It’s becoming clear that Eminem and Mariah Carey are the Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor of pop.

No, wait, that’s wrong. We meant to say that Eminem and Mariah Carey are the honking, toothless, meth-addicted, redneck, laundry-airing Jerry Springer guests of pop. Yes, that’s better.

So far, Eminem wrote a song about having sex with Mariah Carey, then Mariah Carey wrote a song calling Eminem obsessed, and now Eminem has written a song threatening to release voicemails and nude pictures of Mariah. Coming soon, Mariah says that Eminem runs like a girl and has fleas and wets the bed. IDST.

Not since Hilary Duff said something vaguely obtuse about Faye Dunaway’s age has a celebrity spat gripped the world like this. Mariah Carey (a woman who’s about to bring a new album out) and Eminem (a man who recently brought a new album out and has a bit-part in a new movie that just happens to be released in America today) are at each other’s throats.

It’s thrilling. Eminem and Mariah Carey don’t care any more. They don’t care if they hurt themselves, they don’t care if they hurt each other, they don’t care if all of this tedious bickering helps to mutually raise their profiles and spur on dramatic increases in the number of records that they both sell. It’s crazy – they’re literally out of control.

It all stems from the relationship that Eminem and Mariah Carey had back in 2001, during one of the brief windows where Mariah wasn’t having a mental breakdown and Eminem wasn’t busy divorcing and remarrying his wife. Eminem referred to the relationship in his song Bagpipes From Baghdad, which we haven’t heard because it’s got the words ‘bagpipes’ and ‘Baghdad’ in the title and therefore probably sounds like a goat having its diaphragm pummelled.

But anyway, whatever Eminem said in the song, it was enough to make Mariah Carey dress up as a man and call Eminem a liar in her new song, entitled Obsessed. And this, somewhat inevitably, has caused Eminem to write another song about Mariah Carey, The Warning, in which he variously:

* Threatens to release a number of intimate phonecalls and photographs from their time together

* Describes an encounter where he accidentally ejaculated onto Mariah Carey’s stomach

* Calls Mariah Carey an ‘alcoholic’, a ‘liar’ and a ‘whore’

* Inevitably opens the door for Mariah Carey to release yet another song about Eminem – possibly accompanied by a video where she’s dressed up as a monkey or a unicorn or something – that goes on and on and on and on and on and forces Emimen to write yet another poxy bloody song about her.

But we’ve teased you for long enough – here’s The Warning by Eminem…

Now, whoever you choose to side with here, it’s probably fair to say that neither Eminem or Mariah Carey comes out of this looking particularly good. If you ask us, there’s nothing more pathetic than when someone starts publicly insulting another figure for no other reason than to boost their own warped desire for attention.

Which reminds, us – that Robert Pattinson, eh? What an arsehole.

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Hecklerspray truly believes there will come a day when we’ll wake up and stand on a conveyor belt. First we’ll slide past the pee station, then we’ll brush our teeth, we’ll choose a daily gender and then we’ll probably eat some porridge that a robot made for us.

Perhaps the pee station should be after the gender changing one – it’d be more convenient that way if we’re too tired to pull down our pants after being girls the day before.

Until that day, everyone except Mariah Carey‘ll just have to live with what God or scalpel has given us.

M. Carey seems to be jumping on some kind of a bandwagon. After all – it was just last week or something that we found out Cher’s daughter was giving in to her life long battle of not having a penis.

Wait – you don’t even know what we’re talking about, do you? Well this is it – Mariah Carey is a man now. Temporarily. For a music video. It’s a dig at Eminem. The New York Daily News can delve out the specifics:

“This is not your everyday poseur Eminem wannabe – it’s Mariah Carey, who dressed as the controversial rapper while filming her new video “Obsessed” in New York today. You may recall that in Eminem’s “Bagpipes From Baghdad” song, he warns Carey’s husband, Nick Cannon, to “back the f— up.”"

