However, on the off-chance that your interest in the preschool children of Hollywood celebrities is down to something other that surging waves of barely-controlled paedophilia, you should take a look at the just-published Forbes annual ‘10 Hottest Tots’ lists. Just, you know, be sure to hide the magazine inside a less incriminating magazine first, like Big Droopy Knockers or Readers Disgusting BDSM Infantilism Fantasies.

And, for anyone who actually cares, Suri Cruise was named the most influential baby this year. Of course, it seems silly to rank toddlers based on their power and influence but, since Suri Cruise is the only celebrity baby able to summon the mighty Xenu to smite her foes inside his all-powerful fist, she was probably always going to make at least the top three.

This is turning out to be quite the year for the stars of hopeless pre-9/11 ‘terrorists are cool’ movie Swordfish. Halle Berry was named the sexiest women alive last month and Hugh Jackman was named the sexiest man alive yesterday. But sadly Swordfish can’t make the hat-trick, because it didn’t have any sexy children in it.

No, not sexy. Powerful. We meant powerful. Swordfish didn’t have any powerful children in it. If only they’d thought to prenatally cast young Suri Cruise in it, glory would have been theirs alone.

That’s because Suri Cruise has been named by Forbes magazine as the most powerful celebrity child aged under five on Earth in a slightly inappropriate-seeming list entitled ‘10 Hottest Tots’. Reuters explains why:

Suri received more blog mentions than any other Tinseltown child and was referenced in more than 1,300 news articles, which can help shape public opinion about her parents while also fuelling demand for what she wears, plays with and eats.

You see, Suri Cruise isn’t just the suspiciously adorable child of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, nor an everlasting monument to Katie Holmes’ stolen pre-marital virginity, nor a tiny bag of skin who has already gained more household rights than her mother, including reduced cage-time, access to water that doesn’t necessarily come from a rabbit feeder and the right to briefly look Tom Cruise in the eye when speaking to him. Suri Cruise is an opinion former.

We’re not entirely sure what this means – perhaps she’ll get her own E! reality show soon, or maybe she’ll start publishing her own Oprah-style vanity magazine – but magazine editors are already suggesting that Suri Cruise will become even more famous in the coming year. That’s partly because people would rather look at pictures of cute toddlers than fret about their lack of money, and partly because they really want Suri Cruise to understand that her life will peak at the age of two and the rest of her time on Earth will basically be a grey icy relentless downward slope to death.

But if Suri Cruise is number one, what of the other nine of the top 10 hottest tots named by Forbes? Well, OK, since you asked:

2 – Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt

3 – Zahara Jolie-Pitt

4 – Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt

5 – Sam Alexis Woods

6 – Cruz Beckham

7 – Matilda Rose Ledger

8 – David Banda

9 – Sean Preston Federline

10 – Sam Sheen

We know what you’re thinking. No, not that someone should inform the Monopolies Commission about all the Jolie-Pitt kids fouling up the top 10, but how disappointing it is that Matilda Rose Ledger is languishing down in seventh place.

Really Matilda, we know your father died this year in tragic circumstances, but we’re really starting to think that you don’t care about how hot Forbes magazine thinks you are. It’s a disgrace. Buck up your ideas next time, you stupid three-year-old idiot.

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But, at long last, Britney and Kevin have managed to stagger to a full, final custody settlement. And it’s not particularly great news for Britney Spears – Kevin Federline has been granted sole custody of Sean Preston and Jayden James.

Britney Spears will still be able to visit her children, but that’s hardly enough time to build a loving relationship between mother and sons – all the time she gets with them will be spent frantically trying to make them unlearn whatever dumb lessons Kevin Federline has been teaching them, like ‘Cornrows make you look cool’ or ‘Jamming knitting needles into plug sockets is fun’. Poor Britney won’t even have a chance to hug them.

The child custody battle between Britney Spears and Kevin Federline never really took off the way anyone expected it to. While Charlie and Denise and Alec and Kim spent their time lashing out at one another in public, Britney and Kevin seemed to genuinely want the best for their children. Which is good for the kids but rubbish for us. Nobody ever thinks of us.

The potential was there – it’s not often that a child custody case comes along where the mother is a woman who shaves her head and calls herself the devil and the father sometimes goes to court dressed as a pirate – but the sparks never really flew between Britney Spears and Kevin Federline the way everyone expected them to. Stupid anti-psychotic medication.

