Gidget the Taco Bell dog was, in many ways, the Michael Jackson of the Mexican fast food-endorsing chihuahua world.

The similarities are remarkable. Both were megastars. Both brought joy to an otherwise miserable world. Both combined freakishly large facial features with scrawny little underdeveloped bodies in a way that was a little bit freakish to look at. Both were gender nonspecific. And both are dead.

Gidget the Taco Bell dog died on Tuesday following a massive stroke. We haven’t been this upset since the Hamburgler turned up dead in a Bangkok cupboard with a string wrapped around his willy.

It’s hard to overstate the impact that Gidget the Taco Bell dog had on the world. Don’t believe us? Fine – name another female, probably inbred, Mexican dog with a longstanding contract to advertise a fast food franchise in a way that possibly perpetuates a set of negative cultural stereotypes who speaks in a man’s voice.

That’s right, you can’t. Gidget was the Neil Armstrong of allegedly racist dog-based taco adverts. She was the Martin Luther King of them. And, coming so soon after Michael Jackson’s death, the world has obviously been shaken to its core. The New York Times reports:

Gidget the Chihuahua, star of 1990s Taco Bell commercials has died. She was 15. Gidget suffered a stroke late Tuesday night at her trainer’s home in Santa Clarita, Calif., and had to be euthanized, said Karin McElhatton, owner of Studio Animal Services, which owned the dog.

The timing of Gidget’s death couldn’t be worse. She filmed her last Taco Bell commercial nine years ago and had been keeping a conspicuously low profile ever since. However, although it’s thought that she owned the rights to other, more famous dog-based television commercials such as the Andrex puppy campaign and that Volkswagen ad where the dog sings I’m A Man by Steve Winwood, financial troubles meant that Gidget was about to embark upon a highly-anticipated comeback. A DVD of her final Taco Bell advert rehearsals is expected to go on sale soon.

Gidget’s associates and family will now have to put their grief behind them to sort out the administrative tangle that she left behind. For instance, although she made a will some years prior to her death, little of it makes any sense. The will makes no mention of Gidget’s father, for instance, and it also names Diana Ross as the guardian of her children. It’s truly bizarre.

But all of this can wait, because the most important thing now is that Gidget the Taco Bell dog gets the send-off she so clearly deserves. A memorial concert will be held for her next week where, standing in front of her offensively gaudy coffin, the likes of Usher, Mariah Carey and Lionel Richie will perform some of Gidget’s most beloved hits, such as Yo Quiero Taco Bell, Here Lizard Lizard Lizard and the immortal Yo Quiero Taco Bell (Two Tacos For 99c Edition).

Shaheen Jafargholi won’t be there, though. That’d just be weird.

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Of all celebrity feuds, none have been odder than the one between Kathleen Turner and Nicholas Cage about whether or not he stole someone's chihuahua once.

It was a serious feud, too – after Kathleen Turner accused Nicolas Cage of stealing chihuahuas and drunk driving in her autobiography, Cage took her to the High Court for it.

But now it's all come juddering to an end, with Kathleen Turner making a public apology for the claims. Thanks heavens – now we can all stop thinking of Nicolas Cage as the man who stole a chihuahua and go back to thinking of him as the man who runs up hills dressed as a bear and punches girls square in the face. It's his comfort zone, if you will.

Nicolas Cage is a man not without his fair share of weird experiences – he's confronted naked intruders in his house, named his son after Superman and starred in films noteworthy only for the bits where he shouts "How'd it get burned? How'd it get burned? HOW'D IT GET BURNED? HOW'D IT GET BURNED?" – but if there's one thing he doesn't do, it's steal chihuahuas.

But tell that to Kathleen Turner. Now that Kathleen Turner has slowly started turning into a deep-voiced bulldog, she's found it harder and harder to get acting work. So, to keep herself busy, she recently wrote her autobiography Send Yourself Roses. Trouble is, Kathleen's memory doesn't seem to be what it was, and her memories of a youthful Nicolas Cage seem to be way off.

Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage worked together on Peggy Sue Got Married and – far from presenting an accurate depiction of the wide-eyed young actor who wanted nothing more than to one day make a movie that ended with him shouting "Wha! Wha! Not the bees! Not the bees! Arrrgh! My eyes! My eyes! Arrrgh! Arrrghurbhb!" – Turner's autobiography suggested that Nicolas Cage preferred to go around stealing dogs and driving drunk.

Outraged at these lies, Nicolas Cage sued Kathleen Turner for defamation and libel in February. It could have all got very messy, but now Kathleen Turner has relented and apologised, as the New York Times reports:

"Ms. Turner, 53, 'sincerely apologized' to Mr. Cage, 44, in a statement read by her lawyer on Friday in a London courtroom. Ms. Turner’s assertion, which led Mr. Cage to sue for libel, was made in Ms. Turner’s book Send Yourself Roses and was published in a London newspaper in February. Ms. Turner agreed to reimburse Mr. Cage for court costs and to make a donation to a charity benefiting victims of elder abuse. Ms. Turner’s British publisher will place an apology or correction in the book , and Associated Newspapers agreed to remove the article from its website and to publish an apology."

Although momentarily embarrassing for Kathleen Turner, this apology can only be a win-win for everyone in the long-term. Nicolas Cage gets his reputation back, sure, but this brouhaha has probably caused thousands more people to buy her autobiography, just to see what other batshit lies she makes up about famous people she knows.

However, one sad result of this lawsuit is that Kathleen Turner will no longer be making an audiobook of Send Yourself Roses. Not because of libel or anything, but because people have just worked out that her voice is now so deep that people involuntarily shit themselves whenever she speaks.

Read more:

Turner Apologises – New York Times