But hold your horses, everyone. Just because he managed to beat one depressingly short cancer prognosis, Patrick Swayze wants everyone to know that he’s not going to live forever. In fact, in a bleak reality check during an interview with Barbara Walters, Patrick Swayze has only given himself two more years.

Patrick Swayze has got guts – making that admission while staring directly at a million-year-old bouffant Skeletor who logic dictates he should survive by several decades? That’s bravery.

Since he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer last year, Patrick Swayze has managed to walk the line between inspiring and gut-wrenching with more deftness than a thousand daytime made-for-TV movies. Not only did he beat the odds by not dying of cancer within the five weeks he was given, but he then went on to beat the odds again by foregoing painkillers to film a TV show during his treatment.

Patrick Swayze has even survived long enough to hear his own obituaries, but no matter how much his recovery has surprised doctors and the general public at large, it’s clear his luck won’t last forever. And that’s something Patrick Swayze made horribly clear during an interview with Barbara Walters in an interview to be broadcast tonight. Reuters reports:

“I’d say five years is pretty wishful thinking. Two years seems likely if you’re going to believe statistics. I want to last until they find a cure, which means I’d better get a fire under it. You can bet I’m going through hell. There’s a lot of fear here … Yeah, I’m scared. Yeah, I’m angry. Yeah, I’m (asking) why me?… Am I dying? Am I giving up? Am I on my death bed? Am I saying goodbye to people? No way.”

It’s an honest assessment from someone who knows he’s already done better than most. Statistics show only a five percent survival rate over five years for a man in his condition, but simply by being alive a year after his diagnosis, Patrick Swayze has doubled the usual life expectancy of a regular pancreatic cancer patient.

But regardless of whether Patrick Swayze manages to keep the cancer at bay for two years or five, it doesn’t matter – through his sheer grit and determination, Patrick Swayze will prove to be an inspiration for many decades after his death.

What’s more, it means the mawkish Dirty Dancing tribute night that every TV station in the world is planning for the day after Patrick Swayze dies is still anywhere between two to five years off. In a way, we’re all winners.

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And it’s true, too. Just the other week, Star Jones was screeching about The View like a fat lunatic and we don’t even know who she is. And now it’s the turn of Rosie O’Donnell to do the same, although helpfully since she acts like a fat lunatic most of the time anyway, it’s easier for her.

Rosie O’Donnell has been involved in a spat with the old Skeletor lady from The View because Rosie O’Donnell says everyone on The View hates each other and Skeletor lady says they don’t. But it’s much more interesting than that because… no, wait. It’s not more interesting than that. That’s literally as interesting as this gets. A fat lady has shouted at an old lady. As you were, everyone.

Next week, some bright spark has decided to let Rosie O’Donnell back on the TV, where she’ll host her very own primetime variety show. It’s Rosie’s big chance to prove that she’s more than the angry red-faced one from The View who looked like she’d come round and shove firecrackers into your dog’s anus if you ever disagreed with her about anything.

So the promotion of this new show was always going to need a full-on charm offensive from Rosie. No wailing about the war, no being a lesbian any more than she had to, and definitely no starting fights with anyone. And definitely no mentions of The View.

So naturally Rosie O’Donnell decided to start a fight with everyone on The View. Rosie told reporters:

“[Barbara Walters] wanted everyone to believe and think and act as if [the women on The View] get along and are really good friends and happy and hang out together, and, you know, that’s just not the reality. I’m not saying they loathe each other, but the fact of the matter is there was not a lot of camaraderie off camera.”

But, hey, that’s just Rosie O’Donnell being Rosie O’Donnell. Being forthright and sort of obnoxious is what she does best. And gracefully ignoring problems to the extent where you think she’s either dozed off or died peacefully while nobody was looking is what Barbara Walters does, which is why she didn’t react to Rosie O’Donnell at all. Apart from when she did, by going on The View and saying this:

“There are some people who have done this show and then for years feel they have to dump on it, maybe for publicity, and that not only hurts me, but I resent it. So if the shoe fits, lady—ladies—get on with your lives.”

