz Wronski are “former Polish national hand-balancing champions”, which it seems to us is like summarising your life as “I once won a medal at the annual Bulgarian Farmers’ Fair for Sheep Juggling“. Still, we were mighty impressed by the obvious strength of their abs, traps, glutes, and all those other muscle names we had to Wiki to find out.

They deserve to go far, but we fear that if we have to type their names again, our spellchecker will leap out of the computer and run away screaming.

Most Expected Surprise Guest: this had us in suspense. Would it be Simon Cowell, unable to resist turning up for an episode to hurl abuse at the mentally ill? Perhaps Amanda Holden, come to compare notes on these “Homo Sapiens” with Sharon? Or maybe Michael Jackson, operated by puppet strings and performing an all-too-realistic version of Thriller?

No, no, no.

In a move which prompted Barack Obama (the fricking President of The United bloody States) to bring his big speech forward by an hour, NBC broadcast an interview with Susan Boyle (oh, you do: great big pubey hair. Tangled monobrow. Second Coming of The Christ).

And what tastefully restrained title did they come up with for this celebration of The Voice? “Susan Boyle: Daring To Dream“. Oh, America: how you amuse us with your well-meaning-sentimentality-which-unfortunately-comes-across-as-trite-and-childishly-simplistic.

The interview is probably best summed up by the very first words spoken by Viera, attempting to detail Susan’s background in a form easily digested by Americans: “Susan Boyle was born in Scotland: the land of bagpipes, Braveheart and maybe even a big boy named Nessie“. Oh, well done, NBC. Couldn’t you have gone on to tell us how remarkable it was she had survived so long without falling victim to the booze, the skag, or the congestive heart failure?

And then came Susan, having undergone a makeover which has left her looking like the world’s most terrifying clown: as though the producers had grabbed the weirdest looking  hobo they could find and spent half an hour throwing lipsticks and mascara brushes at his face.

She’s had the headpubes straightened, she’s started wearing makeup, she’s got a nice dress on. Well, lah-di-dah, Mrs Poshpants: before long she’ll be shunning the company of beavers and pretending like she doesn’t understand the grunting of grizzly bears. Stuck up bitch.

Susan delivered a compelling argument for the adoption of universal healthcare wittered on for a bit about Scotland, kilts, fame, and the best way to tease nesting cockroaches from bushy eyebrows. And she didn’t even sing a bloody note.

Ah, well. It was satisfying enough to discover that, since her release into the wild, she has been living a fulfilling life and has no regrets about the lack of privacy, the demand for ever more impressive performances, and the slightly mental sweary/stompy public appearances.

We’ll see you next week for the Vegas rounds. Who knows, perhaps Darth Jackson will show up to give us a critique of the dancers. “Yeah, it needs a bit more hip movement, keep your elbows tight, and I’m not really feeling the whole creepy virgin thing.”

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Some things haven’t changed from the British version of Got Talent.

There’s the smug judge on the right, the facially inarticulate judge in the middle, and Piers Morgan on the left (still desperately trying to make comprehensible words come out of his slimy, floppy-jawed mouth).

And now America’s got Talent strikes another BGT-like chord: last night, an aesthetically displeasing lady with terrible hair lumbered onto the stage and sang a song a bit better than you’d thought she would.

They’re obviously nicking all our ideas. Which is depressing, as it means that fifteen dancing twatpuppets will win the thing.

Well, at least the the journey there should be lots of hilarious funnery a dispiriting blend of pretentious ten-year-olds trying to avoid an after-show parental beating, and hallucinating pensioners trying to avoid peeing onstage.

Let’s see what AGT gave us this week:

Most Unsurprising To Be Thrown Off: Reality, from Memphis. Three girls who believe that they are attractive and two boys who believe themselves to be heterosexual.

Art students who performed a showtune with all the melodic harmony and showbiz pizazz of Sylvester Stallone singing a Leonard Cohen song while stoned.

Quite rightly booed from the stage. Quite wrongly not packed into a crate and delivered to the nearest abattoir.

