So why not Patrick Swayze himself? It’s been reported that Patrick Swayze will pen a memoir with the help of his wife Lisa. The book will span Swayze’s entire life – which means, unless things take a turn for the better soon, it’s going to have an incredibly depressing ending.

Because, Jesus, The Beast? Have you actually seen that thing? Talk about a terrible way to end an autobiography. Way to bum us all out, Patrick.

Think Patrick Swayze at the moment and, sadly, you tend to think of the stage 4 pancreatic cancer that he’s been blighted with for the last year. That’s not without good reason – for all the upsetting talk of a two-year survival prognosis, the fact is that by doubling the life expectancy of a patient in a similar position, and by seeing off pneumonia in the process, Patrick Swayze has become something of an inspirational figure.

But, despite all this, there’s much more to Patrick Swayze than just cancer. He was named the sexiest man alive in 1991, for example. Plus he wrote She’s Like The Wind, guest-starred in an episode of MacGyver and was the single weirdest thing about Donnie Darko. And those are all things worth preserving.

And that’s why his continuing battle with cancer has spurred Patrick Swayze on to write his autobiography. Along with his wife Lisa, Patrick Swayze has announced that he’s planning to write what is bound to be an incredibly inspirational memoir. People reports:

Despite reports, the source says that Swayze, who is battling pancreatic cancer, will not write an inspirational book. Instead, The Beast star will focus on his life’s journey, including his current fight against cancer. No word yet on when the book will be published.

Oh, alright then. Patrick Swayze’s book won’t be inspirational after all. We’d quite like to think that Patrick Swayze is going to go out of his way to make his autobiography as deliberately curmudgeonly and demotivating as possible. Not just about his fight with cancer, but about everything that’s ever happened to him – we’d especially love to see chapter headings entitled Letters From A Killer: What In Shitting Christ Was I Thinking? and My Parents? Ugh, Don’t Talk To Me About My Parents – but that’s unlikely to happen, realistically.

Nevertheless, we’re sure that Patrick Swayze’s book will turn out great. Just so long as he remembers not to go into too much detail about anything that happened to him between 1992 and, say, 2007. Our lives are busy enough as it is without having to read page after page on the voice work that Patrick Swayze did for The Fox And The Hound 2.

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Seriously, our script has been yellowing in our closet. Lucas doesn’t know a good thing when he sees it – he must be racist. Why else would he refuse our package at the door? Over 100 times?

Speaking of overly long hand-crafted literature that nobody except George Lucas should have to read – Britney Spears has just agreed to write her autobiography. Sorry, up to five autobiographies.

It wasn’t so long ago that Lynne Spears, fleshy-incubator of Britney, wrote a tell-all book about mothering or something. The first chapter alone included bits about how Brit-Brit breastfed well into the eighth grade, and that Jamie Lynn’s baby was strictly the result of her losing control of her wheelies and rolling awkwardly into a pond where three horny alligators had only just been.

Well that’s how the book would have read had our first ghost-written copy been approved by all the necessary parties.

It wasn’t.

Those Spears’ though, they must have book writing in the blood. We’ll use this chunk from The Mirror to prove our point:

Our source reveals: “There have been numerous unofficial biographies printed about Britney, but she’s never agreed to pen her own tome – until now.” And some of the stories she’s got are absolute dynamite. She’s kept diaries so there’s nothing she’ll leave out unless she wants to. “If the deal goes ahead she will write between three and five books throughout the next decade – it’s one of the most lucrative book deals in showbiz history.”

Now when you started reading this article we have no doubt you thought to yourself – ‘Britney’s writing a book? But she’s lived so much, how can one novel possibly contain it all?’ And your answer there is, as already stated in the above quote, she’s gonna stretch it over the course of at least three books. Sound like a series to challenge Narnia itself. And the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

One of the few things we may already know about the Spears books so far is that when they’re inevitably made into a movie, Spears absolutely insists the part of her be played by Daniel Radcliffe. She really likes what he’s done with the Potter franchise. We’ve heard she’s already mailed him her red Martian jumpsuit to make sure it fits, which incidentally it does.

Now, granted, at this point book #1 is in a pretty early, non-written stage. However, through hecklerspray’s amazing ability to know all things as they were, as they are and as they’ve yet to be, we have some excerpts for you

Excerpt one:

“I studied the finger nails. I looked closer and wondered if those cuticles could possibly be as full of tape worms as they looked. So wriggly, so alive. Then Kevin finished his dance, and I knew I would love him.”

Excerpt two:

“I looked at my mother. I was scared – did she know what I’d done? Should I confess before she finds out? Yes – yes of course I should. So with the pony’s blood dripping down my teeth & cheeks I said “Momma, I been bad.”

