No, really. Etta James is funny. She is. She IS. Like, remember when Etta James launched into a spectacularly bitter diatribe about how much she hated Beyonce for performing at President Obama’s inauguration ball instead of her? Turn out that Etta James was just telling a hilarious – if freakishly convincing – joke. Hilarious!

It just goes to show what a petty, massively untalented washed-up hasbeen that puke-stinking old hag Etta James is, doesn’t it? And Beyonce. And you. Only joking! Hey, we’re catching on!

Oh darnit. We were all set to archive this week away as Celebrity Hate Week, what with Duff/ Dunaway and King/ Meyer and Bale/ underling and Cyrus/ entire population of Asia, but now we won’t be able to. And it’s all Etta James’ fault.

You see, when Etta James started ranting about Beyonce at a concert last week, about how furious she was that Beyonce had hijacked her song to perform at the presidential inauguration ball last month, it meant we’d seen five bewildering acts of celebrity provocation in a week, which is a record. But Etta James had to go and bloody spoil it all, didn’t she.

You see, when Etta James stood on stage in Seattle last week and said that she couldn’t stand Beyonce and that Beyonce was going to get her ass whupped for stealing her song, she was just joking. Now, admittedly it wasn’t a traditional ha-ha joke – more a character piece about a woman so gnarled and vinegary that everything she says sounds like a screeching torrent of hatred – but we’ll have to take her word for it. Here’s Gigwise with Etta’s take on it all:

“I didn’t really mean anything,” James told the New York Daily News. “Even as a little child, I’ve always had that comedian kind of attitude. … That’s probably what went into it.” James added that her comments had not come “from a vicious place”, and that she had been spurred on by the audience. “Nobody was getting mad at me in Seattle. They were all laughing, and it was funny,” she said.

Well, alright, we suppose we can’t really fault Etta James’ explanation here – they were all laughing at her in Seattle. Again, it wasn’t so much of a side-splitting joyous laugh – more of the laugh that people tend to do when they’re on a bus and a nutter gets on and starts fingering a knife and babbling to himself and you nervously laugh along because you think it’ll stop you getting violently stabbed in the neck – but it does technically still count as laughter.

Still, you have to admire Beyonce for gracefully rising above all of the perculiar little outbursts that Etta James keeps lobbing at her. Maybe it’s just as well – imagine how annoyed she’s going to be in the year 2038 when some booby young pup is picked to sing Bootylicious at the presidential inauguration ball instead of her. Livid, we’d expect.

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We’ve never seen nipple work like it. But while Barack Obama and the rest of the world were enchanted by Beyonce’s flawless rendition, one person wasn’t so keen – Etta James, the original performer of the song and the woman Beyonce played in Cadillac Records.

Apparently Etta James was so infuriated by the performance that she told a concert audience that Beyonce’s “gonna get her ass whupped.” Unlikely – Etta James is an old woman, and whupping an ass of Beyonce’s size would exhaust a professional cage fighter.

As far as intergenerational celebrity spats go, this is probably the best week of all time. Today we had Stephen King vs Stephenie Meyer, yesterday we had Hilary Duff vs Faye Dunaway and the day before that we had Christian Bale vs THE ENTIRE WORLD.

But before we start looking forward to tomorrow, when we hear that the entire cast of Gossip Girl is going to attack Elaine Stritch with hammers, we should tell you about yet another celebrity spat that’s flared up – Beyonce vs Etta James.

Beyonce and Etta James first started circling each other when it was revealed that Beyonce would be playing Etta in that Cadillac Records film that nobody saw. And it was a nice, mutually-exclusive relationship – Beyonce could star in a film that she could kid herself was Oscar-worthy while Etta James could be rediscovered by the six or so people who actually went to see the film – but then came Barack Obama’s inauguration, and that’s when things went tits up.

For whatever reason – we’re guessing it’s because she owned a dress that made her nipples look bigger than anyone else’s – Barack Obama chose Beyonce to perform At Last at his inauguration ball over Etta James. And that sent Etta James into enough of a meltdown to screech this at a concert audience in Seattle last week:

“You guys know your president, right? The one with the big ears? He ain’t my president. He might be yours… that woman he had singing for him…she’s gonna get her ass whupped. The great Beyonce…I can’t stand Beyonce.”

No, really, she did. Here’s the audio of it…

Genius. But, of course, this is just water off a duck’s back to Beyonce – Etta James is by no means the first veteran soul singer to round on her. Just last year Aretha Franklin got the hump with Beyonce for calling someone else ‘the queen’ instead of her. And where’s Aretha Franklin now, huh? She’s just a fat lady in a ridiculous hat.

Still, though, we can’t help but wish that this Beyonce/Etta James catfight had happened before Cadillac Records finished filming. After all, would you have gone to see a film where Beyonce plays a woman who grows up and comes to violently resent Beyonce, with an ending where Etta James Beyonce and Beyonce Beyonce have a Matrix-style battle on the roof of a burning building?

Shut up. Of course you bloody would.

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We'd go with 'multi-talented'. Which, we know, is two words as well. We haven't thought this through. Anyway, Beyonce's staggering versatility has just been exercised again because, following her much-hyped turn in 1960s period musical Dreamgirls, Beyonce has decided to branch out and star in 1960s period musical Cadillac Records.

They're different, really they are. Mainly because Beyonce is a producer on Cadillac Records so she gets to make sure that nobody casts sodding Jennifer Hudson to steal all her thunder again.

We used to think that we were the only people in the whole world whose lives hadn't been turned into a biopic. That'll chance in the autumn when Hecklerspray: The Movie is released – starring Karl Howman from Brush Strokes as Lee Ryan and Michael Bay as himself – but in the last few years alone Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Edith Piaf, Bod Dylan, Ian Curtis, Idi Amin and Jesus have all had their lives put on film.

There's obviously one giant name missing from that list, though – the woman who sung the song on the Diet Coke advert from 12 years ago, or Etta James as her mother called her. However, Beyonce is about to put rest to that by producing and starring in a film all about Etta James, as MTV reports:

The "Irreplaceable" singer will star as legendary blues singer Etta James in Darnell Martin's "Cadillac Records," according to The Hollywood Reporter. She will also serve as one of the movie's executive producers. "Cadillac Records" will follow the life of influential Chicago-based record-company executive Leonard Chess — who ran the legendary record company with his brother, Phil, through the 1950s and '60s — and the label's lineup of musical icons, including James, Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright), Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer) and Little Walter (Columbus Short). Oscar winner Adrien Brody is scheduled to play Chess.

It's good to see that Beyonce's starting to learn her lessons after failing to win any major awards for Dreamgirls – especially since Jennifer Hudson won an Oscar and Beyonce didn't even get nominated. You see, Beyonce's mistake was to play a singer who was only heavily alluded to be a real person – if she plays an actual singer who really existed, she'll easily win an Oscar, because you always win an Oscar if you play a real singer.

And Etta James certainly has a life worth making a film about. She toured with Little Richard as a child, she developed a drug habit, she went a bit mad, she got massively overweight and she did songs for both Diet Coke and posh car adverts. Whereas you've probably only done two or three of those things, loser.

Nevertheless, it'll be interesting to see how Beyonce chooses to play Etta James. After all, a bit star like Beyonce will want to put a little bit of herself into the role. And if that's the case, we can't wait for the scene in Cadillac Records where Etta James smashes her face to pieces on some stairs and then offends an entire religion with her tits.

Read more:

Beyonce To Portray Legendary Blues Singer Etta James In 'Cadillac Records' - MTV