There’s only one reason why we even slightly enjoy coming back to work after our Christmas break, and that’s Mr Blackwell.

For the last 35 years, the highlight of January has been Mr Blackwell’s worst-dressed list – a bewilderingly written, mostly-alliterative rhyme-heavy blizzard of celebrity nastiness that couldn’t have sounded any more camp if it was read aloud by a talking buttplug in a feather boa at a Cher concert.

But Mr Blackwell won’t be writing a worst-dressed list for 2009, because Mr Blackwell has died of complications from an intestinal infection. It’s a sad day for sure but, who knows, maybe one day scientists will find some of Mr Blackwell’s blood inside a mosquito that’s been trapped in amber and splice his DNA with frogs to create a theme park where all the exhibits run around telling you that your blouse looks crap.

Mr Blackwell was a myth wrapped in an enigma. You might occasionally think of yourself as a myth wrapped in an enigma too, but chances are that if you are, Mr Blackwell would have noticed the enigma you’re dressed in and called it ‘enig-moronic overkill that’s simply over-the-hill – a tacky terror from head to toe’. Because that’s just what Mr Blackwell did. Every single bloody year.

Not any more, though, because even though his annual worst-dressed list was the basis for the story we most look forward to writing every single year, he’s died. What a selfish old bastard. AP reports:

Mr. Blackwell, the acerbic designer whose annual worst-dressed list skewered the fashion felonies of celebrities from Zsa Zsa Gabor to Britney Spears, has died. He was 86. Blackwell died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of complications from an intestinal infection, publicist Harlan Boll said.

While Mr Blackwell will be best-remembered for his worst-dressed list – the influence of which can be felt everywhere, from fashion magazines to every single Sex And The City script to websites like this – that’s not all Mr Blackwell did with his life. He says he invented jeans for women, for example, plus he used to be a prostitute. And, um, that’s about it.

But without Mr Blackwell and his worst-dressed list, the world will be a sadder, more alliteration-free place. Now is not the time to be upset by this news, though – by dying now, Mr Blackwell has left us one of the greatest gifts we think we’ve ever been given.

Because he wasn’t able to update his worst-dressed list before he passed away, Mr Blackwell has effectively made sure that Victoria Beckham will be the worst-dressed woman until the end of time itself.

We’re misty-eyed with gratitude.

For years the Rolling Stones have been giving hope to the dead and the nearly dead. Not through their music – no, just in the fact that they can still get around reasonably well without having had an actual pulse in over thirty years. Seriously – its inspiring.

Get on that Lifetime.

OK, well sometimes the hope-giving is through their music. Take a man who was recently in a coma, for instance. His wife plugged some headphones into his ears, blasted I Can’t Get No Satisfaction, and then the guy’s ears started to tremble and bleed. That song does the exact same thing to us. It usually starts 1/3 into verse 1.

The guys ears didn’t really bleed – he miraculously woke up.

Nowadays whenever any of the Rolling Stones make the news, its for things like poon-jabbing a Russian bar-maid who’s so young she’s not entirely sure what communism actually is. Also they make the news for getting hit in the head with coconuts or something, getting those coconut-hit heads operated on (or something), and imbibing their parents by whatever means necessary.

No or something necessary for that last bit of sentence. Allegedly.

The Rolling Stones’ news-worthiness has just been stood on its ear. Suddenly they are famous for good reason. Suddenly they can be looked upon, not as gross and prunish, but as brave and overly-skinned.

Here’s what ContactMusic.com reports on the matter:

“The ROLLING STONES have been hailed unlikely life-savers after waking a British fan from a coma. Sam Carter lost consciousness after contracting severe anaemia but came to when his favourite Stones track, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction was blasted into his ears. Ironically, the single was the first the retired baker bought when he was a teenager in 1965. Carter, from Stoke, England, was given just a 30 per cent survival rate by doctors, who advised his wife Eva to play his favourite track through headphones strapped to her husband’s head. Carter says, “I suddenly had a burst of energy and knew I had a lot more life left in me and that’s when I woke up – to the sound of the first song I ever bought.”

What Contact Music didn’t tell us in there is that the man who just awoke from the coma, well he’s gonna wait until the girl Geri Halliwell woke from a coma comes of age, and then they’re gonna make ex-coma babies to the beat of an extremely mediocre soundtrack.

Incidentally, there’s a reason Contact Music didn’t tell us any of that.

A very good reason.

Hecklerspray broke a world record once. It was three years ago when we were going through a phase of carrying a fully functional Defibrillator everywhere we went. When our arms got tired, we'd just drag it.

We did it so that we could administer first aid in a moments notice should we ever be lucky enough to stumble upon somebody who was almost dead. We never did – but we did learn how to cook duck with those things. One of the ducks actually came back to life. It was headless and plucked, but it waddled just the same. That's what our record was for. Nobody had ever previously resuscitated a headless duck. We think it's on page three of that Guinness book.

Geri Halliwell, apparently, is going through that same phase, just a couple of years after us. But instead of zapping people/ducks with thousands of electrical volts, she sings to them back to health. One girl recently emerged from a coma because of it, while no ducks responded at all.

When Geri Halliwell isn't on stage participating in that thick-legged Spice Girls reunion, she really enjoys singing to the comatose. Sure, she also likes to write children's books, give birth to blue-tinted hollow metal instruments and shield her child from abusive golfers, but singing to the comatose is really where her heart lies. Mostly.

She has a fan, you see, a 14-year-old girl who happily owned at least one concert ticket to see the Spice Girls dance and sing and maybe huff off stage. A few days before the show though – and this is seriously horrible (we're not joking here) the young lady was the victim of an attack that left her stabbed 30 times. She didn't die – she had a stroke and went into a coma.

A family member somehow contacted the singer, who was moved by the story and showed up for a visit. The girl's mother explains:

"Geri sang a couple of lines from one of the Spice Girls' songs and Jessica started moving her arms and legs. It was amazing. We were all in fits of giggles because we were so relieved and it was just so funny seeing her legs move to Geri' singing. The next day, she opened her eyes for the first time."

But when those eyes opened – Halliwell was nowhere to be seen. No, with a gift like that one can't stay in a place for too long. There are old ladies with cancer lumps what need singing at, and possibly younger women who need their birth-canals cleared with crazy decibel levels aimed directly in there. Also she has a solo career to think about.

You can't sit all day in a hospital when you've got a solo career to think about.

Read More:

Coma Girl Jessica Knight Woke After Geri Halliwell Sang To Her – Mirror