Sherlock Holmes is one of the most abiding detective characters in literary history. Along with his sycophantic companion, Dr John Watson, the amateur consulting detective uses his powers of deduction to solve the most fiendishly cryptic cases in Victorian London amazing one and all with his capacity for lateral thinking and disguise as he does so.

Conan Doyle’s books have been adapted for television, radio and film on many occasions and every iteration of the classic stories brings its own idea of how the Holmes/Watson dynamic works. Just look at ‘Sherlock’, the BBC’s surprisingly enjoyable updating of the series which began with a reimagining of A Study In Scarlet and you can see that the world of Sherlock Holmes is as relevant to today’s audiences as those half a century ago.

Then there was Guy Ritchie’s enjoyable romp through Victorian London which starred Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law as the duo who cracked-wise and cracked heads through a story which had its roots in the supernatural and came with a very steam punk feel (you know, like Wild Wild West but not as crap).

Luckily for fans of that particular incarnation, Ritchie wasn’t content to rest on the laurels of the first film and in the pursuit of more money to fund his divorce has gone all out in order to ensure that there are as many explosions, gunshots, pulled underskirts and longing looks as possible. You know, to make sure that cinema audiences don’t get bogged down in one of Ritchie’s famously cerebral plots.

The new trailer was released yesterday and manages to cram about eighty slow motion ‘bullet time’ shots into a two and a half minute window, implying that the film might be entirely shot at half speed in order to make sure everyone can keep up with the twists and turns of Holmes’ psychological journey into the past, the present and his case.

Or maybe it’s just yet another dumb action movie with loads of explosions and moments of “minor peril”.

Watch the trailer and decide for yourself. Or don’t. It’s no skin off our noses.

Stephen Fry- author, presenter, actor, and Britain’s most popular choice of dinner party guest has confirmed that he is to play Mycroft Holmes, older brother to Sherlock in the planned sequel to last year’s surprise hit film. We say ‘surprise’ because the film’s director Guy Ritchie spectacularly wrong-footed everyone in 2009 by making a competent blockbuster about the 19^th century smug-bastard detective.

After a heroically terrible run of films, Ritchie has had something of a renaissance over the last few years.

First there was the marriage split. Whereas in 2000 us Brits were quite proud to have Madonna over ‘ere, buyin’ our mansions and shaggin’ our mockneys, in 2008 the dream has gone a bit sour. We were quite content with her being a humourless career disco-cyborg but then she pretended to be English.

We don’t even like it when Americans act English in films so we were never going to like that accent. Then it got worse and she became too American and adopted one of those Hollywood cults that only work on people who are that perfect combination of cash rich, spiritually empty and self-loving.

So in eight short years we went from thinking Guy Ritchie was living the dream to wanting him to save himself before he was sucked into the swirling vortex of bullshit that was building up around his missus.

All of a sudden the papers were full of stories about him escaping to the pub to be with his mates. The breakdown of his marriage finally got him those working class credentials he’d been searching for. Unfortunately there was still the sticky problem of his being a one-trick pony, and when your one trick is sound tracked by Ocean Colour Scene, it’s time to panic.

Critics were rubbing their hands with glee when it was announced that Ritchie would be directing a big-screen version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous creation.

Maybe Sherlock would be nicknamed ‘Deerstalka’ we wondered, and perhaps an east-end voiceover might describe Professor Moriarty as “one nasty bastard”.

Sadly for them, the movie was a well-directed piece of throwaway Saturday night action. It may have made little sense but it looked the part and the action was well shot.

Which bring us back to present day. The wonderful Mr Fry announced on Radio 5 that he will be joining Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law in the sequel, scheduled for a 2011 release. The film will also feature Noomi Rapace from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

So there.

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It’s a brave man who’d try and burgle Guy Ritchie. Don’t they know he’s an expert kung-fu practitioner?

Don’t they know he’s a brawler? Don’t they know that his ex-wife Madonna might be visiting, and that if she is they might end up being apprehended between her veiny – yet unusually strong – leotard-clad thighs? More relevantly, don’t they know that Guy Ritchie lives in a ridiculously large country estate full of servants, and that they’d probably be caught the moment they broke in?

Apparently not, because that’s what happened on Monday. The servant thing, not the thing about Madonna’s thighs. That’d be gross.

Guy Ritchie knows a great deal about the criminal underworld, because all of his films have been about criminals, apart from Swept Away which was criminal. And that’s the reason why he could so easily apprehend the man who broke into his house on Monday.

