What’s more impressive is that Patrick Swayze has got his pancreatic cancer on the run. He’s responding well enough to the treatment that he’s even made his own, admittedly quite rubbish-looking TV show.

So Patrick Swayze doesn’t seem like he’s on death’s door. And if you think he is, keep it to yourself, because Patrick Swayze is so furious about it that it’s all he can do not to get all penultimate scene of Ghost on your arse.

Manufacturers of limited-edition plate sets featuring badly-painted pictures of Patrick Swayze dancing in a vest and the slogan ‘Nobody puts baby in a corner… except pancreatic cancer. Patrick Swayze: 1952 – 2008′, we have some bad news for you. It doesn’t look like Patrick Swayze is going anywhere.

It’s astounding to think that back in March Patrick Swayze was given just five weeks to live because pancreatic cancer had taken hold in his body. But then the five-week mark passed. And then the five-month mark. And then enough time for Patrick Swayze to have to deny that he was going to star in Point Break 2 because he realised he wasn’t going to get out of it by dying first.

Between this and his new TV show Beast, it seems like Patrick Swayze has got his pancreatic cancer well and truly licked. Whether it’s because he was rich enough to afford the best cancer treatment in the world or because God doesn’t want him to leave Earth until he’s made a sequel to Letters From A Killer, a movie which He wrongly regards as a classic, it doesn’t matter. Patrick Swayze is on the mend and that’s what’s important.

Unless you’re the National Enquirer, because if that’s the case then what’s important is writing all kinds of stories about what a feeble old cancer-suffering wanker Patrick Swayze is as often as possible; something that Swayze himself has not unreasonably got the arseholes with. The New York Daily News reports:

“They’re reporting that I’m on my last legs and saying goodbye to my tearful family!” he railed. He called the coverage of his battle as “emotional cruelty” – especially, he said, “when hope is so precious… It’s upsetting that the shoddy and reckless reporting from these publications cast a negative shadow on the positive and good fight I’m fighting.”

Honestly, these people should know better than to morbidly follow every last gasp and croak of a man with a serious disease. Not only does it reflect very badly on the publications in question, but you also have to wonder if any of these journalists have ever seen Ghost.

Annoy Patrick Swayze in this life and he’ll come and get you from the next life. Or he’ll sort of jump inside Whoopi Goldberg’s body and make her come and get you. Or he’ll help Demi Moore do some pottery. Or something.

Look, it’s ages since we last saw Ghost. Just, anyway, look, stop it.

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That’s why Mariah Carey only makes music videos that feature her wriggling around in a bra or splashing about in a bikini in slow motion, and it’s also why Mariah Carey only releases songs called Touch My Body or Squeeze My Knockers or Stare Up My Bumhole. Appearing to be constantly sexually available is Mariah Carey’s one promotional cornerstone.

And that explains Mariah Carey’s alleged rage at husband Nick Cannon for telling the world that Mariah enforced a strict ‘no sex before marriage’ policy upon meeting him. Mariah Carey not instantly thwapping it all on a plate? That’s the kind of loose talk that destroys careers! Luckily Mariah Carey is a pro, so she’s fixed the problem herself by heavily implying that she sucked Nick off a bunch of times before the wedding. No joke.

Mariah Carey’s genitals have been in the news to a terrifying degree lately, haven’t they? As well as being the insinuated focus of every song she’s recorded in the last five years, we’ve also had to put up with all kinds of talk about their role in aiding the pregnancy that Mariah Carey gets so jittery talking about.

But that’s not all, not by a long margin. You see, Mariah Carey’s husband Nick Cannon has also been recruited into this rolling vaginal news cycle, which is why he recently told anyone who’d listen that Mariah Carey wouldn’t have sex with him from the day they met until the day they were married. Which, by our calculations, works out at slightly less than two days.

Oh, that’s not true. Actually it was two months. But anyway, by discussing their sex life so candidly, Nick Cannon broke the sacred bond of trust he had with Mariah Carey – the trust that silently implies to the world that Mariah Carey will have it away with anyone she likes, whenever she likes, while probably making a noise a bit like a dolphin on a rollercoaster.