Excerpt three:

“…me! They wanted me to be dungeon master! Nervously, I picked up the dice…”

That last bit actually bleeds over into book two. You should definitely buy it.

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Seems it wasn’t that long ago that the Big O fell victim to the wily and deceitful James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces. Oprah, as you may recall, quickly came to Frey’s defense upon hearing the news that much of the book had been, er, made up, actually.

You may also recall that Oprah, upon receiving a trillion or so rage-filled letters from her viewers, promptly and publicly ripped Frey a new arsehole.

Well, it’s happened again. What had been described by Oprah as the ‘single-greatest love story in 22 years of doing this show’ was in fact, a real nose-stretcher.

Herman Rosenblat, a survivor of Buchenwald, had appeared twice on Oprah’s programme, claiming that he had met and fallen in love with his future wife who saved his Iife by throwing apples to him over the Buchenwald barbed wire fence. “You have become the beautiful metaphor for what love can be,” Oprah burbled, “for endurance, and fate and destiny.”

Or not.

Although Rosenblat and his wife were indeed concentration camp survivors, Rosenblat has now admitted that this charming tale of love and sacifice at Buchenwald was completely fabricated out of his own noodle.

“That’s what happens with lies,” Oprah now says, “They get bigger and bigger and bigger.”

Like grocery receipts.

And rib orders.

What a jerk. Pass the sauce.

Now.

[story by McG]

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Because if that was true, then JK Rowling would be our dealer. And Rowling is a mean dealer, too – she’s been withholding our supply, probably until we break down and agree to let her become our pimp or something – but yesterday JK Rowling threw us a lifeline.

Because yesterday JK Rowling released her new book The Tales Of Beedle The Bard – kind of like the methadone to Harry Potter’s hardcore skag – and somewhat predictably it instantly became a bestseller.

Never let it be said that JK Rowling isn’t an intelligent woman. She knows as well as anyone else that nothing she ever does for the rest of her life will be as popular as Harry Potter and that, once the Harry Potter series had ended, there was a strong chance that she’d be on the scrapheap. A really nice scrapheap, obviously, made of great big gold scraps that your entire family couldn’t afford even if they worked every hour of the day for their entire lives, but a scrapheap nonetheless.

So what did JK Rowling do? She made sure that an important plot device in the last Harry Potter book was The Tales Of Beedle The Bard – a gimmicky spin-off book that she could then write herself and flog off to the millions of children who’d buy a rancid squirrel carcass if it was branded with the Harry Potter logo. Genius.

It’s important to note that JK Rowling didn’t publish The Tales Of Beedle The Bard for the money – all proceeds from it are going to charity – but for the supercharged thrill of knowing that if she was any more powerful she’d legally qualify as a god and that she can crush her enemies like bugs whenever she wants. And, you know, because she likes writing and children and charity and crap.

Anyway, JK Rowling released The Tales Of Beedle The Bard yesterday and, as if you needed telling, it was instantly snapped up by everyone hungry to get their hands on a fresh slice of authentic Harry Potter literature, even if none of them would know what a bloody Beedle was if it came up and shat in their mouths. The New York Daily News reports:

J.K. Rowlings new book “The Tales of Beedle the Bard” hit stores Thursday, and it looks like Harry Potter fans can’t get a copy fast enough! The book soared to the top of the online bestsellers lists on Amazon.com and the Barnes&Noble Web site. A $100 collector’s edition offered exlusively on Amazon.com had skyrocketed from 778,576 to 22 on the site’s ”Movers & Shaker’s” list, which tracks the biggest gainers in sales rank.

Now, look, we know it’s for charity and everything, but know this – if you see anyone reading the $100 version of The Tales Of Beedle The Bard in public, it’s your moral and legal obligation to knock the book out of their hands and into a puddle to make them cry. Just so you know.

Anyway, now that The Tales Of Beedle The Bard is officially a hit, all we need to do is sit back and wait for the inevitable movie adaptation to hit cinemas, something which we’re particularly looking forward to because – if the Harry Potter actor tradition holds – it won’t be long before Babbitty Rabbitty gets her cackling stump out onstage during a theatrical production of Equus.

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And that’s because now everyone’s reading Twilight instead, despite the fact that reading a staunchly conservative abstinence manifesto dressed up as a slushy emo romance fantasy in front of other adults is far worse than reading Harry Potter.

So hooray for JK Rowling, who tomorrow releases her new Harry Potter spin-off book The Tales of Beedle the Bard, either for charity or to help us identify idiots more easily on the tube. Merry Christmas to you too, JK!

