This is meant to be some kind of a cynical pop-culture website, right? Most of you are looking at the name in the title and wondering which celebrity has forcibly trapped a lesbian in the back of a transit van before inserting their penis inside them for the pleasure of a pod of watching aquatic mammals, right? Wrong.

It doesn’t matter that Dick Van Dyke might be an 84 year old man who has done little since being in Diagnosis Murder, which finished in 2001 (coincidence? It’s safe to assume that it was pulled off the air because Osama Bin Laden was a fan. By entertaining terrorists, we’re letting them win, kids)

It doesn’t matter that, if anyone recognises him they are either a student, are unemployable or are one of the few people in the country who have coherent memories of family Christmases. It doesn’t matter because he was in Mary Poppins for god’s sake. Show some respect. Like the porpoises did.

Yeah, that’s right.

Dick Van Dyke is apparently some kind of freaky animal whisperer, beloved by all the animals in the sea. DigitalSpy picks up the Story Of The Year (seriously, can you get a Pulitzer for reporting on fluffy internet stories? Someone needs to be rewarded for bringing this to the public’s attention):

“Dick Van Dyke was reportedly rescued by a school of porpoises after he floated out to sea on a surfboard. According to WENN, the Mary Poppins and Diagnosis Murder star fell asleep on his board while at the beach. Van Dyke reportedly explained: “I woke up out of sight of land… and I started paddling with the swells and I started seeing fins swimming around me and I thought, ‘I’m dead!’.”They turned out to be porpoises [and] they pushed me all the way to shore. I’m not kidding.”

Yeah, they’re apparently not kidding.

It needs repeating though: Dick Van Dyke, the man you remember as the perfectly-voiced, singing and dancing cockney with a slightly too-adult relationship with Mary Poppins (they were totally doing it. Check them out on the dance they do with the cartoon penguins), and the star of this seemingly unending sentence, was saved by freaking porpoises.

Doesn’t that make you feel glad you got up this morning? Isn’t it a nice change from reading about how X Factor contestants are all blubbering sacks of crap that you wouldn’t choose to listen to even if they were forced by law to sing into a into a silencer for a high powered rifle while staying  at least 100 paces from you at all times? Or that Amy Winehouse has fallen down some stairs and now smells a bit mingent? Of course it is. Now go and spread the joy!

Don’t worry, this isn’t a new direction for HecklerSpray, we’ll be back to being awful, hatefilled ballsacks in about half an hour. Unless Dick does something else awesome, like command his army of rhesus monkeys to invade the pentagon or something.

XBox Kinect

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter or join our Facebook group

Hayden Panettiere is best-known for being the cheerleader from Heroes who can mangle up her body and then spontaneously regenerate – either that or being the one from Heroes that makes you feel the most like a dirty old man.

However, if you're from Japan then Hayden Panettiere is a high-profile fugitive who hates Japanese culture to such an extent that she's in a huge amount of trouble for it. Admittedly that's because the part of Japanese culture that Hayden Panettiere hates the most is the way they slaughter dolphins – and her surfboard-based pre-dawn attempts to disrupt a dolphin cull last month has resulted in a Japanese arrest warrant being placed on Hayden Panettiere's head. Forget 'save the cheerleader, save the world'; this is a case of 'arrest the cheerleader, curtail a potentially knotty international diplomatic incident'.

Also, it's thought that – following Hayden Panettiere's Japanese arrest warrant – the schizophrenic porno girl from Heroes who used to be in Dawson's Creek has decided to keep her controversial anti-Hello Kitty sentiments to herself for now.

Of all the western TV shows ever made, only two have really stood out for their love of Japanese culture. One was Tenko – which concerned itself with the ancient Japanese practise of putting bits of glass in Stephanie Beacham's dinner – and the other is Heroes, thanks to the break-out success of lovable Japanese geek Hiro. Heroes loves Japan.

But Japan doesn't love Heroes back, because the cute cheerleader girl from the show keeps trying to stop them killing dolphins all the time. And now that cute cheerleader girl – Hayden Panettiere – is going to get arrested for it.

The story started last month when, along with five of her friends, Hayden Panettiere paddled out to sea on a surfboard to to try and disrupt attempts by local fishermen to slaughter a bunch of dolphins; only to become trapped by the fishermen, who contained her with their boat propellers and pushed her with sticks until they got to kill the dolphins like they wanted to. At the time Hayden Panettiere described the dolphins as:

"So pretty. They were teddy bears in the water. They slowed down and started gathering in the net towards us. This little baby popped its head out and looked at us and all of us just wanted to cut them out of the nets and set them free.”

However, so infuriated are the Japanese by Hayden Panettiere's actions that they've placed an arrest warrant on her head. Although Hayden was stunned into silence when she was told of this on live Australian TV yesterday, she's since put out this statement:

“Obviously this issue has generated defensive behaviour on the part of both the Japanese Authorities and Fishermen,” she said in the statement. “I have grown up hearing – and adhering to – this phrase: ‘condemnation without investigation dooms one to everlasting ignorance.’ We must unite as a world to solve our increasing international environmental crises. We can no longer hide [behind] out-dated, senseless cultural traditions and lazy, bad habits that are resulting in the annihilation of our planet’s resources and the extinction of our species.”

Of course, it could be argued that Hayden Panettiere's actions and statements show a lack of understanding of the greater issue here. For example, if it wasn't for the dolphin cull, Japanese fishermen wouldn't have a livelihood. Plus, the Japanese Fisheries ministry maintains that the dolphin slaughter is done in a highly-sustainable way. And also, Hayden should be thankful to the Japanese for killing all the dolphins, because if those buggers ever grow legs and thumbs and decide to invade dry land then that's us done for, buddy.

But it's unlikely that Hayden Panettiere will ever willingly go to Japan to get arrested, so all of this is moot. And that leaves the Japanese government with two real options here – either they can capture Hayden Panettiere and ship her off to Japan in a cargo ship to torture her for two years like the Chinese did with Jack Bauer that one time, or they can redub all the imported episodes of Heroes so that Hayden's voice sounds a bit stupid. We're fine with either of those.