It’s OK, though, because Mariah Carey knows exactly how to deal with situations like this – yes, she might have caved into peer pressure and had a two-month stretch of vague chastity, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t be a teensy bit slaggy. SFGate reports:

She says “Why did he tell that story? He just told people… I didn’t want him to let everybody know that but I never said anything about it; I didn’t say, ‘Don’t tell people’.” But Carey insists it’s not as if they were complete innocents in the run up to their fairytale wedding: “We were intimate but weren’t completely intimate in the biblical sense.”

An expert intervention, Mariah. We’ll admit that we were worried about you for a second there. But, no, by alluding to a possible blowjob or – at the very least – a grubby couple of tugs on your boyfriend’s little soldier, you have absolutely restored your dignity to its previous levels.

But still, at least now we can see why Nick Cannon got married to Mariah Carey so quickly – it was because she made him wait for sex. There’s a message there, girls – if you want a boy to marry you, withhold sex.

Oh, and be so incredibly rich and famous that he’ll propose before he even knows you properly, because he understands that you’ll buy him all the crap he could possibly ever wish for and then get piles of cash when he invariably divorces you after the first couple of years. That helps too, we hear.

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Well, you’ll never guess what it’s just done. A newspaper published by the Chinese government’s ruling Communist Party has got upset with the title Chinese Democracy, and accused Guns N’ Roses of ‘turning its spearpoint’ on China.

Not that the Chinese government has any real reason to worry about Guns N’ Roses’ spear – based on historical evidence we’d say that Axl Rose is going to spend the next 15 years polishing the spear to within an inch of its life, then get Shaquille O’Neal to do a rap about the spear, then build everybody’s expectations of the spear to the extent that it’ll be a horrible letdown to anyone who actually sees the spear. And then instead of stabbing anyone with it, he’ll just go and have a wank anyway.

Some said this day would never come – after a wait of approximately 350 years, more false starts than you could possibly count and the still-unexplainable employment of a man called Buckethead who always had a bucket on his head, Chinese Democracy by Guns N’ Roses has finally been released, to the clear delight of the thirtysomething middle-management family men who made up the band’s angry young fanbase back when they were popular.

It’s been a labour of love for Axl Rose, a man who made it his own personal mission to create a semi-decent album that’s swaddled in so many overdubs, whooshy sound effects and random one-word dips into befuddling comedy Transylvanian accents that listening to it all the way through feels like scuba-diving through week-old trifle.

The weight of expectation around Chinese Democracy is so immense that it’ll never sell enough copies to justify the years and years of work ploughed into it. Unless, you know, the biggest country in the world is stupid enough to take the bait and get wound up about an album title that’s been common knowledge since the mid-1990s.

Which, hey, it has. AP reports:

In an article Monday headlined “American band releases album venomously attacking China,” the Global Times said unidentified Chinese Internet users had described the album as part of a plot by some in the West to “grasp and control the world using democracy as a pawn.” The album “turns its spear point on China,” the article said.

We can’t help feeling that China might be overreacting a little bit here. Look, something tells us that Axl Rose probably wouldn’t be able to grasp and control the world using democracy as a pawn if he wanted to. It took the poor sod about 15 years to come up with an album that sounds like the mediocre soundtrack to a documentary about monster trucks, for crying out loud. The sun will have expanded and swallowed Earth up by the time Axl’s even decided with shoes he’d like to wear for grasping and controlling the world using democracy as a pawn.

But still, at least China has got all this anti-Guns N’ Roses sentiment out of its system now. And with that it can begin concentrating on something a bit more relevant, like the hints of racism in that Chinaman sketch by hot new up-and-coming comedian Benny Hill.

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However, Taylor Swift doesn’t quite see it like that. Taylor was dumped by a Jonas brother last month, and she’s reacted as any normal 18-year-old girl would – by making an internet video that slags him off, by doing radio interviews that slag him off and by sort of claiming that all the angry songs on her new album are about what a turd he is.

