Any child of the nineties will remember not wanting to go to school. Not because the education system was as messed up as Chloe Sims’ face, or because of the taunts of  the three stripe-clad knuckle-draggers who marked themselves as the school’s social elite.

It was because they wanted nothing more than to watch The Big Breakfast.

The alternative breakfast show has been hosted by pretty much everyone on television, but really came into its own with Johnny Vaughan and Denise Van Outen at the helm. It was brash, bright and loud: just what a child wants instead of stupid Maths and History. Tell the truth, where has Maths or History ever got you that knowing how to sing the ‘Vital Statistics’ song hasn’t? Nowhere, that’s where.

Well Children of the 90s rejoice and unite, because rumours flying around the internet and now your brain, is that the Big Breakfast is coming back to our screens to coincide with the Olympics this year. Probably to cheer everyone up before having to endure packed Tubes and buses for two whole, solid weeks. And that’s just the ceremony itself!

Although nothing is set in stone, and the whole project looks unlikely given that Chris Evans and Johnny Vaughan have their own careers on radio and the like, but isn’t the thought of it just absolutely ball tingling ?

The site of the Big Breakfast House was compulsory purchased to go with the 2012 Summer Olympics plan put forward by the government, so it’s looking likely that the site will be used for something to do with the Olympics, and it may just be a case of wishful thinking. For all we know, it could be the place where all the chemical toilets are emptied.

However, any reason to have Liza Tarbuck back on our screens is fine with us, so come on Hecklersprayers! Let’s start some sort of grass roots campaign to get the Big Breakfast back on our TV. It’s when Johnny Vaughan was super-hot.

That might just be us.

Remember when they hung Gary Glitter on Channel 4? That was nice wasn’t it? Alas, for you pitchfork wielders, it was a work of fiction and Glitter is actually alive and well and causing trouble on twitter.

Apparently, the twitter account (not yet verified, so invariably a hoax) says that the disgraced glamster will be making a comeback on the road in 2012. That’s if people don’t storm the building and tear him limb-from-limb.

They’d want to do that after he was convicted of possessing child pornography (sentenced to four months) and then, after release, arrested in Vietnam for committing obscene acts with children (three years in the clink). However, all that’s behind him now.

The tweets read that Glitter will be making his comeback…

“London, Bristol and Birminghm are all semi-confirmed for the tour at the end of the year. I’ll confirm more info as it becomes certain… #GlitterTour will be a v small tour. Planned for 20 days in oct/sept later this year. I’ll post dates/venues when they are confirmed… I am truly touched at the incredible response i’ve had over twitter in the past few hours.Thank you to all my fans.”

And the response HAS been incredible. One look at the @ replies he’s been getting and you’ll be astonished at the levels of hatred he can provoke, simply by existing.

Of course, Chris Brown must be thrilled that Glitter has (possibly) arrived back on the scene because, in comparison, Breezy is a stale sandwich compared to the Leader Of The Gang.

Hitting a woman is pretty bad, but sticking your things in a minor is unspeakably dreadful!

Naturally, Glitter is ‘saying’ that this is all in the past and it is time to move on. Just forget about all that kid-fid stuff if you could and, y’know, pay money to me and I’ll perform my songs.

That’s right. Give money to a convicted paedophile. Jesus wept. Wouldn’t like to be the person who does the PR for that particular comeback.

How are your ears? Like having them? They’re great for holding your glasses up aren’t they? Pierced them? How nice. Alas, there’s one drawback with ears – you can hear stuff. Yep, all manner of useless dreck can creep in their and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Unless you stuff the canal with liquid concrete and then lop them off with cigar clippers.

And you may want to do exactly that because the most appalling news has come our way – Paris Hilton is making a pop comeback and she’s teaming up with zany-irony gobblers and ear-wormers, LMFAO. If you don’t know what that means, let us draw out the horror.

You may not know this, but Paris Hilton actually had a record out a while ago. She released an album in 2006 and, of course, it was lousier than a thousand Ed Sheerans.

And so, in a bid to buy herself a number one, she’s decided that she will hire the second most irritating music producers on the planet (the first being 3OH!3 who look exactly like the kind of lads who would wag their tongues and shout ‘BREWSKI!’ while spitroasting a drunk girl on some grotty amateur video).

