At the time, no doubt, he claimed total innocence to deaf ears. Once a fiery pattern was established after a few more incidents, his surrounding adults may have been more likely to believe him – especially when they actually saw him accidentally ignite things without a match in sight.

As we already said, Benedetto Supino discovered his strange powers at a young age – around 10 – when a dentist's comic book flamed-up in his hands. Although there were instances of the boy starting a flame with sufficient intention and concentration, it seems that usually neither was the case.

Paranormal.About.com gives an example of the latter happening:

"One morning [Supino] was awakened by a fire in his own bed – his pajamas were in flames and the boy suffered severe burns."

Doesn't sound like a terrific gift there, does it? The same article goes on to give other instances of flames starting by his intention, or merely by his presence:

"On another occasion, a small plastic object held in his uncle’s hands began to burn as Benedetto stared at it. Just about everywhere he went, furniture, paper, books and other items would start to smolder or burn. Some witnesses even claimed to see his hands glow at these moments."

Everywhere he went – according to some sources, fuse boxes ignited, newspapers burst into flames and non-specific 'small objects' would smoke and burn. Obviously the boy's parents worried. They sent him to physicians and scientists who apparently found no reason for the strangeness. He was also sent to an Archbishop with the same result – nothing. The burden taxed the boy – he himself can be quoted as saying:

"I don't want things to catch fire, but what can I do?"

It seems though, that with some help he was finally able to learn control. According to Prediction Magazine:

"When an entire army of doctors were unable to help him, he turned to parapsychologist Dr. Demetrio Croce, who taught him to control and hone his abilities."

Now we haven't found any specifics as to what exactly is meant by the word 'hone' in this case. We don't know whether Supin's just managed to turn it off completely, or just to burn things he wants to burn.

In fact the only thing we seem to know for sure at this point is that guy would be great on a camping trip.

Read More:

Strange Fires – SFGate

Not that a little thing like the Back To The Future clocktower burning down will stop people from being curious about the 50 Cent house fire, though – especially as it came right in the middle of an ugly public feud between 50 Cent and his ex-girlfriend Shaniqua Tompkins, who was living in the house at the time.

And now the mystery has got a little deeper, because Tompkins is claiming that 50 Cent hasn’t bothered to call their 10-year-old son Marquise after the fire, even though he was treated for smoke inhalation. But you know what they say – better to have no contact at all than to record a mawkish vom-inducing Eminem-style ‘Daddy loves you’ track about it.

Good news – after owning little tiny dogs and being in drunken automobile accidents, the hot new celebrity fad to sweep America is the terrifying uncontrollable fire. Since Friday, 50 Cent’s house has burnt down and Universal Studios in Los Angeles has burnt down – leading to hopes that Paris Hilton and the cast of The Hills, eager to jump on board the fad while it’s still fresh, will soon deliberately set themselves on fire and run through the streets until their charred remains can only be identified by dental records.

But that’s something to look forward to. For the time being, however, let’s concern ourselves with the 50 Cent house fire, because it’s still so gloriously suspicious that we can only imagine it’ll be solved by a moustache-twirling detective pacing up and down an Edwardian drawing room.

If you missed them first time round, here are the details – a house owned by 50 Cent and occupied by his ex-girlfriend Shaniqua Tompkins and their 10-year-old son Marquise burnt down on Friday right in the middle of a bitter legal battle between 50 Cent (who wants to evict Shaniqua and Marquise for not paying rent) and Tompkins (who claims that 50 Cent promised that the house was a gift).

And with the fire department calling the fire suspicious, it seems as if everyone’s got a motive. 50 Cent could have wanted to intimidate Shaniqua into leaving, Shaniqua could have wanted to destroy the house that she was being made to leave, any number of third parties could have started the blaze, or there’s our current favourite theory – that Marquise started the fire because the pain of being a boy named Marquise has turned him into a warped, fire-obsessed sociopath.

Whatever the cause, though, it doesn’t look as if 50 Cent is in any hurry to make sure that his son’s not too badly shaken by the fire, as the New York Daily News reports:

The mother of 50 Cent’s son angrily slammed the superstar rapper as an uncaring father who didn’t check on the boy after a suspicious fire ripped through his Long Island mansion. Yesterday, she returned to the charred $2.4 million house to retrieve some belongings – and scorch her former lover. “Tell him to call his son!” Tompkins screamed at reporters gathered near the Dix Hills house. “He didn’t even attempt to call his son to see how he was doing!” she said. “A good father would do that!”

How dare Shaniqua Tompkins accuse 50 Cent of being a bad father. He works hard to ensure that there’s food on his son’s table – sometimes he’ll put in gruelling three-hour shifts mumbling to himself about that time he got shot over an insultingly derivative backing track in a state-of-the-art recording studio to keep Marquise in stale bread and second-hand shoes.