Joe Jonas – for those of you who are able to distinguish between the Jonas Brothers and happen to inexplicably care enough to need to know which one dumped Taylor Swift, who we’re presuming you know as well – has yet to respond to Taylor Swift’s vitriol yet. Or maybe he has. To be honest we don’t care enough to find out.

Would anyone mind telling us how The Jonas Brothers suddenly got so famous? All we know about them is that they’re making a film about a trumping dog, they all have haircuts that are so ridiculous they border on illegal and the nearest any of them have ever got to a set of female genitals was once six years ago years ago when they accidentally got too close to a butcher’s window and one of them fainted.

But thanks to their music, film and TV work and the fact that Russell Brand mocked their virginity at a recent awards show, The Jonas Brothers are big business. Such big business, in fact, that it makes the news if one of them splits up with a girl. Even if we don’t really know who that girl is.

Which is good news, because we really don’t know who Taylor Swift is, either. Apparently she’s some sort of infant country singer or something. But, anyway, the important thing is that Joe Jonas split up with Taylor Swift last month, and in retaliation Taylor Swift has made it her mission to blurt out as many barely-veiled references to him in public as possible, as The Chicago Tribune reports:

On Ryan Seacrest’s radio show Wednesday, the country star revealed that she penned the tune “Always and Forever” about their October split. In a new video on her MySpace page, she pokes a little fun at Jonas, who reportedly dumped her over the phone. Holding up the “Camp Rock” Joe doll, she says, “See, this one even comes with a phone, so he can break up with other dolls!”

Well that’s just nasty. We don’t know what the lyrical content of this new Taylor Swift song is, but since other songs on her forthcoming album include What Kind Of Arsehole Splits Up With A Girl On The Phone, You’re An Embarrassing Virgin, Nobody Wants To Go And See A Film About A Stupid Farting Dog and Joe Jonas: Pigfucker, we can’t assume that it’s very positive.

And if, like us, you’re having trouble visualising the enormity of Joe Jonas dumping Taylor Swift, why not do what we did and imagine that it’s a couple you’ve heard of who split up instead. Is that helping? No? Yeah, you’re right. Screw it.

And, as such, all political viewpoints must be represented on The View. That’s why Elisabeth Hasselbeck has gained longterm employment on The View as the show’s resident spiteful backwards reactionary fact-ignoring common sense-deprived world-hating Bible-humping bumbling yokel.

But maybe not for much longer. It’s been reported that Elisabeth Hasselbeck is getting more and more infuriated with the liberal viewpoints of her co-host Whoopi Goldberg, to the extent that ‘cooling-off meetings’ have been arranged to calm her down. It’s led to speculation that Elisabeth Hasselbeck will soon leave The View, which will be a shame. We were hoping she’d stick around at least until her brain popped.

It doesn’t matter what happens on The View any more. The show’s glory days are behind it. Barbara Walters could set fire to some orphans and kick them down the stairs tomorrow and people would still only remember The View for two moments.

Those moments are when Danny DeVito drunkenly burped puke into his own mouth and – more relevantly – the full-scale split-screen windtunnel of a screechy row between Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Rosie O’Donnell about the war or something. Nobody came out of that one looking good – not least us, but that’s only because it made us so infuriated that we pulled all our hair out and started striking around at our faces with a hammer.

The winner of that particular battle was Elisabeth Hasselbeck, whose argument that all unborn children should be given handguns to protect themselves from abortionists and rapists (or something) beat down Rosie O’Donnell’s assertion that the government is made of a giant super-intelligent lizard race determined to farm the world of its tears (or something). But, by winning the battle, Elisabeth Hasselbeck may have lost the war.

That’s because, after the fight, Rosie O’Donnell left The View and was replaced by Whoopi Goldberg. Now, Whoopi Goldberg is probably as liberal as Rosie was, but it’s harder for Elisabeth Hasselbeck to win fights with her. It’s easy to look like the clever one when your debate opponent is a fat belligerent lesbian, but when it’s the wise, all-knowing Jesus alien from Star Trek: The Next Generation? Not so much.