She told MTV News:

“We’re going to be doing my new single with LMFAO… I’ve known them since I was a little girl. We grew up together ’cause our parents are friends, so I’m just so proud of them and all their success and what they’ve done ’cause they’ve just created this whole Party Rock brand and it’s just so awesome.”

You want to hear some of that ‘Party Rock brand’ don’t you?

And so, listening to that, you’re probably thinking that it’s pretty derivative, blurt-pop as influenced by Timbaland at his worst, as much as it’s influenced by terrible squelch-house, right?

Well, if you can put a name on it, you’ll be helping out Paris who insists her new album will be very different from her debut:

“I’m going with a whole new genre.”

So basically, it better sound a million miles away from this or we’ll think you’re full of it. Which you are. However, this threat comes with a ‘…and if we aren’t satisfied with the results, we’ll come and skin your chihuahuas’. Okay? No pressure.

Remember Suede? That’s right. They were a vaguely noisy band with an obsession with Bowie and women’s blouses. They were at the forefront of Britpop and, for the most part, Britpop was rubbish. So thanks for that.

Apparently, they’ll be making a comeback. Just great.

Of course, there’s a plethora of middle-aged men with pink faces who are just as thrilled as their velvet blazer wearing girlfriends who will be pleased about the return of one of the most average bands in existence! Dust down your Doc Martens now! Start brushing off your best Indie Nightclubs Of The 90s anecdotes now!

The band are going to release a new DVD Box Set of their comeback performance at the Royal Albert Hall on 24th March, a show that was described by Brett Anderson “The best gig ever.”

Or, if you prefer, ‘the gig I can remember best because I my head was completely inserted into my colon throughout the 90s.’

This new limited edition boxset (limited to THOUSANDS of copies, of course) contains a DVD of the entire concert featuring twenty-one dreadful, pompous, overblown songs about nothing, as well as thrilling backstage footage (Toilets! Dressing rooms! Team prayer! All in black and white no doubt!) and two audio CDs of the show and a grotty 48 page book.

There’ll also be specially written individual notes by all five band members and photos documenting the event.

This all signals the intent for Suede to make a comeback, just so fans can hear the most dreaded words on the nostalgia circuit: “This one’s from our new album…”

Apparently, Anderson says that, if the new material isn’t amazing, they won’t release it… not that this ever stopped them in the past.

Excuse us. We’ve got 8 litres of snakebite to puke up.

What have you done today? Bet you’ve dragged yourself through your dreary life, bumping into other insignificant doldrumites, who clamour for their carcinogenic hit of Heat magazine to find out what that family of soulless prostitutes we call Kardashians are up to.

Frankly, between us, you sicken us. Maybe you should try a little harder and people will stop thinking you have an alcohol problem and smiling inanely at you when you struggle to open the bottle of Pepsi Max you have with your Boots Meal Deal.

Whereas us, we’ve jumped from cloud to cloud to return an angelic harp to a sad Saint Peter, made a deal with Death himself to let us pass, and ensure that once Britney Spears does pass, she doesn’t return in a zombie form and a red pleather catsuit and managed to lose our girlfriend in a mythical land. So not a bad day’s work really. Bet all the exercise that you’ve had is strumming yourself in the Tesco car park while thinking about how sexy him from Outnumbered is going to be soon. You sicken us.

Of course we could’ve done that all by ourselves, just on the way home from work, but this time it’s because we’ve been testing out the new Dizzy game from the people who made him semi-popular back in the ’80s and ’90s, Codemasters.

Out for iOS, which we don’t need to tell you is what runs on iPhone, the game is a rehash of the 1991 title where you traverse the magical land where eggs can walk, jump, and generally be as philanthropic as you can be, although with spanking new titles that, allegedly, are high definition. Although moving from the pixellated mess of yesteryear is going to be an improvement under any comparison. Look at Steps. They were shit back then, but they’re shitter now because they’re ten years older and still giant assmunchers.

However valiant an effort that Codemasters has put in, it has the same effect as pulling out before spluffing your splaff all up in her bloof.