But now it’s over. It’s all over. Rather than allow the court commissioner to give the children the best possible chance at life they had – by sending them to Cambodia to stitch footballs together, or giving them to a pack of hungry bears, or just letting them crawl around on the motorway – Britney Spears and Kevin Federline have reached a custody settlement.

And that settlement is sole custody for Kevin Federline with occasional visits from Britney Spears. E! Online spoke to Federline’s lawyer Mark Vincent Kaplan:

“The case has been settled. The court still has to approve it. As of this evening there is a fully executed deal memo… All the issues that would have been addressed at trial have been settled… Kevin is absolutely delighted.”

That’s not to say that Kevin Federline will have sole custody of the kids forever, though – once Britney Spears has recovered to the extent that she no longer needs a conservator, it’s thought that Federline is open to the idea of giving her co-parenting status again.

But that’s just a possibility to deal with in the future. For now Kevin Federline has sole custody of his kids. And, you know, perhaps it’s for the best.

After all, Britney Spears obviously still isn’t well enough to look after herself, let alone her children – and this means that she’s freed up to concentrate on making a professional comeback to the best of her abilities.

And this custody settlement has also boosted Kevin Federline’s credibility as a father. He’s had to put up with jibes about his ability for a couple of years now, but gaining sole custody means that he’s clearly a very capable father.

Plus it’s wicked funny when he dresses the babies up in tuxedos and gets them to act as beer butlers at house parties until 4am, too – now he gets to do that whenever he wants.

Strangely enough, these things are also associated with the jury in the R Kelly child pornography trial.

Would you believe it? Of course, this brings up a wonderful revelation – it shouldn’t be too long before hecklerspray can refer to R Kelly in whatever terms we see fit, with the full backing of the law on our side.

Yes: the jury have heard the prosecution, the defence, rebuttals, witnesses and counter-cross-ultra-examinations, and they’ve run off to that room probably occupied by Twelve Angry Men to decide once and for all what the media are allowed to refer to R Kelly as.

And probably, more importantly, if the man is to serve jail time or if he is cleared of the charges held against him.

The future looks bright.

That’s as in ‘the future looks bright because it means we don’t have to pussyfoot around as much with our language for fear of being sued’, of course, and not some other misconstrued meaning attributed to the phrase. Obviously.

The case has been through a lot over the last few months, most recently the confusion as to who in the blue hell was in the video presented to the courts. Though whoever it was may have definitely had a mole – or did they? So no one is really sure who it was in the video, but whoever it was may have had a mole, though it may have been an ‘artifact’.

Good lord the jury must be confused by now.

It didn’t help that the defence were throwing around biblical quotes:

“Second Corinthians 11, verse 14. And Satan shall come disguised as an angel of light. That is what she is. She is a liar. She is an extortionist.”

And it can’t have made it easy when the prosecution relied on one of those pesky ‘experts’ to back up their case.

Though we would likely be the best one on the planet, hecklerspray would hate to be a juror in this case. And it’s clear that the actual jurors are taking their time on this one, since they’ve been deliberating for around a day now after starting on Thursday afternoon. According to CBS 2’s legal analyst Irv Miller this may very well be a good thing for R:

“A lot of people who have seen the entire trial say this is a slam dunk guilty and others are saying, ‘Hey, listen, there’s reasonable doubt there’.”

Time will tell. A verdict will come. And when it does, hecklerspray will know – either way – how we stand legally when talking about R Kelly. It’s been a long ride, but we’re nearly at the end of this particular legal tunnel.

Oh, and so is R Kelly. Forgot about that fact for a second there.

According to the scientists, who have conducted ‘research’, Jessica Alba had sex with her husband, Cash Warren, approximately nine months ago and, as far as hecklerspray can deduce, this is somehow linked to the emergence of the little girl.

They have decided to name the little girl Honor Marie Warren. Giving the girl a tag such as this will help to identify her when there are two or more little girls in the same room and in later life people can call out this name in order to get the girl’s attention. Pretty smart when you think about it. Saves a lot of faffing.

Honor Marie Warren was probably called Honor because Jessica Alba and Cash Warren felt honored by having her, just as Cash Warren was named by his parents who felt a tight financial burden by having him. His parents were more accurate.

When Honor grows up, every time a boy kisses her they will no doubt follow it up by saying “what an honor”.

It won’t be confined to just boys either. Throughout her life, whenever she does a favor for anyone, or when anyone does a favor for her, someone will say “it’s been an honor” and then laugh.