We thought that JK Rowling had been living in idle luxury since the publication of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows last year, maybe ordering 50 pizzas at once and then crapping all over them, or maybe giving the homeless urine-covered five-pound notes to take off their trousers and sing I’m A Little Teapot as loudly as possible. We’d expect JK Rowling does that because it’s exactly what we’d do if we earnt £13,000 an hour, too.

But we were wrong. Just because she’s so rich that she could tile her swimming pool with orphan teeth if she wanted, JK Rowling has found endless things to do with her time – like suing people who admire her and talking down to people more intelligent than her. And she’s also managed to make a clean break and move on from her Harry Potter days, too.

Well, OK, not a clean break, exactly. Or any other kind of break, for that matter. In fact, JK Rowling has pretty much carried on writing about Harry Potter regardless, like a woman who hasn’t stopped packing her husband’s lunchbox every morning even though he died a year ago.

The Tales Of Beedle The Bard might be familiar to some Harry Potter fans because not only was it alluded to in the Harry Potter novels, but it’s also the book that JK Rowling handwrote and auctioned off for almost £2 million last year. And now, in a peculiarly millionaire-spiting move, JK Rowling will tomorrow widely publish a printed, easier-to-read version of The Tales Of Beedle The Bard at a generously pikey-friendly price. Reuters reports:

A new book by British author J.K. Rowling, her unofficial farewell to the adventures of boy wizard Harry Potter which made her the world’s wealthiest writer, goes on sale on Thursday. Proceeds from “The Tales of Beedle the Bard,” expected to become an international bestseller even though the seven-book Potter series is over, will go to a charity for vulnerable children in Eastern Europe co-founded by Rowling.

Now, we haven’t researched this properly, but the charity that proceeds of The Tale Of Beedle The Bard will go to is either The Children’s High Level Group which campaigns to protect and promote children’s rights across Europe, or The Stitch This Harry Potter Merchandise Faster And I Might Give You Some Of My Food Foundation, which we’ve just made up. But it’s definitely one of those two.

But if you don’t want to The Tales Of Beedle The Bard, then don’t worry. Knowing what a cash cow Harry Potter is, it’s only a matter of time before someone at Warner Bros adapts it into a movie. And that way, rather than helping some whiny European kids, you’ll be lining the pockets of an obnoxious power-crazed nonspecific Hollywood executive who we imagine cheats on his wife with a teenager and spends his weekend throwing pebbles at dogs.

Which is better, obviously.

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But that’s besides the point.

Books still get banned you know. All the time – why just recently the British arm of Amazon.com reached into its electronic library, grabbed a tell-all work of non-fiction by the spine and thrashed it to and fro until the pages thereof had all fluttered loosely to the ground.

Rumour has it the book was pulled by the heavy hand of Tom Cruise who, for the record, denies any involvement in this literary scandal. His influence is implied because the novel’s topic is – you guessed it – Esoteric Christianity. Or whatever that thing is he’s deep into.

John Duignan is a guy who wrote a book called The Complex. Duignan is a former Scientologist who’s had it up to here with how the religion made him and everyone else who’d reached the inner sanctum of the seventh level sit around wearing nothing but donuts over their nipples while talking over and over about how L Ron Hubbard didn’t owe the US government one red cent when he died alone in his desert trailer.

This is all detailed in his book’s eleventh chapter – it starts on page eight. We should clear up that we haven’t actually read the book as we’re waiting for Oprah’s go-ahead, but most of our description there is probably written on the jacket somewhere. If you want to see for yourself – don’t check Amazon.co.uk – they’ve digitally burned it. At least according to the author.

The Daily News explains things:

“On Oct. 31, Irish publisher Merlin released “The Complex,” in which John Duignan, identified as “a former high-ranking member” of the church in Britain, describes his “dramatic escape” from its “elite para-military group,” the Sea Organization.  Five days later, Cruise dropped by Amazon’s Seattle headquarters to glad-hand staffers and host a sneak peek at his new movie, “Valkyrie.”

“A few days later, Amazon’s British Web site stopped selling “The Complex,” explaining to customers that someone mentioned in the book had alleged it defamed him with “false claims.””

Cruise is innocent – we think we can explain things right away here. Tom strangely stopped by the Amazon offices to show off his new Valkyrie movie. Seems like a weird choice until you realise that later in the day he’d also let the employees of a local mom & pop grocery store sneak a peak. Then he went to two gas stations and an unimpressed toll-taker, all allegedly with a projector in tow, but we digress.

The film, being extremely pro-Nazi according to a dream we had three nights ago, whipped all the employees up into a heil-Hitler fervor, causing several smokey book piles to plume way up into the night sky.

