Guess what tech fans! Those Chinese tinkerers have made another copy of an Apple trademark that’s bound to cause a stir, if not entirely offend fanboys and turtle neck wearers everywhere.

Having already found success with the SciPhone and a full sized replica Apple store, those crown princes of piracy, the Chinese, have now created THE ULTIMATE ACTION FIGURE, in the form of Apple founder Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs. ACTION figure. ACTION… Steve Jobs?

Girls have their Barbies, boys have their Action Men and now, the long forgotten subset of androgynous hipsters that swathe around Shoreditch coffee houses will have their own doll to play and sexually experiment with.

Naturally, being an Apple product (albeit a fake Apple product) it’s ludicrously expensive, costing a whopping £65, doesn’t work with flash and it can’t play any real games. Not that you’d want it to play games, no, this action figure is all about the way it helps you do your design work, isn’t it?

You smarmy tit.

Rather predictably, Apple haven’t responded to this trademark infringement well. After all, what was Steve Jobs if not another trademark for Apple to profit off of?

Apple issued a statement to the Daily Mail, saying:

“Mr Jobs has not consented to the use of his name and/or image in the product.”

NO SHIT SHERLOCK, HE’S DEAD! We’re no experts, but we’re pretty sure it’s never going to be the easiest thing in the world for a Chinese company to obtain the image licensing rights to a deceased technology behemoth.

Aside from stating the obvious in the Mail, Apple are believed to have started legal proceedings against the two companies behind the Steve Jobs iAction figure, InIcon and Dragon in Dream.

They’re also rumoured to be preparing a press statement for the Independent that will confirm that the Pope is indeed a Catholic.

Doubled or Quit?

Folded

• Mobile Phones – They won’t give you brain cancer! Hurrah! Well… they might.
• A History Of Ancient Britain – Neil Oliver tells us about the Iron Age while holding up the jaws of our ancestors. Marvellous!
• Rich Johnston – We’re going to bring down the government with a He-Man sword! Oh, wait. Hang on. Well… we can try!
• Poor Hollywood Geography – This is the kind of pedantry we condone.
• Star Wars – It’s coming to TV!

Creased

• Star Wars - It’s coming to TV!
• Why Don’t Public Institutions Allow Folding Bikes?! – Wait… no-one gives a fuck.
• Zombie Gameboy – Sure, it’s cool and all but it’s not going to stop us having nightmares.
• Blanket Media Coverage of a Corpse – All right, we get it. He is not sleepeth, he is very dead.
• Editor Mof’s Face - There’s a Tumblr full of it and if that’s not creased, we don’t know what is.

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According to various reports, Bert Jansch has died. He may not have been hugely famous, but this is sad news all the same… and we’re going to tell you why.

Jansch was a titan of the folk scene who inspired many artists ranging from Led Zeppelin to Blur’s Graham Coxon to The Smiths’ Johnny Marr. He’s arguably one of the finest guitarists the world ever saw, mercifully eschewing awful axe-wielding and 30 minute guitar solos.

The legendary Scot has suffering from lung cancer for a good number of years now and it would appear that he’s finally succumbed to the disease (although, everyone is awaiting confirmation of his death, thereby potentially making us all look a bit stupid with these pre-emptive tributes). Either way, this is a perfectly good time to look at some of his best music.

Jansch – a founding member of ace folk combo Pentangle – has recently cancelled shows, with a statement on his official site saying he was “unwell” and set to spend “at least” one week in hospital.

With Pentangle, Jansch made a comeback to the live arena, teaming up with long friend/enemy Jon Renbourn. Jansch also co-headlined a US tour with Neil Young.

Bert’s work influenced many, with Paul Simon, Bernard Butler, Nick Drake, Donovan and Devendra Banhart all citing him as an influenced, as well as the aforementioned.

And so, let us look at some of his work, and stop this cloying business at once.

Bert, you’ll be missed.

