Nicole Kidman isn’t a traditional Hollywood star – for instance, rather than make one film that everyone loves, she’ll make ten films that everyone hates.

And this fierce sense of anti-establishment also includes the way she raises her daughter. When most moviestars have children, for example, they’ll sell pictures of the baby to a magazine for millions of dollars. But not that’s not how Nicole Kidman rolls.

Similarly when most moviestars have children, they’ll give interviews about how great it feels to be a mother and how wonderful their child is. But, again, Nicole Kidman doesn’t roll that way – which is why in her first big interview since the birth of her child, Nicole Kidman didn’t seem to do much except for shriek about how she doesn’t want to die and how she can’t stop crying. Attagirl, Nicole.

Nicole Kidman has been a mother for several years now, but that doesn’t count because a) her kids are adopted and b) they were adopted with Tom Cruise, which means they probably live in a cage with their eyes pinned open watching pro-Scientology propaganda interspersed with scenes from The Last Samurai. Probably.

So when Nicole Kidman gave birth to a baby daughter earlier this year, it was just like becoming a mother for the very first time. And with that birth came a wave of violently intense new emotions that Nicole Kidman had to deal with.

Admittedly you wouldn’t know it – over the last few years Nicole Kidman’s face has become so morbidly expressionless and bat-like that the only emotions she’s able to convincingly display are ‘ennui’, ‘mild displeasure’ and ‘corpse’ – but she has.

No, really, the birth of her baby has left Nicole Kidman in such a state that, as far as we can work out, she can’t stop crying because she’s always thinking about death. The Boston Herald reports:

“I’m raw and emotional… I cry even thinking of her. But they are tears of joy. Because I suppose I never thought I would get to (have a baby). To have been given it so late in life – I’m so ready for it… It’s very bittersweet. Because at 41, I think, ‘I want to see her 21st birthday, and I want to see her get married.’ My relationship with death used to be far more ambivalent… now it’s very much about staying in the world.”

Thinking logically it won’t be too hard for Nicole Kidman to stay alive until her daughter’s 21st birthday because by then she’ll only be 62 years old. And it’s not like she’ll be exhausted by the pressures of work either – it’s been so long since Nicole Kidman made a film that anybody actually liked that she should probably start thinking about semi-retirement as it is.

Because, honestly, it seems as though Nicole Kidman has got such a good handle on this motherhood lark that she should probably turn her hand to writing parenting guides, starting with a book for new mothers in their forties entitled NO! I DON’T WANT TO DIE! I’M SO AFRAID! ARRRRRRGH!

Or something.

We like our female athletes like we like our coffee – brutish and startlingly masculine – which is why we like Marion Jones so much.

Oh come on, you remember Marion Jones – the American athlete who won five medals at the 2000 Olympics and then lost them all because she was pumped up to the knockers on steroids, and then ended up getting thrown in jail for the exact same reason. Essentially Marion Jones is the Incredible Hulk, only bulkier and with a deeper voice.

Oprah Winfrey thinks so too, because yesterday Marion Jones appeared on her show in her first post-prison interview. Were there tears? Yes. Were there hamfisted stabs at self-help therapy-speak? Yes. Was there a moment where Marion Jones lost her temper with Oprah Winfrey, crushed her skull with one hand and javelined her dead body into the sun. No, no there wasn’t. And don’t think we’re not disappointed about that.

There’s a reason why Oprah Winfrey is such a powerful force in the media. No, it’s not because she’s so rich that she can afford to send all dissenters to her special school for child abuse, it’s because Oprah Winfrey believes in second chances.

It doesn’t matter how down on your luck you are – whether you’re a fat Scientologist who thinks she looks good in a bikini or a dwarfish Scientologist who just seems a bit creepy – Oprah Winfrey will always give you a second chance. Unless you’re French, in which case Oprah Winfrey thinks you can piss off, you racist.

Anyway, the latest recipient of Oprah Winfrey’s almighty wave of forgiveness is Marion Jones, the mannish athlete who was thrown in jail earlier this year because ate all the steroids before the Olympics eight years ago.

In case you don’t remember, at the 2000 Olympics Marion Jones won gold medals in the 100m, 200m and 4x400m relay and bronze in the 4x100m relay and the long jump although, in retrospect, it was probably because she kept stabbing loads of nandrolone into her gut. Since then, Marion Jones has been retired from athletics, been stripped of her medals and completed a six-month stint in jail for lying about the doping.

