Obviously it’d be far worse if Roman Polanski had sex with you when you were 13, then admitted to it, and then ran off to France for 30 years so he couldn’t be sentenced.

Which is why the girl at the centre of the rape case, Samantha Geimer, has announced that she wants Roman Polanski’s charges dropped. Then maybe people will concentrate on the more attractive people she’s slept with, like a plastic heron or that mouse with the gigantic ear grafted onto its back.

There’s a growing chance that Roman Polanski will be returning to America in the next couple of weeks. He hasn’t been there for 30 years – since he admitted to having sex with a 13-year-old girl and legged it to France before anyone could sentence him – and we’re sure he’ll be surprised at how it’s changed.

The cars look different, for a start, and the TVs are bigger. And he’s bound to notice the crowds of furious people who scream “RAPIST GO HOME!” all the time and constantly push mounds of dogmuck through the letterbox of wherever he’s staying, too. Yes, America sure has changed.

But that’s assuming that Roman Polanski will be returning to America. It all depends on the outcome of his quest to have his charges dropped. Based on a documentary that uncovered several alleged wrongdoings on the part of the deputy district attorney at the time, Roman Polanski seems certain that his charges should all be dismissed, allowing him to return to America. Besides, it’s not as if Roman Polanski is going to have sex with any more children, is it? He’s 75 years old now, so chances are he can only get an erection these days with the aid of a bowl of pharmaceuticals and an intricate system of pulleys and winches.

However, Roman Polanski’s plans might be stumped by the LA superior court’s demand that he come to America first to ask for his charges to be dropped – an obvious ploy to get him out into the open so he can be arrested.

But one person who’s had enough of all this legal nonsense is Samantha Geimer, the woman who Roman Polanski is alleged to have had sex with. She’s decided to ask for the charges against Polanski to be dropped so she can get on with her life. BBC News reports:

Samantha Geimer said the continued publication of details “causes harm to me, my husband and children”. Ms Geimer, 45, said in her written declaration to the court: “If Polanski cannot stand before the court to make this request, I, as the victim, can and I, as the victim do… I have urged that this matter come to a formal legal end. I have urged that the district attorney and the court dismiss these charges,” she added.

You know that you’re onto a good thing, don’t you, when even the girl you were accused of raping 30 years ago wants your charges dropped. It’s unknown whether or not Samantha Geimer’s request will be heeded by the courts, but we’re sure that Roman Polanski will be grateful for her efforts nonetheless.

Maybe with her help, Roman Polanski can shake off his tag of ‘alleged child-rapist’ and live freely with his new tag of ‘man who merely admitted having sex with a child although that’s been neither proven nor disproven.’ It almost brings a tear to the eye, doesn’t it?

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Why? Because he’s not going to jail. Not that Josh Brolin was ever going to go to jail in the first place or anything, but it might have been a possibility after he was arrested and charged with interfering with a police officer during a barroom brawl in Louisiana last summer.

But now prosecutors have dropped the charges against Josh Brolin, so this entire story is basically pointless. Josh Brolin didn’t do something and he won’t be punished for it. Hooray.

Josh Brolin and Vinnie Jones have got a lot in common. It might not seem it – one’s a critically-lauded actor who many claim is among the finest of his generation and the other one’s only allowed in films if he promises to shut up and punch as much stuff as he can in them – but they are.

They’re both enjoying second flushes of fame, for a start – Josh Brolin was originally a child star and Vinnie Jones used to kick footballers for a living – and they both seem pretty handy and allegedly being involved in bar fights and then getting away without charge.

Vinnie Jones, you’ll remember, was arrested last month after allegedly charging at a bloke and hitting him in the face with a glass before getting off without charge, and now Josh Brolin seems to be enjoying a similar – if less terrifyingly berserk-sounding – fate.

Back in the summer Josh Brolin, his W castmate Jeffrey Wright and five members of the movie’s crew were arrested in a Louisiana bar after allegedly being involved in some sort of fracas. During the chaos both Brolin and Wright apparently had pepper spray squirted into their eyes, with Wright also ending up on the wrong side of a police taser.

Now, however, prosecutors have decided to drop the charges against Josh Brolin, Jeffrey Wright and the crewmembers within 60 days, meaning that everyone’s in the clear and Wright gets to release a statement about it all. People reports:

“These arrests should never have happened. Thankfully the prosecution was able to see that and dismiss all charges. Unfortunately, there are no winners here, but I remain hopeful that Shreveport officials will be encouraged to dig at the root causes of certain police incidents down there. An old-fashioned refusal of service led to our arrest that night, and there’s no room for that in America in 2009.”

Looks like this is a happy ending all round, then – not only have Josh Brolin’s charges been dropped but all this publicity has probably made W a lot more money, too. Maybe getting tasered in the street by overzealous policemen is an effective new way to market your movie – if so, someone should probably pass the memo to Tom Cruise. But, you know, give us time to get through police school first.

