So from that we can assume that Britney Spears will be singing in Madonna's video, right? Not quite. Dancing? Close, but no cigar.

Instead, Madonna's video requires Britney Spears to smash up the inside of an elevator while screaming her lungs out like some sort of crazy, red-eyed bitch from hell.

It's a stretch, we know, but somehow we think Britney Spears will be able to pull it off. We've seen Crossroads, after all, so we know what a versatile actor she can be when she's essentially limited to playing herself.

It's got lost in the din of her alleged impending divorce, but Madonna is going out on tour soon. It's going to be awesome, or at least as awesome as something that involves spending a week's wages to watch a middle-aged woman singing a) rubbish songs from her new album and b) good songs from years ago to demonstrate her recent drop-off in quality can be.

And a Madonna tour wouldn't be a Madonna tour without a great big dollop of controversy, whether it's simulated masturbation, fake crucifixions or funny-looking bras. This time around, as we all know, the controversy is coming courtesy of Britney Spears, who has made a video for Madonna's tour.

Why is Britney Spears such a controversial choice for Madonna? Haven't you been paying attention? It's because Britney Spears is so mentally unwell that she has to be accompanied on trips to the toilet. She's so mental that a court would rather let Kevin Federline look after her children than her.

She's so mental that people look back on the time she rubbed dogshit on her dress and fondled herself in front of a crowd as a sort of long-lost golden age when everything was lovely.

So that's why Britney Spears is a controversial choice for Madonna – but what will she actually be doing in the video? Fortunately, E! Online has found out:

Britney, partially disguised by a gray hoodie, walks into the elevator. As she starts traveling upward, she seems particularly nervous and anxious. The popster starts pacing back and forth. Then she progresses to kicking and smacking the walls, all frantic-like. She screams into one of the cameras. Then she starts climbing the wall, pulls down her hood and, into another camera, says: "It's Britney, bitch."

You see, it's funny because it's true. Britney Spears is poking fun at her own misadventures, like when she smashed up that car with an umbrella that time.

It's a nice marketing ploy – it reminds the world that Britney Spears hasn't disappeared completely, while tipping a nod to her mental troubles – and we just hope that Madonna can convince other stars to reference their darkest moments in the name of entertainment too.

That'd be excellent – maybe Madonna's old friend Naomi Campbell can make a video of her beating up a policeman to the beat of True Blue, or Madonna's other old friend Vanilla Ice can film himself punching his wife to Hanky Panky. Ask nicely and perhaps she could even get Whitney Houston to play with a vibrator on crack in a funny and postmodern way. We'd watch tha… no, wait. We wouldn't watch that.

Definitely not.

Listen – all this leaves us a little bit confused. If Britney Spears is mocking her recent mental breakdown, does that make it OK for us to start mocking it again without feeling like bastards too?

And think of poor Chris Crocker.

What if he's so upset by the mockery in Britney's video that he starts screaming "Leave Britney alone!" at Britney Spears herself? Wouldn't that create some kind of unstable time/space paradox? Wouldn't that literally cause his head to explode?

Because if it does, that should really be Madonna's opening video.

Mathematics exams, for example. Or being subjected to a slideshow of holiday snaps. Or wading through the 746,983 comments along the lines of ‘OMG, OMG, why r u such haters, Pete Doherty is a legend, I luv u Pete !!!!!!!1111′ that hecklerspray receives every single day.

Nothing, though, matches the sheer soul-crippling nightmare you’re about to see. Footage has only just been released of a peculiar event in 1999, in which magazine writer Nicholas White popped out of his high-storey New York office for a cigarette. He took the elevator. It stopped. And he was stuck.

For forty hours.

Want to see that condensed into three minutes? Hell – we don’t care if you do or not. Here it is anyway.