At the age of about six, Honor will be asking God why her parents gave her such a rubbish name.

This will evolve into a deep psychological problem by the time she reaches adolescence and, if she isn’t fortunate enough to have inherited her mother’s gluteal genes as compensation, she will probably be reaching for the medicine cabinet before she makes her 20s.

It all happened on Saturday, June 7 in Los Angeles. Her representative, Brad Cafarelli, confirmed so to People magazine.

Jessica Alba was recently interviewed by Fit Pregnancy. When asked what kind of a mother she’d like to be, she said:

I don’t want to be my child’s best friend. I want to be a mom, But I do want my child to come to me when they have problems and need to talk, so it’s going to be about treading that line.

It must be, because Anne Heche is moping around court because her TV show got cancelled and now she can’t even pay her child support bills.

Seriously, is this how bad the credit crunch has got? It’s scary to think that not even a famous actress like Anne Heche can pay for the upbringing of her children because the measly $65,000 she gets for each of her tiny movie roles won’t cover the cost of keeping her two international homes, her cars and all her other various expenses. Maybe we should stage a telethon for her.

Remember that TV show Men In Trees? No, us neither. Shame it wasn’t better, really, because if it was then maybe Anne Heche wouldn’t have had to go to court just now and whine about being so poor.

You’ll know Anne Heche, of course, as the woman who regularly does things that make you feel a little bit sorry for her until you realise that actually she’s being a dick. And the terrible Psycho remake, probably. Last year Anne Heche made the news for losing custody of her child to her ex-husband Coley Laffoon. Sad, but only until you realise that her main argument for keeping custody was that her ex-husband wanked and played ping-pong a lot.

It’s a pattern that stretches way back, past the time that Anne Heche started a lesbian affair with Ellen DeGeneres and then broke it off so she could tour around America telling everyone how God had cured her of her homosexuality all the way back to when she invented the alter ego of hers who could talk to aliens. You know, the one who was Jesus’ half-sister.

Anyway, it’s time for the cycle to come around again, because Anne Heche has gone to court claiming that she can’t pay her child support bills because she’s been a tragic out of work actress since Men In Trees got cancelled. E! Online reports:

“Since January 18, 2008, I have been unemployed and had no income from unemployment except for one very short term contract for a movie role for which I received a total of $65,000, approximately the amount I received for one episode of Men in Trees [which has not been renewed for a third season],” Heche’s filing states. Among the expenditures listed are private school tuition for Homer, rent for her L.A. residence, the mortgage on her Vancouver abode and miscellaneous auto and personal expenses. Heche says the $240,000 she received in January from the sale of her and Laffoon’s Hollywood home is already long gone.

Anne Heche got paid $65,000 an episode for Men In Trees? Yeah, we remember that time we got paid a total of $2,275,000 just for going to work 38 times as well. We barely know how we managed to get by. We literally had to dig through other people’s rubbish because our servants kept serving us our whole roast suckling pig on cold plates. Cold plates! What did they think we were? Animals?

Anyway, you’ll be pleased to know that the court granted Anne Heche’s wish to suspend her child support payments for the month of July, potentially putting their son’s private school tuition in danger. That might be a good thing, though – after all, the less educated he is, the longer it’ll take him to realise that his mother seems to be a Curly Wurly short of the full selection pack.

Read more:

Anne Heche Doesn’t Have to Pay for July – E! Online

And that’s delaying the start of his child pornography trial. For the last six years, R Kelly has kept inventing clever new tricks to put off the trial again and again – but it looks as though his luck might have run out.

At last, tomorrow will see the commencement of the jury selection process for R Kelly’s child pornography trial, effectively locking a start date down for good. And, oh boy, is that going to be one lucky jury – the judge has ruled that R Kelly’s apparently incriminating underage sex tape can be shown in open court. High fives to agreeing to watch a 14-year-old girl get urinated on by R Kelly! Anyone? No?

The Phil Spector murder trial was such a golden time, wasn’t it? In fact, it’s probably hard to think of anything better than watching a tiny old man in a lesbian wig get accused of shooting a depressed woman in the face for months at a time. Except for, at a push, watching a singer who compares himself to Martin Luther King get accused of pissing on a 14-year-old girl’s face during a sex tape for months at a time.