Obviously by ‘house’ we mean ‘sprawling £9 million country estate’ and by ‘he’ we mean ‘some of the people who Guy Ritchie employs as servants’. CNN reports:

Guy Ritchie’s country house was broken into Monday morning and his household staff foiled a potential raid. Employees for the filmmaker — who directed last year’s “Sherlock Holmes”  — came to the rescue as they nabbed a man in Ritchie’s home near Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, and turned him over to police. A man has been arrested but not charged.

You know who we feel most sorry for in all of this? The burglar. Who can blame him for trying to rob Guy Ritchie? There’s not a lot else to do in Salisbury, and it’s not like he’d steal anything of any worth, is it? At best he could probably make off with a couple of cardboard boxes full of unsold Revolver DVDs or a signed photo of Jason Statham. Stuff like that has absolutely zero market value.

But, hey, at least Madonna wasn’t visiting. That would have been awful. Picking on a scared old lady like that? Disgusting.

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Guy Ritchie may have already screwed the chances of a Sherlock Holmes sequel ever getting off the ground.

Well not Guy himself, but one of the blokes in his movie, a little known actor by the name of Robert Downey Jr. No, we’ve never heard of him either but we expect great things from his career.

Okay, enough New Year’s silliness. According to reports, despite having only just been spanked at the box office by The Over-long, Over-priced Thunder Smurfs movie, the chances of a Sherlock Holmes sequel being made are already in jeopardy. In a recent interview on The Late Show With David Letterman Robert joked about his new movie having a homoerotic subtext, in which characters Holmes and Watson are gay lovers. He also asked the audience whether or not Holmes was in fact “a very butch homosexual.” Apparently, a little well-dressed man-on-man love is enough to ruffle the feathers of the copyright holder.

From The Escapist:

The estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has threatened to kill any potential sequel to the hit film Sherlock Holmes if it suggests that the famous detective and his associate Dr. Watson were secretly gay lovers.

Andrea Plunket, who controls the U.S. copyrights on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective stories, didn’t appreciate Robert’s particular brand of humour. She states that if the film does portray the men as lovers and if this were the implicit direction of the next movie she would pull the rights – leaving them well scuppered.

From Towerload:

Andrea Plunket, who holds the U.S. copyright to Sherlock Holmes is not happy that Robert Downey Jr. has been joking that the subtext of Holmes and Watson in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes is gay. Said Plunket: “I hope this is just an example of Mr. Downey’s black sense of humour. It would be drastic, but I would withdraw permission for more films to be made if they feel that is a theme they wish to bring out in the future. I am not hostile to homosexuals, but I am to anyone who is not true to the spirit of the books.”

We like slightly skewiff sub-plots as much as the next lot. Avatar has the clumsily tacked-on love story – the point of which is to stop us whimsical lady-types from falling asleep during the multitude of action sequences. Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel subconsciously drains you of the will to live – the point of which we are yet to ascertain. The Princess and the Frog wants to teach viewers about the joys bestiality, with that weird frog kissing bit. And Nine aims to play the movie equivalent of ‘How many actresses can you fit in a mini’.

Back to the thinly veiled, sharply-dressed point. Copyright holder Andrea must not be one of us sophisticated Webbernets people. She seemed to have missed the lulz in Robert’s late night commentary. In spite of the fact that he was probably joking – and even if he weren’t this is a plot twist that might actually make a dull as dishwater pretence worth watching – someone’s probably going to have to say “Sorry”, for all the confusion.

We think Guy and Robert should both tell Andrea to hop it. But quietly. Really quietly. So she doesn’t get her panties in a bunch again, and pull the plug on the whole thing.

This was a guest post by Amy Grindhouse, who rocks worlds wherever she goes.

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From Paul Newman eating 50 eggs in the film Cool Hand Luke, to Mel Gibson eating dog biscuits in Lethal Weapon 3, movies and food have been closely linked.

So it comes as no surprise that in order to promote the new Guy Ritchie-helmed version of Sherlock Holmes, Warner Brothers have teamed up with that stalwart of American convenience food, 7-Eleven. Because when you think of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s famous detective solving crimes in Victorian London, you also think of microwaving a burrito and swigging weak, lukewarm coffee.

Since mid-November the chain has been running the Holmes promotion, the main part of which involves you using a clue printed on your coffee cup to go online and unlock another clue on a special 7-Eleven/Holmes microsite, which then takes you to another Holmes teaser site, which then presents you with another mystery. If you solve that you apparently then get more clues leading up to the movie’s opening scene, which OH MY GOD THIS SOUNDS LIKE THE MOST CONVOLUTED LOAD OF SHIT.