It’s good, but gaming has moved on immeasurably in the past 18 years and Dizzy hasn’t kept up. The same dodgy controls (weighed down by the failure that is touch screen movement controls) mean that precise jumping you needed back in the 90s is still a problem, and the simplistic ‘Pick something up, take it to someone, use it on that someone’ is still repetitive and, at times, annoying.

Even though the level is very short, you’ll find yourself wandering around aimlessly for hours before giving up, throwing your iPhone on the ground and thinking how awesome it would be if a few letters of the alphabet didn’t exist.

Give Dizzy a wide berth if you want a game that gives some sort of immediate payback. Because, by the time that you do get some payback, you’ve lost interest so much that you don’t care anymore and realise there’s pots of tea to be made and pictures of Jesy from Little Mix to photoshop into hilarious situations.

Shame.

With the teasing of a new Dizzy hitting the old interwebs as late as yesterday, people were kind of surprised that definite information would be released so soon. It kind of made the whole teasing process pointless, like most attempts at foreplay.

But the news has “finally” been released and the new Dizzy game is going to be… *Mark Ronson style trumpet blare*

A rehash of 1991’s Dizzy: Prince Of The Yolkfolk. Can we have some grumbles with that underwhelming announcement please?

Paul Ranson, the original project manager had these words to say:

“20 years on and Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk remains one of the most memorable games in the series for its puzzles and humour and it’s an absolute pleasure to return to the director’s role for this HD edition.

For once, this is a retro classic that doesn’t require rose-tinted glasses to appreciate its design and gameplay – Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk is simply a great puzzle-solving romp that’s been brought up to date with glorious visuals.”

But if you want to be able to see what you’re doing, you can even switch back to the original, verging on 4-bit graphics if you so wish.

Why you would so wish is beyond us, but different strokes for different folk’s junk innit.

So, it’s out 9th December, expect a review from us around January.

After we’ve decided that it’s actually quite a good thing instead of a CRUSHING DISAPPOINTMENT ON BEHALF OF EVERYONE FROM THE 80S.

Here’s the ZX Spectrum version for fans of glitchy bip bip music.

RPGs are like the 80s. Before the 80s were cool, they were revered by everyone as being the decade with the most eye meltingly bad fashion/music/celebrities. But that whole decade has had a resurgence in popularity; partly because of Lady Gaga’s vagina, partly because of Brian May’s tenacity (that man will not be forgotten easily).

Whatever the reason, the 80s are back, which is just like the rise in popularity that role playing games have had over the past few years.

Well before the Elder Scrolls and every other game had levelling up characteristics and diluted the market with enough hot RPG action to put you off them for life, there was a lower standard of charming RPG that grabbed us by the soon-to-be short and curlies, before paedophiles became all the rage.

Predominantly made for consoles, these games have lived long, LONG past their shelf lives (much like Brian May) but still remain some of the most sought after games when it comes to re-release songs that are decades old.

Chrono Trigger is one such of those games.

Already out for almost every other gaming platform; DS, Playstation Network, Virtual Console but not XBox Live, it’s finally coming to iOS before the end of the year.

Chrono Trigger is one of, if not THE best role playing games ever created (we’re not going to debate with you whether it is or not; we don’t have enough time for that when we have actual spots to burst), so make sure you pick it up if you can.

It’s not like us to overstate something but IT’S THE BEST GAME FOR THIRTY YEARS.

Bet Brian May can’t say that.

The 1980s were a great time: Kelly Le Brock was still a bodacious chick, 9/11 was still twenty years away, Blossom was still a good decade away, so you didn’t have Joey Lawrence hair envy yet and Dizzy The Magical Fantasist Egg was the alternative to tickling your balls with soda from a SodaStream.

Times may have changed; for instance Kelly Le Brock looks like someone melted a mariachi band, Joey Lawrence is bald and SodaStream still feels great on your nutsack, but Dizzy still remains in the hearts and minds of thirty year old men. Like a pixellated Diana, Princess of Hearts. Only more interesting and a better soundtrack. There’s only so much you can remix screeching tyres and a Martin Bashir interview.

So it’s good news that a new version of Dizzy has been rumoured by Codemasters isn’t it?

Exactly!

The ’80s mascot, who’s career stalled when Edwina Curry went batshit mental about salmonella (probably), is said to be revealed once again tomorrow. Re-revealed, if you will.