**UPDATE** Reports confirmed. Bert Jansch RIP.

Travelling Song

Black Waterside

Moonshine

Light Flight

It Don’t Bother Me (With Johnny Marr)

Lucky Thirteen

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Remember the halcyon days when Westlife were a five-piece. They all looked so perfect in photographs with their highlighted curtains and work-sweaters from River Island. They really were the most refreshing thing to get off a stool in pop since GG Allin.

Then, the band went all off-balance when, unfathomably, Brian McFadden decided to go ‘indie’, which actually meant growing a bit of a beard, wearing a parka and… well… still peddling turgid, plodding pop music. Westlife, of course, continued doing exactly the same as before (which actually means, ‘doing as they were told’) and set about becoming the most earnest entertainers in the history of mankind.

BUT WAIT! Is McFadden going to rejoin Westlife? Have they seen Robbie’s reunion with Take That and thought ‘Hey! That’s a really clever, cynical marketing ploy to shift a few more tickets and albums! Provided Brian doesn’t do that rape song…’?

When a boyband runs out of ideas, it is a good idea to trade on the vague drama they’ve had in their career.

This usually manifests itself in a song about how much they’ve grown up, complete with a black and white montage video of all the members, complete with slightly embarrassing footage of them starting out and slo-mo screaming fans in a stadium somewhere (usually South America to show just how popular they are worldwide).

Sadly, most boybands are completely soap-opera free. In Take That’s case, they are an actual band, so the slightly pretentious documentaries, scandals and reunions are as close to the real deal as supposedly more credible rock bands. In the case of Westlife, they’ve simply forged a career through tenacity. They simply refuse to go away. The closest thing to controversy is when doe-eye in chief, Shane Filan, responded to a potential McFadden reunion last year, when he said:

“I don’t think it’s even remotely interesting if Brian came back”

That’s almost an opinion! That’s definitely the closest thing Westlife have ever gotten to trouble. Naturally, that thinking has been swept under the rug now. The crease has been ironed out. There’s no need for Westlife to be even remotely interesting. Shane now says:

“I look up to bands like Take That who are the best out there and it was good to see them put the past behind them and move on by having Robbie back.”

“I’d never rule out Brian coming back because there never was a bad patch with him. Brian was great with fans. I definitely think some day it would be great fun to sing with Brian again.”

See? How staggeringly uninteresting is that? We hoped for ‘we’d reluctantly take him back… he was a prize weapon just before he left and he’s got some serious apologising to do… mainly for that gaspingly peculiar chin he’s got.’ But no. Everything is lovely and beige in the Westlife garden. How bloody wonderful.

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Delta Goodrem is a singer. Now, you may find that patronising, but we thought you might need reminding as it would appear she’s only famous for having cancer and being dim enough to see Brian McFadden as a suitable mate.

Of course, once McFadden had released his date-rape classic, ‘Just The Way You Are’ (listen here if you missed it), it didn’t take Goodrem long to bin the former Westlifer off.

And now, much to screaming girls annoyance, Goodrem has been spotted out and about holding hands with crooning clone Nick Jonas.

The biggest scandal for anyone who remotely cares about this tedious union is the age gap between the two singers.

Basically, Delta Goodrem is 26 years old and Nick Jonas recently celebrated his tenth birthday where he received gifts from his singing brothers, such as a singing Justin Bieber toothbrush and some He-Man figures.

Apparently, this gasping duo have developed a close relationship while recording obviously awful tracks for Delta’s new album in LA earlier in the year. And now, they’ve been spotted sloping off for a romantic evening of necking on the back row of the Arclight Cinema.

Amusingly, Delta has been rumoured to have had an affair with ‘work colleague’ while going out with Brian McFadden. We asked the heckler magic 8-ball if the ‘work colleague’ was Nick Jonas and it initially said ‘No’, but we shook it a few times ’til it said ‘All signs point to yes’.

So there you have it. It is definitely on.

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Much can be said about Heather Mills. Much has been said about Heather Mills. It’s safe to say that we aren’t the only ones who have said things about Heather Mills.