7-Eleven’s vice president Rita Bargerhuff proudly states that “7-Eleven customers will get a peek at the Holmes and Watson characters on in-store signage with clever phrases promoting value-oriented offerings, like quality fresh food and coffee.”

The ‘clever phrases’ Bargerguff is talking about include such gems as ‘Solve Your Hunger!’ ‘It’s No Mystery!’ ‘Get a Clue!’ ‘Investigate Our Coffee!’ and presumably ‘Elementary, My Dear Breakfast Sausage Quesadilla!’

Of course movie tie-ins are nothing new, although the notion of Sherlock Holmes ditching the cocaine and violin in favour of an Oscar Mayer hot dog and a cup of Mountain Dew just might make it the best promotion the world has ever seen. It’s certainly beats their tie-in for the Wolverine movie – the ‘X-Treme Energy Cappuccino’ into a cocked hat. Albeit a jittery, short-tempered hat.

But it’s Burger King who are the undisputed big bastards of snack-related movie cash ins. This year alone they’ve offered collectible drinks glasses to promote the J.J. Abrams Star Trek film, and a frozen citrus icepick to drive into your skull for G.I Joe: The Rise Of The Cobra. They also ran a Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen promotion, by offering the most awesomely named hot-meat sandwich ever – the New BK BBQ DOUBLE STACKTICON.

In a carefully worded-bit of promotional copy, they stretched both the concept of a burger and how this is connected to transforming robots from another planet: “the Transformers-inspired burger allows guests to stack multiple burger patties, bacon, sauce and cheese similar in theme to the “combining” of Transformers characters in the upcoming film.”

Much like a normal burger, then. But Constructicon references aside, as long as the poster bellows THIS SUMMER YOUR HUNGER WILL HAVE FALLEN, I don’t really care.

So what can we look forward to next? Later this month Peter Jackson‘s version of The Lovely Bones will hit cinemas and naturally the theme of child murder will prove to be a big draw for fast-food tie-ins. Perhaps a burger that promises YOUR TASTE BUDS, LIKE SUSIE SALMON, WILL BE IN HEAVEN. And if we can all hang on to July of next year, we’ll get to see the Nic Cage remake of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – which will doubtlessly have some great food connected to it. I’m looking forward to some wizards-hat-shaped fried chicken – PREPARE FOR YOUR MOUTH TO BE ENCHANTED! No need to thank me, fast food marketing departments.

Who wrote this? Simon Swatman from Mediapill. What a delightful chap.

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If there’s one thing that Madonna isn’t, it’s a retard. Old, gap-toothed, embarrassing, yes – but not retarded.

But tell that to Guy Ritchie. He was married to Madonna for several years, so if he says that Madonna is retarded then, yes, Madonna must be retarded. And since Guy Ritchie said that Madonna is retarded in this month’s Esquire, it must be true.

But it’s OK – Guy also says that he still loves Madonna. Aww, it’s just like Romeo & Juliet, isn’t it? A wildly offensive version of Romeo & Juliet where Juliet is about 150 years old and keeps thrusting her manky old genitals in people’s faces when they’re trying to eat.

It seems a little pointless to go over the Madonna/ Guy Ritchie divorce again, because it happened a long time ago and both parties have moved on so effortlessly. In fact, they’ve both pretty much reverted to exactly what they were doing before they even got married – Guy Ritchie is back making disappointing-looking films and Madonna is busy having it away with men so young that it wouldn’t surprise you if she one day stopped them on the street and wiped their faces clean with a spitty tissue.

But just because their divorce is in the past, it doesn’t mean that we’ve heard the end of it. Guy Ritchie has a new disappointing-looking film coming out soon, you see, and he needs to promote it. But how? What could he possibly talk about? The film itself? No, because he wants people to discover how disappointing it is for themselves. His previous films? No, because there’s a very real chance that an interviewer would lean in and slap his face the moment he said the word ‘Revolver‘. What does that leave? Oh, right, his marriage to Madonna.

So, a full year after anyone stopped caring, what insights into Madonna’s life could Guy Ritchie offer to Esquire? Let’s see:

“She’s a manifester, if there ever was one. First-rate manifester. Madonna makes things happen. Put Madonna up against any twenty-three-year-old, she’ll outwork them, outdance them, outperform them. The woman is broad. And, of course, here you go: I still love her… But she’s retarded, too.”

