As we’ve already made abundantly clear on this very day, no-one wants to see myriad bands reforming to remind us of why we thought they were a bit awful in the first place.We thought we’d just get that out of the way to start with.

Secondly, the answer to the question ‘Why do bands reform?’ is never ‘For the music, maaaaaaannnnn.’. It is, invariably, “for the money, maaaaaaannnnn.”

Whether we like it or not, the music industry is a big wheel that keeps on turning, spewing out derivative crap with every clicking cog. That’s not the problem, it really isn’t. There is still good music out there and even some of the launched faeces eventually breaks down into a diamond.

The real problem is that the music industry and the music press makes it very, very easy for bands to reform with the veiled intention of making shedloads of cash while claiming that they’re coming back to fill the void left by a move away from rock n’ roll to twink pop nonsense.

We meant to mention by the way, Pete Townshend of The Who doesn’t think he’s capable of writing hit songs any more. He also regrets ever joining the band in the first place because being ‘typecast’ as a member of The Who has stifled his solo career. The solo career he would never have had a hope of having without The Who. Townshend is so delusional and desperate to stay in the limelight that it comes as little surprise to hear that he and Roger Daltrey (of ‘once in an episode of CSI’ fame) are planning to re-release the classic Who album ‘Quadrophenia’.

Are they content with the millions of dollarpounds that the re-release will draw in? No! Of course they’re not!

They’re also planning to take the album on an over-priced stadium tour where tickets will cost £100, t-shirts will cost £25 and the audience will have to remortgage their homes in order to afford a pint of the stagnant urine which laughably passes for lager at stadium venues.

Yes, that’ll really recapture the old days, won’t it? Fans of The Who, we have nothing against you but don’t fall for all this diluted nonsense which is designed for one thing and one thing only; to get you to part with your cash. These old boys of rock have enough. Keep it in your pockets. Go and stand in a sweaty, packed little venue that you got into for free, drinking real alcohol that you paid £1.50 for and see if you can find a band that you really, really like.

Maybe give them £100. Maybe become their manager. Maybe make them the best damn rock outfit since The Who. It sure beats lining the coffins of the money-hungry reformers.

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Mentally-wayward popstars appearing on desperately mediocre American sitcoms is a bit like buses, isn’t it.

You go years without seeing, say, Syd Barrett cameo on Home Improvement, and then suddenly Britney Spears decides to appear on How I Met Your Mother twice in quick succession, thus making her identical to a bus in that one unconvincing respect.

Yes, we know that we’ve hardly stopped yammering on about Britney Spears returning to How I Met Your Mother, but this time it’s official – a contract has been written and Britney Spears has either signed it or wiped a dirty finger along the bottom of it because she’s still not allowed near anything as sharp as a pen yet. Whichever one is true, the deal’s been done.

If you haven’t ever seen How I Met Your Mother – and we’d guess we’re speaking to the majority of you here – the show revolves around the conceit of an old man describing his youth to some children in flashback with the intent of explaining how he met their mother, and the audience has to slowly guess who their mother is as well. It’s a bit like The Jeremy Kyle Show, only slower and not as funny.

Anyway, the chances of Britney Spears being the mother have just doubled. It’s still a fairly unlikely proposition, though, because the children in the show can speak in full sentences, don’t exclusively eat Doritos and live in a house instead of a grotty trailer. It’s clues like this that you have to look out for.

Why have Britney Spears’ chances just doubled? Because she’s only officially signed up to make her big How I Met Your Mother return after weeks of speculation, as The Associated Press reports:

Britney Spears, who proved she’s worth a cool million viewers to “How I Met Your Mother,” is paying another visit to the CBS sitcom. Spears will reprise her role as bubbly secretary Abby in the May 12 episode, CBS said Monday. “We’re all so thrilled to have Britney joining us once again,” series executive producer and co-creator Craig Thomas said in a statement. “And just to head it off at the pass this time around: Yes, Mom, Britney’s very nice and no, I can’t get her autograph for you,” Thomas added, jokingly.

No wonder, really – last time Britney Spears appeared on How I Met Your Mother the show received its highest-ever ratings. True, having Britney Spears appearing on a sitcom a few weeks after she was taken to a psychiatric hospital reeks of opportunistic stunt-casting, but getting a few more viewers to watch a TV show is probably more important than a young woman’s mental health, all said.

One person who’ll either be thrilled or mortified about Britney’s return to How I Met Your Mother is Neil Patrick Harris, who recently seemed to say that having Britney on the show was a stupid idea.

He’s since backtracked like mad over the claims, but that hasn’t stopped Britney Spears from inserting a contractual obligation stating that one full third of her new How I Met Your Mother episode should involve her jabbing her nicotine and Cheezum-stinking tongue into Neil Patrick Harris’ mouth over and over again as a nasty lesson about dissing her in public. Probably.

Read more:

Spears reprises guest role on CBS’ ‘Mother’ – AP

The thing that sets EastEnders apart from all the other British soaps is how gritty and realistic it is compared to everything else.

After all, anyone who's ever been to the east end of London knows that every five or six weeks a gang of unconvincing, slightly-too-theatrical thugs burst into the local pub for no real reason and kick a pregnant woman over.

That exact thing happened on EastEnders not so long ago, and now Ofcom has criticised the episode. Not because of the unusual and irresponsible level of pre-watershed violence, though – but because it was honestly the single most rubbish thing to appear on television in the last 12 months, other than the failed BBC2 pilot Look! Adrian Chiles In A Bikini! And because of the violence too, actually. A bit.