The Dizzy franchise has been on hiatus since the 1992 Crystal Kingdom Dizzy, and there was even rumours that the egg hero was set to join Pat Sharp and Sinitta on this year’s I’m A Celebrity, but it was only Fatima Whitbread’s love-eggs. Which Sinitta smuggled in.

The filthy bitch.

There’s no definite word on what platforms the new game will be appearing on, or even whether the Prince of Yolkfolk will be gracing Electronic Boutique or Woolworths shelves before Christmas but that doesn’t matter because you should be getting yourselves to the doctors for anxiety tablets.

If this version of Dizzy is as difficult as the previous outings, with the annoyingly precise jumps, you’ll need diazepam. Troo dat.

Marvin Gaye, one of the greatest soul singers who graced our undeserving ears, is going to be the subject of a new biopic directed by Julien Temple. Hardly surprising that someone would want to make a film about him with the life he had!

Professionally speaking, Marvin Gaye went from being a great pop star to a socially aware, right-on soul preacherman. From the glorious two-minuters of ‘It Takes Two’ and ‘Heard It Through The Grapevine’, to the far-reaching LPs of ‘What’s Going On’ and ‘Let’s Get It On’, Gaye covered a lot of ground.

However, away from the microphone and piano stool, Gaye had a soap opera of a life which belied the control he had musically. While ‘Inner City Blues’ confidently went about changing people’s perceptions of what black music could offer the world, Gaye couldn’t hope for a stable private life.

Gaye’s relationship with other humans was complicated. He married twice, first hitching up with his boss’ – Berry Gordy, lord and master of Motown – sister, before the marriage imploded after Marvin began stepping out with (the very attractive) Janis Hunter. He promptly went about making his split from Gordy’s sister all the more problematic by making a sleazy disco LP called ‘I Want You’ about his relationship with Janis.

Of course, that marriage exploded within a year.

Gaye’s relationship with Tammi Terrell would also define him. The pair enjoyed great success as a duo, cut savagely short when Terrell collapsed on-stage in Gaye’s arms, brought on by a brain tumour that would eventually kill her. Let us not forget Gaye’s troubles with alcohol and drugs. Marvin had a coke-habit you could see from space.

But of course, the most defining relationship was the one Marvin had with his father.

Gaye had made a successful comeback with ‘Sexual Healing’, despite the fact his mental and physical condition was spiralling out of control. Isolating himself at his parents’ home in LA, groupies and dealers still continually tried to reach the singer, leaving Gaye trying to commit suicide on numerous occasions.

Then, on April Fool’s Day, 1984, Gaye’s father fatally shot him with a gun bought for him by his famous son, after a heated argument about money.

Phew and phew, eh? It’s hardly surprising that British director Julien Temple wants to make a film of Gaye’s life.

It isn’t clear how much ground the film will cover or who might take on the role of Marvin himself. One thing  is for certain, there’s enough personal turmoil in Gaye’s life to make a ripsnorting film.

More when we get it.

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Usually, we only serve to tell you about celebrity mishaps and insane behaviour. Yes, it may well be a rare thing, but occasionally, we report news that everyone can benefit from – but today is one of those days!

So break out the vintage fizzy pop as we proudly announce the retirement of Calvin Harris from the live circuit!

For us cynical moody gits, we’ve never been fans of Calvin Harris and his penchant for post-modern, ironic student-friendly dance music that seems perfectly made for annoying commercial radio.

This retirement of playing live fills us with more joy than the announcement of the royal wedding.

Are we being overly mean? No, of course not. Let us explain why we’re right and you’re wrong. In March, Harris released ‘I’m Not Alone.’

To your average drugged up clubber it might sound like one of those club stompers with its uplifting trance synth and all that – but hold on a minute! Haven’t we been here before with this sort of thing? Why yes we have! Going all the way back to 1995, we heard Faithless belt out ‘Insomnia.’

Only fifteen years late Calvin.

Then it comes to the lyrics. Granted, electronic music might not be at the forefront for memorable lyrics apart from “lager lager lager” but even we can do better. “I put on my shoes and I’m weekend” screeches some session singer, but we can do better if lyrics are being inspired by modern life.