And because of this, Elisabeth Hasselbeck has reportedly been getting so wound up that she could be on the cusp of leaving The View. The Seattle PI reports:

Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the only politically conservative member of the hosting crew on ABC’s “The View,” apparently is becoming more annoyed with her liberal counterparts. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Bill Zwecker quotes “a longtime staff member” of the show as saying, “It’s not as bad as during the Rosie era,” but Hasselbeck is “really upset” with the liberal politics of co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar.

Because of this, there have apparently been ‘cooling-off meetings’ to try and get everyone back onside. But with an election just weeks away, there’s every chance that Elisabeth Hasselbeck will become so shrill and objectionable that only dogs will be able to tell how much ill-informed nonsense she’s spouting.

So, you know what? Let Elisabeth Hasselbeck leave. She’s apparently already looking over offers from Fox News, and she’ll obviously be happier there. Plus it can’t be that hard for The View to find a replacement who shares the same political ideologies as Elisabeth Hasselbeck, can it? Has anyone even tried calling Ralph Fiennes From Schindler’s List In A Lady’s Wig yet? Thought not.

This is because you have a pre-teen daughter, or because the whole world threw a giant hissy over her photos in Vanity Fair, or because you’re a bit pervy like the majority of hecklerspray readers, and virtually all of the male staff.  

But Miley Cyrus isn’t just kittens and cupcakes anymore. She’s angry, and she’s attempting to make the predictable jump from super sweet to angry and edgy in her new album. No, really. She totally is. 

Miley Cyrus has a lot to be angry about. Everyday she has to get up and make the challenging decision of ‘blond wig, or no wig’?  And then there’s her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, with mandatory bi-daily performances of Achy-Breaky Heart, complete with mullet and sleeveless flannel shirt.   

But what she really has to be mad about is boys. Boys make Miley Cyrus more than mad, they make her (gasp) angry. That’s right, her new album is going to be all hardcore and angry, and stuff. 

Miley unleashed her terrifying rage to Ryan Seacrest in a radio interview for KIIS-FM on Wednesday. Parental discretion is advised for reading the following statement from Miley as she describes her wrath about ex-boyfriends: 

"The word 'hate' could describe how angry I am. [It goes] through all the different stages of what's been going on the past couple years," Miley said. "It was like a little therapy moment for me."

Aside from those stages which include pre-training brassiere stage, training brassiere stage, and post-training brassiere stage, Miley has gone through some difficult stuff when it comes to boys, and she's hoping to get back at them through song. Miley also said: 

"I want them to be upset. That was my point. I was a little worried, but I'm excited that I just did it." 

These are the things that make for groundbreaking music. Look out, Avril Lavigne and Ashlee Simpson. There’s a new spurious, pseudo-angry rocker chick on the affluent suburban block.

Not so long ago Kanye West performed a set at the Bonnaroo music festival that didn't go so well, possibly because he kept his crowd waiting for eight hours before finally dragging himself onstage at about 4:30am. And since Kanye West is a sage so wise that he rivals all of history's greatest thinkers, he's taken to the internet to construct a well-considered explanation for the mix up.

Just kidding – Kanye West's gone batshit! Properly, 94-exclamation-marks-in-a-row batshit. All-capital batshit. Confused, badly-formed batshit that doesn't make any sense. Hecklerspray commenter batshit. We're scared.

Kanye West is a man you can't help but admire. It doesn't matter how conceited you are or how much power you have, chances are you've probably experienced self-doubt at some point in your life. Even if it happened for a millisecond while you were playing Jenga drunk in boxing gloves during an earthquake, you probably at least have some idea of what self-doubt feels like.

Not Kanye West. It's Kanye West's job to strut around like a ninny telling everyone how brilliant he is at everything. Hold an awards ceremony – even if it's a local village fete awards ceremony for especially large marrows – and you can guarantee that Kanye West will storm the stage and start bitching about how his marrows are undeniably superior to all other marrows past or future. He unironically dresses up as Jesus, for god's sake. The man's a flipping treasure.