And that’s where Oprah stepped in. Yesterday, Oprah Winfrey allowed Marion Jones her first televised interview since leaving jail, but only on the condition that, according to Winfrey Law, Marion Jones had to babble some mawkish shit that sounds as if it was directly stolen from Chicken Soup For The Soup. AP reports:

Jones, 33, apologized to her teammates and tearfully read a letter she wrote in prison, in which she told her children she lied to federal prosecutors because she didn’t love herself enough to tell the truth… “I don’t have athletics anymore to hide behind,” Jones said. “In the past, it was Marion Jones, the athlete. … I don’t have that cover anymore. I have really had to find out who I am and why I make certain choices.”

Marion Jones didn’t love herself enough to tell the truth. That’s disgusting. What sort of a mother would write a thing like that in a letter to her children? She didn’t love herself enough? It’s bad enough that their mother went to jail for lying about her steroid use – the last thing they’d want to hear is an explanation of how often she got to masturbate.

That is what she meant, right?

This just in – the paparazzi makes Nicole Kidman sad. Actually, that's a lie – we don't know how the paparazzi makes Nicole Kidman feel now – but in January 2005 the paparazzi definitely made Nicole Kidman sad.

How sad? Sad enough for Nicole Kidman to turn up in court yesterday and legally testify that a photographer made her cry by trying to take her picture back on January 23, 2005. As part of a defamation suit against an Australian newspaper by Jamie Fawcett, the photographer in question, Nicole Kidman showed up at the New South Wales State Supreme Court in Sydney to say that she was reduced to tears when Fawcett chased her almost three years ago. This news will come as an incredible surprise to anyone who, like us, presumed that Nicole Kidman's tear-ducts were Botoxed into everlasting paralysis long, long ago.

Aside from the money, fame, glamour, jet-set lifestyle and the comforting thought that she never has to work again, Nicole Kidman has a lot to cry about. There was her failed marriage to Tom Cruise, for example, and the way she never seems able to have the children she's dreamt of for so long. There's the way that Nicole Kidman's current husband is a recovering alcoholic and the way that Nicole Kidman hasn't made a decent film for six years. Then there's the weird sonar/ rape alarm noise that Nicole Kidman does at the end of her Nintendo DS advert.

No, wait, that's us. That noise Nicole Kidman does makes us cry.

But anyway, you can see our point. Nicole Kidman has a lot to cry about. Whether she's actually cried about any of those things is another matter, though. But what we do know for sure is that Nicole Kidman definitely cried on January 23, 2005 – because yesterday she told an Australian court that she did.

Nicole Kidman testified as part of a defamation suit against Sydney's Sun-Herald newspaper by photographer Jamie Fawcett, who the paper claimed was Sydney's "most inventive and disliked freelance photographer… determined to wreak havoc on Kidman's private life." Although the court has already found that the newspaper defamed Fawcett, Nicole Kidman's testimony was needed to help establish what amount of damages Fawcett should be paid.

That'll be hardly any if Nicole Kidman gets her way, because her testimony yesterday hinted that Fawcett was lucky not to have caused a pile-up:

"I have been pursued many times. I have had this happen in relation to this particular man…so many times. [The driver] said they were driving crazy and that they had run red lights and jumped the median strip. I was frightened, and I was worried about a car accident…. I employ people to protect me now. I employ people 24 hours to protect myself, because I don't feel equipped to handle things."

Although Nicole Kidman has helped to shine a light on all the distress that celebrities must constantly deal with at the hands of persistent photographers, there is at least one up-side to the story – at least we know that Nicole Kidman is still capable of believable emotion. After The Invasion and The Stepford Wives and Bewitched, we had begun to worry.

Here it is, folks – a fully-fledged institution as inevitable as a rancid fart after a Happy Meal. The Celebrity Haiku Competition.

Usual prize up for grabs: two whole packets of delicious Space Raiders crisps. The best intergalactic-themed corner shop snack in existence? Damn right. And you could be in with a chance of munching down on 'em within, oohh, a week or so. Possibly.

This week we're looking at pompous fashion-fascists Trinny And Susannah. But – before we kick off our festivities – let's just see who claimed victory last week…

Seven days ago, we asked you to come up with the best haiku about the fact that The Queen had been voted one of the world's most glamorous women by Vogue magazine. The winner was a chap called Sparkymike, whose poetic ode ran like this:

Elizabeth reigns

Vogue thinks she is glamorous

(The Braille edition)

Pretty good, sonny-boy. Send us your details and we'll send you your crisps.

As for the rest of you, why don't you take a look at this week's subject:

TV fashion presenters Trinny And Susannah say they don't feel guilty about making their unfortunate 'makeover' victims frequently burst into tears.

All you have to do is remember the golden haiku rule: five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables. Technically – as someone called JBollocks wrote to tell us – you're not really allowed to split lines over verses, but we're a rebellious bunch here at hecklerspray, so we don't much care if you do that or not. An example would look like this:

Trinny and her pal

want to change your clothes. Why not

tell them to fuck off?

Think you can do better? Entries in the comment box, kids…