Don’t feel bad for Madonna just because Guy Ritchie called her retarded, though – almost exactly a year ago Madonna called Guy an ‘emotional retard’ during a concert, so this is his comeback. We can’t wait to hear Madonna’s rebuttal, which is due at some point in October 2010 and likely to be formed around the phrase “No, you’re retarded.” At which point, obviously, Guy Ritchie will take the bull by the horns and repeat the entire phrase back to Madonna in a slightly sarcastic way sometime around October 2011.

In fact, this weird little backwards and forwards could rumble each year until Madonna and Guy Ritchie are old and grey. Well, until Madonna is old and grey. It’ll go on until next year, that’s what we’re trying to say.

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When Henry VIII wrote his first Sherlock Holmes story on the severed necks of his dead wives sometime in the 1500s, he likely had no idea how long his sleuth would endure.

Yet here it is, some 500 years later and we’re still making movies out of him. And how, you might ask, can this next incarnation possibly seem fresh after all these years? Why, as best as we can tell they’re tying in Iron Man or something.

Also – they’re bringing in Brad Pitt. Or they’re not. But they are. Or they’re not.

Well it’s official – Brad Pitt is playing the part of Sherlock Holmes’ winged, semi-robot nemesis James Moriarty. We know this because it was reported by the Mirror:

“[Guy Ritchie] got in a right pickle with movie execs when they clapped eyes on the rough cut of his latest film… and felt like re-titling it the Mystery of the Missing Moriarty. They ordered the director to reinstate the great Holmes’ evil nemesis, pronto…Desperate for help, Guy phoned his old mucker Brad, who had starred in his gangster flick Snatch. Fortunately, Brad, 45, had a couple of days free in his busy schedule to pop over to Blighty to play the evil criminal mastermind.”

Sounds like a great idea – after all, look what Pitt did for Benjamin Button. Yeah – we’re talking real class here. Another reason adding him as an entirely new character last minute is brilliant is because we’ve heard it’s a sign of tremendous greatness when a script gets completely overhauled after it’s been 90% filmed.

That’s probably why it ends up the Pitt rumour is false. E! News says:

“By Jove, Brad Pitt is not—repeat not—snooping around the set of Sherlock Holmes. Warner Bros. is shooting down a widely disseminated newspaper report that the Hollywood hunk is planning to shoot a cameo as Moriarty, the archfoe of Robert Downey Jr.’s pipe-toking supersleuth. “The report in today’s London Mirror is completely inaccurate. Brad Pitt is not joining the cast of Sherlock Holmes and we’re extremely pleased with the production of the film,” a studio-sanctioned statement says.”

Well that’s too bad – because we’d already envisioned a terrific slow-motion bear fight Brad could have had in the end just as the credits rolled. The bear wouldn’t have been hurt, of course, but with the right CGI there could have been blood all over the place – now that’s a movie!

Actually, it’s probably best that Pitt doesn’t star with Downey on the film. After all, he’s a committed family man now, and the last thing anybody wants to hear is that he’s leaving Angie because a home-wrecking Robert is pregnant with Brad Jr.

That’s what happens on Pitt films, you know. Somebody always gets pregnant.

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Robert Downey Jr. is Sherlock Holmes…

Our inspectors are baffled by the mystery of it: somehow, our favourite Victorian hero was mistaken for Inspector Gadget. Guy Ritchie resurrects London’s drug-reliant super-detective and ditches his deerstalker hat for ninja skills and fruity dialogue. Accompanied by Watson (Jude Law), a plot involving the occult and other destructive powers sends Mr. Holmes on a mission fraught with explosions, bare-knuckle boxing and ridiculous acrobatics.

See him leap into the Thames from Westminster Palace, blow up half of London looking for criminals and get chained to a bed by a whore. Arthur Conan Doyle‘s quick-witted 18th century legend is dragged, kicking and screaming into the box office of the future, making a name for cheesy one-liners and walking stick martial arts. A sense of humour failure is expected from the purists.

At one point in time, Madonna was a feminine woman who graced the charts without having to flex her arse at us.

Even perverts liked her – they got to see ropey porn featuring cars and candle wax. Now she’s bulked up so much that if you sticky-taped a drawing of a willy over her lady tunnel, she’d legally be classified as a bloke.

Over the years, she has moved on to other career paths. These include picking up an African child as her new plaything and divorcing Guy Richie. Someone captured their time together in a painting which we’d sum up as rubbish. Arty people seem to agree too – nobody bought it.

Now, it’s not like no-one stuck up their hand and offered £5.63, a Twix and their hat. A few bids were apparently recorded, but nobody wanted to piss away £15,000 on a painting of Madonna and Guy Richie.