We’d sing “pick up our pint and we’re ready to get hammered” or “one large chicken kebab and a can of pop, please.” Okay, perhaps not.

Anyway NME.com report why Calvin Harris is jacking it in:

“I’m not a singer, I’m not trained. Taking it onto the stage in front of people was terrifying. I got much, much better at it but I never lost the terror. Looking after your voice on tour is such a priority and such a nightmare. If I had a night out the night before a show it’d be awful and I’d feel for the audience.”

Whilst we’d love to fully see the back of him, that eventuality hasn’t fully happened. NME reports Calvin Harris as saying:

“I’m going to focus more on production and DJing and zero percent of my time will go on singing. I’ll do tracks with people who can sing well – proper artists, proper performers.”

People who can sing well? Guess he won’t be collaborating with Dizzee Rascal anytime soon.

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Un-shocking ‘shock-rocker’ and massively uncontroversial ‘controversial artist’ Brain Hugh Warner is due to make a comeback next year, once again posing as unconvincing pantomime dame ‘Marilyn Manson’.

The entire world probably shrugged at the news, secure in the knowledge that you can’t create moral panic if you haven’t had a record deal in over a year. He was dropped from Interscope.

Christ, even the emo kids who hang around your local park drinking cider don’t know who he is anymore.

The tween-generation Alice Cooper is thought to have spent the last year standing by his front-door in full ‘Marilyn Manson’ regalia waiting for trick-or-treaters to knock whilst practising his best impression of Jack Nicholson’s “wait till they get a load of ME” scene from Batman in the mirror.

But now he’s BACK. And badder than ever.

If by ‘back’ you mean ‘has scraped a deal with a small independent London record label’. And if by ‘badder than ever’ you mean ‘only an option on a second album as nobody’s that confident in him’.

Cooking Vinyl – for that is them – were formed as a contemporary folk label and are clearly not filled with optimism.

Perhaps the market for below-par sub- Nine Inch Nails nonsense that sounds like it was made by a middle-class suburban teenager with no friends because he smells ‘weird’ trying too hard to come across as ‘on the edge’ is on the wane.

Cooking Vinyl’s MD Martin Goldschmidt has said that

“Manson’s in that mood where he really wants to come back fighting.”

Although we assume in this case the definition of ‘coming back fighting’ involves not tidying your bedroom and smoking low-quality weed in your Dad’s garage.

XBox Kinect

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Remember The Tings Tings? Those two who are probably shagging but not telling anyone about it? Those that sang “they call me Maureen, they call me dipshit, they call my Cyril, they call me galling, they called me thingy… that’s not my name!” Them? They’re coming back.

Yes indeed. The Ting Tings are bringing out a new single called  ‘Hands’, on October 11th and the track has been mixed by Calvin Harris.

He’ll probably have a small breakdown about the whole thing on Twitter and then run at someone with a piece of watermelon stapled to his eyelid or something.

The Ting Tings have been recording in Berlin and the new track will be the first taster of the new material. The second album is due out later in the year.

What’s it called? The album is called ‘Kunst’. That sounds a bit like a rude word doesn’t it?!

Woooo.

Drummer and main songwriter Jules De Martino said to the NME, talking about the sessions: “Our time in Berlin was a fresh start, with no rules again. When you’ve had an album that’s been successful, the danger is you go back in the studio, look back and try and emulate it.”

Singy drum thumper, Katy White added: “It’d be so lazy and easy to make the same album twice.”

‘Hands’ will be released on 12-inch limited-edition vinyl and as a digital download.

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At hecklerspray towers, nothing quite gets us excited like the opening of a bottle of beer and a sausage roll from the local bakers.

Apart from rubbish PR requests from companies, nothing really gets us going in the morning.

Now, we weren’t fed tons of money to promote this to you, but we thought we’d do the world some good and announce this to you all. Blue, the boyband who had hits like All Rise and er… a few others including that one with Elton John are coming back. We aren’t sure if new material is going to be recorded, but we can see them this summer at least!

As we all know, blue is a colour and is also an important piece of information for gypsies, fortune tellers and other piss-poor psychic folk. They see blue as a sad and depressing colour and use it to convince you you’ll soon cut yourself to death with a bread knife. But since four random idiots formed a band under that name, it has changed meaning. For the better is to be debated.