We don’t really think Cruise’s visit had a specific book bashing agenda though. No, there was definitely more of a religion-in-general theme to the torching as we’ve heard other flame-fuellers included the Bible, The Book of Mormon, and the third installment of Jeff Foxworthy’s semi-popular ‘You Might Be Resurrected If….” series.

But, you know, Cruise denies the allegations outright.

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That’s the reason why everyone’s favourite episodes of The Brady Bunch is the one where Marcia Brady plumbs the squalid depths of addiction thanks to her years growing up in an abusive family, trading sex for drugs and being forced to deal with unwanted pregnancies. And that episode where Marcia Brady gets hammered on Quaaludes in Sammy Davis Jr’s house? Oh Marcia Marcia Marcia.

Wait, they’re not episodes of The Brady Bunch at all – they’re excerpts from Maureen McCormick’s new book, Here’s The Story: Surviving Marcia Brady And Finding My True Voice. You might think that Maureen McCormick has reached a new pitiful low by detailing her battles with depression and drug addiction in a book for cash, but you’re wrong – she’s nowhere near the pitiful low benchmark set by her participation in A Very Brady Christmas.

If we ever have children, the first thing we’re going to do is shove them into ill-fitting careers as childstars. Really, it’s the best thing for them. Admittedly they’ll grow up with a sort of low self-esteem Pavlovian conditioning that’ll equate attention with love, making them spiral off into the dark realms of joyless sex and drug addiction by their early teens. But they’ll thank us later when their careers dry up and they can get an easy second income by detailing what a shitty childhood they had in a series of books.

Honestly, everyone’s at it. Screech from Saved By The Bell has a book coming out, it can only be a matter of time before Gary Coleman releases a book called What’chu Talkin’ ‘Bout: Cries For Help From An Angry Midget and now Marcia Brady actress Maureen McCormick has had a go too.

Previously the two most exciting things to ever happen to anyone from The Brady Bunch were a) when Bobby lost control of his car in The Brady 500 and ended up paralysed from the waist down and b) when Florence Henderson lost her dog and got a bit sad about it.

But that’s nothing, because Maureen McCormick today publishes Here’s The Story: Surviving Marcia Brady And Finding My True Voice, her attempt to make all Brady Bunch fans so depressed and guilty by association that they end up losing all will to live. In the book, Maureen McCormick reveals fun little anecdotes about the time she developed a long-term addiction to cocaine and Quaaludes, the time she spent most of her adult life getting treated for depression, the times she debased herself by swapping sex for drugs and her hilarious unwanted pregnancy. E! Online has details:

“As a teenager, I had no idea that few people are everything they present to the outside world,” McCormick, now 52, writes in the book, excerpts of which were released today. “Yet there I was, hiding the reality of my life behind the unreal perfection of Marcia Brady. No one suspected the fear that gnawed at me even as I lent my voice to the chorus of Bradys singing ‘It’s a Sunshine Day.’”

Well that’s Christmas sorted, then. Everyone we know is getting a copy of Maureen McCormick’s book. That way, by Boxing Day teatime, everyone will be so inert and desolate that they won’t notice that we’ve eaten all the sausage rolls and have stolen their Xboxes. Result.

Let’s hope that Maureen McCormick’s book acts as a valuable warning to the new generation of tween stars rising up in America at the moment. The lesson it teaches is plain to see – make sure you do as many drugs and have as much meaningless sex as possible right now, otherwise you’ll never get that publishing deal in 30 years’ time.

So there’s obviously no better time to publish a book about Britney Spears; primarily her struggle with mental illness and her amazing revival. Admittedly it’s still early days – Britney could have a relapse tomorrow and start throwing animals off motorway bridges, rendering the whole book obsolete – but there’s nothing like striking while the iron’s hot, is there?

That’s what Britney Spears’ mother Lynne Spears thinks, because her Britney Spears book Through The Storm comes out next week. Copies have already leaked, and it seems it’s more about what a brave and inspiring mother Lynne is than anything else. Which is true – Lynne Spears has bravely inspired us never to have kids in case we end up raising them as terribly as she’s done with hers.

We’ve always thought that Lynne Spears was an excellent mother. No really, we did. It must be harder than it looks to have two children and then deprive them of a normal childhood so that you can relentlessly pursue your dream of living vicariously through your childstar offspring, only to watch it blow up in your face when they become so maladjusted to real life that one of them gets knocked up while still at school and the other one shaves her hair off in public and calls herself the devil.

For that, Lynne Spears deserves a medal. It’s true.

