Hello. Are you a Westlife fan, troubled by the news that your Princes are going away to enjoy their moneyed-lives with their families and friends? Are you worried that there will suddenly be a void of mawkish, soaring ballads to sooth you while you self-harm in a bath of ice?

It’s bad news we’re afraid.

Westlife’s members have confirmed that the musical equivalent of an itchy jumper are unlikely to ‘do a Take That’ and get back together in a few years. Is it because Take That were always more relevant to pop music or is it because the Boyzone tribute market isn’t as lucrative as it once was? Who knows. Certainly not us.

There’s definitely no question of money. Especially not after Westlife announced that they will part next year after releasing a greatest hits compilation and going on a tour of Ireland & the UK (because no other countries care). Definitely nothing to do with grabbing a quick buck before they head of into the wilderness to await their call to the Never Mind The Buzzcocks ‘line-up’.

Kian (whoever that is) told someone or other that definitely wasn’t us:

“We walked away from a multi-million-pound record deal that would have changed our lives forever, secured our future beyond anything.”

Not that they’re skint, you understand. A career of covering other people’s hard work and standing from a stool when middle-aged women scream at you is both reminiscent of a Chippendale and surprisingly lucrative.

“It’s not about the money. We’d have made far more on a new record than we ever would with a comeback tour.”

Oh, good. It’s not about the money. They’ve decided they don’t want to put out a concept album. Presumably a concept album of them covering other people’s concept songs. We can’t confirm anything because they’re splitting up. Kian refused to address the issue of how much money they would make out of a greatest hits album and a farewell tour, having our hecklerspray reporter removed when he audaciously suggested that he was a money-obsessed hypocrite in a stained white suit.

Still they’ll make some money from their inevitable solo careers. Another Westlife member- apparently- Shane also told reporters that they will support each other when one decides to release an awful solo album, aiming to become the 21st Century’s Daniel O’Donnell.

“The first person to decide to do a solo record, the other three will all be there.

Wait… if they’re all there… would that not be another Westlife record?

“Everyone’s thought about going solo — I would love to continue singing for a living.”

At the moment though, Westlife are channelling all their efforts into the farewell tour, making sure that their stage show isn’t as boring as their music. Luckily, nothing was mentioned about ticket prices. It’s not about the money after all. It’s about the opportunity to say goodbye to their fans. Perhaps they’ll waves handkerchiefs… or £50 notes.

In case you gave half a hoot, Brian McFadden (the one whose name you know because he mounted Kerry Katona like a peroxide stallion) will not be joining them on stage. Apparently he has enough money. Somehow.

“We still sext him and stuff, but he’s not coming back.”

It’s a terrible time to be a Westlife fan. But then by the same token, we imagine it’s not been a great 13 years. Don’t worry though. They’ll be back in a few years. Bet your house on it.

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter or face dire consequences or ‘Like’ us on Facebook or BUY ONE OF OUR T-SHIRTS OR WE’LL KILL EVERYONE YOU LOVE… & your little dog too!

Louis Walsh. He’s been on the brink of a nervous breakdown since the last series of The X Factor when he got spectacularly angry about the existence of the film, Gummo. We’ve assumed that he’s been going under thanks to working with Jedward.

That or some suffocating closeting he’s imposed on himself surrounding rumours of his sexuality.

And the latest Louis Walsh’s Brain Is About To Completely Capsize tale surrounds his wanting to end his life. Suicide, obviously, is utterly hilarious and should be mocked at every noose, pill bottle and 2 bar heater dropped in the bath water.

What nearly pushed Louis into the abyss is the recent accusation from the marvellously monickered Leonard Watters, who said that the  X Factor judge groped him one on the nuts in the latrines of a Dublin nightclub. If you didn’t know, it turns out Watters was making it up and got himself prosecuted for making false claims.

Not that this made Louis feel much better. Even after his name was cleared, he stared at himself in the mirror, pulled down on his sagging face and thought ‘I think I’ll let this ordeal stay with me for the duration of my life’.

He melodramatically says:

“I’ve changed forever. This has made me physically ill. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I’ve lost so much weight that my suits don’t even fit me anymore. I can’t even get a proper night’s sleep, so I’m exhausted. When I drift off I suddenly wake up in a blind panic. The panic attacks are awful. I have to calm myself down and say, ‘It’s over, I’m going to be OK’.”