When we think of the colour blue, we always think of the band first. The following can only wish they were as popular as a manufactured band – the colour of the sky, the colour of the sea, the colour of Carlisle Utd’s football kit, the colour of the office lamp, vile alcopops called WKD, the colour of some peoples eyes, biro ink and the toolbar on a lot of computers.

Each band has to have a novelty wacky member who everyone loves to chuckle at. For Blue, it’s comedy chef and all round bad speller Lee Ryan. Like a bad experience at the fairground, hecklerspray and Lee go way back, following a mini battle where he launched a semi illiterate rant against our lovable scribbler Chris Laverty via the dying MySpace. Don’t worry too much though; Chris only wakes up occasionally now screaming “ONE LOVE.” He’s pretty much all there, despite a sweary message from Lee.

Blue were set to be mass marketed for our American chums, however, in true comedy fashion, Lee Ryan kind of messed that up. Remember the terrible attacks in New York on September 11th? Instead of keeping his mouth shut, Lee decided that this event wasn’t that important. Instead, we had to think of the elephants. Yes kids, the elephants. Subsequently, they weren’t shipped off to other countries for others to hate.

Whilst we all thought the band had thankfully been dead and buried for a long time, they are apparently due to make a comeback! Glastonbury may be a step to high, just like V Festival. We think Bath leisure centre is something that the lads can be content with.

According to Simon Webbe:

“We’re the only boyband that has never split up”.

Unless we’re wrong, there’s some boyband called The Jackson 5 who have never officially split up and still plan to inflict touring on us. They’ve just been caught up in kiddy touching trials, getting in to shitloads of debt and trying to salvage solo careers. Oh, that’s just Michael isn’t it?

Duncan James from Blue also added:

“The four of us will definitely do something together this summer”.

Sadly, there was no word from Lee about the exciting comeback plans. Presumably he couldn’t attend the press conference after throwing a strop when he went outside the lines in his colouring book. He’d have only punched his own reflection or claimed to be dating Ariel from The Little Mermaid, anyway.

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There are all kinds of ways to tell if your comeback has been successful, but Britney Spears has easily just found the best one.

Britney’s big new comeback single Womanizer has jumped 95 places in the American singles chart to reach number one. And you know what they say – when a song that sounds like Professor Stephen Hawking‘s faulty voicebox being jumpstarted by a big spluttering clown-car engine gets to number one, you’ve probably been accepted by the general population to some extent.

And now that Womanizer‘s number one position is the cherry on Britney Spears’ public rehabilitation cake, it’s time for her to celebrate. How? The same way she always does – by shaving her head, mashing anti-psychotic drugs into her food and trapping her own children in a bathroom until she’s sedated and taken to a mental hospital. Hooray!

Britney Spears should go into politics. Seriously, look at how well she’s galvanised the public with her comeback. It’s been so stage-managed and choreographed that nothing could possibly have upset it. Well, nothing except for Britney Spears’ fragile state of mind, which could still explode messily all over the place and end up with Britney Spears kidnapping a stranger’s child and hiding it in the rafters with her at any moment, but let’s ignore that.

Because Britney Spears’ new single Womanizer has just made it to number one in the American single chart, and it’s broken all kinds records as well. E! Online reports:

The song’s 95-spot jump to No. 1 is the biggest in Billboard history… “Womanizer” also set a record by selling 286,000 digital copies. That not only tops the singer’s 179,000-copy debut for 2007′s “Gimme More,” it’s also the biggest digital debut for any female artist since Nielsen SoundScan started tracking digital sales five years ago. Mariah Carey‘s “Touch My Body” previously held the record.

Other records that Womanizer by Britney Spears has broken include Most Popular Song To Ever Go ‘Womanizer Woma-Womanizer You’re A Womanizer Oh Womanizer Oh You’re A Womanizer Baby’ All The Titting Time, Best Song To Make Suspects To Break Down And Confess Their Secrets Now That Physical Torture Is Frowned Upon and Best Alternative Theme-Tune To Prime Minister’s Question Time.

The success of Womanizer bodes well for Britney Spears’ new album Circus, to be released in December, and by and large it’s all down to the exceedingly professional way that her comeback has been stage-managed. So, disgraced celebrities, if you want to make a successful comeback all you need to do is follow Britney Spears’ simple five-point guide.