We’re told that in order to keep a hormonal balance in the house, Nick Cannon is probably gonna start wearing sun dresses. He’s already got a decent collection, and now he feels he can break them out without causing as awkward a pause in the conversation. Imagine the freedom he’s probably feeling for the first time right now.

We’d just like to know how far Carey is willing to take this whole becoming-Eminem thing. We all know she’s been talking about him for long enough, but if she ever shows up to D12 band practice or divorces Kim Mathers 100 times, well that might just be too much for all to bare.

But we’re not saying we wouldn’t write about it.

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Nevertheless, the tween ceremony which has produced an average of one genuine laugh per every three years – not a bad statistic – has a new notch on the bedpost where they can proudly boast ‘we made a website that doesn’t like Robert Pattison laugh. A bit’.

Why? Well: Sacha Baron Cohen’s gay Austrian fashion journalist creation, Bruno, landed half-naked in the lap of Marshall Mathers‘ gay-disliking American irritant/rapper, Eminem.

That’s a lot of bold.

While Americans are still to get really used to the fact that Cohen isn’t actually any of the men he claims to be, hard as it is to believe, the British have had his antics for a decade now and really aren’t too shocked any more with anything he does.

Which also means there isn’t any shock that events like this are staged. Because it’s an MTV event. They are actually an evil corporation and they want to stay on the good side of artists (using the term in a fashion so loose it simply doesn’t hold itself up without a belt).

What this means is that no, they probably didn’t spring this on Eminem. All the speculation that came after the event, which saw everyone’s favourite rappist teabagged by a genuinely funny man, was unnecessary.

The ‘revelation’ by Perez Hilton that he hears it was set up? Unnecessary.

The speculation on countless blogs and traditional news sites the world over as to the ballsack-to-face and how genuine it was? Unnecessary.

The posting of a story decrying all these people as fools on a reasonably popular, award-winning celebrity news blog? Unne… oh no, wait – necessary.

Hopefully our cutting wit and cynical take on the situation will force Baron Cohen to take things to the a new level for his next stunt – he can be a new David Blaine. Except with discernible talent, a personality and the ultimate saving grace of not being a massive prick.

But what could the new street magician of comedy do? Yes, as we’re so smart (and have run out of things to say), here’s a list:

1. Stage a coup at the next ‘youth’ award ceremony he is invited to, taking over from the main hosts and declaring the show as his own. This could possibly involve murder, cutlasses and Mark Thatcher, depending on how far Cohen wants to take it.

2. Take the humiliation of a popular celebrity angle up a notch by kidnapping one – say, Robert Pattison – keeping him locked in a cellar and frequently abusing and humiliating him over a period of months or years. He could even record it, if he’s feeling particularly fruity.

3. Destroy MTV, thus bringing about the end of the disgusting corporation and finally bringing about the fall of their dominion over the music you people listen to. This would thusly pave the way for a better society where people actually listen to good music. And not the fucking Jonas Brothers. In 3D.

This will probably be taken down by the time you see this, but still try and do a watch of Eminem getting teabagged by Bruno here.

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Remember when yappy-voiced rapper Eminem yelled at us to “lose yourself” in isn’t-life-tough-in-trailer-trash-rappy-land film 8 Mile?

Sorry if you were inspired at the time to put on some baggy trousers, spit some phat lyrics and mug a pensioner, because it turns out Eminem wasn’t just talking about losing yourself in the magic of urban music.

Four years after the film in question, Eminem is back and has revealed that he was in the grip of drug and alcohol addiction at the time. Lose yourself indeed, Nemmy! Perhaps you lost yourself after a night out on vodka and disco biscuits, forced to sell one of your blingin’ necklaces to a cab driver in exchange for a wide-eyed lift home? Or maybe you lost yourself in a bucket ‘o crack at a squat party. Either way, Eminem, this is all most disappointing.

You always seemed to focused, so individual and, most important of all, happy to fly in the face of celebrity and its conventions. A trip to la-la-drug land followed by a spell in rehab and then a magnificent, clean-living resurgence conveniently timed to coincide with the release of a new single/film/appearance in Celebrity Big Arse? That’s just too predictable, Marshall.

