If you own ears and at least one solitary braincell, rejoice! Why? The Kings of Leon have cancelled their tour of the USA which means that you don’t have to walk around with socks stuck in your lugs on the off-chance you’ll dander past one of their dreary stadium shows by accident.

This has left the band saying that they’re “ashamed” and “utterly depressed”, which could well be in reference to their back catalogue, which they’ve finally got around to listening to after years of constant touring coming to a sudden close.

The news comes on the back of a pretty lousy gig in Texas recently, where singer Caleb Followill fled the stage to be sick, to which he didn’t come back. Are there big problems underneath this puke? ARE THEY GOING TO SPLIT UP?

When the singer legged it and did a thick spit, the group’s publicist cited dehydration as the cause… but bassist Jared Followill implies otherwise:

“There are problems in our band bigger than not drinking enough Gatorade.”

After a couple of lame gigs, Caleb moaned about not having any voice (you don’t say?) and generally complained of feeling unwell. After he didn’t resume the show, his bandmate and brother showed excellent solidarity when addressing the unhappy crowd.

“I know you guys fucking hate us. It’s really not our fault… it’s Caleb … Fucking hate Caleb, not us.”

The drummer Nathan Followill tweeted:

“Ashamed & embarrassed by last nights fiasco. Can’t apologise enough, utterly gutted. A million I’m sorry’s.”

Again, on twitter, Jared followed up with the supremely bitchy:

“I know [our fans] aren’t stupid. I can’t lie … There are internal sicknesses & problems that have needed to be addressed.”

The brothers are now adamant that Kings of Leon are not breaking up, which means they’re totally breaking up. Completely. They’re gone. Outta here. Hopefully, some hijinx in rehab first! THANKS GUYS! You’ve saved our ears from certain misery!

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

If there’s one thing more annoying than going to a Janet Jackson concert, it’s going to a Janet Jackson concert in Canada.

And if there’s one thing worse than going to a Janet Jackson concert in Canada, it’s getting ready to go to a Janet Jackson concert in Canada and then finding out you can’t because Janet Jackson’s gone and been struck by some sort of super mystery illness.

Which is what happened last night, as it happened. Five minutes before the opening act of Janet Jackson’s concert in Montreal was set to take the stage, Janet ‘suddenly fell ill’ and had to go to hospital. Nobody would say what illness Janet Jackson had, although it’s thought to be the rare Nogoodalbumsfortwodecades Syndrome. Or it might be something serious, in which case – whoops.

Janet Jackson must be glad she kept that secret teenage daughter of hers a secret, because there could be a chance that Janet’s going to need to start harvesting her organs before long.

Why? Because that bout of the sniffles that wrecked Janet Jackson’s SNL appearance in March has escalated into a full-blown mystery illness that has disappointed literally dozens of Canadian Janet Jackson fans. Well, disappointed is a strong word. And so is dozens, for that matter.

Anyway, the point is that Janet Jackson suddenly got ill right before a concert last night and had to cancel the show. BBC News reports:

The 42-year-old had to cancel her Montreal show after she “got suddenly ill” during her sound check, her publicists said. Jackson was being monitored at an unnamed hospital but no further details of her condition have been released.

Are you getting this? Janet Jackson is ill with a disease that’s a secret in a hospital that’s unknown in a country that nobody cares about. Don’t any of you say we never give you the facts.

For the time being, Janet Jackson hopes to reschedule her cancelled concert – leading us to believe that she’s either not that seriously ill at all or that she plans to surprise the population of Montreal in the future with a number of sexy dance routines performed inside an iron lung attached to a stationary bleeping piece of hospital equipment.

Hopefully it’ll be the first one, otherwise we’re going to look a right bunch of dicks.

Poor old Toni Braxton. For close to two years Toni has spent night after night grinding out a living as a Las Vegas casino performer and nobody cared.

But now Toni Braxton has finally got the attention she deserves. Thanks to the mysterious, potentially life-threatening chest pains that took her off to hospital last week, Toni Braxton has never been so famous and her Vegas show is bound to sell even more tickets than ever as a result.

Except that it won’t, because Toni Braxton has cancelled all of her shows for the rest of April while she recovers. Stupid chest pains – they give you all the thrill of being famous with none of the cardiovascular functionality of being healthy. Hardly ideal, is it?

We’re starting to think that we’re under attack from the early 1990s, what with Stone Temple Pilots reforming, Gladiators coming back to television, Vanilla Ice getting arrested for domestic battery and Toni Braxton going to hospital with chest pains. We’ll know for sure as soon as there’s a sighting of Macaulay Culkin swatting planes out of the sky from the top of a skyscraper, but by then it’ll be too late. Then the cast of Hangin’ With Mr Cooper will march into town and suicide will be the most painless option left open to us.