Of course, we all know that everyone is being financially shafted and hardly anyone can afford to piss away money on total tat. Believe it or not, we aren’t expert art dealers and our invitation to appear on Cash In The Attic and Bargain Hunt haven’t arrived yet. But we know the following:

* The painting was done by Scottish artist Peter Howson who is meant to be quite good. Sadly 93.7% of the public don’t know who he is. If the auction house had lied and said Banksy painted it, some moron would have shelled out £100,000.

* We’ve never seen Guy Richie naked before, only his face. But it appears that he is the human equivalent of The Thing from The Fantastic Four in the portrait. Give him a fake tan to make him look orange and you’ve completed the look.

* Madonna and Guy Richie secretly created the monster from the Cloverfield movie. They both appear to be as tall as the building in the background and don’t really mind unleashing a beast to destroy New York.

*Sadly, the artist Peter Howson has done nothing to make Madonna look vaguely attractive. Surely his brief for the painting can’t have been “make her look as manly as possible, pregnant and strongly resembling something that farmers would use as an alternative as a scarecrow”.

* Just a little bit of work is needed on Madonna’s left tit. Her nipple looks a cherry stone and if you turn your head to the left to gaze at its ugliness, it resembles Pac-Man. We know you’ve just tried it.

But don’t worry dear reader! If you thought you’ve missed out on the opportunity to own a genuine piece of overpriced shit, then you are wrong. According to BBC News:

“The painting is still for sale and we would be delighted to hear from anyone who is interested in this much talked about piece of Scottish art history.”

There are two options here. We all chip in a pound, buy the artwork and stage a mass public burning of it in a randomly picked city centre. Or, the auction house will have to go for a rubbish bid such as £5.63, a Twix and a hat with fluffy clouds pasted all over it.

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Say whatever you like about Guy Ritchie, but never suggest that he doesn’t like women with stupid accents.

Because that’s incontestable fact. Until recently Guy Ritchie was married to Madonna, whose bizarre mid-Atlantic accent made her sound exactly like Lloyd Grossman choking on grape skins – and now it’s been rumoured that he’s hooked up with Jemima Khan, the horsey aristocrat who used to go out with Hugh Grant.

And, as we all known, Jemima Khan is so furiously posh that her voice sounds a mouse stuck up a chimney who can only communicate in vowel-sounds. Well done, Guy Ritchie.

It’s good to see that after all the arguments, comparisons to butchery cast-offs and possibly having it away with steroid-using idiots, Guy Ritchie and Madonna have managed to move on from their divorce with the utmost dignity.

Well, you know, dignity only relative to two people who dress up like slutty 14-year-olds and make the worst films in the history of planet Earth respectively. Madonna is apparently going out with a boy named Jesus who could literally only be younger than he currently is if he was a test tube full of sperm, and Guy Ritchie is still cartwheeling after a woman so unrelentingly upper class that she probably employs a full staff of Indonesians just to keep riff-raff out of her eyeline in case one of them offends her delicate sensibilities.

You may remember that Guy Ritchie and Hugh Grant’s ex-girlfriend Jemima Khan were possibly but not quite a couple back in December. Well we’ve got some blisteringly hot news for you – Guy Ritchie and Jemima Khan are… still possibly but not quite a couple. Gigantic news, we know. Gather yourselves and read what the News Of The World has to say about it:

One close friend told me: “They’re taking things slowly as Guy doesn’t want to throw himself back into the dating world so soon after splitting with him. Jemima has been there to comfort him — they’ve become very good friends because of it. But everyone can see there’s clearly a connection between them and I don’t think anyone would be surprised if they take things on to the next level.”

Personally we’re hoping that Guy Ritchie and Jemima Khan do manage to take things on to the next level, because at this rate, the next level would be ‘sharing a strand of spaghetti like in Lady And The Tramp except the strand of spaghetti is nine miles long and they’re both quite full up’.

Honestly, we’ve calculated that Guy Ritchie and Jemima Khan are moving so slowly that they’d need to take things on by about 300 extra levels before they actually become a couple, which we’d like to see because they’d probably split up a couple of days afterwards and then we’d actually have something decent to write about for once. People, let’s make it happen.

Read more:

A Guy Khan Look! – NOTW

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All those years of marriage to Madonna have done something strange to Guy Ritchie – they’ve opened him up to the possibility of love.

Or, to be more specific, they’ve opened him up to the possibility of love with immensely rich women whose plummy British accents are so ludicrous that they sound like aristocratic cats yakking up hairballs when they try to speak.

