Even Shaggy relied on it at one point, though the dolt did ruin the get-out clause for the rest of us by making it public knowledge.

Now, as fate would have it and as the mole/artifact argument would have us believe, the man in the video being examined in the R Kelly child sex trial isn’t actually R himself. It is, as the defence have stated, a lookalike.

According to the defence, the man in the video must have had access to Kelly’s property and the video was edited to make it look as if Kelly himself was taking advantage of the underage girl.

Though they also claim that the girl in the video isn’t actually the one who claims to be the girl in the video, and is actually a different girl altogether. In the video.

This was ascertained by interviewing members of the original girl’s family, who all basically said ‘yeah, that’s not her’.

Still with us? We don’t blame you if you aren’t, seeing as apparently no one in the video is who they were originally claimed to be. Never mind ‘it wasn’t me’, apparently ‘it wasn’t anybody anyone knows, at all, ever, anywhere’. It’s certainly a bold defence, that much is for certain. As MTV reported:

The lawyers suggested that the man is a look-alike who lacks a large mole on his back that Kelly has, arguing that a mark on the man’s back comes and goes during the tape. However, they provided no leads on this man’s identity and admitted that he must have had access to R Kelly’s house.

The music-site-cum-ultimate-news-source went on:

The defence countered the statements from relatives of the girl on the tape by finding other relatives who testified to say that it wasn’t her, this helped their argument by spreading confusion.

You’re bloody well right it spread confusion. Now we don’t know who to believe, or what to believe, or even why to believe anything. hecklerspray prides itself on knowing everything there is to know, but these crafty lawhounds have ruined everything by being really, really, irritatingly confusing. How do they sleep at night?

Christ – they didn’t even call any star or surprise witnesses to throw everyone off and give us the surprise and joy that we all get through watching the trial of a major musician for serious crimes. Twats.

There are, fortunately, some things we do know:

1) R Kelly’s defence rested after just two days, clearly feeling confident that their campaign of sending sane minds into disarray will bring their client home free.

2) The prosecution is expected to recall video experts to analyse the footage. Again.

3) There are only a few stages left before a verdict is finally reached and Kelly is either released into a world where trial-by-tabloid incites fear in any celebrity, or he is sent down for abusing an adolescent. Neither of which will be that rosy for the R&B star.

The trial continues.

Really, it isn’t. R Kelly has a caterpillar-shaped mole on his back, you see, and the man in the R Kelly sex tape doesn’t have a caterp… oh wait, yes he does. Bum.

However, just because R Kelly and the man in the sex tape appear to have similarly-shaped birthmarks on the same part of their backs, it doesn’t make R Kelly guilty of anything. That’s because, according to a defence analyst yesterday, there aren’t any moles on the R Kelly sex tape at all – only artifacts. What’s an artifact? God knows. Let’s go!

Credit where credit’s due, R Kelly’s defence is really earning its money at the moment. Had it been us in charge of proving his innocence, we’d have sat through all the prosecution’s witnesses and video experts and then, when it was our turn, we’d have conceded because we couldn’t resist stopping R Kelly from releasing any more albums until the year 2023.

But not R Kelly’s defence, because that’s playing out of its skin right now. No matter what you throw at it, it’s got an answer. All those family members positively identifying the alleged victim in the sex tape? Here’s a bunch of family members negatively identifying the alleged victim in the sex tape. That woman who said she had threesomes with R Kelly and the alleged victim? She’s not very trustworthy, you know.

That mole on R Kelly’s back that seems to match the mole on the back of the man in the sex tape? Well, um, wait a minute.

No, hang on, that’s not a mole on Mr Sex Tape’s back. That’s an artifact. Forensic video analyst Charles Palm said so. So shove it, haterz. The Chicago Tribune reports:

When the sex tape is played at normal speed, the man’s naked back is visible for less than a second, and it’s difficult to spot any markings. But a prosecution witness last week showed jurors a freeze-frame image of the male participant’s back and pointed out what the witness called a mole to the left of his spine. Kelly’s defense team countered the potentially damaging testimony Thursday with their own expert, who described the markings as “artifacts” created by the tape’s poor quality and multiple reproductions.

It’s a completely feasible argument, because the recording in question is not the original tape, and could have been copied several times over. When that happens, all sorts of blips and scrapes can sneak onto the tape – like that old home video of us eating a picnic that, when copied, made it look as if were forcing a 14-year girl to urinate and call us ‘daddy’. It’s a common technical glitch, happens all the time.

While he was in court, Charles Palm also countered the prosecution’s claim that it would be impossible to doctor the tape in any way by showing the jury self-edited versions of the sex tape where he made the participants vanish from a hot tub and another one where he erased their heads for the duration.

According to Charles Palm, he managed to manipulate the tape in a couple of afternoons, putting a dirty, great hole in one of the prosecution’s main arguments.

True, that means he spent two whole afternoons watching illegal and degrading child sex acts in painful slow motion on a giant screen in a dark room and it’s probably made him afraid of all human intimacy for the rest of his life, but if it means R Kelly stays free to release new albums of sexy R&B every couple of years, then he can write it off as an acceptable loss.