But anyway, hopelessly paranoid time-travel invasion fears aside, Toni Braxton has managed to make the news for the second time in just over a week – the most talked-about she’s possibly ever been.

Obviously the first instance came when Toni Braxton was admitted to a Las Vegas hospital with chest pains last week. Although no official statement has been made about the nature of Braxton’s illness, it’s thought that it could be a resurgence of the pericarditis that she was diagnosed with a few years ago.

And now that she’s out of hospital, Toni Braxton has made the decision to cancel all of her scheduled Toni Braxton: Revealed concerts at the Flamingo for the rest of the month. The Associated Press reports:

Toni Braxton won’t return to the stage on the Las Vegas Strip until at least next month. The Flamingo Las Vegas says Braxton’s show will remain dark this week while the 40-year-old Grammy winner has more medical tests following her April 7 hospitalization for chest pain. Flamingo President Don Marrandino said her Tuesday-through-Saturday shows are also off, and Braxton will take advantage of a previously scheduled two-week break. She is due to resume her show at the Flamingo Showroom on May 6. The Flamingo is offering refunds for the canceled shows.

It’s just common sense that Toni Braxton should cancel the rest of the month’s concerts, for everyone’s sake. Needless to say, Toni Braxton will find it hard to perform to her utmost level while she’s worrying about such a potentially dangerous heart condition, but her audience would probably appreciate it if she didn’t drop dead straining for a high C in the middle of a show as well. It’d take the shine right off their trip, for starters.

But with Celine Dion out of Vegas and Toni Braxton incapacitated by illness, who’s left for the good people of Las Vegas to go and see during their visit? Four words – Lucky Cheng’s Drag Cabaret!

Read more:

Toni Braxton’s Shows for April Canceled - AP

Minor illnesses are being massively under-represented at the moment, so let's all thank Jesus right now that Janet Jackson is doing something about it.

You see, Janet Jackson was supposed to be performing on Saturday Night Live this week but she's dropped out because she's got the sniffles. Or, as she likes to call it, 'the flu'.

A fairly serious bout of flu nonetheless, because Janet Jackson wound up in hospital because of it, but on the bright side at least by pulling out of SNL Janet Jackson has stopped an audience of millions from catching whatever degenerative brain disease you get when you're forced to watch a fortysomething woman repeatedly try to convince you of how sexy she is to a backing of tinpot R&B fluff.

Disease is laying waste to our celebrities at the moment, whether it's newsreaders dying from strokes or 1980s film stars being diagnosed with terminal cancer or widdly-woo rockers catching mystery tour-cancelling illnesses. Whatever happened to celebrities getting a little tiny bit ill and making a great big fuss about it? Huh?

Relax, because Janet Jackson has heard our pleas and pulled out of a TV appearance because she's got a bit of a cold. MSNBC reports:

Janet Jackson has dropped out of her upcoming “Saturday Night Live” performance because she has the flu, the singer’s representative said Tuesday. Celebrity Web site TMZ.com reports that the singer even checked into the ER at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. “Janet did go to the hospital last night due to the fact she’s been suffering from this flu that’s kicked a lot of people’s behinds,” publicist Patti Webster told The Associated Press in an e-mail. “She was never admitted and she is fine.”

Really? Janet Jackson? The flu? Surely Janet Jackson's immune system is as strong as an ox by now, what with everything she's been through. She's exposed enough flesh to the elements and given birth to enough phantom daughters over the years that a bit of a snotty nose shouldn't be able to stop Janet Jackson from appearing on a TV show.

If we're guessing correctly, Janet Jackson would have been on SNL to perform her new single Feedback. And that wouldn't have taken much energy, since it's basically just Janet croaking about how sexy she thinks she is through Dr Stephen Hawking's voicebox to the sound of an old Britney Spears cast-off. Janet Jackson could do that in her sleep. It certainly sounds like she recorded it that way, anyway.

Or maybe, just maybe, Janet Jackson is exaggerating her illness because her new album isn't selling and she's decided that pretending to be ill is a better way to drum up publicity for it than by twonking about on Facebook like REM.

Now we know what you're thinking. You're thinking "Have a heart hecklerspray. Janet Jackson had the flu, and the flu can actually kill people." Which is true – the flu can kill you, but it usually only kills people who are really really impossibly old and… oh.

In that case, close call, Janet. Sorry for ever doubting you.

Read more:

Janet Jackson drops out of ‘SNL’ performance – MSNBC