But not this year! Oh no, this year is completely different – this year we’ve got some real news for you! And that news? Matt Dillon was caught driving his car a little bit faster than he should! And he got arrested! In VERMONT!

No, really, this is big news. Huge news. Matt Dillon is one of the most famous actors in the world and… oh wait, it’s not 1988 any more, is it? OK, carry on. Sorry.

We’ve always had a soft spot for Matt Dillon, and that’s why you’ve never seen a hecklerspray story written about him. It’s not because Matt Dillon is such a thundering charisma vacuum that he could set himself on fire and run through the streets machine-gunning kittens while repeatedly screaming his own name into a loudhailer made of matted blood and toddler-hair and you’d still be hard pushed to find anyone who’d care. It’s because we’ve got a soft spot for him.

But, look, let’s not kid ourselves. This is January 2. Nothing has happened. Nothing ever happens on January 2. We’re so desperate for stuff to write about that we’re completely prepared to pretend that people care about the minor legal infractions allegedly committed by past-it James Dean impersonators who once chose to star in both Herbie: Fully Loaded and You, Me And Dupree within a particularly harrowing 13-month timespan.

And that’s why we’re pleased to report that Matt Dillon has been arrested for driving his car at 106mph in a 65mph zone. In Vermont. In a rented car. A red rented car. But wait! That’s not all – MSBNC reports:

Dillon, of New Rochelle, N.Y., was photographed, fingerprinted and released with a citation to appear at Orange County Court, police said.

OK, actually that was all. Matt Dillon drove a car quite fast, got arrested for it and was released. What happens next is anyone’s guess – chances are that if Matt Dillon is found guilty of speeding then he might have to complete a community service sentence, possibly in a field that he’s already an expert at. And that means he’ll have to teach some deprived kids how to either a) mumble a lot or b) drive a red rented car at 106mph in a 65mph zone in Vermont. Because they are the only two things that Matt Dillon is good at. And the second one seems a little bit counterproductive, frankly.

However, at least by allegedly speeding Matt Dillon has broken his hecklerspray duck, and we look forward to writing about him again in the year 2013 when he does something equally newsworthy, like prodding a cat with a pencil or thinking about some crisps or whatever. We can’t wait!

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But not any more – not since Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora was arrested for driving his Hummer around Laguna Beach all shitfaced with his 10-year-old daughter in the passenger seat.

Unsurprisingly the police have taken a rather dim view to it all, and have recommended that prosecutors go all out to hit him with a misdemeanor child endangerment charge. But, really, whatever criminal charges may or may not be be brought against him, Richie Sambora will have to live with the emotional upset that comes with knowing that he endangered the life of his daughter in a moment of stupidity. And, on top of the emotional upset he’s already got from being in a really rubbish band, that’s going to be quite a lot of upset.

Between his terrible mullety haircut, his propensity for getting hammered, his awful band and his role in Earth’s stupidest-ever love triangle, Richie Sambora has enough on his plate at the moment. With so many conflicting desires, it’s no surprise that Richie ended up taking the easy way out.

Actually, that’s a lie. Getting arrested on suspicion of drunk driving while your daughter is in the car isn’t actually all that easy at all – you have to get drunk, find your car keys, round up your 10-year-old daughter, convince her that taking a ride with her obviously drunk father is a good thing to do, focus on the road long enough to pull out of the drive and then somehow manage to catch the attention of the police, all before the booze wears off – but you catch our drift.

And that’s what Richie Sambora managed to do recently. At the end of last month, Richie Sambora was arrested on suspicion of DUI with his daughter as a passenger. Richie still hasn’t been charged with anything yet, but the police seem pretty hell-bent on making the whole ‘child endangerment’ thing as official as possible. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Bon Jovi star Richie Sambora will be charged with misdemeanor DUI and child endangerment, if police officials get their way. The rocker’s daughter and her cousin were passengers in his vehicle when Sambora was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving last month, and police want prosecutors to get tough with him.

If it turns out that Richie Sambora really was driving drunk with his daughter in tow, then he probably deserves whatever charges can be hurled at him. Drunkenly smash your car into a tree and die, shame on you. Drunkenly smash your car into a tree drunk and kill your daughter then double shame on you, you massive boozy halfwit. That’s how it goes, isn’t it?