Having said that, there are one or two people who'd disagree. Like, for instance, the entire crowd of people who went to see Kanye West's recent performance at Bonnaroo. As previously reported, Kanye West was due on stage at some point around 8:15pm, only to eventually start his set at 4:30 in the morning in front of a handful of bleary-eyed insomniacs who were only hanging about to shout "Kanye sucks!" a lot anyway.

Now, Kanye West has heard this criticism over his Bonnaroo performance, and it's hurt him. He's so hurt that he's decided to write a blog entry detailing his feelings in painful detail. In capital letters. With excessive punctuation. And he probably growled a lot as he was writing it, although that's just a guess. 

The full blog entry is too mind-bogglingly long to publish here in full, and also there's a good chance that it'll destroy your brain forever if you were to try reading it all in one go, so here's a few (genuine) choice snippets:

This Bonnaroo thing is the worst insult I've ever had in my life. This is the most offended I've ever been… this is the maddest I ever will be.  I'm typing so fucking hard I might break my fucking Mac book Air!!!!!!!!

JUST SAY THIS OUT LOUD IN  A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE, "KANYE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT GIVING A GOOD PERFORMANCE."  CAN ANYONE HONESTLY SAY THAT ?????????

PEARL JAM ENDED ONE HOUR LATE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  AT THAT POINT WE'RE RACING AGAINST THE SUN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The main thrust of Kanye West's argument seems to be that, since his tour is named Glow In The Dark, it should be dark when he performs. At 8:15 when he was scheduled to go onstage it wasn't dark, so Kanye shifted his set to around 2am. But then it took longer than expected to set up his preposterously overblown set, by which time it was 4:30am and getting light again.

It's not Kanye West's fault that his Bonnaroo set went down like a lead balloon, you see, it's night's fault for not being long enough. We await night's apology with bated breath.

Incidentally, this cock-up has already inspired Kanye West's next tour concept – he's going to call it the Shouting In Front Of Several Tired And Disgruntled Hippies tour. It just seems like it'd be a better fit.

Read more:

Untitled – Kanye West

But you're not the only person to be annoyed by the Gene Simmons sex tape. Gene Simmons isn't especially thrilled with it either.

And like you, Gene Simmons is fighting back. But where you fought back by punching a hole in your computer, stapling your eyelids together and trying to destroy the part of your brain that remembers it by ramming a knitting needle up your nose, Gene Simmons has decided to fight back against the Gene Simmons sex tape by doing clever legal stuff. Which probably makes more sense.

The recently leaked Gene Simmons sex tape raises more questions than it answers. Like 'Why doesn't that girl want to kiss Gene Simmons?' and 'Why doesn't Gene Simmons take his top off?' and 'If he's got a tongue like that, why doesn't Gene Simmons get round to using it?' and 'Why?' and 'Why? Why, in God's name? Why? Why?'

Because, honestly, if you haven't seen the Gene Simmons sex tape, you're missing out on perhaps the funnest way to ensure that you'll spend the rest of your life compulsively self-medicating with drugs or alcohol to escape the pain. The Gene Simmons sex tape is basically an old man with crap hair lackadaisically having disinterested, partially-clothed sex with an Austrian bimbo who resolutely won't let him kiss her. To the sound of I Wanna Know What Love Is by Foreigner.

We're explaining this to you, you see, because chances are it won't be on the internet for long. Gene Simmons has switched his 'old man having the worst sex anyone has ever seen' head with his 'diamond-sharp business mogul' head, and he's out to get whoever put the Gene Simmons sex tape on the internet. A hint of what was to come appeared on Gene's website a couple of days ago:

Hi everyone. You may have heard or seen garbage that has sprung up from my past. Rest assured the proper legal team is looking at all ramifications and options. And us?  Shannon, Nick and Soph are happy and healthy. All is well. And thank you all for the kind words of support.