Which is a relief, because that’s what we’ll finally get to see soon enough. After spending six years trying to wriggle out of it, thanks to mountains of pretrial motions and badly-timed births and ladder-based accidents and appendicitis and tired-looking bus drivers, the R Kelly child pornography trial is all set to get underway in Chicago tomorrow.

Or at least the boring jury selection process that precedes the R Kelly child pornography trial, anyway. The New York Daily News reports:

After six years of delays, jury selection is to begin Thursday in the Grammy-winning R&B singer’s trial on child pornography charges – although defense attorneys did throw in a last-minute motion Wednesday seeking another postponement. The case was prompted by a videotape allegedly showing Kelly having sex with a girl as young as 13.

Since R Kelly faces 15 years in jail if he’s found guilty of these charges, his lawyers will want to find the most sympathetic jury possible – a group of people who’ll understand that a man has needs, and that sometimes those needs involve apparently filming himself pissing all over an obviously underage girl’s face. But that tactic might be scuppered by Chicago’s famous lack of stereotypical cartoon Frenchmen.

However, the jury selection process is firmly weighted in the defence’s favour. Since this alleged R Kelly sex tape is the crux of the entire trial, it’s bound to be shown in court at least once – so there’s a chance that the jurors who’ll fight hardest to get on the trial will be the ones who basically enjoy watching child pornography the most. We think that’s how it works, anyway. Urgh.

But still, R Kelly’s jury selection process doesn’t start until tomorrow, so that leaves R Kelly with about 15 or 16 different chances to get the trial postponed again before then. All we’re saying is that we shouldn’t be too surprised if R Kelly suddenly gets his arm bitten off by a shark before teatime. That’s all.

Read more:

R. Kelly kid-porn trial creeps forward - NYDN

But one lucky child claims that Jeremy Clarkson recently made him cry for a whole new reason. Specifically because Jeremy Clarkson screamed “I will hunt you down and rip your fucking head off,” at him.

And all because the boy took a photo of Jeremy Clarkson asleep on a beach. Why did Jeremy Clarkson overreact so furiously to a sleeping picture? Was it because he’s an avowed defender of human rights and privacy laws, or was it because he’s a drooler? He’s a drooler, isn’t he. He certainly looks like one.

Should Jeremy Clarkson suddenly lose his lucrative careers presenting shouty TV show about cars and writing a million near-identical books called things like Jeremy Clarkson: I Don’t Know Why I Bother and Jeremy Clarkson: Pffff, Typical, he’d be perfectly suited for a job as a Dickensian child-catcher.

Actually, that’s a little unfair. Child-catchers usually succeed at catching children by being creepily nice to them and offering them lollipops, whereas Jeremy Clarkson tends to just go mental at kids until they run away crying. He’d be a shit child catcher. We apologise.

Honestly, Jeremy Clarkson is developing a bit of a reputation around children. Not so long ago Jeremy Clarkson got in trouble with police when he picked a a boy up and screamed at him, just because the boy looked at him funny. And now it’s alleged that Clarkson’s been at it again.

According to reports, Jeremy Clarkson recently launched into a foul-mouthed rant at 12-year-old Tom Dickman because he’d used his new camera to take a picture of Jeremy Clarkson asleep on a beach. And Jeremy Clarkson’s response? Well, this:

“Are you the little fucker that took my picture? If you do that again or it goes on the internet I will hunt you down and rip your fucking head off.”

And if it wasn’t bad enough that Tom Dickman was screamed at by an irate man with a perm and a mouth that looks like the results of a terrorist attack on a ceramic factory, the poor boy’s Dad appears to be a tiresome gobby wanker as well, as the Sunday Mirror reports:

Tom ran to his dad Chris in tears. The 37-year-old garage owner, from Hitchin, Herts., said: “I saw it all happen. Tom was a huge fan of Top Gear and Clarkson was his hero. He watched the show every week and even asked me to buy him the DVDs for Christmas and birthdays. Clarkson’s reaction was out of order. He utterly humiliated and scared my son. Who the hell does Clarkson think he is?… I used to think Top Gear was great – but I won’t watch it ever again.”

What with this recent spate of child-scaring, we wouldn’t be surprised if Jeremy Clarkson soon becomes a kind of urban myth for parents who want to stop their kids from misbehaving. Basically a bit like the bogeyman who lives under your bed, except one with a distinct war cry that sounds quite a lot like petty-minded muttering about immigrants and recycling and local governments. Or somthing.

Read more:

Jeremy Clarkson in four-letter rant to boy, 12 – Sunday Mirror