So we did kind of expect her to fight back in some way, what with her being a bit “interesting” in the head.

What we didn’t expect was that she’d wish cancer on anyone who had ever wronged her, tumours on those who had slighted her and death to those who gave her funny looks.

Sure, she denied she’d actually said that, but we happen to trust The Observer over Bionic Commandette.

Let’s make one thing clear: hecklerspray is not the type to unfairly judge people, places or things, as we are really, really nice.

Unless it’s Heather Mills. And even then, technically, it’s fairly judging her.

Where some celeb-types attract scorn simply by being who they are
(and through the help of millions of squawking, cloying, piss-stained females), or by dying, some bring it on themselves by being a massive, massive twat.

Who would like to guess which side Heather Mills falls into?

And now – as we believe The Observer – we have an even better reason than before to slate the self-obsessed, sympathy-hungry eterno-victim.

In an interview printed this past Sunday, Heather Mills reportedly said:

“The truth always outs in the end – no-one gets away with those things. Certain journalists have written horrible things, and then they’ve got cancer, or they’ve had a tumour, or they’ve died. And it’s terrible for them, but they’ve done really evil things. I truly believe things come back round.”

Why the paper would print her as saying that without her actually saying it we do not know – it’s pretty obvious they would get the crap sued out of them. But the woman with the best hecklerspray picture available on our database quickly backtracked, through her new favourite means of communicating with us peasants: Twitter.

It may just be our mind working overtime, but that does seem very much like a comment from a hecklerspray user. She later added:

We may be gullible – we may be – but Heather Mills did say:

“The truth always outs in the end – no-one gets away with those things. Certain journalists have written horrible things, and then they’ve got cancer, or they’ve had a tumour, or they’ve died. And it’s terrible for them, but they’ve done really evil things. I truly believe things come back round.”

Apparently.

Plenty of people have profited from Patrick Swayze’s cancer – and, yes novelty ‘NOBODY PUTS PANCREATIC CANCER IN A CORNER’ T-shirt vendors, we’re looking at you.

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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Nobody could have ever expected Patrick Swayze – the man who wrote the embarrassingly weedy She’s Like The Wind, remember – to be this strong.

As if battling stage 4 pancreatic cancer and holding on for much longer than anyone anticipated wasn’t enough, Patrick Swayze now also has pneumonia beat. Last week Patrick Swayze checked himself into hospital with pneumonia, but he’s already well enough to be released.

It just goes to show Patrick Swayze’s tenacity. In fact, we’re starting to think that this Ghost‘s final scene all over again – God isn’t letting Patrick Swayze die until he chops a baddie in half with a window or something.

Since he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer last year, Patrick Swayze has never taken the easy option. Not only has he dealt with the illness in public, letting everyone know his fears and bravery in intimate detail, but he’s also found the time to film an entire TV series – foregoing painkillers and only taking one day off throughout the shoot.

And if that wasn’t enough, Patrick Swayze has even decided to take on additional illnesses as well. Last week Patrick Swayze admitted himself to hospital with pneumonia, and obviously the world feared the worst – the chemotherapy had ravaged his immune system and if it didn’t finish him off for good then at the very least everyone expected an indefinite hospital stay.

Turns out, though, that all the worry was unnecessary. Just one week later and Patrick Swayze is well enough to leave hospital and return home, as BBC News reports:

Actor Patrick Swayze has been released from hospital one week after checking himself in with pneumonia, his publicist has confirmed. Annett Wolf would not elaborate on the Dirty Dancing star’s condition, but said he was “well enough to have been released”, and was resting at home.

It almost defies belief that Patrick Swayze can continue to do so well in the face of such gigantic hurdles. In fact, if we were Swayze we’d see how far our luck could go and riverdance across a motorway or deliberately enrage a bear with a stick or something. The way he’s going, we’re pretty sure he’d escape from both unscathed.

Honestly, our admiration for Patrick Swayze is tempered only by the fact that he didn’t show this strength of spirit when he was choosing his movie roles. Because, really, he can fight off pneumonia but he couldn’t say no to Steel Dawn? Disappointing.