Most Safely Dangerous Act: If you’re going to do an act with fire, we need it to be something with the potential for dreadful self-harm: swallow flaming petroleum, set your hair on fire, or stick red-hot needles up your urethra. Something that makes us go “Wow, they are either an incredibly resilient human being, or else a terrible dumpsplash of a person who would shove red-hot needles up their urethra in order to be on the telly for eleven seconds“.

Point being, a fire act should not consist of you trying to keep a broomstick with a candle on each end as far away from your body as you can by holding it in the air on your feet. On these criteria – and the fact that he looks like a just-outed-himself-and-going-overboard-with-the-gay-thing David Schwimmer – we declare Simon Chaban to be the losingest winner.

Most Susan Boyley Performance: Remember when Susan first trundled onto the BGT stage, hair swaying like a pube helmet and hips swinging like a gorilla in a dress trying to make a casual entrance into a meeting of Anorexics Anonymous?

We do. We dream of it. Dreams in which a beefy-wristed Scotswoman twists our limbs into uncomfortable, yet oddly enjoyable, positions.

Anyway, you know the story: unattractive lady comes on, sings a show tune okay, it gets disguised for broadcast with some dubbed audience noise, and YouTube melts as a trillion overweight American ladies try to embed the video in their emails.

Yet those bloody Yanks had to go one better, didn’t they? Not-pretty lady? Check. Backstory involving rejection of singing based on physical appearance? Check. Hair that would shame a hermit? Check. Showtune sung badly? Check. Bilateral cleft palate? Che…Wait a minute, what?

Oh, yes. Not content with merely repeating the Boyle template, America has added medically genuine physical defects to the mix. Kari Callin, a radiology technician from Seattle, last night stepped up to the plate and delivered a performance likely to generate YouTube viewings in the hundreds of… well, just hundreds probably.

But still: the torch passes. And long may you carry it, straggly-haired and easy-target-of-fun Kari Callan. For where would hecklerspray be without a hilariously ugly talent contestant to mock?

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Will the producers of America’s Got Talent be able to find a mad-haired old fat lady, just like the Brits did? The clue is in the question: what with this being America, they’ll doubtless be fighting them off with sticks.

Of course, America has to do things a bit bigger than anybody else. So we fully expect their version of Susan Boyle to be a 1o00lb monster with hair like a mammoth’s pubes, who has to be poured onto the stage from the back of a dump truck.

Join us after the jump, when we look at how the show’s first week went.

The format of the show is the same as Britain’s Got Talent: a bunch of wildly-deluded ordinary Joes and Janes wander onto the stage and, in front of a real audience, perform their ‘act’. Just as in BGT, most of these people and their ‘acts’ come in four categories:

1) Senior citizens doing inadvisably energetic things. Which often involve sequins, Swedish balls and a total lack of dignity. These ageing funsters don’t tend to get through the auditions, being shunted straight back home to their weak tea, afternoon naps, and fading memories of hitting the big time.

2) Young people with tattoos doing painful things. Usually consists of an ugly young man with a pierced nose and his female assistant who looks kind of hot until the camera gets too close to her face. Opening week had Sky and Vlad Eros, who didn’t even get to show us Vlad punching a carriage bolt through his cock, or whatever he was going to do, as Sky’s hair immediately and hilariously caught fire on a stage prop.

3) Tediously similar groups of kids doing wacky dances. Public of Britain, you disgust us. Given the choice of Susan Boyle and Diversity, you went with the loose-limbed kids instead of the wobbly-bottomed spinster. Let us hope that the people of America are slightly more discerning, and realise that frizzy-haired old virgins are much funnier and easier to write about than a meeting of the Epileptic Parkinsons’ Patients Support Group.

4) People with a voice and a  “backstory”. Think Danny Gokey from this year’s American Idol. These are the folks who have come to the auditions smelling of petrol and telling the sad story of their entire family’s recent demise in a housefire. If they get to air, you can be sure there’s a decent voice to justify your vote, and here it was The Voices Of Glory: three kids with a genuinely horrific tale, who sang God Bless America. Tragedy and patriotism? They’ll go far this year.