Oh, who to believe? Well, since R Kelly’s defence began yesterday with testimonies from the accused sex tape victim’s relatives, all claiming that it wasn’t her who R Kelly was having it off with, our microscopic attention span means we’ll have to side with them.

So that’s it, R Kelly definitely didn’t have sex with the 14-year-old girl that everyone thinks he had sex with because the very few members of her family who didn’t say that R Kelly definitely did have sex with her say he didn’t. We can’t believe it was this obvious all along.

If you’ve been following the R Kelly child pornography trial so far, then a) congratulations, you’ll never be able to hear Everybody by the Backstreet Boys again without thinking of a child urinating for the sexual pleasure of a grown man, and b) you’ll have realised that everyone so far has been pretty sure that R Kelly is guilty of all the stuff he’s been accused of.

But that’s just because the prosecution has been hogging the limelight, with witnesses ranging from the alleged victim’s friends and family to R Kelly’s former employees, who all agree that R Kelly is the man in the sex tape.

And since the prosecution in the R Kelly child pornography trial rested earlier this week, it’s now time for the defence to have a bash at convincing everyone that R Kelly is guilty of nothing except making the occasional metaphor-heavy song about all the different things his cock can do.

So far it looks like the defence has an uphill task, because so far it appears that its two main arguments are that someone digitally transplanted R Kelly’s head onto someone else’s sex tape (Official FBI response: “What are you, stupid?“) and that it can’t be R Kelly in the sex tape because R Kelly has a mole on his back and the man in the tape hasn’t (Official response from everyone with eyes: “Hey geniuses, they’ve both got moles in exactly the same place”).

Chances are the defence will get to this in the coming days – but first it’s found a list of people who say that the accused victim in the sex tape isn’t who the prosecution says it is, as the Associated Press reports:

“It definitely wasn’t her,” said Shonna Edwards, when asked Wednesday whether the underage girl seen having sex with the Grammy winner on the video was her relative. The 27-year-old Edwards said she saw the tape for the first time several days ago in a lawyer’s office, telling jurors that the female’s body in the tape was too developed to be her relative at that time.

As well as Shonna Edwards, two other relatives of the accused victim denied that it was her, putting the current tally of family members who say it is her at four and isn’t her at three.

R Kelly’s defence also punctured the credibility of prosecution witness Lisa Van Allen – the woman who said that she had threesomes with R Kelly and the accused victim – with a witness who claims that she sought $300,000 from Kelly to keep quiet.

But with the R Kelly child pornography trial more than halfway over, what have we learnt so far? Well, not much. Except that if you keep writing about 14-year-old girls who wet themselves at the sound of the Backstreet Boys, eventually you’ll start instinctively wetting yourself at the sound of the Backstreet Boys as well, something we learnt recently in a crowded lift where some idiot decided to use Quit Playing Games With My Heart as their ringtone.

Because yesterday at the R Kelly child pornography trial… not much happened. Not much happened because the judge halted the trial for a day. And the judge halted the trial because a brand new ultra-mysterious secret witness for the defence has just descended onto the scene.

According to R Kelly’s defence, nobody knew this witness even existed until 9am yesterday morning when it received a phone call. It’s exciting, dramatic stuff and not even the judge knows what’s going on. We can’t wait! We want to be profoundly disappointed by the inevitable anticlimax now!

Although we’re aware that R Kelly’s defence hasn’t had a proper go yet, the R Kelly child pornography trial hasn’t especially been going great shakes for the singer so far.

The trial revolves around a video of a girl, possibly as young as 13, having all sorts of illegal piss sex with a man to the sound of the Backstreet Boys. Since R Kelly denies it’s him on the tape and the girl suspected to be the victim also denies that she’s on the tape, the onus is on the prosecution to find people who’ll identify both R Kelly and the girl.

Apparently, that’s not as hard as it seems, because everyone from friends of the girl to family members of the girl to R Kelly’s old employees have been lining up to claim that R Kelly is the man in the sex tape.

However, that could all be about to change dramatically with the sudden appearance of a previously-unknown witness for the defence, who’s apparently going to swoop in and save the day. BBC News reports:

Dramatic claims of a potential new defence witness have interrupted the trial of US R&B singer R Kelly on child sex charges. A lawyer for Mr Kelly informed the court in Chicago that the defence had not known about the new witness until he called them on Wednesday morning. The judge halted the trial for a day to allow time for the man to fly in from another state and make a deposition. “I have no idea what’s going on,” Judge Vincent Gaughan told the court.

Dramatic, huh? It’s just like an exciting courtroom drama, only it’s far slower and it’d never get shown on TV because a grown man shags a child and then pisses on her head in it.

We’re not too sure about what happens now. Will this surprise defence witness get wheeled out in court immediately, drop a giant bombshell and bring the R Kelly child pornography trial to a premature end? Or will the prosecution finish up its business before the witness is allowed to make a grand game-changing entrance?

Most importantly, do we still get to hear the witness’ testimony even if he turns out to be a funny-looking R Kelly superfan whose argument just consists of singing “I don’t see nothing wrong with a little bump and grind” several times in a row while doing a creepy little shuffle dance in the witness box?

Because we get the feeling that’s what’s going to happen, and we’d quite like to see the pastel courtroom sketch of that, please.