She won’t get one, of course, so second-best is her new book Through The Storm. You might remember Through The Storm as the parenting guide that Lynne Spears was going to publish right before Britney went barmy and Jamie Lynn got herself pregnant. Well, realising that reading a parenting guide by Lynne Spears would be a bit like reading Dr Harold Shipman’s Guide To Looking After Granny, Lynne scrapped that idea and decided to retool the book as an explosive tell-all.

We already knew that the book would claim that Britney Spears was sex-and-drugged to the wazoo by the time she was 15, but now the Associated Press has managed to snatch a look at a preview copy of the Through The Storm, and has given it a little summary. SPOILER ALERT: Britney Spears goes a bit mental near the end:

In “Through the Storm,” Lynne Spears presents herself as a loving, selfless (she gave up her job as a school teacher for her daughter’s sake) but increasingly powerless parent. After the jolting, but pleasant surprise of Britney Spears’ debut smash, ” … Baby One More Time,” Lynne Spears says she felt she was losing control when a 1999 Rolling Stone magazine story featured a racy cover of the singer in panties and a bra.

And that’s where it all went wrong, you see. Not several years earlier when Lynne Spears decided to bring Britney up in the public spotlight to ensure that she’d constantly spend the rest of her craving approval from strangers – or when she let Britney Spears’ first video involve schoolgirl uniforms and creepy allusions to sexual violence – but when she got her bra out in a music magazine. Sounds fair.

Anyway, none of that matters any more because, as we all saw at the MTV VMAs on Sunday night, Britney Spears is absolutely back, completely well and as clear-headed and normal as you could ever wish to be. We know this for a fact because she didn’t have lipstick smeared all over her face and wasn’t arbitrarily lunging at children and making them cry.

Lynne Spears must be kicking herself about that, because now Through The Storm looks like an uplifting story about courage in the face of adversity, and we hear she was really going for the whole ‘ghoulish car-crashy exploitative last shot at fame’ demographic. Shame.

It got us in an outhouse. We should have brought a flashlight.

Also there’d be a chapter about how that reptile-hanger-onner had us tied up in Customs for a day and a half. If this book actually happens, don’t anybody read it. We’d simply die.

When Britney Spears gets a tell-all book penned by her mother, it doesn’t get to have any lizard encounters included unless its about dancing with them in those new fangled southern churches. What it does get, however, is vivid accounts of Brit-Brit drinking at 13, drugging at 15, and watching her virginity sail over the horizon on the guardrail of a decrepit family tree house.

The tree house bit is probably not an actual excerpt.

Britney Spears and her mother Lynne have long had an apparent poor relationship. They tried to kill each once other or something, and we heard they had a full-on tug of war with Jamie Lynn’s recent umbilical cord.

The baby was still attached to it. So was Jamie Lynn. We heard it was very slippery, and in the end everyone laughed and had a good time.

If that is true at all you can read about it in Mother Spears upcoming book Through The Storm, which we heard is written in the spirit of Tom Clancy and an updated William Shakespeare. We’re waiting for it in paperback. If you read it don’t spoil it.

The Sun talks about the tome’s content:

“Wild child Britney allegedly first hit the bottle after joining Disney’s squeaky-clean Mickey Mouse Club. Mum LYNNE claims 14-year-old Britney then had sex with an 18-year-old high school footballer soon after she quit the TV show. And she had her first taste of drugs at 15 when she went to Los Angeles to record her debut album Baby One More Time. The sensational revelations were leaked last night ahead of publication of Lynne’s memoir, titled Through the Storm.”

Well a mother telling all of her troubled daughter’s most intimate secrets sounds OK to us, but if there is so much as a sentence of Britney shaving Federline’s corn-rowed back we’re gonna report it to some sort of ethics committee.

The book was supposed to come out a little while back, but it got postponed after Lynne Spears’ other daughter, who we think is named Rosebud or something, got knocked up by the teenage love of her life. Hopefully all that will be included in the sequel.

We’ve heard film rights have been acquired by Steven Spielberg, and the Nolan brothers are hammering out the script to give it that crazy Dark Knight appeal. As those two prefer to work with people they know, Christian Bale will be playing the part of Lynne Spears – and spot on too, no doubt.

First he stopped jumping around like a particularly stupid chimp, he stopped going on about Scientology in public – though he did see some of his private video collection released, much to the delight/terror (delete as appropriate) of the general public – and he’s seeing some rave reviews flying about for his small role in Tropic Thunder. So what next?

Well, it’s obvious isn’t it? Star in a superhero film, and get someone like Sam Raimi on board to produce. Which is, apparently, what’s being pushed for by Tom Cruise and Warner Bros, who own the rights to Sleeper – a short running comic book series from a few years back. Well, Raimi’s already on board, but you get the point.

