Things that are certain in life: Big Brother will be awful but it will drag us all in for the hideous ride. Death, taxes and an irritating headache on the day you’re supposed to be going on a big night out. Sacha Baron Cohen will get sued eight billion times for whichever of his comedy characters he’s been parading around most recently.

Yes, the latter has once again happened, with Cohen’s Bruno being sued for allegedly hurting a woman in a bingo hall quite badly.

Normally this would bring cries of derision from hecklerspray, but this time it looks a bit different…

Where normally Sacha Baron Cohen is sued for having a sense of humour, mocking idiots and preying on those with deep-seated resentment of “the blacks” “the jews” or “the foreigns” (or is simply punched in the face), this time – if early indications are anything to go by – there may be legs on the case.

During filming for the upcoming Bruno movie Cohen visited a bingo hall in Palmdale, California, back in 2007. While he had been billed as a celebrity guest, his presence probably didn’t go down too well – if it did, it would be a bit of a shit film, let’s be honest.

No, what allegedly happened was that Sacha/Bruno was involved in an altercation with the bingo caller – one Richelle Olson – which (allegedly) left her so dazed that she ended up collapsing and hitting her head on a concrete slab. Allegedly, this has (allegedly) left her disabled, has made her lose a great deal of weight and has generally made her life a lot worse, pushing her to sue for unspecified damages.

Allegedly.

What isn’t alleged is what Olson herself said of the allegedly fateful day, which was as follows, according to (*shudder*) The Daily Express:

She accuses the star of using “vulgar and offensive language” when he took the stage to call the numbers during the bingo game, and when she tried to snatch the microphone from him she alleges a “physical struggle ensued.”

The legal papers allege Cohen “offensively touched, pushed and battered” Olson, causing her to fall to the ground.

She goes on to accuse several camera operators, who were filming the event, of rushing onto the stage where “defendants attacked (her) for a period of one to five minutes to intentionally create a dramatic emotional response… while (they) recorded her humiliation and embarrassment.”

It all sounds pretty horrible, to be fair, but at the same time it’s hard to take any of these cases seriously when the vast majority of them are nothing but embarrassed morons feeling bad that they’ve been shown up. Time will tell if this is one of those cases or if it carries on and leads Sacha Baron Cohen to rethink how far he goes with his film stunts.

It probably won’t, let’s be honest here. Lawsuits will have been expected from day one, especially after the three billion other ones (eight was an overstatement) that came along in the wake of Borat. And lest we forget, this is a man who is willing to bleach all of his body hair for a laugh.