To demonstrate this, Guy Ritchie has apparently been seen ‘canoodling’ with Jemima Khan – a woman who’s basically just a singing career, an adopted African child and a wardrobe full of gruesome leotards away from actually being Madonna. Possibly.

The best thing about the Madonna/ Guy Ritchie divorce – aside from the happy relief that we’ll never see Madonna star in a woefully-directed cockney gangster thriller about some nonces trying to turn over the Kabbalah – is that they’ve both managed to make a clean break of it.

It was simple – Madonna and Guy Ritchie decided to split up, Madonna handed Guy Ritchie an obscene amount of money and they both went on their merry ways. Since then, Madonna has been seen gyrating her crotch at Alex Rodriguez and, if today’s reports are true, a dancing teenage Jesus – although we’ll admit that we haven’t actually read today’s reports properly – and Guy Ritchie doesn’t seem to be doing too badly out of this either.

Not only has Guy Ritchie been romantically linked with a ginger girl from his new film, but he’s also apparently set his sights on Jemima Khan, the aristocratic ex-girlfriend of Hugh Grant, daughter of right-wing billionaire James Goldsmith and former wife of Star Trek villain Khan Noonien Singh.

Those of you with pointlessly long memories will remember that Jemima Khan is the woman who got the hump because Hugh Grant didn’t want to marry her and then left, and then went back to him, and then left, and then went back to him and blah blah blah forever until everyone died. And now it looks like it might be time for her to go through all that kerfuffle again with Guy RItchie. They’ve been canoodling, don’t you know. Monsters And Critics reports:

Guy Ritchie has a new squeeze, it has been reported. According to London’s Telegraph, the director was canoodling with British millionaire heiress Jemima Khan. The report says that Ritchie and Khan attended a U.K. dinner party together earlier this month, hosted by Matthew Freud and his wife, Elisabeth Murdoch.

Actually, we’re hoping this rumour is true. Guy Ritchie and Jemina Khan would be such a good match for each other. Jemima has lived her entire life in the shadow of powerful men, so we’d have to endure fewer of the ridiculous power struggles that Guy constantly had with Madonna. More importantly, though, Jemima Khan is bloody well loaded, so if Guy moves fast enough he can marry her and then divorce her by Easter and he’ll probably get another pub out of it.

Still, though – Guy Ritchie isn’t the only with a type, is he? First Hugh Grant and now Guy Ritchie? It seems like nothing turns Jemima Khan on more than British people who make rubbish films but are bizarrely lauded in America. If we were James McAvoy, we’d be investing in a decent pair of running shoes.

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Remember when everyone thought that Madonna had given Guy Ritchie close to $100 million in their divorce settlement because she’s so lovely?

Yeah, she’s not lovely. Madonna is an awful person. And, as a reminder, Madonna has rushed out a statement suggesting that she wouldn’t dream of giving a cloth-eared bellend like Guy Ritchie that much money.

However, both Madonna and Guy Ritchie have said they’re happy with the divorce settlement – Madonna because she can keep her money and Guy Ritchie because he doesn’t have a wife who looks like a pensioner’s scrotum wrapped around a set of antique dentures any more.

Oh, we thought it was all over, you know. Madonna and Guy Ritchie were divorced, Madonna did some weird pneumatic vaginal thrusts at a man at a concert – thereby making him her new boyfriend according to Madonna Law – and Guy Ritchie probably shagged an actress in Chatham. Madonna gave Guy Ritchie a ridiculously large pile of money as a settlement and, bish bash bosh, everyone could get on with their lives again.

Except no. No, that’s not the case at all. Madonna wants you to ignore all the reports saying that she’d given Guy Ritchie $76 million, a gigantic country pile and a London boozer in her divorce settlement, because it couldn’t be further from the truth.

And, yes, even though news of the divorce settlement seemed to come directly from Madonna’s own henchwoman Liz Rosenberg, it still isn’t true. The new story is that Madonna is big and mean and nasty, and all she gave Guy Ritchie in the divorce was a kick in the bum and a nasty case of the herpes. Or something else entirely. Nobody’s saying for sure. However, Madonna and Guy did release this joint statement:

“We have tried to maintain a dignified silence regarding the details of our divorce for the last few months whilst accepting the obvious media interest. A misleading and inaccurate statement, specifically in relation to the sums of money involved, was wrongly issued to AP this week. The financial details of the settlement will remain private, save to say that both of us are happy with our agreement. Our primary concern, like any co-parents, is the care and well being of our children.”