Notice that Barbara Walters referred to ‘ladies’ there. That’s either because she was talking about Star Jones who recently had a similar outburst about The View, or because Rosie O’Donnell is now so fat she can only be alluded to in the plural. We can’t really be bothered to find out.

Anyway, so that’s it. Rosie O’Donnell said something mean about Barbara Walters, Barbara Walters said something mean back to Rosie O’Donnell and that’s it. Oh, except that Rosie O’Donnell has decided to say something mean back to Barbara Walters in a webcam message on her blog even though nobody really asked her to. E! Online:

O’Donnell posted a video item titled “Lady,” which shows the former talk show host making faces in response to Walters’ remarks. “Whew, I do not know what Star Jones and Debbie Matenopoulos did,” O’Donnell sarcastically adds at the end, name-checking two other examples of View cohosts past. “Whew, lady, she is pissed off.”

And that’s definitely it now. Both women have said their piece and both The View and Rosie O’Donnell’s show have got piles of publicity because of it. True, this Rosie O’Donnell/ Barbara Walters fight will probably result in an attention-strapped Elisabeth Hasselbeck trying to muscle in on the spotlight by setting herself on fire while running around kicking puppies in the sternum within the next few days, but we should probably just deal with that when it happens.

It’s a picture of Thomas Beatie – the famous pregnant man from a few months ago – topless, pregnant and flexing his biceps into a mirror. It’s weird. It’s like that scene from American Psycho where Christian Bale is gazing at his muscles in the middle of the threesome, but a few months after he’s managed to get himself pregnant. Weird. Weird.

Why are we telling you this? Because we saw it while reading that Thomas Beatie has got himself pregnant again. Look, we know what you’re thinking – usually one child is enough for a bearded mother of nonspecific gender – but we can totally see his rationale behind getting pregnant again. Now Thomas Beatie’s children will both have someone to cling onto in terror when their parents tell them how they were born.

Remember a few weeks ago when everyone thought that Jamie Lynn Spears had got pregnant again? It turns out that she hadn’t, but it would have meant that she’d have got pregnant just four months after giving birth. Given that that’s slap-bang in the middle of the stage where both parents are still constantly exhausted and covered in baby poo, that’s impressive.

But not as impressive as Thomas Beatie. He gave birth to his first child in a flurry of controversy at the end of June, and now it’s been revealed that he’s pregnant again. That means not only is he exhausted and covered in baby poo, but he’s also got a penis. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Jamie Lynn.

Anyway, yes, the point is that controversial pregnant dad Thomas Beatie has got pregnant again, just a few months after he pushed his last baby out of his… we want to say arse.

Thomas Beatie revealed all to Barbara Walters, as ABC reports:

Thomas Beatie, who is in his first trimester, tells Walters he did not go back on the male hormone testosterone after Susan’s birth so he could have another baby. “I feel good,” he said. “I had my checkups with my hormone level, as far as the HCG. And everything is right on track.” He says the baby is due June 12.

As unusual as it may seem to begin with, Thomas Beatie’s second pregnancy is perfectly normal. He’s still a human being, and he has every right to bring as many children into this world as he likes. We have no doubt in our mind at all that Thomas Beatie will raise this new child with nothing but pure, endless love.

Plus we bet that Angelina Jolie will spend a fortune trying to buy it off him. Any old sod can get a baby born in Africa these days, but a baby that came out of a bloke? Top that, Madonna.

Oh, and to answer the question we set in the headline, the reason why we think that Thomas Beatie can’t keep it in his pants is because hardly any of it is in his pants any more. We’re guessing most of it’s in a jar on a creepy surgeon’s desk somewhere.

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Why? Because even though Peter Cook’s supermodel wife Christie Brinkley recently divorced him after he a) had it off with a teenager he met in a toystore and b) started spending $3,000 a month on internet pornography, Peter Cook says that the divorce was absolutely not his fault at all.

Better still, Peter Cook blames the divorce squarely on Christie Brinkley, because she didn’t thank him for being him as much as he wanted. Peter Cook said all this in an interview with Barbara Walters in an effort to stop him being branded as a “scumbag pervert.” And we’re pretty sure he’s got his wish – we believe the term is “egomaniac scumbag pervert dimwit” now.