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When Patrick Swayze was diagnosed with cancer last year he was initially given five weeks to live, a deadline he easily beat.

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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The fact that Patrick Swayze is still around nine months after he was apparently given five weeks to live is clearly impressive.

What’s more impressive is that Patrick Swayze has got his pancreatic cancer on the run. He’s responding well enough to the treatment that he’s even made his own, admittedly quite rubbish-looking TV show.

So Patrick Swayze doesn’t seem like he’s on death’s door. And if you think he is, keep it to yourself, because Patrick Swayze is so furious about it that it’s all he can do not to get all penultimate scene of Ghost on your arse.

Manufacturers of limited-edition plate sets featuring badly-painted pictures of Patrick Swayze dancing in a vest and the slogan ‘Nobody puts baby in a corner… except pancreatic cancer. Patrick Swayze: 1952 – 2008′, we have some bad news for you. It doesn’t look like Patrick Swayze is going anywhere.

It’s astounding to think that back in March Patrick Swayze was given just five weeks to live because pancreatic cancer had taken hold in his body. But then the five-week mark passed. And then the five-month mark. And then enough time for Patrick Swayze to have to deny that he was going to star in Point Break 2 because he realised he wasn’t going to get out of it by dying first.

Between this and his new TV show Beast, it seems like Patrick Swayze has got his pancreatic cancer well and truly licked. Whether it’s because he was rich enough to afford the best cancer treatment in the world or because God doesn’t want him to leave Earth until he’s made a sequel to Letters From A Killer, a movie which He wrongly regards as a classic, it doesn’t matter. Patrick Swayze is on the mend and that’s what’s important.

Unless you’re the National Enquirer, because if that’s the case then what’s important is writing all kinds of stories about what a feeble old cancer-suffering wanker Patrick Swayze is as often as possible; something that Swayze himself has not unreasonably got the arseholes with. The New York Daily News reports:

“They’re reporting that I’m on my last legs and saying goodbye to my tearful family!” he railed. He called the coverage of his battle as “emotional cruelty” – especially, he said, “when hope is so precious… It’s upsetting that the shoddy and reckless reporting from these publications cast a negative shadow on the positive and good fight I’m fighting.”

Honestly, these people should know better than to morbidly follow every last gasp and croak of a man with a serious disease. Not only does it reflect very badly on the publications in question, but you also have to wonder if any of these journalists have ever seen Ghost.

Annoy Patrick Swayze in this life and he’ll come and get you from the next life. Or he’ll sort of jump inside Whoopi Goldberg‘s body and make her come and get you. Or he’ll help Demi Moore do some pottery. Or something.

Look, it’s ages since we last saw Ghost. Just, anyway, look, stop it.

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Sad news – author Michael Crichton has died after a battle with cancer, it has been announced. He was 66.

While some will say that Michael Crichton’s legacy will be Jurassic Park, the best-selling novel that was turned into movie phenomenon; or ER, the TV series he created from his own experiences as a doctor; or even Westworld, the movie he directed that was exactly the same as Jurassic Park except with a bald-headed robot cowboy instead of dinosaurs, they are respectfully wrong.

For us, Michael Crichton will be remembered for one thing and one thing only – this video. It’s the climax to the movie adaptation of his novel Congo. Evil gorillas have never been brutally dismembered by a laser gun inside a volcano so gracefully. Michael Crichton, you will be missed.

The last time Patrick Swayze had a second chance it was in the movie Ghost, and he used it to cut a bloke in half with a window.

And now Patrick Swayze has been given another second chance, and this one is perhaps even more remarkable. When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Patrick Swayze was supposedly given five weeks to live. That was back in March, and not only has Swayze not died, but he’s also managed to star in a TV show in the meantime as well.