So fair enough, maybe Guy Ritchie isn’t getting $76 million from Madonna in his divorce settlement after all. It doesn’t matter – what’s important is that he still gets to keep the love of his children. Or at least a generic expression of their love in the form of a three-line acknowledgment of his existence that Madonna will grudgingly pay an orderly to type out once every year.

The bad news, of course, is that a $76 million divorce settlement would have easily been enough to ensure that Guy Ritchie never had to direct another film again. And now he almost certainly will. Thanks a lot Madonna, you massive bitch.

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When Guy Ritchie divorced Madonna recently, it definitely wasn’t about the money – definitely, definitely not.

It was about the children. And it was about having the freedom to do whatever he wanted. And it was about going to bed each night with a woman who didn’t feel like a half-chewed steak. But Guy Ritchie definitely didn’t divorce Madonna for the money.

Except now Guy Ritchie’s divorce settlement from Madonna has come through at close to $100 million, including a dirty great mansion and pub. It’s so much money that Guy Ritchie never has to work again. Guy, read that last sentence again. Read it!

Now that Madonna and Guy Ritchie are properly divorced, we can take off our rose-tinted glasses to inspect its carcass objectively and – you know what? – in hindsight, it’s obvious that, apart from his son Rocco, not one single decent thing was ever produced from that marriage.

It’s true. Madonna’s influence led Guy Ritchie to produce the most hamfisted movies of his career. Guy Ritchie’s influence led Madonna to start talking in the most bizarre stab at a British accent we’ve ever heard. Madonna released possibly her two worst albums ever in American Life and Hard Candy. An African kid got taken away from his father in the name of adoption.

And – worst of all – to try and cover up the cracks in their marriage, Madonna even wrote a song about having sex with Guy Ritchie. As if our lives weren’t horrible enough without the mental image of the withered corpse from the end of Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade grinding away on Mr Potato Head’s lap to contend with.

Actually, we’re lying. There was one good thing to emerge from Guy Ritchie’s marriage to Madonna. And that’s the gigantic pile of money that Madonna’s just handed Guy Ritchie as a final divorce settlement. People reports:

Madonna has reached a divorce settlement with Guy Ritchie, according to the singer’s rep. The pop star will pay her ex between $76 million and $92 million, her spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg tells the Associated Press. Rosenberg says the figure includes the value of their country home Ashcombe, in western England, as well as the couple’s London pub, the Punchbowl.

That is a phenomenal amount of money. Guy Ritchie must be counting his lucky stars – eight years of standing slightly out of frame on red carpets with a handbag swinging from his arm while his elderly wife jiggled her genitals around in a special orthopedic leotard for the paparazzi and he gets almost $100 million? That’s incredible – even if most of that sum is in the form of property and will therefore only be worth about 50p by the middle of next week.

But Madonna is a canny businesswoman, remember that – this huge divorce settlement won’t come without any stipulations. Madonna and Guy Ritchie have yet to reach a formal agreement regarding child custody, for example, so don’t be surprised if Guy’s time with his son Rocco and adopted son David is greatly reduced now. In fact, for $100 million, don’t be surprised if Guy Ritchie’s only contact with the children is a single Christmas card each year addressed from Anonymous Father Figure B.

Still, what does Guy Ritchie care? He’s rich! Rich enough to buy his own children! Rich enough to buy 100 children and run through meadows tossing them all in the air like confetti.

Well, it’s what we’d do. Don’t judge us.

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Madonna doesn’t do Thanksgiving, possibly because someone once confused her with a turkey and tried slicing her bum open.

And because of this, Madonna won’t be spending this Thanksgiving with rumoured new boyfriend Alex Rodriguez. Well, in truth it’s because Alex Rodriguez would rather spend Thanksgiving with his children in Florida than with the human equivalent of frozen giblets, but the bum-slicing thing just seemed funnier.

But anyway, contrary to several reports, Madonna and Alex Rodriguez won’t be spending Thanksgiving together. Which just goes to show, most men would prefer to spend a holiday with an ex-wife who’s bitter because she was dumped for Madonna and some children whose births were almost missed because their father wanted to go and meet Madonna than actually spend it with Madonna herself. That’s got to sting a bit.

This Thanksgiving will be the first one in ages that Madonna and Guy Ritchie won’t spend as a married couple. The knock-on effects of that are huge. It means that Guy Ritchie won’t have to eat a gigantic turkey dinner, and can settle for the 14 giant turkey dinners that he usually has at every mealtime regardless of the day, the greedy cockney fool.