Generally, divorce never makes anyone happy. It’s basically just a huge admission of failure and, while it can provoke feelings of anger or remorse or sadness, happiness never really factors into the equation.

The exception to this, of course, was the divorce between supermodel Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook, because that was hilarious. Actual roll on the floor, wet yourself hilarious. If you’re new to all this we should recap.

Peter Cook is an architect who, by some incredible fluke, managed to end up married to supermodel Christie Brinkley, of Uptown Girl and Chuck Norris sports equipment commercial fame. Everything was going swimmingly, until Peter Cook started having sex with Diana Bianchi, an 18-year-old girl he met at a toyshop, because after that Christie Brinkley left Peter Cook.

What followed, after Peter Cook swapped his testicles for a series of Please Forgive Me front page newspaper adverts, was one of the best divorces in history. Carried out in public at Christie Brinkley’s insistence, the divorce proceedings included tears, professional psychoanalysis on the brains of both Brinkley and Cook and – best of all – the news that Peter Cook spent $3,000 every month to grind his willy down to gristle on internet porn.

It was incredible. Unbeatable, we thought. But we were wrong. Although Peter Cook got the beating of his life in the divorce courts, he’s since dragged himself up, brushed himself down and appeared on television to, um, start punching himself in the face, basically.

For no logical reason at all, Peter Cook has decided to go on 20/20 with Barbara Walters and blame the entire dissolution of his marriage on Christie Brinkley alone. According to Fox, Cook said that the divorce was Christie Brinkley’s fault because:

“I wanted a little acknowledgement, a little attention, a little thank-you every now and then for my efforts, for the amount of time I took to care for her and my family, for the wealth I was building. Just the tremendous amount of work I was putting into my family… My hope is that the world will see that I’m not the scumbag pervert that I’ve been painted to be.”

In a way, we suppose Peter Cook has got a point – we’re certainly never going to think of him as a scumbag pervert after hearing his sad story. That’s because we’ll be too busy thinking of him as a permanently-masturbating attention-craving infant who wouldn’t know what self-awareness was if it came along and crapped in his mouth.

But that’s just us.

And that might not be new – we guessed that the moment Britney shacked up with Kevin Federline – but Britney Spears' manager Sam Lufti has apparently told Barbara Walters that Britney suffers from "mental issues" that she's seeking treatment for.

And how did Britney Spears celebrate this news? By having a gigantic fight with Sam Lufti and then sobbing on a pavement in front of the whole world. In case we didn't already get the message.

Aside from being that play where Harry Potter got his winky out, Equus is actually a meditation on the role of psychiatric treatment that raises the question 'is it really morally acceptable to entirely change an individual's personality with medication and treatment just because they don't fit society's definition of normal?'

And, in the case of Britney Spears, the answer is 'Yes. Yes, it's absolutely acceptable and frankly we wish that she'd get a bloody move on with it because she's getting right on our sodding tits.'

But finally it looks as if Britney Spears might actually be seeking out help because, according to Britney's manager Sam Lufti, Britney Spears has realised that she's mental. Yes, look, we know that this makes Britney Spears literally the last person in the entire world to realise that, but at least it's a start.

Lufti's assertions that Britney is crazy were revealed by Barbara Walters yesterday on The View. Reuters reports:

Veteran broadcast journalist Walters said she spoke with Lufti by phone after he reached out to her. "He said that Britney is suffering from what he describes as mental issues which are treatable," Walters said on "The View." "He said that she has been to a psychiatrist and that she, I assume, is starting some kind of treatment." Walters said Lufti has been staying with the singer "constantly" and added that Spears has been having "mood swings, she's been having trouble sleeping." Walters said she did not know whether Lufti was indeed telling the truth.

Now we're not sure what exactly made Britney Spears admit to her mental problems – could it be the emotional stress of losing her children, the shocking realisation that she's become a petty shoplifter or the way that, ten months after she called herself the devil and tried to hang herself with a bedsheet in rehab, she got topless, locked herself in a bathroom with her kids and started in yelling in an inexplicable British accent until an ambulance came to take her away? – but she's getting there.