So Patrick Swayze has hit the promotional circuit, giving a bracingly upbeat interview to the New York Times where he revealed how proud he is of his continued recovery while admitting that chemotherapy is ‘hell on wheels’. It must be working, though, because Swayze is doing a fairly good impression of a man on the mend. Maybe our dream of seeing Red Dawn 2: Zombie Commies get made wasn’t so stupid after all.

Everyone likes a story about a man who beats the odds - Rocky, Winston Churchill, that chap who eats all the hotdogs – and that’s why there’s such a huge swell of goodwill for Patrick Swayze at the moment.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that Patrick Swayze had been struck down by such a vicious strain of pancreatic cancer that he was only given five weeks to live. As expected, all kinds of tributes bordering on obituary were paid to Patrick Swayze, but it seems they might have been a little bit premature.

Because in July, months after he was supposed to be dead, Patrick Swayze seemed to have the cancer licked. And now, almost four months after that, not only is Patrick Swayze even better still, but he’s been feeling well enough to star in a TV series.

The show will no doubt be horrible, given that a) It’s called The Beast, b) it’s on A&E and c) it’s got Patrick Swayze in it, but the fact alone that Patrick Swayze even has the drive to make it is nothing short of spectacular. And Patrick Swayze’s just as pleased about that as anyone else, as he told The New York Times:

“How do you nurture a positive attitude when all the statistics say you’re a dead man? You go to work… I do find myself, at the end of the day, riding home sort of catching myself with a smile on my face. I’m proud of what I’m doing… It’s a battle zone I go through. Chemo, no matter how you cut it, is hell on wheels.”

We’ve said it before, but it’s phenomenal that Patrick Swayze can pull 12-hour days working on a TV show while battling chemotherapy.

Some have said that Swayze’s recovery is down to God refusing to accept that he’s completed all of his objectives on Earth – which is rubbish, because until he was diagnosed with cancer Patrick Swayze’s objectives on Earth seemed to involve making really crummy films – but regardless, it’s hard not to be impressed.

10 - People smiling for two minutes. We’re going to vomit. Seriously…

9 - A French man gets his arm stuck down a toilet. Ha ha ha – BBC

8 - Please let this be true: Guy Ritchie‘s Madonna: The Movie – Holy Moly

7 – A slightly disgusting miles per gallon calculator for your own body – Carconnection

6 - Baconnaise. Exactly what it sounds like it is Thank you, geniuses – Holytaco

5 - An acorn cakelet pan! – Bakingbites

4 – The title of every single unmade music biopic ever – Best Week Ever

3 – Christopher Nolan dissects a scene from The Dark Knight. Fails to answer the question “Hey, what’s up with Batman’s silly voice?” – LA Times

2 - You know what we wish existed? Wine based on The Sopranoes. What? It exists?! – Videogum

1 – Jamie, a longtime hecklerspray reader, has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He’s keeping a spiffy, abnormally testicle-heavy, blog about it, though, so go read it – Cancerouscapers

This weekend, the world lost Paul Newman to cancer – a sad but hardly surprising piece of news, given his age and ill health.

However, although he may have physically passed away, Paul Newman will never really die – he’ll live on forever in our hearts and minds with both his indelible, iconic movie roles and also his yummo salad dressing.

When someone as legendary as Paul Newman passes away, it’s only natural for other celebrities to share their memories of the deceased with everyone. So, as such, we’ve decided to pass on perhaps the most relevant tribute of all – Paul Newman’s co-star in Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, The Sting and Termintor 3: Rise Of The Machines, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

On Friday night, Paul Newman died after a period of ill health. He was 83. During his lifetime, Paul Newman managed to succeed in industries as varied as food production, philanthropy and NASCAR, but the thing that he’ll go down in history for is his movie work.

The Hustler, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, The Hudsucker Proxy, Road To Perdition – regardless of the age he made them, Paul Newman imbued all these movies with the sort of intelligent, dignified, macho cool that only really comes along once a generation.

So, as such, it’s only right that one of the men we should be paying attention to in the wake of Paul Newman’s death is his spiritual successor, Arnold Schwarzenegger – the man who took Paul Newman’s nuanced ethos and applied it to films about angry vikings and pregnant men.