The pressures of being a staccato-voiced young rapper with millions in the bank and the world at your feet must be quite sizeable. That must be your excuse for your nosedive into whisky, wine and weed. After all, every other famous addict tells us the same thing. Why can’t anybody get successful without getting hooked – and more to the point, using their recovery as the reason why we should be interested in their latest career development?

Eminem is talented enough for us to listen to his rappity stylings without us having to listen to his ramblings on addiction. Unfortunately, his talent for lyrics is not echoed in a talent for not sounding like a twat in interviews about his drugs hell. Witness this comment from a recent BBC interview: “I was like Bugs Bunny in rehab, Bugs Bunny walking in the room.”

Yes, dear. We’ve all thought that we were someone else once under the influence. There was this one time at uni when I ate too many space cakes and meowed like a cat for an hour. But I don’t tell anybody about it now because I don’t think it would help my career. So why should it help yours?

This was a guest blog by comedienne and all-around good egg Louise Scodie. Discover more about her inherent greatness here.

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9 - Do you have £500 and are insultingly stupid? Then why not buy this – Domesticsluttery

8 - A very good site that you should all read – Thewaterboarder

7 - The ugliest mobile phones of all time! – PCWorld.

6 – Intense-looking table tennis players. You’re welcome – Bestweekever

5 – A breathtaking array of songs that sound like other songs – PopEater

4 - A rather wonderful alternative celebrity richlist – Scumbagmillionaire

3 – Eminem’s still doing that ‘one happy song/ one sad song’ shtick, then – Popsugar

2 - Duelling banjos with handfarts. Yes, you read that correctly - Gorillamask

1 – Wolverine in a minute and a bit. Better than the real film, because it’s shorter…

9 – Watch this video. Pause it at the 15 second mark. Try and predict what happens next. You will fail – I Am Bored

8 - Here’s a list of all the reasons why Eminem’s comeback witll fail – Independent

7 - Because it’s been vaguely sunny for about 30 seconds, here’s a recipe for a kickass Strawberry Daiquiri – Domesticsluttery

6 - Looks like Amy Winehouse is officially rubbish now – Welt

5 – Here’s a song that was banned from Family Guy, which you might enjoy if you like Family Guy – EJB

4 – DRUNK GORILLA! – Dailymail

3 - Some videogame characters with undiagnosed medical conditions – Cracked

2 - 12 photos of hateful drunkards – Sloshspot

1 - Just to ease your redesign anxiety, here’s something timeless – Lindsay Lohan acting like a knob…

Contrary to what your destroyed and embittered careers advisor screamed into your face – flecks of saliva spattering your cheeks – becoming an actor isn’t just a hobby, it’s a job.

Just look what happens when non-actors like Britney Spears, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston give it a bash – they ruin films. Completely ruin them.

And yet, while those three were totally rubbish, every once in a while a marvelous young pop star will come along and blow our minds. Here are four great singers/actors…

1. Prince, Purple Rain

2. Eminem, 8 Mile

Stealing ever so slightly from Purple Rain, Eminem goes about proving to the competitive hip hop world that he’s got what it takes to win rap battles in small clubs in Detroit. Along the way he gets up to all kinds of mischief with his buddies – one of whom was the doctor in ER. And he has some mind-blowing sex with Brittany Murphy, who was presumably cast because she looks exactly like a prostitute. The scene at the end where he makes the middle-class rapper look like a ninny is the stuff dreams are made of. Eminem has never been so excellent.

3. Tina Turner, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Before he became drunk with power, Mel Gibson starred in some great films, and this is one of them. Not only does it find the Australian at the top of his game, but it also finds Tina Turner on amazing form as Aunty Entity, a mean-spirited woman who is making hay in the apocalyptic sunshine. Not only does the singer – whose voice is like a packet of gravel, by the way – put in the performance of her damn life, but she also provides a moving soundtrack. Excellent.