As many of you will know, there is no darkness that can cloud a soul like the one that manifests itself in the form of a cheap suit that is suddenly too big for you. The loose waistband, pulled taut, acts as a very real metaphor for the yawning chasm in your heart… that clawing emptiness that may never be filled.

Unless you get some pies in you.

On the night of the allegations, he thought about topping his little self:

“I locked myself in my hotel room in London. I wouldn’t speak to anyone … I was devastated. That night in the Kensington Hotel I did think about a way out. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever considered ending it. I was serious. Even today I’m still a shell of my former self. The pressures this business brings are immense. With good you get bad so I’m going to be suspicious of everyone I meet now. I have good days and bad days. I’m questioning everything now. I think time will heal it all right but I’ll never be me, the old person that I was, ever again.”

So is the claptrap of yore gone? Are we about to see a new, reserved, hollowed out husk compared to the old Louis who would open his mouth without thinking when talking about things that don’t concern him?

Yeah. Right. Literally hours after showing everyone where he would slit his wrists, if he meant it, Walsh promptly went about gossiping about Cheryl Cole’s lovelife.

Louis says, seemingly forgetting the enveloping darkness in his heart:

“I knew she would get back with Ashley. I think he loves her and she loves him. I think they will be happy. If they got married again I’d be at the wedding.”

Unless you chuck yourself off a motorway bridge, right?

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter or join our Facebook group or BUY ONE OF OUR STUPID T-SHIRTS!

Louis Walsh was recently accused of indecent assault in a nightclub toilets in Dublin. That’s great isn’t it? All indecent assaults seem to take place in toilets. It must be something to do with the wonderful bouquet given off by urinal cakes.

Anyway, some fella has said that Walsh went for his groin and it was all very distressing for him, more distressing when you consider how much money could be made from accusing a celebrity of such a thing, especially one that everyone assumes to be a homosexual.

However, the case against Louis has been dropped, following an investigation into the alleged incident. Legally speaking, the man’s genitalia didn’t at all remind Walsh of a ‘young Lenny Henry’.

Basically, if you missed the story, a 24-year old man said that the X Factor judge “molested him” in a nightclub toilet. However, the cheeky wag has now been arrested by the Gardai on suspicion of knowingly making a false report to the police.

Walsh, looking confused and simple, says:

“I have been informed by An Garda Síochána that I am now no longer under investigation. I have robustly maintained from the outset that this alleged incident did not occur.”

“While I obviously welcome today’s confirmation from the Garda that the matter has been dropped I remain outraged that this story ran in the first place in The Sun and I have instructed my libel lawyer to vigorously pursue legal action against the paper.”

Damn. We wanted to make jokes about the lad in question enjoying it. Don’t take legal action against us Louis. We write jokes, not news stories. Okay?

“I have no intention of letting this matter rest until I have received total and absolute vindication. This has been a hugely distressing time for me but I would like to thank all my friends and colleagues for their support and I am now just looking forward to getting back to work.”

Christ. Calm down lad.

Speaking of the incident, a source added:

“Louis has been living under a cloud – it has been a nightmare and he has been in tears.”

In tears? Bloody hell Louis, that sounds stereotypically [joke removed under advice from hecklerspray's lawyers]

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter or join our Facebook group or BUY ONE OF OUR STUPID T-SHIRTS!

Louis Walsh, of X Factor and impresario behind Westlife and Boyzone, is a man much mocked. Firstly, he’s mocked for his terrible taste in music. Secondly, he’s quite clearly in the middle of very long nervous breakdown. Thirdly, everyone likes to point at him and say ‘gay’.

Now, with a combination of the stresses of fame, the assumed mental illness and his presumed closeting himself, it is surprising that someone hasn’t alleged that Walsh has touched them inappropriately before.

But now they have! Hurray! And better yet, it has allegedly happened in the toilets of a nightclub, which is textbook tabloid scandal fodder.

Before we get going, let us just get this legal bit out of the way as qualifier and safeguard to any future jokes which may come across as scurrilous libel. *clears throat* Louis Walsh has ‘vigorously denied’ allegations that he indecently assaulted a young man at a nightclub in Dublin. The Sun said it first, so sue them.

Okay? Good.

Anyway, the police are investigating Walsh after some fella claimed that Louis Walsh grabbed him by the balls in the toilets of a club called Krystle.

The chap in question says that Walsh groped his privates, which is nice. It’s just a different way of shaking hands isn’t it? Or maybe the 24 year old single father had a bit of water on his groin regions which Walsh was simply trying to dry for him. Repeatedly. Until he got hard.