But just because Richie Sambora potentially faces a child endangerment charge, it doesn’t mean that he’s automatically going to jail. It’s just a misdemeanor child endangerment charge, so perhaps if Richie’s convicted he can get away with community service at a local factory and nothing more.

If that’s the case, though, perhaps it’s best not to let Richie anywhere near the forklift. Especially not if the factory’s anywhere near a primary school.

Read more:

Police Want To Get Tough With Sambora – SFGate

But anyway, back to the rebellion. Time was that to be a rebel you only had to get drunk and drive around in your car for a while. But now that everyone from Paris Hilton to most of the stars of Lost have done that, the bar had to be raised. Which is why Richie Sambora apparently got drunk and drove around with his own 10-year-old daughter in the car with him.

And now Richie Sambora might be hit with child endangerment charges for it. How many times, Richie? You should only get drunk and endanger the lives of your passengers when your passengers are the other members of Bon Jovi, not kids. That's just stupid, although the Bon Jovi thing really should be actively encouraged.

If Richie Sambora could learn one thing from being in Bon Jovi, it's that driving along a road is a suitable metaphor for life. Crossroads, Lost Highway, Seat Next To You, Born To Be My Baby, It's My Life – all songs that very clearly state that life is like a road. However, hardened Joviists – once their brain medication wears off – will be able to tell you that not one of these songs mentions veering about this road all shitfaced with a terrified ten-year-old girl in the passenger seat.

Richie Sambora needs to do some boning up on the wisdom of Bon Jovi, in that case.

Although Richie Sambora's struggles with alcohol are well known, possibly stemming from having to balance having the world's most complicated love life with being in the world's most fist-gnawingly awful band, up until now he'd managed to avoid combining getting hammered on booze with bombing around in a car with his own daughter in it.

But on Tuesday night that's exactly what Richie Sambora was arrested for. The New York Daily News reports:

Rocker Richie Sambora could face criminal charges of child endangerment after being busted on a DUI charge Tuesday night. Cops in Laguna Beach, Calif., tell us they're investigating whether there's enough evidence to hold the Bon Jovi guitarist responsible for putting his 10-year-old daughter, Ava, and another child at risk. Police pulled over Sambora, 48, at 10:52 p.m. on the Pacific Coast Highway after spotting his car "weaving within lanes," Laguna Beach Sgt. Jason Kravetz tells us. "The officers smelled alcohol on his breath and did several field sobriety tests. He failed [all of them] and was arrested."

Richie Sambora is due in court on May 7, although he's yet to be charged with anything pending results of a blood test. If the tests do test positive for alcohol, though, the extent of Sambora's fall from grace will be immense. Of all the boneheaded things you could possibly do, weaving around on a road drunk with your own child on board is right up there with trying to dislodge pieces of biscuit from plug sockets with your tongue and, well, being in Bon Jovi.

Hopefully this arrest will have some long-term benefits, though – the shock should be enough to sent him back to rehab where he can take his recovery seriously. Plus if Richie Sambora ends up going to prison, Bon Jovi won't be able to release any more albums for a while. Great – if only more acts we didn't like seriously endangered the lives of their own children while drunk. Oh Johnny Borrell, when will you have children just so you can almost drive them into a tree?

Read more:

Richie Sambora busted for DUI – New York Daily News 

And while the former goes woefully unpunished, the latter at least has seen Britney Spears get banned from driving a car while her children are onboard. A judge hit Britney Spears with the ban on Friday after video emerged of her running a red light on a busy Los Angeles interchange, but Britney is damned if she's going to take this news sitting down – we've heard that she's ready to exploit the wide open 'car-only' loophole in the ban by transporting her two sons around town in a succession of tanks, saddled grizzly bears, fireballs and robot pterodactyls made from shards of broken syringe-glass from now on.

We don't know about you, but we're slowly becoming more and more resigned to the fact that the child custody battle between Britney Spears and Kevin Federline is never going to end, not even when Sean Preston and Jayden James are pensioners and Britney and Kevin's lawyers are just fighting on behalf of two dead piles of dust – although in that scenario we'd imagine that dead dustpile Britney Spears would make a more convincing pop star that the current barely-alive Britney Spears.