And as for Madonna? Well, she’s free to spend her Thanksgiving with Alex Rodriguez, the man rumoured to have played some part in the Madonna/ Guy Ritchie split. You’ll remember, of course, that Alex Rodriguez is the man who apparently ran out on the birth of his second child to meet Madonna because Madonna brainwashed him into thinking that she was his ‘fucking soulmate’. He’s obviously a highly intelligent gentleman.

Well, now that her divorce saga is finally over, Madonna can make this Thanksgiving a celebration of her new-found freedom and the love that she apparently has for Alex Rodriguez. They can cook a huge Thanksgiving meal together that Rodriguez can eat and Madonna can lick a molecule of before whining to her personal trainer about it and then doing tantric sit-ups for nine hours to burn off the calories.

Except, despite what’s been reported, Madonna and Alex Rodriguez won’t be spending Thanksgiving together at all. People reports:

“He always had every intention of spending the holiday with Cynthia, the family, and his two daughters. There was never any intention of him flying back. The allegations regarding this trip to New York [to be with Madonna] couldn’t be anything farther from the truth”. A-Rod is planning on having dinner with Cynthia and their two children Tuesday night.

So, in short, something you didn’t know was happening isn’t happening. You may let this news affect your life in whichever manner you see fit.

But still, at least you know that however you are or aren’t spending Thanksgiving, at least you know yours will be better than Alex Rodriguez’s. Unless you happen to be spending it sitting around a table in icy silence with a woman who clearly hates every fibre of your body and some children who want to know why daddy doesn’t love them any more, in which case your Thanksgiving will be identical to Alex Rodriguez’s.

But don’t think that Madonna will be upset about this Thanksgiving shun because, as she so clearly stated, she works too hard to be upset about anything. And if she doesn’t happen to be working over Thanksgiving? When then she’ll be too busy, um, being a bit lonely to be upset. Does that work?

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For a woman who got divorced a few days ago, Madonna has been doing a remarkable job of gritting her teeth and ploughing on.

That’s not particularly surprising – years ago Madonna had her brain removed to make space for more bicep and her tear ducts were cemented up because she didn’t weep holy Kabbalah water – so we’ve come to expect steely, robotic reactions to everything from her. However, Madonna has now finally decided to accept her divorce and mention it in public for the very first time.

Speaking to the Associated Press, Madonna has said how sad she is about the divorce, and how grateful she is that her heavy workload can distract her from it. Wow, sadness and gratitude? We’ve seen Swept Away and Body Of Evidence – that’s literally about six more human emotions than we thought Madonna was capable of.

When Madonna married Guy Ritchie almost eight years ago, there was a lot of speculation about why the world’s most famous woman had decided to move to England to live with a man who looks like a potato and can’t decide whether he’s Ray Winstone or Terry Thomas. And all the time it was staring us right in the face.

Madonna married an Englishman because she’s essentially English herself. She rides horses, she speaks in something that she believes is an English accent, she wears vastly inappropriate clothing for her age (see: Loose Women) and – most importantly of all – instead of expressing an emotion, Madonna would rather roll up her feelings into a little black ball and push them down into the pit of her stomach where one day they’ll surge out of control and prompt an act of staggering violence on someone who doesn’t deserve it. It’s the British way.

You can see this fear of emotion in Madonna’s professional output – she’s so lifeless in all of her films that often we have to be reminded that we’re not watching a film about a veiny ventriloquist’s dummy, and the most profoundly emotional thing she could come up with on her most recent album is “tick tock tick tock tick tock” – but at least her recent divorce from Guy Richie has yanked some feeling out of her.

Last week, after their divorce was finalised, you’ll remember that Guy Ritchie reacted by smiling and looking pleased while Madonna gave everyone the finger like a surly teenager would. But, of course, in reality Madonna is as raw and vulnerable as you’d expect her to be in this situation – all the posturing and aggressive defiance was just to paper over the cracks in Madonna’s broken heart. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

In an interview with the Associated Press, she says her intense schedule “provides a distraction that keeps me going,” adding, “I’m sad about my personal life, but I feel very blessed and very lucky that I have the opportunity to do what I do in my professional life. It would be horrible if I was just thinking about getting a divorce and had nothing to do.”

Look, we never said they were very big cracks, OK?

But now that Madonna has finally decided to allow herself to properly reflect on the divorce in a healthy and emotionally naked way, maybe she open herself to the remaining stages of being a 50-year-old recent divorcee, too.

For instance, first Madonna is bound to feel some resentment, then loneliness, then slowly she’ll come to terms with her loss. And then finally she’ll get shitfaced in a pikey disco in a small provincial town and end up wanking a frightened 18-year-old off in a toilet. That, too, is the British way.

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