And now Operation Get Everyone To Stop Looking At My Tired Old Knob has launched into full effect. As TMZ reports, the Gene Simmons sex tape isn't long for the world, and it's all thanks to our old friend copyright infringement:

We're told Gene's lawyers contacted Webmastercentral.com, which is responsible for the content on the website promoting the video — ordering them to cease and desist because of copyright infringement. How, you ask, is this copyright infringement? Gene's lawyers claim the site had no right to use face paint to promote the skin flick, because face paint is a KISS thing. And now we're being told, the tape is old and the copyright owner is … drum roll … Gene Simmons! Apparently, Gene got wind of the tape a few years back and bought the rights.

Now, the danger hasn't completely passed yet and the Gene Simmons sex tape is still on the various parts of internet. What we suggest you do is take your family into the shelter room immediately and wait there. There's a chance that some members of your family may have already been infected by the Gene Simmons sex tape, in which case you need to stove their head in with some pipe, label the body clearly and take it into another room. It's hard, but rather that than they try and actually describe the full horror of the Gene Simmons sex tape to you.

This is only a temporary measure, though – Gene Simmons seems to be doing everything in his power to eradicate all traces of the Gene Simmons sex tape from the internet forever, so everything will be back to normal soon.

The fact that Gene Simmons is doing this is heartening in itself, though – for a while there we weren't sure if he was able to do anything with any amount of enthusiasm any more.

Read more:

Gene Simmons to Sex Site: Suck My Copyright! – TMZ 

No? Nobody coming along with us on this one? Well Shannon Price understands. That's because Shannon Price has married Gary Coleman, planet Earth's foremost angry midget. To be fair, Gary Coleman and Shannon Price got married last August and people have only just found out about it, but you can't deny a happy couple when you see one.

Apart from that time Shannon Price called the police because Gary Coleman was so angry that she was scared he'd hurt her – but, you know, apart from that they're probably quite happy.

People say that nice things come in small packages. For the most part that's rubbish – if you wanted a speedboat and someone gave you a package the size of, say, a Chewit, you might feel a little bit disappointed – but with former Diff'rent Strokes star Gary Coleman it's completely true.

For a little man, Gary Coleman has got a lot of love to give, unless you're the autograph hunter who he beat up that time or the inside of his own car. And now Gary Coleman has found an outlet for that love – a woman called Shannon Price who's 18 years younger than him, one foot taller than him and due to get half his stuff when thy invariably divorce. Gary Coleman and Shannon Price, you see, are married.

We don't know why we're reporting this as news, actually, because they got married last August. However, it's only now that the Coleman/ Price marriage has been revealed to TV show The Insider. And it sounds like they had a beautiful mountain-top wedding that Gary Coleman is proud to say was as simple as possible:

"Nobody was around but the minister, the preacher, the videographers, the photographer, the helicopter pilot and us."

Yes, it was lovely and simp… what!? A helicopter pilot? That's not simple at all, Gary Coleman. That's fairly elaborate when you think about it.

Anyway, six months into their marriage and things couldn't be going any sweeter for Gary Coleman and Shannon Price. She says he's "ten feet tall" to her because he's so kind. He says that she's, um, a "fabulous eBayer." And she's only had to call the police because she was terrified of his furious rages once, which bodes well for a happy futu… what!? According to E! Online:

He has a temper, "throws things around"—sometimes at Price, and heaved a printer, direction unknown, on the day of the TV interview. "I don't like the violence, I really don't," Price said. "He's got to damage something before his anger stops." Price told the show she's called the police on Coleman, and that the police, in turn, have ticketed him for disorderly conduct.

Still, if we wanted any man to angrily throw objects at us in a violent frenzy, it'd be Gary Coleman and his adorable podgy cheeks and stubby limbs. You're a lucky girl, Shannon Price, and we wish you every happiness in the rest of your marriage to Gary Coleman, which we've calculated as about three or four more weeks.