That said, Walsh isn’t happy about this at all. In fact, he’s vowed to fight all the way to defend his name, whatever that means.

Walsh says:

“The allegations made against me are wholly false and with no foundation. I will happily cooperate fully with the police and am 100 per cent confident that after a full investigation I will be fully exonerated.”

He then hoped to see a black policeman so he could say ‘you remind me of a young Lenny Henry’.

The Gardai will be very interested in this case because, as well you know, homosexuality is still outlawed in Ireland unless you’re wearing priest robes and the groped is under the age of sexual consent, in which event, it is actively encouraged.

We can only hope that the chap Louis is alleged to have fondled appears as a hopeful on the new series of The X Factor, mainly because the incredible pain and awkwardness would make for brilliantly grisly television for us braying simpletons.

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter or join our Facebook group or BUY ONE OF OUR STUPID T-SHIRTS!

Preening, chemically enhanced music “supremo” Louis Walsh has spoken out about his decision to step down as Boyzone’s manager, something that we didn’t even know had happened. Walsh, the man responsible for making the skin of young boys everywhere crawl to the point where it attempts to tear itself from the body of its host and choke itself.

Earlier this month, reports emerged that Walsh had ditched the boyband because of disappointing ticket sales, brought about by the death of pop music, something that he is at least partly responsible for. The poor man’s Simon Cowell is said to believe that he missed a trick by refusing to manage Take That because he didn’t fancy Mark Owen enough to take the job.

Add to this lead singer Ronan Keating’s recent revelation that he likes to put his knob about a bit and you have yourself a self-righteous, pompous TV personality trying to get himself some more personality by strategically dropping a relatively unpopular band that are still well-known at the beginning of the downward slope of their singing careers.

Walsh has argues, largely with himself because no-one else cares, that Boyzone cannot compete with their younger, more contemporary peers. Speaking to Heat Magazine:

“They’re like Blue – yesterday’s men, there’s too much competition for them.”

hecklerspray, while delighted at the cheap shot at Lee Ryan’s horrific shower of fecal matter, we cannot condone the suggestion that Louis Walsh knows anything about good music whether it be drivel-filled, manufactured pop or otherwise. He went on to say:

“You have to have something amazing as there’s so much talent out there – JLS, One Direction, Westlife, The Wanted.”

Rumours suggest that cracks between Walsh and Boyzone became wider following the death of group member Stephen Gately at the end of 2009. There are a number of jokes that can be placed here but we sometimes like to have you do the work yourselves.

“Boyzone can carry on but it wasn’t working. It was great while it lasted, but it’s time for me to move on.”

With that blessing from the least interesting man in music, how can Boyzone ever consider splitting up? They should keep going until Shane Duffy is eventually jailed for beating Aston from JLS to death in an alleyway. So far, they have no plans to split up but, just to be on the safe side, let’s all keep our fingers crossed, eh?

So much for a Boyzone reunion folks.

Stephen Gately is busy working his boyish charms on St Peter while the rest of us bicker over puke, speculative evidence and an oddly-placed Bulgarian.

The Majorca Press recently felt the need to suggest that Steve was smoking ‘cannabis’ the night before he died and ‘knew that was not the cause of his death’. Now there’s a strange breed of paparazzo: ‘I know amigos, let’s take the bastard out of the death-crouch and crucify him, never mind relevance! Por Favor! We’re the Spanish Inquisition, and by the way, we’re trained doctors too.’

Smoking ‘cannabis’ in your own home isn’t illegal in Spain and probably isn’t newsworthy, but as you can see – some people will do anything for a scoop. An autopsy revealed that Gately choked on his own vomit and tissue samples were sent to a Barcelona lab for further tests.

“The autopsy revealed Stephen had taken cannabis, and his husband and another man present on the night he died have confirmed this in interviews,” said reporters to The Sun. “They have said Stephen did not take any other drugs, but the toxicology tests are being carried out to confirm this.”

Not a happy day for the Boyzone enthusiasts out there, especially as the boy-band were set for a comeback. Like em or not, there’s no denying that the babyfaced Irish foursome and their ‘nice-guy’ manager Louis Walsh had a massive impact on European pop and even paved the way for a handful of equally irritating clones.

Walsh and bandmates were said to be ‘shocked’ and ‘devastated’ by the loss of their friend and a slew of celebrities including Brian McFadden, Stephen Fry and Emma Bunton mourned his loss via Twitter. 2009 looks like a morbid little year for packaged popstars – aren’t we lucky there’s a televised machine to replace our fallen heroes. Here’s to X Factor!