4. Ice T, New Jack City

You probably know Ice T for his biting rap lyrics, and gangster posturing. But in 1991, he wowed the entire planet by taking the role of a big city cop with street smarts in this tale of drugs and Judd Nelson. Only a few short minutes into the film, and the power of Ice’s acting allowed him to morph effortlessly into the character of Detective Scotty Appleton. Some say that they couldn’t tell where Ice ended and Scotty began. Powerful stuff.

This was a guest blog by Josh Burt from Interestment. Hot damn that’s a good website!

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But ask yourself this: would you have gone to see Jumper if the Hayden Christensen role was played by Eminem?

No. No you probably wouldn't. But that didn't stop Eminem from having discussions with director Doug Liman about starring as the lead in Jumper in the preproduction stages. Although it's impossible to tell what Jumper would have been like if it had Eminem in it, we're guessing that it probably would have been reset in Detroit and been about a plucky wannabe rapper instead of Darth Vader driving buses through a desert.

You may have wondered what Eminem has been doing these last few years, apart from eating all the pies and nearly dying of pneumonia, but the secret is finally out.

Eminem has been busy not quite starring in a bunch of rubbish-looking films.

The proof is there for all to see – first Eminem was linked to a remake of Have Gun Will Travel that thankfully didn't get made, and then just the other week there was talk of Eminem almost making a Grand Theft Auto movie. But if the thought of those haven't sent you quivering into a corner, it turns out that Eminem almost starred in new movie Jumper.

Oh, you know. Jumper. The movie that'll probably scrape a weekend box office number one spot in a couple of days because it's a pre-Oscar movie that isn't about the war in Iraq or one woman's soul-searching quest to find her identity in preindustrial-era Stuttgart. The movie where Samuel L Jackson leaps through time after a bus-driving Billy Elliot. The movie that looks about as appealing as two hours spent thwacking bamboo rods under your fingernails with a hammer.

Anyway, yeah. Eminem was almost going to be in that, as MTV reports:

"We did have a meeting," writer/director Doug Liman confirmed this week, confessing that surly hip-hop superstar Marshall Mathers was once in talks for the starring role. "We did have conversations with Eminem." When the director considered [Hayden] Christensen more seriously, however, the Eminem flirtation vanished as quickly as David Rice jumping between Egypt and New York. "At that point, I had already met Hayden and had fallen in love with Hayden," he recalled. "It was one of those things where the studio, with all things being equal, would rather put a bigger name in the movie [and wanted Eminem]. At some point, I just put my foot down and said, 'I love Hayden.'"

Weird. We didn't think that Hayden Christensen had it in him to inspire love in others. Or anything other than a vague sense of irritation, come to think of it.

It's odd that Doug Liman is selling Jumper on the basis that it almost starred someone but didn't. Perhaps – and this is just a theory – Liman has read some of the early stinging Jumper reviews and opted to take the tactic of saying "If you think Jumper's bad now, just imagine how useless it'd be if Eminem was in it!" just to try and get people to say one positive thing about it.

And as for Eminem, only time will tell what other movies he didn't get round to making. Although we do hear that he was up for Keira Knightley's role in Atonement, but just lost out because he looked a bit silly in a damp nightie.

Read more:

Eminem Almost Had Hayden Christensen's Role In 'Jumper' - MTV 

But maybe that's because Eminem was quietly hatching a plan to get his name back up in lights again. Maybe Eminem was preparing to take the lead in a brand new movie based on Grand Theft Auto.

No. No he wasn't. According to GTA producers Rockstar, Eminem was never going to star in a Grand Theft Auto movie, because a Grand Theft Auto movie was never going to be made. Good thing too – we always had Eminem down as more of an Irritating Stick kinda guy anyway.

A few years ago, Eminem had the world at his feet. He'd managed to achieve the impossible and become a credible white rapper, he'd punished all those who'd ever held him back in the past by making Dido famous and there was talk of him winning an Oscar for 8 Mile even though he was so transparently playing himself that we're surprised that the movie didn't end with him remarrying and divorcing the same woman 16 times in a row. 