Addressing a crowd of Olympians and Paralympians in California this weekend, Arnold Schwarzenegger took the time to commemorate Paul Newman’s passing. The Mercury News reports:

“There’s just one thing, news that we have, that is sad,” the governor said. “Last night Paul Newman passed away because of cancer, and so our thoughts and prayers go out to Joanne (Woodward)—his wife—and to his friends and his family.” Schwarzenegger had met Newman but never appeared with him in a movie.

Of course, it’s only right for Arnold Schwarzenegger to publicly mention Paul Newman’s death – as Governor of California, he’s ultimately in charge of a state that’s just 2,865 short miles away from where Newman lived.

Anyway, now that Schwarzenegger has paid tribute to Paul Newman, the grieving process can begin in earnest. And, if that means we’ll all get to watch Cool Hand Luke again in memorial, then at least some good can come of it.

It must be bittersweet to be Jade Goody at the moment – true, she’s been diagnosed with cervical cancer, but at least she’s back on magazine covers again.

And that seems to have triggered something weird in Jade Goody’s brain. Since getting cancer has made her famous and liked again, Jade has taken it on herself to keep the momentum going by recounting awful periods of her life to various publications while photographers take pictures of her crying.

Following yesterday’s revelation that she once smoked crack in front of her mother, Jade Goody has now revealed that she was once kidnapped by a fake taxi driver. God knows what Jade will admit to tomorrow – maybe she once got sexually abused by some cattle or bought a pair of shoes made of tumours or something – but at least we know that this isn’t the most depressing Jade Goody news that we could hear. No, that’d be that they’re letting her back on the telly.

You wouldn’t want to be Jade Goody at the moment. OK, to be fair you wouldn’t want to be Jade Goody ever. In fact, most right-minded people would rather deliberately suffocate themselves in horse diarrhea than be anything like Jade Goody. But you especially wouldn’t want to be her now.

The reasons are too numerous to mention, but since Jade Goody is perhaps one of the only cancer sufferers in the country to also have a one-armed lesbian mother, an incarcerated boyfriend and a public reputation as a bit of a hateful racist, she just doesn’t seem like someone you’d want to particularly swap with, does she?

But, by a tragic coincidence, exactly one week after Jade Goody was seen sobbing her heart out on the cover of a million magazines because she’s got cancer, Jade Goody can now be seen sobbing her heart out on the cover of a million magazines because she’s got an autobiography coming out and promoting that seems to require her to dredge up every last gruesome event that’s ever occurred to her in public while a photographer snaps away at her miserable face.

Yesterday, of course, was ‘Jade Smoked Crack’ day, where Jade Goody admitted to smoking crack to make her mum stop smoking crack, even though that sounds like admitting to sitting in front of Weightwatchers eating a KFC Bargain Bucket to stop the lardies from eating so much.

And today? Well today Jade Goody has decided to inexplicably tell the world that a bloke kidnapped her once by pretending to be a taxi driver. Now reports:

The reality star, 27, and her then boyfriend climbed into his car thinking it was a cab. But when the driver dumped Jack Tweed, 21, in the middle on nowhere, Jade panicked.  She managed to overpower him and get out of the vehicle.  ‘I didn’t know what to do, then instinct kicked in,’ she writes in new book Jade: Catch A Falling Star. ‘It was to grab the driver’s head and begin hitting him as hard as I could.

It’s terrible, isn’t it? Why would anyone want to kidnap Jade Goody? All you’d end up with is a dumpy woman tied up in the corner of your house and a migraine from all her nasally bellowing. Jade Goody, hand on heart, would be one of the last people we’d kidnap.

Worse still, Jade Goody’s got a new perfume coming out soon as well, called Controversial. If she’s going through all this emotional anguish for a book, imagine what she’ll do for something that she doesn’t even have to read. Honestly, it’s going to be like the last few scenes of Requiem For A Dream, except a bit more council.