There are two major disappointments about the Beverly Hills 90210 spin-off – the first one is that it’s a sack of balls.

The second is that there’s no Tori Spelling. We’d assumed that Tori Spelling was a shoo-in to appear on 90210, what with it being the show she’s most associated with and her being such a rubbish actor that she’d be grateful of the work and all. But it wasn’t to be.

Not until now, anyway – Tori Spelling is returning to 90210, which will be great news for the three people who watch 90210, are old enough to remember Tori Spelling and aren’t recovering lobotomy patients.

Like many people, when we heard that a new spin-off of hateful early-1990s teen drama Beverly Hills 90210 - a show about braying arseholes made by braying arseholes for braying arseholes – our first reaction was to fall to the floor clutching our temples in agony.

Once that went away, though, we assumed that 90210 would be the perfect excuse to re-employ some of the stars of the original series. They’ve all dropped off the radar in recent years and would probably work for scraps, plus it’d be a nice lineage to the show’s previous generation.

All the old gang wanted in – Shannon Doherty returned as Brenda Walsh for a few episodes, Jennie Garth returned as Kelly Taylor for a few episodes, Jason Priestley is apparently going to direct an upcoming episode, and who can forget Hillary Swank‘s hilarious cameo as the disabled transsexual who chewed through her own tongue to quicken her own death? Happy days. But there was no Tori Spelling.

Sure, Tori Spelling had been approached to star in 90210, but that soon fell apart. Why? Well reports at the time seemed to suggest that Tori Spelling wanted more money than producers were willing to pay, but we think we know the truth – Tori Spelling really wanted to see if 90210 was going to be lousy enough for her standards.

You see, Tori Spelling doing anything good in her life would be a tremendous oversight. What if she agreed to be in 90210 and everyone loved it? That would have really overshadowed her voiceover work on one episode of Biker Mice From Mars and the made for TV movie Mother, May I Sleep With Danger, wouldn’t it?

Luckily, though, enough time has passed for Tori Spelling to see that fewer and fewer people are watching 90210 and that it was axed in Australia after a handful of episodes and that it’s utter dog-piddle from start to finish. So with that in mind, guess what? Tori’s back in! People reports:

Looks like Donna Martin will return to 90210 after all! Tori Spelling is in “final negotiations” to return to the world’s most famous zip code, a show rep confirms to PEOPLE. The actress, who was set to star in the CW’s spin-off when it was announced — but then had “no plans” to join the show for its fall debut — is close to finalizing a deal to be in multiple episodes.

OK, so maybe it’s not a completely done deal that Tori Spelling is returning to 90210, but we can guarantee that – even if she doesn’t – Donna Martin will definitely make an appearance. And when we say ‘Donna Martin’ we mean ‘a heat-warped Marilyn Monroe waxwork dummy’. It’s the same thing, really.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!