And you can’t fault the man’s logic.

The rumoured decision happily fits in with our theory that Hollywood is physically incapable of having an original thought, ever, ever, ever. It also fits in with the current logic that if you make a film of a comic book it will make a lot of geeks wet with anticipation, thus creating millions upon millions of dollars to line the executive’s pockets with. And we all know how much they love money over there in movieland.

Valuing cash over creativity, honesty or integrity? Say it ain’t so! Ahem.

It appears, if reports are to be believed, that the latest in the line of films the studios hope will emulate the success of Spider-Man 3 and The Dark Knight is an adaptation of Sleeper – a limited series that ran from 2003-05 from the Wildstorm Universe and written by Ed Brubaker, whose writing credits include some work on X-Men and Captain America comics, amongst many others.

It does strike us that such a smalltime comic wouldn’t be the best of the potential earners out there for the studios and actors, but hey ho – it’s their money to waste and, who knows, they might get it right.

They won’t. But, you know – we are the bastions of truth, glory and optimism in the world of the internet. Wait, what? We’re not? Ah crap, Stu isn’t going to be happy…

The connection of Tom Cruise with the project has come about through the usual web of lies/rumours that prop up countless websites across the world, though it did originate at somewhere half-decent in the shape of The Hollywood Reporter, meaning we can leave it to them to explain the finer points:

Written by Ed Brubaker with art by Sean Phillips, “Sleeper,” which ran from 2003-05, centers on an operative whose fusion with an alien artifact makes him impervious to pain and allows him to pass it on to others through skin contact. He is placed undercover in a villainous organization by an intelligence agency and falls for a member of the group, named Miss Misery.

Which sounds absolutely ideal for some big names to get attached to, a plethora of nerds to claim they read the book when it first came out (even though they picked it up off eBay on hearing the news a film was in the making) and a film to come out and get critically panned, while earning a small amount of cash.

You heard it here first.

We should also point out: superpowers afforded by the film adaptation still won’t allow Tom Cruise to keep pizzas warm using magic. Just thought we should point that out yet again.

Yes, it would seem that everyone involved in the investigation – which covered the whole of the US – can breathe a sigh of relief, as they will not have to present themselves in front of a grand jury. This includes one Mary-Kate Olsen, whose involvement with Ledger was something questions have been raised about for a number of months now.

Fortunately for the twin-billionaire, with the case being dropped she will no longer be forced to appear for any legal proceedings, nor will she have to keep up her claims for immunity.

The collective eyebrow of the world probably isn’t quite as raised any more.

Reports on TMZ have highlighted the amount of confusion and ridiculousness in what they call a ‘power grab’ by the DEA. Heath Ledger’s death was something that should have been investigated by the NYPD, in many people’s views, and there was no reason for the feds to get involved in the whole thing.

Basically because it was ruled an accidental death and there was no criminal element linked to the proceedings. Which, y’know, is pretty much necessary for the federales to get involved, normally. What with that being their job description and all – not hassling people because someone accidentally killed themselves.

This does mean that we may never get to see Mary-Kate Olsen doing her best to look like she’s capable of functioning in the real world, as she explains her case to a grand jury and tries not to look as rough as a badger’s arse. Which would all surely come as huge challenges to her.

It’s a shame, as that would have made for some interesting reading, as well as actually letting us know whether the one half of a child from Full House did have anything to do with Ledger’s death.

It would also mean we would know where we stood legally, and wouldn’t have to avoid baseless accusations. Stupid laws…

No, we will simply have to put up with the Olsen’s book, possibly watching as Mary-Kate decides to add a new chapter at the end, telling all about her experiences with the feds. Obviously Ashley would have to put something in there as well for the sake of twinly balance, so she could talk about what it was like to get all jiggy and stuff with a cyclist.

Though anyone that wanted to read that part would have to be clinically insane, downright sick or probably blind. A combination of all three would definitely be a benefit.

Wait – we had a point somewhere… oh yes!

So the Drug Enforcement Administration’s seemingly frivolous investigation into the death of The Dark Knight star Heath Ledger has been dropped, with one reason given being:

“Because they don’t believe there’s a viable target.”

Which is, well – a pretty good reason to stop an investigation, if we’re honest here. We may never know if there was a third party that contributed willingly or unwillingly to the death of Heath Ledger, but at least this strange investigation can be forgotten about and the man can be left alone.

At least until they launch a new investigation, of course.

But don’t feel sorry for Dustin Diamond because he’s doomed to spend the rest of his life stereotyped into a perpetual inescapable vacuum where he’ll only be known as Screech from Saved By The Bell to everyone he ever meets all the time forever until he dies, because some good has come out of it.