Anyway, the Britney Spears/ Kevin Federline child custody case is rattling on, with the now-familiar pattern of Britney Spears getting filmed doing something dumb and Kevin Federline dragging everyone to court and Britney Spears getting a slap on the wrist showing no sign of letting up. And this latest incident, in case you've managed to get this far without actually reading any words, is about Britney Spears' driving skills.

Britney Spears is known for being a terrible driver, whether she's speeding around with a kid perched beltless on her lap, or with a kid in a poorly-installed baby seat or smashing into another car and then walking away – all without a valid California driving license. But the thing that's caused the new upset is the video of Britney Spears running a red light at an LA interchange with her two sons onboard and a mobile phone held an inch to her face, even though people were all shouting "Red light!" at her while she was doing it.

Needless to say, Kevin Federline took the whole thing back to court for another hearing – with a photographer apparently testifying against Britney – and the result is that Britney Spears has been indefinitely banned from driving her children around. A source told People magazine that:

"The tape of Britney running the red light was not viewed today, but it was a major point of the hearing. Britney's lawyers brought in an expert who argued that, for whatever reason, Britney could have made the turn through the red light."

If Sean Preston or Jayden James were old enough to understand, we're sure that they'd be relieved – by banning Britney Spears from driving them the judge has effectively reduced the chances of them getting mangled in a car accident, increasing the possibility that they're grow up to become the emotionally-crippled, undereducated, socially-inept adults that they've always had the potential to be.

Officially the Britney Spears/ Kevin Federline child custody case is due back in court on November 26, which means that realistically Kevin Federline will only drag the circus back to court for emergency hearings another billion or so times before that. 

Although it's becoming increasingly clear that Britney Spears is even worse at driving than she is at remembering where her knicker drawer is, the poor girl doesn't seem to be learning at all. That much is clear from the video footage that's been released of Britney Spears running a red light in her car in Los Angeles. With her children as passengers. And her mobile phone about an inch away from her face. And a bunch of panicking paparazzi screaming "Red light! Red light!" at her. And now that Kevin Federline has got wind of this video, it means that there's going to be yet another Britney Spears court hearing set for the middle of the week. Fun.

You know how all girls like to have a fat friend to make themselves look thinner than they are when they're out? Well, it seems as if Britney Spears is adopting the fat friend principle to make aspects of her own life look better than they are. For instance, if anyone else had turned in a performance as shocking as Britney Spears did at the MTV VMAs they'd be out of a career – but compared to the rest of Britney's knicklerless, bald-headed car-crash of a life her routine was actually vaguely decent.

And if you thought that Britney Spears was in the middle of an all-time worst personal slump now that she keeps losing custody of her children – to Kevin Federline, for God's sake – and can't even manage a five-minute radio interview without ditching it midway through to drift about aimlessly, then let's just remember what a genuinely awful driver Britney Spears is.

Britney Spears has already got in trouble for the following: a) Driving with her son perched on her lap, b) driving with her son's baby-seat facing in the wrong direction, c) crashing her car into another car and walking away and d) driving without a valid California driving license – but that obviously isn't enough. And that might be why Britney Spears recently tried to combine as many of these things as possible in one fell swoop.

This weekend TMZ posted a video of Britney Spears running a red light on a busy interchange with her children in her car and her mobile phone held right up to her face, despite several cars honking at her and swarms of ever-present paparazzi shouting warnings at her. And now it looks as if this video is going to cost Britney her hard-fought visitation rights, because Kevin Federline has seen it and has set up yet another court hearing for Wednesday. So, you know, expect another flood of 'Britney Spears loses her children' stories on Thursday.

But whatever you think of Britney Spears recklessly endangering the lives of her children by making illegal red-light turns on busy intersections, it's important to remember that Britney Spears is a pop star and driving badly like a rebel is exactly the sort of thing that pop stars do, as Britney's lawyer is so fond of pointing out. Of course, it might be worth pointing out to Britney Spears that another part of being a pop star is convincingly making and promoting records that don't sound like an emotionally-distressed robot short-circuiting in the Geiger counter room of a leaking nuclear substation, but that's a technicality so shut up.