1 – Turn up in public wearing nice clothes and make-up that doesn’t look like it was applied by an elderly Parkinson’s sufferer in the middle of a temper tantrum. The fact that you aren’t red-eyed and bald will confound everyone senseless.

2 - Let your mother publish a book that graphically describes what a mental old bastard you are, but only so long as the last line reads something like “But, hey, she’s all better now, so phew.”

3 - Release a single that just involves you saying the same word over and over again while a fire alarm goes off in the background that everybody seems pretty ambivalent about.

4 - Get naked in the video for that song, because only then will people actually pay any attention to it.

5 - Pray to God that your little sister makes you look relatively sane in comparison.

Followed all those steps? Congratulations, you’re a success just like Britney Spears! Now you’re ready to be the subject of so much unwanted media intrusion and responsibility-free power that your mental health is almost certainly going to deteriorate to a worry extent. See you in the mental hospital!

Imagine your ex-husband was on TV doing a wobbly-voiced interview about how his affair with an 18-year-old wasn’t his fault.

Imagining that? Congratulations, you’re now Christie Brinkley. And now, Christie Brinkley, given that your ex-husband Peter Cook has just shown himself to be an egomanical attention-div of the highest order by writhing around in the gutter in front of the world like this, what’s the absolute last thing you should probably do?

That’s right – dive into the gutter with him. But that’s what Christie Brinkley has just done. Christie’s released a statement that further slags off Peter Cook, even though it’s basically just another reminder for her daughter that her parents are no longer capable of rational thought. The poor girl’s already called Sailor, for Christ’s sake. How much more do you want her to resent you?

Peter Cook is that rare breed – an egomaniac with no sense of insight whatsoever. Looking back, it was actually over two years ago that Christie Brinkley threw Peter Cook out for having it off with a teenager he met in a toyshop, and several months since the Christie Brinkley/ Peter Cook divorce was finalised.

Since then, given that the world is swamped with piles of brand new meaningless celebrity codswallop every day, memories of Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook’s messy break-up have faded. So when Peter Cook decided to bitch about Christie Brinkley to Barbara Walters this week, he made two profound mistakes:

1 - Because people don’t care about whatever tiny ephemeral thumbprint Peter Cook left on the world of celebrity, everyone had to think back to remember who Peter Cook actually is. And that made them realise that, oh, he’s the dirty little bugger who spends $3,000 a month on wanking paraphernalia. Urgh, dirty.

2 - Having reminded people that he’s the man who shagged a teenager and wanks a lot, going on TV to blame Christie Brinkley for all that made Peter Cook look like a sort of giant clueless fudgepot who lives so far up his own bottom that his mouth smells like oesophagus.

In fact, Peter Cook’s 20/20 interview seems like such an ill-advised trainwreck that it actually makes us almost respect Christie Brinkley, and given that she painted the nightmarishly awful artwork for Billy Joel’s River Of Dreams album, that’s something we never thought we’d hear ourselves say about the jumped-up hopeless goon.

In fact, all Christie Brinkley needed to do to come out of this muddle looking peachy-clean was keep her mouth shut. That’s literally all she needed to do. Rise above it. Be the better person. Accept dignified silence into her life. And so that’s what Christie Brinkley did.

For about five seconds, anyway. Then she got her lawyer to release this piece of moronic screech just so everyone could be certain that she’s just as much of an arsewedge as Peter Cook is:

“It is a measure of Peter Cook’s character that he has breached the confidentiality agreement that is in the divorce settlement and has sought to present this distorted one sided view of his marriage. Mr. Cook had his days in court, testified on his own behalf and ultimately agreed with the view of the children’s court appointed attorney and psychiatrist that the children should live principally with their mother and that she should be the sole custodial parent.”

It’s disappointing to see that Christie Brinkley has lowered herself to Peter Cook’s level by continuing to fling mud at each other in public like this, but at least they’re square now. This should be the end of it.

For about five seconds, anyway. At this rate we’ll be stunned if Peter Cook hasn’t released a six-volume autobiography entitled Mer Mer Mer Christie Brinkley Smells Like Badger Balls by the end of the day.