However, this is still just one person’s word against another. As things stand at this point in time, there’s no way of knowing if 50 Cent or Shaniqua Tompkins or anyone else had a hand in starting the house fire. And there’s only one way to properly, officially get to the bottom of a squabble this deep and wide-ranging – Maury.

Well, it looks like remembering it is all you’ll be able to do, as the courtyard square from the Back To The Future films is just one of the many movie milestones that has been eaten up by a blazing fire raging its way through Universal Studios, Los Angeles.

According to L.A Fire Department Chief Michael Freeman, the impact of the fire on a New York street mock-up was as such:

“Those are basically building fronts with some walls but they’re very susceptible to rapid burning… it also got into the King Kong building. That building is totally destroyed.”

Hecklerspray has an army of informants in Los Angeles (okay, one bloke who lives in his car nearby, watching famous people through binoculars and surviving purely on Cheetos and Mountain Dew), and we’ve managed to cobble together an exclusive list of things that have been lost in the blaze so far:

- Every copy of Fuhrer Time!, Adam Sandler’s controversial unreleased Third Reich comedy

- Richard Gere’s gerbil farm, which exists purely because he likes looking at gerbils, and for no other reason whatsoever

- The cast and crew of Highlander 6

- Main Chapel of the Church Of Costner

- Lindsay Lohan’s stash

- Like, some totally fucking awesome monster movie masks that would have, like, fucking ruled if we could have borrowed them and gone to some party, bro

- Burt Reynold’s favourite Nissan Micra

- Heath Ledger’s hiding place, from which he was going to emerge on The Dark Knight’s release day in the most elaborate publicity stunt ever

- The collected tears of Cuba Gooding Jr, labelled in bottles such as ‘career loss,’ ‘lack of self-respect,’ and ‘any memories associated with Boat Trip‘

- Six thousand Mexican cleaning staff

- The script for Battlefield Earth 2

That’s because 50 Cent’s house has just spectacularly and completely burnt to the ground. But don’t worry – 50 Cent is fine. The house that burnt down wasn’t the house he lives in, just the house that his ex-girlfriend and their 10-year-old son live in. Phew! Panic over.

They’re both OK as well, by the way – but that hasn’t stopped a fireman calling the blaze ’suspicious’, not least because 50 Cent has been trying to evict his ex-girlfriend and son from the property for a while now. Still, if we know anything about the hip-hop community, it’s that it’s full of exemplary citizens who like nothing more than to cooperate with potentially criminal investigations by the authorities.

50 Cent is an intensely private individual. Back when he got shot, for example, 50 Cent vowed only to refer to the incident in most of his songs, all of his interviews and a specially written pseudo-autobiographical movie. And chances are he’ll be just as coy about his house in Dix Hills burning down just now.

Because, if recently losing a high-profile challenge with Kanye West and being forced to quit music forever (at least in theory) wasn’t bad enough – let alone being implicated in a human growth hormone scandal and being robbed by a scrawny dude onstage – then watching his $1.4 million, six bedroom house go up in flames should be enough to reduce any man to a temporary state of blissful silence.

Well, that and the fact that the fire is being treated as suspicious and just a few days ago 50 Cent was seen furiously arguing in public with the tenant – his ex-girlfriend Shaniqua Tompkins, who lives there with their 10-year-old son Marquise. Newsday reports on the fire:

An eyewitness told Newsday that among the injured, all of whom suffered smoke inhalation according to fire officials, were 50 Cent’s ex-girlfriend, Shaniqua Tompkins, and their 10-year-old son, Marquise. “She was all right,” eyewitness Frank Hoyte, a Newsday employee, said, adding: “But she was angry.”One of the first firefighters to arrive on the scene told Newsday the fire was suspicious. “I would say there is a strong — a strong, strong — possibility that it is suspicious,” Dix Hills Fire Department Chief Larry Feld said.

This is great – anyone could be responsible for the fire. You see, 50 Cent recently filed a lawsuit trying to evict Shaniqua Tompkins and their son from the house unless he started receiving $4,500 a month in rent from them, while Tompkins countersued because she says 50 Cent promised to put the house in her name and then didn’t.

So did 50 Cent have the house burned down to get rid of Tompkins? Or did Tompkins burn the house down to punish 50 Cent? Or was it the doing of one of 50 Cent’s enemies? Or was it an accident? Or did little 10-year-old Marquise burn the house down partly as an effort to push his parents back together and partly because he hates them both for giving him such a gay little name? Can we stop caring about this any time soon?

No, really, that last one was serious.