Dustin Diamond, you see, has decided to use his notoriety to pen a no-holds-barred Saved By The Bell tell-all book that’ll chronicle the cast’s naughty shenanigans in a frank and shocking manner. Honestly? We’re underwhelmed. Now, if there was a Hangin’ With Mr Cooper tell-all book coming out…

Dustin Diamond probably resents Saved By The Bell a little bit – he knows in his heart of hearts that the first thing the paramedics will say after they’ve failed to resuscitate his elderly body several years into the future is “Hey, that’s Screech from Saved By The Bell. Truly he was the Gary Coleman of normal-sized white men,” – but that would be doing the show a great disservice.

Look at all the headlines Dustin Diamond made in the last few years. None of them would even exist without Saved By The Bell. Would we have had Screech Almost Mugged By A Girl? No, we would have had Scrawny Anonymous Man With Problem Hair Almost Mugged By A Girl.

And how would we have reported the Screech from Saved By The Bell sex tape? Scrawny Anonymous Man With Problem Hair Wipes His Shit-Covered Hands Over A Girl’s Face After Doing Her Up The Bum? That doesn’t even scan at all.

No, being on Saved By The Bell was the greatest thing that could ever have happened to Dustin Diamond, and he knows it. That show is the gift that keeps on giving. It saved his house from foreclosure, it got him on that slightly humiliating child-star edition of The Weakest Link and it’s now hurling him into the world of publishing.

Yes, according to reports, Dustin Diamond has signed a publishing deal for a shocking tell-all book detailing his days on Saved By The Bell. According to New York magazine:

Behind the Bell, which Gotham Books preempted from Objective Entertainment’s Jarred Weisfeld, promises to detail “sexual escapades among cast members, drug use, and hardcore partying,” and for those of us who spent untold hours in our formative years memorizing “I’m So Excited” and the entire back catalog of Zack Attack, this is the greatest book deal in the history of the universe.

Sex? Drugs? In Saved By The Bell? That hardly sounds convincing, unless milkshakes have suddenly been reclassified as narcotics and Mark-Paul Gosselaar’s slightly nauseating infatuation with himself counts as a sexual escapade these days.

Still, what do we know – Dustin Diamond was there during the Saved By The Bell days and we weren’t, so we should hold off from making any sudden judgements until we’ve read the thing.

Even though we’re fully aware that Dustin Diamond only wrote a book in the first place so he could star as his childhood self in the movie adaptation of it. And, that when that day happens, it’ll be the happiest day of his life.

Or at least that’s the theory. Having allegedly made enemies of his friends, neighbours and everyone who’s ever seen Zardoz from start to finish, Sean Connery has now apparently turned on his son Jason.

According to a book written by his ex-wife Diane Cilento, Sean Connery’s tricks have included removing Jason from his will and threatening to kill him during an argument about his name.

Apparently, it was all an effort to get Jason to stand on his own two feet, and it worked – without Sean’s help Jason would have never founded the My Dad’s A Miserly Bald Sod Who Inexplicably Wants Me Dead support group. Thanks Sean!

Sean Connery has had a life so completely different to ours that it’s hard to get a handle on the man. For instance, we haven’t been megastars for almost 50 years and he has, we’re not 77-year-old Scots and he is, and we’ve never been publicly referred to as a ‘rude, foul-mouthed fat old man’ by people we live near.

Sean Connery, as if you need to be told, apparently has.

What we’re trying to say is that it’s difficult for us to understand why Sean Connery does some of the crazy, anti-social things he allegedly does. Perhaps he’s got perfectly decent explanations for them all.

Perhaps, for instance, Sean Connery only allegedly punched his wife because she was a massive bitch. Nobody thinks of that, do they?

And maybe Sean Connery only decided to write his son Jason out of his will and threaten to kill him because he’s a useless layabout who wouldn’t know a decent day’s work if it came up and sliced his nipples off and who’ll never be as good at anything as Sean Connery because Sean Connery is 100% Sean Connery and Jason Connery will only ever be 50% Sean Connery at best.

That claim – the one about Jason Connery being disinherited – is made in a new book by Diane Cilento, the ex-wife who Sean Connery apparently slapped around a bit. According to Cilento, Sean and Jason fell out over an acting role, as The Sun reports:

“Sean said, ‘You only got this job (an acting role) because your name’s Connery,’” said Cilento. “Jason said, ‘Well, I’ll change it to something else.’ Sean said, ‘If you do that I’ll fucking kill you.’ Jason loves him but Sean has a problem about relationships, as everybody round him knows.”