So, this season’s AGT looks set to tick all the right boxes: normal people, odd people, talented people, pensioners who play the guitar and harmonica while riding a unicycle. It’s all there.

At the moment, our money’s on the inspirationally surreal Comic Bots. However, as NBC only showed a few seconds of the breakdancing transformers, here’s the quite wonderful David Johnson:

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But at least America’s Got Talent knows this. That’s why, to replace Jerry Springer, the new host of America’s Got Talent has been named as Nick Cannon. Nick Cannon. Oh, you know Nick Cannon. He’s Mariah Carey’s husband.

Anyway, to help Nick Cannon fit in, America’s Got Talent is changing its name to suit him. Currently it’s a toss-up between America Once Met A Stripper Called Talent, America’s Got A Rampant Desire For Fame and America Got Married To Someone With Talent For The Money.

It must be hard being Nick Cannon. Not only is he married to Mariah Carey – and is therefore totally eclipsed in terms of recognition, wealth and basic human ability as her – but his sudden engagement and marriage to Mariah has meant that he’s subject to all sorts of accusations of gold-digging and the like.

Plus, you know, it’s Mariah Carey – so Nick Cannon knows that he’s just one innocent request away from bearing the brunt of a berserk screaming mental tantrum.

So, to counter all the accusations made against him, Nick Cannon has decided to earn his keep. And, since his Wikipedia page pegs him as an actor and a rapper, it’s only natural that he’ll do this by becoming a television presenter. And he won’t be presenting any old TV show, either – Nick Cannon will be presenting America’s Got Talent.

Nick Cannon has been recruited to join America’s Got Talent after previous host Jerry Springer bowed out last week, presumably after coming down with a nasty case of ‘If I Even As Much As See One More Bastard Sodding Juggler Again I Swear To God I’m Going To Machinegun A Bloody Orphanage-itis’. E! Online reports:

“I’m thrilled to be working with NBC,” Cannon said, adding that network brass “understand my vision as not only an entertainer but as a creative show producer. I look forward to working with the network and their executive team on America’s Got Talent and other shows to come.”

See? Nick Cannon isn’t just an entertainer, but a ‘creative show producer’. Let’s hope he brings some of his unique vision to the new season of America’s Got Talent, which we expect will feature segments including ‘Who’s the most famous person that you can unexpectedly knock up?’ and ‘the weekly 15-minute reminder of who Nick Cannon is and exactly what he’s doing on your TV screen’.

Oh, we’re just kidding – after Jerry Springer and Regis Philbin, Nick Cannon is going to bring in a whole new younger generation of viewers for America’s Got Talent. The man’s going to transform the show’s appeal – not only is the 16-34 audience share going to skyrocket once Nick Cannon steps aboard, but also the highly sought-after ‘Viewers Rendered Too Incapacitated By Alcohol, Laziness Or Morbid Depression To Stand Up And Look For Their Remote Control To See What Else Is On’ demographic. Nick Cannon is a winner!

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In the UK, to win any sort of talent show, you need a gut-wrenching tale that will pull everyone’s heartstrings. Or if you’re Leon Jackson from X Factor, you should just burst into floods of tears every other minute to guarantee success.

The first winner of Britain’s Got Talent – Paul Potts – overcame his eating addiction to pies/ small children/ chips and replaced Pavarotti as the world’s favourite fat tenor.

Earlier this year, pint-sized mover George Sampson boogied on down to win £100,000 and a stint at the Royal Variety show. However, instead of us all learning how he trained long and hard to win, we got to hear about the crippling illness he battled against and how his father abandoned him. Why is it that no-one in this bloody country can win anything without having some horrid flashback about being attacked by trolls?

Thankfully, it’s up to our American friends to be proud of whom they are. Take this lady for example – Busty Heart. Sounding like a B-movie pornstar she takes to the stage and uses her weapons of mass destruction to destroy some tin cans and pieces of wood. Watching her do so almost sends us in to a hypnotic trance.