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Actually that might not be true – we don’t like Barenaked Ladies nearly enough to listen to one of their terrible songs – but they do have a song called If I Had $1,000,000 and, since the band’s singer Steven Page was arrested for cocaine possession this week, that scenario would probably make the most sense.

Or maybe it wouldn’t, because Barenaked Ladies have posted a message on their website saying that Steven Page will fight his charges to the ends of the Earth. Or until he’s convicted, sent to jail and used as a violent masturbatory tool by the entire prison population as a twisted revenge for his song about Chickedy China The Chinese Chicken. Whichever one happens first, basically.

When it was first announced that Steven Page from Barenaked Ladies had been arrested for cocaine possession, we were a little perplexed. Usually drug-taking in the world of music is synonymous with acid-fried 20-minute psyche-rock freak-jams, not twee little acoustic ditties about relationships that only girls and weirdos like.

But then it all started to become clearer. If you were in Barenaked Ladies, you’d want to be wrecked off your shit on drugs all the time just to numb the pain of your day job, wouldn’t you?

In this respect, Steven Page is lucky that he was only arrested for cocaine possession – most men in his position would be ramming industrial quantities of rhino tranquiliser up their arses 24/7 just to forget that they were responsible for that dreadful One Week song.

But that’s assuming that Steven Page is guilty of cocaine possession, which we shouldn’t do because Steven Page says he is absolutely innocent of everything. According to a statement left on the Barenaked Ladies website:

“Many of you have probably read or heard press accounts about Steven Page’s recent arrest in New York state. Steven has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and the validity of the charges against Steven will be strongly contested. While this is happening, it’s business as usual for Barenaked Ladies. We will continue to perform and look forward to heading into the studio later this year to record a new album.”

What? Business as usual? Jesus Christ – what needs to happen to get Barenaked Ladies to split up? Alcoholism? Bestiality? Dead prostitutes turning up in their sheds? Just tell us, for the love of god, and we’ll try our hardest to make it happen.

Anyway, at least now that Steven Page has declared his innocence over his arrest, Barenaked Ladies won’t have to worry about people not buying their new kid’s album Snack Time because they’re morally outraged. If they don’t buy it, it’s because it’s really quite rubbish and a waste of their precious wages. Business as usual, then.

However, Amy Winehouse has received a rare nugget of good news today – police have confirmed that Amy won’t be charged for that video of her apparently smoking crack like it’s going out of fashion.

What fantastic news! Now that this crack video palaver is out of her hair, all Amy Winehouse has to do is sort out her crumbling marriage, her multimillion-pound divorce, her drug addiction, her self-harming tendencies, her skin disease and literally single other thing regarding her personal and professional life and she’ll be almost completely back on track. Go Amy!

Nobody can really know what it’s like to be Amy Winehouse. That’s because to be like Amy Winehouse you have to be off your munch on crack most of the time, and if that’s the case you’re probably worrying too much about the heart attack you think you’re going to have to stop and think “Ooh, this must be what it’s like to be Amy Winehouse.”

But, hey, that’s just speculation. For all we know Amy Winehouse has never taken crack in her entire life. Yes, she’s taken cocaine, heroin, Ecstasy and ketamine to the point of a near-death overdose, but we can’t say for sure if she’s ever taken crack.

Yes, we know that The Sun secretly filmed Amy Winehouse smoking a crack pipe, and that as soon as the video was released Amy Winehouse checked into a crack clinic and that Amy Winehouse was recently arrested for smoking crack in that video of her smoking crack, but where’s the proof, eh?

There isn’t any. And that’s why the police have just let Amy Winehouse go without charge, as BBC News reports:

Singer Amy Winehouse will not face charges over a video that purported to show her smoking a crack cocaine pipe, police have confirmed. She was interviewed under caution by police in east London after the footage was posted online in January. “The Crown Prosecution Service has now reviewed the case and no further action is being taken,” a Metropolitan Police spokesperson said. “Amy is pleased to be able to move on,” her spokesman said.

Let’s hope this close shave with the law has helped teach Amy Winehouse a valuable lesson – next time anyone films her huffing frantically on a crack pipe, she should make sure that the video will only get sent to You’ve Been Framed and nowhere else. After all, if it’s shown on TV she’ll get £250, and that can buy you a lot of crack these days.

Yeah, allegedly. Whatever.

Read more:

No drug charges for Amy Winehouse - BBC

Shia LaBeouf was arrested in a Chicago branch of Walgreens last month for appearing drunk and not leaving when a security guard asked him to – but all that trouble is far behind him now. Less than one minute after his hearing started earlier today, Shia LaBeouf quickly found out that Walgreens had written the court a letter wanting to drop the charges against him. Nobody knows what cause Walgreen's sudden change of heart, but it's thought that the key phrase from the letter was "Oh, how could I ever stay mad at an adorable face like yours? Ubba dubba dubba. Ubba dubba dubba. Ubba dubba dubba dubba dubba."