Simon Cowell paid tribute to the singer in front of X Factor finalists by saying Stephen’s death was ‘really, really tragic’ while fellow judge Dannii Minogue tweeted: ‘R.I.P. STEVEN GATELY’. Louis Walsh did not appear on the show and was clearly very upset.

Walsh was responsible for creating Boyzone in the 90s and managed them for seven years, achieving 16 top-three singles and six number ones. He recently told the Irish Times that he would have thought twice about auditioning Gately if he’d known he was gay.

“It wasn’t cool then to have a gay guy in the band,” he said. “I think people are racist and homophobic. They just pretend they’re not. It’s the way we’re brought up.”

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter

Starting today, here’s a blast through the stuff on the internet that’s been rocking our world over the last 24 hours…

5 – The all-time feline champion of What’s The Time Mr Wolf…

4 – The top 25 covers of Yesterday by The Beatles. And 23 of them are crap. Redux

3 – Boyzone‘s new single. We can tell if you click this, and we’ll hunt you down if you do. Popsugar

2 - Official Guitar Hero 4 set-list. Good news if you like Tool. Bad news if you have ears. AV Club

1 - It’s the world’s smallest man posing with the woman with the world’s most unforgiving hairdo. Best Week Ever

Have you heard the news? Boyzone are reforming because they've put aside their differences and not because Take That and the Spice Girls have got rich doing it and nobody cares about Ronan Keating's solo career any more.

Yes, Boyzone – the most famous elderly Irish boyband after Westlife and Murtagh Fitzpatrick And The Clodpoopers – are reforming, but there's a hitch. Boyzone wanted their comeback single to be I Gave It All Away, a song written by inexplicably popular annoyance Mika – but Mika's not having it. That's a good thing, because when a band interprets a songwriter's work, the result is often a brand-new, unique piece of music spliced equally from each party's DNA like a baby – and we can all agree that a part-Mika/ part-Boyzone baby would probably end up looking and sounding a lot like the disfigured genetically-deformed mutant puppy from The Fly II.

Although the reunions of Take That and the Spice Girls have shown that there's definitely a market for cacky old past-it pop groups transparently trying to make a quick buck for as long as they can bear looking at each other for, the failure of the All Saints comeback and the East 17 comeback proved that it's just as easy for these comebacks to fail.

So right now it could go either way for Boyzone, the Westlife-inventing Irish boyband responsible for Ronan Keating, that bloke who used to be on Coronation Street, him out of Love Island, the one who looks like he's spent the last decade sobbing, The Other One and – to a lesser extent – Louis Walsh. This week Boyzone reported that they were reforming after what seems to be a painfully short amount of time. We would have reported it, but we were too busy crying.

But the Boyzone reunion isn't without its obstacles. And not the obvious obstacle, either – the obstacle of Ronan Keating being so completely punch-worthy that the other Boyzone members would be so busy thinking about slapping him in his stupid smug face that they'd never get any work done – but another obstacle. It's been reported that Boyzone wanted to use I Gave It All Away, a song written by infuriating one-hit wonder Mika, as their lead comeback single with a performance on Children In Need to promote it. However, Mika has refused to let Boyzone release it because he apparently thinks that Boyzone are 'too cheesy' – a little like Dr Harold Shipman chiding Fred West for being 'too murdery.'

The Sun quotes an 'industry insider' as saying:

"Mika wrote the song and made it available for other artists. Boyzone loved it. They thought it was perfect to launch their comeback so they recorded it and it sounded great – a certain No 1. Just like the track, Mika gave it all away. But then he took it back again."

While in the short-term this is an obvious win-win for all involved – because the end result of a Boyzone/ Mika hybrid would invariably sound like a gang of dullards trying to mimic a twelfth-rate Freddie Mercury impersonator with a keychange in the middle where everyone stands up, and almost certainly the very worst thing your ears would have ever heard – it might be worth taking all this with a pinch of salt.

Because, after all, Boyzone's manager used to be Louis Walsh – a man who'd happily feed any old bullshit to the press so long as he got a speck of publicity out of it – so the truth is probably that Mikey Graham from Boyzone just saw Mika from his cardboard box outside Woolworths and asked for some change, to which Mika replied "I gave it all away. Plus I need the money I do have for when people work out I'm rubbish and stop buying my records in a few months' time."

Or something.