Read more:

Gary Coleman, Married Man – E! Online 

Despite only disbanding as recently as 2005 (apparently), this trio of punk-pop muppets were really big in the year 1999, which led many to believe that a global technogical meltdown at the turn of the century would have been preferable to hearing All The Small Things one more time. Alas, it wasn't to be, and album Enema Of The State (do you see what they did there? Do you?) went on to sell approximately sixty million billion trillion copies the world over.

You'd think, then, that the Blinksters would be a relatively chilled-out bunch these days, happy to kick back and watch the odd royalty cheque pop through the letterbox. Unfortunately, you'd be quite massively wrong – because the band's former drummer Travis Barker is mightily pissed off about something and he wants the whole wide world to know it. 

Barker's anger lies with energy drink Rockstar, who he claims wrongfully used his picture by publishing an image of him on their website "holding a can of one of Rockstar's beverages, and identifying him and his endorsement by name".

While Barker naturally seems like quite a bizarre, relatively low-key figure for a company to use as a figurehead – kind of like 'hey, I'm Crispin Mills from Kula Shaker, and I can't get enough of Findus Crispy Pancakes', or 'hi, I'm Brad Renfro and I just love Axa life insurance'* – a big old lawsuit is all set to go ahead.

Barker's lawyers are frothing that:

'… the company unjustly used his photo and image to endorse their product,
alleging invasion of privacy, unfair competition and misappropriating
his likeness to promote the product.'

Fair enough, but they also make the claim that Barker is "a prominent figure in the rock music world" - a statement that was either a) written eight years ago or b) pushed out there by the ballsiest legal attorney in the world.

Probably a bit similar to that Lionel Hutz character from The Simpsons, except with a love of rubbish Walmart 'punk' and a bright orange Californian skin-glow in place of that yellow Groening tinge.

Hecklerspray, on the other hand, would like it put on record that we would never endorse an energy drink such as Rockstar. Except to say that – should Blink 182 be announcing a comeback gig in your local area – you'd probably be able to run away faster if you downed five cans of the stuff.

Or possibly a bottle of delicious, delicious Lucozade (available from all good supermarkets, and some bad ones too) instead. 

Read More:

Blink 182 Man Files Suit Against Beverage Company – NME

* Too soon? 

Everyone knows that – it's the reason why all the hecklerspray staff are such well-rounded, perfectly normal individuals. It's also the reason why the family of Britney Spears have all got the hump with Dr Phil for speaking out publicly about Britney's recent psychological snafu. Dr Phil, they say, have broken the Spears' circle of trust.

And circles of trust are a lot like hymens – once broken they can only be repaired by complicated, expensive and largely unnecessary surgical procedures. We think. 

Dr Phil lives to help people. OK, that's not strictly true – we get the impression that Dr Phil actually lives to shout worn-out old self-helpish catchphrases at emotionally-crosseyed rednecks who just want to be on TV – but helping people is sometimes a by-product of that. On Dr Phil's show today, for instance, he'll be helping five dumpy housewives to dress like sluts.

So it goes without saying that Britney Spears would have to be the world's most cloth-eared nobsack to not want to listen to the advice of the almighty Dr Phil. Which is funny, because she doesn't. She really doesn't.

This might come as a surprise to some of you, but Britney Spears was recently in hospital getting her brain looked at following a custody stand-off with police and Kevin Federline which may have involved some sort of drug or weapon and almost certainly involved all kinds of fairly annoying attention-seeking shrieking. 

On hearing about this, Dr Phil rode the fireman's pole down to his Advicecave, hopped into his Advicemobile and shot off to the hospital to scatter his life-changing advice seeds over Britney Spears' heart. After leaving hospital with Britney, Dr Phil vowed to help her by devoting an entire episode of his show to Britney Spears, not because he wanted to get bigger ratings by chasing a sensationalist headline while it was still warm, you understand, but because he wanted to help.

And, as you know, this incensed Britney Spears' family so much that they forced Dr Phil to cancel the episode. And quite right too – the Spears family have obviously done such a sterling job of raising Britney Spears and her pregnant 16-year-old sister so far that the last thing they need is an outsider sticking their oar in with their high-falluting 'ideas' and 'qualifications'.