Or at least she would be if it weren't for the gigantic fight that Britney Spears had with Sam Lufti last night that ended up with Britney Spears slumped on a pavement crying her eyes out and clutching her dog until the police, Britney's family and her boyfriend Adnan Ghalib all turned up to turn it into the gigantic circus it was promising to be. But, hey, at least she's getting better. 

And whether Britney Spears is only seeking treatment for these "mental issues" because she wants to convince a court that she can see her children, or whether she's solely invested in getting help for her own sake, Britney has at least admitted that she's got a problem. And don't they say that admitting your problem is the first step on the road to recovery?

Yes they do. However, the second step on the road to recovery is 'put some knickers on for Christ's sake darling, your tatty minge is bringing our lunch up', and we all know how difficult Britney Spears is going to find that. She's not out of the woods yet.

Read more:

Spears' manager says singer has "mental issues" - Reuters

Because that's what Victoria Beckham has done, and it's got her into Barbara Walters' prestigious 10 Most Fascinating People Of The Year list. Although her complete failure to establish herself as an actress or presenter on American TV might make it look as if Victoria Beckham has had a massively depressing year, at least the inclusion on Barbara Walters' fascinating list means it hasn't been a total disaster. And we're so happy for her that we're willing to overlook the fact that Barbara Walters calling Victoria Beckham fascinating is basically an admission that 2007 was so drearily unfascinating that everyone might as just suffocate themselves to death in their sleep tonight.

You know who one of the most fascinating people of the year was? Rosie O'Donnell, that's who. Lovely old angry Rosie O'Donnell with her Donald Trump fights and her Elisabeth Hasselbeck fights and her leaving The View and her subsequently not getting any other television jobs because everyone mostly thinks she's an overdemanding, unstable firebrand. That behaviour is almost the dictionary definition of fascinating.

However, you won't find Rosie O'Donnell on Barbara Walters' list of the 10 Most Fascinating People Of The Year. That could be because Barbara Walters used to be Rosie's boss on The View and their interview would be uncomfortable and awkward, or it could be that Barbara Walters really believes that a wooden, past-his-best footballer and a washed-up singer with a speaking voice that's part dentist drill and part hairdresser falling down a lift-shaft are actually more fascinating.

Barbara Walters has unveiled her list of the 10 Most Fascinating People Of The Year and, for some reason that we still can't understand, David and Victoria Beckham have come out on top.

That's not to say that David and Victoria Beckham aren't fascinating – although by going to live in America in a blaze of moviestar-endorsed publicity then singularly failing to either a) justify David's multi-million dollar salary by not even getting his team into the top half of its league or b) do anything more interesting that get followed around by some pigs at speed, it technically means that the Beckhams are fascinating in the same way that your cat finds dead frogs fascinating.

But this is Barbara Walters' list, not ours, so we'll just relay why Victoria Beckham thinks her marriage to David is so fascinating:

"I think it's where sports meets fashion meets music, and I think that's probably what people find interesting."

Yes, on reflection this whole 'sports meets fashion meets music' idea of Victoria Beckham's probably is what makes them fascinating. We were wrong to think it was because all the thundering vapidity that surrounds the Beckhams is sort of funny. Apologies all round.

But this is Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating People Of The Year list, not Barbara Walters' Two People Who Barely Count As One Normal Person's Idea Of Fascinating list, so who else did Walters pick this year? In no particular order, they are:

Justin Timberlake – Fascinating because: he brought sexy back. Single-handedly. Even though he's got a girl's voice.

The MySpace Founders – Fascinating because: of the way they're crapping it about Facebook.

Katherine Heigl – Fascinating because: she was a doctor on the telly and then a woman in a film.

Jennifer Hudson – Fascinating because: she was the only person to win an Oscar this year.

Don Imus – Fascinating because: scientists managed to genetically clone his facial skin to use as a material that can stretch across the top of space shuttles to stop them burning up on re-entry.

Bill Clinton – Fascinating because: he's the least-convincing Carmela Soprano ever.

Hugo Chavez – Fascinating because: his CD, Hugo Chavez Sings The Soundtrack To Cannonball Run 2, has been top of every single music chart in the world since January 1.

Read more:

The 10 Most Fascinating People Of 2007 – ABC