We should probably remember that – although it’s not an impossible stretch to see Sean Connery as a cranky, foul-tempered, old bastard – this is from a book written by a woman with a grudge, so maybe it should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Still, we’d be eager to discover which acting role it was that caused the schism between the Connerys. Was it Jason’s role as James Dunham in one episode of Casualty 11 years ago? Or his turn as Professor Joel Barash in Wishmaster 3: Beyond The Gates Of Hell? Maybe it was Jason’s critically-acclaimed role as Bennington in the seminal TV show Mary Kate And Ashley In Action!

Because if it was that last one, there’s no way that being Sean Connery’s son affected his casting. No, he got that role the old-fashioned way – by being the only actor alive prepared to degrade himself enough to star in a Mary Kate and Ashley TV show. We hope Sean Connery feels very silly indeed now.

OK, maybe not anyone. Ask Madonna and, while it’s entirely possible she’ll wheel out a hilarious bedroom anecdote, there’s no way on Earth that she’ll bring up her divorce.

That’s because, despite relentless gossip to the contrary, Madonna is still maintaining that she’s not going to divorce Guy Ritchie. And that’s fact. Madonna’s brother, who hasn’t really seen Madonna that much in almost a decade, said so. And facts don’t get any more factier than that.

Have you heard about Madonna’s divorce? Of course you have – as a human with at least one working sense, you’ll have been pounded over the head with reports about Madonna’s divorce. Even those freaky smell-only people know about it, probably because they can detect Guy Ritchie’s tears from a radius of up to 50 miles.

Anyway, it’s not exactly new news – Madonna and Guy Ritchie, who have reportedly been going through marriage difficulties for years, are getting divorced. Madonna’s hired an impressively expensive divorce lawyer and is so serious about ending things with Guy Ritchie that she’s even made time to erotically hypnotise a baseball player into thinking he’s her soulmate.

It’s over, we all know it’s over and everyone just wants it to be over as soon as possible so that they can think about something more interesting for a change, like bread dough or dust. Right?

Oh you poor misguided plebs, of course it’s not right. Madonna loves Guy Ritchie and she’d never dream of getting a divorce from him. Definitely not. Never. And that’s according to a relative of Madonna who’s been all but estranged from her since she married Guy Ritchie, and everyone knows they’re the most trustworthy sources of marital speculation, especially when they happen to be shopping a book around. Right?

Yes, in this case it is right. Christopher Ciccone, for he is Madonna’s brother, has written a book all about Madonna, and all this talk of divorce has briefly elevated him from ‘writer of a trashy tell-all book that’ll be quickly ignored’ to ‘writer of a trashy tell-all book that’ll be quickly ignored even though he’s on telly all the time banging on about Madonna’.

And that explains all of Christopher Ciccone’s recent Madonna-defending appearances on US television. Reuters reports:

“I believe she’ll do what’s best for her family and her kids and I believe she’ll do her best to maintain the marriage,” Ciccone told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday. “She’s not the kind of person to walk away.”

You know what? Actually we think we have to agree with Christopher here – Madonna definitely isn’t the kind of person to walk away from anything. Except her marriage to Sean Penn. And her career as an erotic thriller actress. And her occasional dabbles in lesbianism. And any of the personal, musical or visual styles she’s toyed with over the last 20 years.

But, aside from all that, Madonna doesn’t walk away from anything. Guy Ritchie has nothing to worry about at all whatsoever, has he?

Nah. Turns out that she has a mum.

Warning: if you've just eaten, you may want to avoid reading this report for a short while. On the other hand, if you're bulimic – and need a horrific mental image to really spur on that gag reflex – please allow us to be of service. Ready? O-kay.

Kerry Katona's mother – 48 year old Sue Katona – is apparently unhappy with her portrayal in Kerry's recent literary opus Too Much, Too Young. She's aiming to write a new book in which she recounts how:

… she taught Kerry how to seduce men and then went on to steal her daughter's lovers.

Jesus wept.

That's not the only revelation that dear old Sue has to offer, though. Oh, no – anyone lucky/stupid/deserving-to-die enough to pick up a copy of her forthcoming book will learn that Kerry once offered sex in exchange for drugs when she was suffering dire financial circumstances. Presumably to the drug dealer with the world's lowest sexual standards, then. Either that or he had a real fetish for simpleton failed pop stars who seem to have escaped from Fraggle Rock's deformed birth ward.

Kerry is reported to be 'devastated' and – get this – can't believe that her mother would stoop so low. What's that, love? You're a bit surprised that someone who shares your genetic makeup – i.e. every cell poised to snatch and slurp at whatever half-arsed publicity it can find, no matter how risible or tasteless – might sell you down the river?

Maybe cut back on the coke, then, eh? That perspective should even out in no time.