And now they've revealed why they're all so furious at Dr Phil. According to family spokesman Lou Taylor, Dr Phil only took an interest in Britney Spears to serve his own purposes:

"What's wrong with Dr. Phil's statement is that he made a statement. The family, basically, extended an invitation of trust for him to come in as a resource to support them, not to go out and make public statements. He was not invited to make this part of a public display or part of the media."

Yes, how dare Dr Phil – a man who Britney Spears' family contacted because they saw him on TV – discuss Britney Spears on TV. It's appalling, although maybe the family should think about looking through the Yellow Pages for help next time rather than calling up the first person they happen to gawp at dancing around in the flickering box in their living room.

We're speaking from experience here – when our dishwasher broke we called Tim Allen after seeing him on an episode of Home Improvement. We won't be doing that again. Not because he hilariously destroyed our dishwasher, you see. It's because he's a dick.

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Spears Family Slams Dr. Phil – Daily Dish 

Although the whirlpool of custody cases and drug allegations and head-shaving, vagina-baring madness has overtaken Britney Spears' life at the moment, it's good to see that Britney hasn't completely turned her back on what she's good at – annoying the clergy. One of the booklet photos for Britney Spears' new album Blackout has caused controversy among Catholics because it shows Britney Spears sitting on a priest's lap in a short skirt. If anything, though, the Catholics should be pleased by this – the priest in the photo clearly isn't aroused at all by Britney Spears, and is instead wearing a facial expression halfway between "What's that smell? Has someone farted?" and "Oh Christ no, not the vagina again!"

Offending Christians is probably the easiest thing in the world to do. All you need to do is build a chocolate Jesus or crucify yourself for cash or make a film suggesting that Amelie is Jesus' granddaughter and the flurry of blustering clergymen will instantly give you all the free publicity you'll ever need.

Britney Spears already knows this thanks to her controversial role as a demented Christian on Will & Grace two years ago, and now she's getting it again because there's a picture in the artwork to her album Blackout that shows Britney Spears sitting on a disgruntled-looking priest's lap. Somewhat predictably, Catholic leaders are just as outraged as if the picture had been of Britney Spears pooing in baby Jesus' eye, as the New York Daily News reports:

Kinky photos of a half-naked Britney Spears perched on a priest's lap and leaning seductively against a church confessional sparked outrage among Catholic leaders. At least one said the saucy snapshots, which grace the singer's thumping new dance album, "Blackout," are a "bottom of the barrel" stunt from a girl who really could use some quality time spent repenting sins in a wooden cubicle. "This is all the puzzle pieces coming together. This girl is crashing," said Bill Donohue, president of the New York-based Catholic League. "She's not even allowed to bring up her own kids because she's not responsible enough. Now we see she can't even entertain."

And you know what? We agree wholeheartedly with Bill Donohue. We didn't mind seeing Britney Spears driving with her children perched on her lap. We didn't mind watching Britney Spears shave her head and attack a car and go to rehab and call herself the antichrist. We didn't mind when a judge made Britney Spears take drug-tests to prove she was capable of looking after her own children. But dressing up in a short skirt and sitting on the lap of a man who's dressed up as a priest? The disgusting witch! Let's forget all that forgiveness crap that the Bible's always banging on about and set fire to Britney's house as a punishment.

But, in fairness, we can see where these priests are coming from. If Britney Spears dressed up as a farmer for the Blackout artwork, or a chimney sweep, or a vet, those professions would be pretty riled up, too. And if Britney Spears posed for the Blackout artwork wearing the same manky decade-old T-shirt she's already worn for a month while ballooning in weight, developing all sorts of sallow skin complaints, being generally grumpy and going days at time without seeing another human being, counting all her cats as her best friends, chances are we wouldn't enjoy having our turf invaded either. 

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Catholics slam Britney Spears pix as 'bottom of barrel' stunt – New York Daily News