Ladies, here's a warning – if you ever find yourself pregnant on EastEnders, get out of town as quickly as you can. It doesn't matter where you go – George Street, Up West – but just don't stick around. EastEnders hates pregnant women, so in that respect it's just like the Lost island, only with more depressed pikeys.

If you're pregnant on EastEnders, it means your husband is either doing it with a bruised headed market-stall Gollum, or it means that a mental doctor is going to try to slice open your stomach even though people at home are trying to eat their dinner, or it means that a weird gang of deeply unrealistic football hooligans led by Lenny Henry's put-upon assistant from the Premier Inn adverts are going to kick you over a beer barrel. 

On November 13 last year, that's exactly what happened during an episode of EastEnders. An entire episode was dedicated to showing what it looks like when a group of posh, overly theatrical gasbags are employed to smash up a pub using one episode of The Bill from 1986 as their sole reference point to what poor people are like.

And that episode of EastEnders was violent. Unusually so. If you missed it, here are some edited highlights. In particular, look out for the 19 second mark, the 33 second mark, 49 seconds, 1:25, 2:42, 2:53, 3:30, 7:02 and 7:09. Not because they're violent, but because in years to come historians will pinpoint these moments as the least-convincing pieces of acting in all of television history…

Violent, huh? Distressing, you might even say. Or rubbish. Rubbish is also accurate. Anyway, Ofcom certainly agrees with the violent part – it got 78 complaints from viewers about the episode, who we imagine were all so alarmed by the Sidekick Thug's rubbery goon face that they all started crying. And Ofcom has upheld the complaints, saying:

"Although EastEnders is not made specifically for children it does attract a significant child audience, and any portrayal of violence needs to be carefully considered. The programme started with the gang attack on the Queen Vic. This involved a sustained, intense and high level of violence, destroying parts of the pub with hammers and bottles and glasses smashing into the furniture, to intimidate the locals, some of whom were injured. Regular viewers of EastEnders are aware that this soap deals, on occasions, with tough social issues. This is balanced, however, with the expectation that it will be suitable for children to view, who form a significant minority of the audience."

Yeah, that told you!

Now, with its wrist slapped, EastEnders will have to heed Ofcom's warning unless it wants another tongue-lashing. Maybe a rethink is in order, which is why we demand that EastEnders sacks all the characters with a violent past immediately and replaces them with an adorable little puppy that can't stop sneezing. It's the only way.

Read more: 

EastEnders violence ruled out of order – Guardian 

This morning we woke up in an unusually delicious mood knowing that, by bedtime, Dr Phil would have single-handedly solved all of Britney Spears' crazy problems on his downhome self-help TV show.

It was an exciting thought – that maybe by the time we tucked ourselves up in our one big communal hecklerspray bed (head-to-toe, we're not perverts) – Dr Phil would have restored factory settings on Britney Spears, reverting her back into the Britney we love best, the provocatively-virginal schoolgirl who dressed up in pigtails and a miniskirt and asked grown men to hit her. But sadly that hasn't happened because Dr Phil has cancelled today's scheduled Britney Spears episode as a result, citing pressure from the Spears family.

Lesson learnt, Dr Phil has decided to instead do a show entitled Fine, But Don't Come Running To Me Next Time Your Minge Is All Over The Internet.

Britney Spears has been getting a lot of attention for her antics on Thursday, but who can really look inside themselves and say that they've never locked themselves in a bathroom with one of their children during a dispute with a former spouse, possibly having takensome form of substance, possibly with a gun, possibly screaming that they'd either kill themselves or their baby until the authorities arrive and they're strapped into an ambulance and taken to hospital for psychological evaluation? Can you? Can you really? Really? We thought everybody did that. No? Just Britney? Ohh, so that's what all this fuss is about.

Anyway, long story short, Britney Spears is effed. She's not allowed to see her children, her hopes of ever being a parent with equal custody are fading fast, her career's taken another dive and her new boyfriend is a paparazzo, the type of person who she usually hisses death threats at.

Clearly there's only one man in the whole world who can fix Britney Spears, and that's Dr Phil. When Britney Spears left hospital, Dr Phil was by her side, probably whispering helpful catchphrases like "Let's call a spade a shovel" and "I want you to get excited about your life." And this was due to be followed up today by Dr Phil devoting an entire episode of his TV show to trying to help Britney Spears out of her current mess.

But now it isn't happening. Right now Dr Phil is claiming that he ditched the episode because:

"The Spears situation is too intense at this time, and out of consideration to the family."

And it is considerate, too – considerate because now Britney Spears' father won't have to walk round to Dr Phil's house and throw a brick through his windows and poo through his letterbox. Life & Style magazine reports that Jamie Spears – Britney's father – wasn't entirely chuffed when he heard about the show:

"As soon as Jamie realized Dr.Phil was making public statements about Britney, including assessments of her condition, he got angry. He started making phone calls to everybody in the family, telling them not to cooperate."

So where does that leave everyone? Well, it leaves Britney Spears in exactly the same position she was in before, in so deep that she can't see where her life is going and rich enough not to care. But Dr Phil? Don't you worry about Dr Phil. This is just one minor setback on his route to world domination which will inevitably end with a hologram of his face projected onto the moon, silently judging everything anyone does.

Plus his show tomorrow is about harrowing domestic abuse involving children. And who wouldn't want to watch that?

Read more: 

Dr. Phil cancels Britney Spears show – New York Daily News