Since then, though, Eminem hasn't contributed anything to the world of cinema. To be fair Eminem hasn't contributed much to anything lately, except perhaps the pneumonia-suffering lardballs statistics, but let's just focus on the world of cinema for now, OK?

Remember that talk of Eminem starring as a modern-day gun-totin' cowboy in that Have Gun Will Travel remake? Didn't happen. But you might have heard that Eminem was getting ready to star in a movie based on the Grand Theft Auto videogame series – that's still definitely on. And when we say 'definitely on' we mean 'not even vaguely going to ever happen, especially if it's got Eminem in it.'

If you haven't guessed, Rockstar has shot down rumours of the Eminem-starring Grand Theft Auto movie. MTV reports:

On Tuesday night, Variety reported that "a deal was virtually in place with one of the six major movie studios" to begin development of a "GTA" movie, possibly starring Eminem. But the deal, according to the report, fell through for unknown reasons. Reached for comment by MTV News, Dan Houser, vice president of creative at Rockstar, said no movie was ever in the works. "Not as far as we are concerned… Some movie producers were trying to put something together to entice us to make a movie, as studios and production teams frequently have done in the past. This proposal was no more interesting than the numerous others we receive. We never entertained proceeding with the project."

It's a shame, really, because Eminem would be perfect for the lead in a Grand Theft Auto movie; running around, shooting people, stealing their cars, climbing up the criminal underworld's career ladder, all set to – if there was any justice and based on Vice City – pop hits of the 1980s. Although, of course, if the Grand Theft Auto movie has Eminem in it, it'd be relocated to Detroit and have a soundtrack of Eminem songs rather than Luther Vandross songs. And it would be about a struggling white rapper instead of a would-be criminal.

Still, now that the Grand Theft Auto movie has been officially denied, Eminem can go back and do what makes him most happy these days – eating relentlessly and catching serious lung diseases.

Read more:

'Grand Theft Auto' Movie, Possibly Starring Eminem, Shot Down By Rockstar Games - MTV 

It's been reported, you see, that Eminem went to hospital over the Christmas period because of a serious heart condition and complications from pneumonia, with sources adding that he's increased in weight to over 200 lb. Of course, this illness and massive weight-gain means that Eminem can't be called Slim Shady any more, and so he's thought to be deciding on a new name, with either Fatt Poorly or Pensioner'z Illnezz being current front-runners.

In the past you couldn't help but stumble across comparisons between Eminem and Elvis Presley – after all, they were both white boys stealing black music and sending it mainstream. But now the comparison has never looked more accurate thanks to reports that Eminem has taken on Elvis' fondness for tubby reclusiveness and bouts of ill health. While it hasn't got to the 'death by shitting' stage yet, it's understood that things are actually getting quite serious for Eminem.

TMZ has reported that Eminem was rushed to a Detroit hospital over the festive period suffering from pneumonia, a bad heart and worrying weight-gain:

We're told Em was taken to a Detroit-area hospital for a serious heart condition and severe pneumonia. Sources tell TMZ Em's weight has ballooned to over 200 lbs. Eminem 's publicist told TMZ: "Over the holidays, Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem, was under doctor's care at a Detroit-area hospital for complications due to pneumonia. He has since been released and is doing well recovering at home."

At first, news of Eminem's illness probably seems sudden, but it's only after some thought that you come to realise that, actually, what is it that Eminem does any more? Sure, he's sold millions of records, but his last proper album came out four years ago. Since then there's been a Greatest Hits collection and a weak mix album to his name and nothing else with little on the horizon. Frankly Eminem could have caught pneumonia by digging a moat around his house naked, or contracted his heart disease by swallowing bees for a bet for all we know about him these days.

So hopefully Eminem will get better soon, and maybe even think about making more music at some point. Still, ever the optimists, at least there's something to be gained from Eminem laying in a hospital seriously ill – it'd be one less opportunity for him marry his ex-wife and then divorce her another couple of times.

Read more:

Eminem — Not Slim Anymore; Big Health Scare! – TMZ