There's no doubting that Shia LaBeouf's face is his fortune. Made of marshmallows and kitten fluff and the innocent daydreams of children, Shia LaBeouf's face has got him out of all kinds of trouble in the past. For instance, blabbing the title of the new Indiana Jones movie could have been a sackable offence, but it took just three seconds of Shia making his eyes all big and sad and adorable for Steven Spielberg to forgive him of everything, grab him by the cheeks and go "Ubba dubba dubba" at him for upwards of 90 minutes.

And now Shia LaBeouf's inherent adorability has even beaten the law. Last month, you'll remember that Shia LaBeouf was arrested in a Chicago branch of Walgreens because he appeared to be drunk and refused to listen to the security guard's requests to leave. Hit with a misdemeanour trespassing charge, Shia politely posted bail and was released, pending a following hearing.

That hearing's just happened in a Chicago courtroom, and Shia LaBeouf has got off scot free. Not that he wasn't prepared to fight, you understand – Shia LaBeouf apparently turned up to court with two of Chicago's most expensive lawyers – but he just didn't have to.

Less than a minute into the hearing, the judge revealed that he'd received a letter from Walgreens stating that it no longer wanted to pursue the case against Shia LaBeouf and that all charges had been dropped. The judge then added that he could have informed everyone of this by the phone, but he just wanted to see if Shia was as adorable in the flesh as everyone says. Bringing his gavel down with a crack, the judge ruled that Shia LaBeouf was indeed highly adorable, then leapt over his podium, grabbed Shia by the face and went "Ubba dubba dubba dubba dubba" at him. For all we know they're both still there now.

So Shia LaBeouf is off the hook for now. The test for him now will be to see how many more terrible crimes he can commit with his adorable little face. Oh, who are we kidding? Shia LaBeouf could poison our local water supply and burn down our hospitals and we'd still forgive him. With that face? Ubba dubba dubba.

Read more:

Trespassing charge against Shia LaBeouf dropped – Chicago Tribune 

Yesterday Akon appeared at a courtroom in Fishkill, New York to enter a not guilty plea to charges of endangering a minor and second-degree harassment stemming from the summer's fan-chucking incident. Pleading not guilty is a brave move for Akon because a) he was filmed doing the thing he's pleaded not guilty to and b) if he's convicted, Akon could end up spending over a year in jail. A year without Akon's blend of slightly derivative squeaky-voiced R&B music? Why, surely that's a punishment for us all.

Akon, then – genius or dickhead?

It's a tricky question, actually, because Akon is the man who invented the "woo-hoo, yee-hoo" hook for that Gwen Stefani song that you weren't able to shift from your mind for four months this year. So for that reason Akon is a genius. However, it's slightly outweighed by the 'dickhead' argument, since that includes everything else that Akon has ever done in all of his life.

Let's not forget that Akon isn't just the man who frenziedly dry-humped a 14-year-old girl in the middle of a concert once – or even the man who picked up a boy during a concert in upstate New York and threw him on top of a screaming girl's head – but he's the man who then goes and pleads not guilty to doing it. 

After he was charged with endangering a minor and second-degree harassment last week, Akon yesterday appeared in a Fishkill courtroom to enter a not guilty plea even though there's a freely-available video of Akon's fan-fling on the internet for everyone to see.

As a result of the not guilty plea, Akon was released with no bail and ordered to return to court on January 16, where he faces a maximum sentence one one year and 15 days in jail if he's convicted. Not that we're making suggestions or anything, but Akon and his legal team should probably use that time to get his story in order.

That's because Akon claims that the boy-throwing was a staged introduction to his next song – something that doesn't explain why the parents of the boy who Akon threw contacted the police, or why the girl whose head the boy landed on is suing Akon – while Akon's lawyers Benjamin Brafman and Andrea Zellan say it was all just a big misunderstanding:

"It was never Akon's intent to violate the law. This unfortunate incident was a spontaneous reaction during a live concert that Akon deeply regrets. We are confident that this matter will ultimately be resolved in a manner that does not in any way interfere with Akon's successful career."

That's probably a statement that'll come back to haunt Akon and his lawyers in the future, because we'd argue that spending a year in jail wouldn't interfere with Akon's career at all, since to our knowledge he's borderline obsessed with basing all of his music videos in jails anyway.

In fact, if Akon manages to write and record a new album by January, he'll just be able to mouth the words to his new songs into a jail CCTV camera and nobody will notice any difference. Except that Akon will be crying and covered in all sorts of cigarette burns across his face when he does it. Plus the jittery arsonist staring at him while urinating down himself and playing with a razorblade might put him off slightly, but that can probably be edited away.

Read more:

Akon Not Copping To Fan Tossing – E! Online