And that means, you guessed it, it’s time for another one. And this one is serious! Denise Richards has trotted off to court to request an emergency order restricting Charlie Sheen’s access to their children. According to Denise Richards, there’s a serious issue in Charlie Sheen’s home that could have an adverse effect on the children.

Since this is Charlie Sheen we’re talking about, we’ve whittled the possible causes for concern down to a) whores, b) drugs or c) DVD copies of Two And A Half Men. For the children’s sake we can only pray that it’s not the latter. They’re just children, for crying out loud.

Imagine that it’s your job to decide whether Denise Richards or Charlie Sheen is a more suitable parent. Imagine that’s what you do every day. What a shit job that must be. You’d idle hours away wishing that you’d studied something more sensible at college, wouldn’t you, like dipping your genitals into wasps’ nests or seeing how many times you could kick a sleeping crocodile in the mouth before it woke up.

But someone does have that job and, by christ, are they ever earning their money. The choice between Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards is essentially a choice between a man with a history chocked full of drugs and whores, and a woman who throws computers at the elderly.

What’s more, Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen really hate each other. Denise hates Charlie so much that she made a reality TV show called Denise Richards: The Father Of My Children Is A Gigantic Dicksplat or something, and Charlie hates Denise so much he won’t even give her any of his sperm. The pair of them aren’t getting any friendlier, either.

We know this because, for the trillionth time this year, Denise Richards has requested an emergency order from a court banning Charlie Sheen from seeing his kids. Why? OK! knows why:

At an emergency hearing, the 37-year-old claimed there were serious issues at the actor’s home that need to be evaluated before the children could visit – allegations Charlie’s team is leery of.

OK, so maybe OK! doesn’t know why. Nobody knows why, in fact. And they won’t know until next week, because the proper judge is on holiday and the stand-in judge doesn’t want anything to do with it because, clearly, she is a very sensible woman.

So in the meantime at least we have a nice firework display between Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards to sit back and admire. Now Charlie’s lawyers are claiming that this is all just a lot of hot air designed to detract from his recent Emmy nomination and make him less likely to win.

We’d be inclined to disagree with this because, if anything, it has raised awareness of Charlie’s Emmy nomination. It doesn’t mean he stands a better chance of winning it now because he’s been nominated for Two And A Half Men, and surely people aren’t stupid enough to let that win anything, other than a box of Anthrax.

So that’s that. Chances are next week we’ll discover what issue was so serious that it made Denise Richards try to call an emergency hearing.

And even if we don’t, it’s no big deal – she’s probably going to try and call another six or seven before the month is out.

And that's what scares Foxy Brown the most. Still in jail, Foxy Brown has requested to go to California to have her cochlear implant examined and possibly repaired before it causes serious permanent damage to her hearing.

And, naturally, judge Justice Melissa Jackson told her to eff off. We'd like to see her be that brave next time she gets with Foxy Brown's hair-pulling range.

When celebrities get put in jail, quite often they're released again after a couple of hours. But that's only because celebrities tend to break the law in silly harmless ways like violating their probation or driving into oncoming motorway traffic on drugs. But Foxy Brown didn't do any of that fun stuff, much to her detriment.

What illegal stuff Foxy Brown did do, in fact, was so numerous that we can't even be bothered to list it all here. Needless to say, beauticians have been kicked and that woman's still pulling number-pads out of her face. And that's why Foxy Brown was saddled with a one-year jail term in September. 

And what a slog it's been so far – first Foxy Brown was locked up in solitary and now she's not even allowed to hear stuff. Apparently the on/off deafness that Foxy Brown sometimes experiences has flipped itself to 'on' and Foxy Brown claims that she needs an important trip to California to save her hearing forever.

Sadly, though, the judge don't care for that ho-skank's ears much, as E! Online reports:

A New York judge has denied the rapper's request for a premature end to her yearlong jail stint in order to travel to California for an ear examination and possible repair of a troublesome cochlear implant. Attorney Laura Dilimetin argued that Brown, who first made public her hearing issues during a 2004 court date, required the services of specialists at the Los Angeles House Clinic, the center where she received her initial treatment for the sudden hearing loss. Prosecutors, however, said the "Chyna Doll" artist could just as easily make do with more localized medical services and called the request, which included a four-page letter penned by a "terrified" Brown, a "desperate and frivolous petition."

Yeah, stick that Foxy Brown! You'll have to make do with those dirty-fingered New York ear doctors who use hotdogs instead of medical instruments! That's good enough, surely – it's either that or you spend the rest of your life listening to an upsetting and unpleasant atonal squeal that makes you want to vomit.

Unless you decide to turn your new album off, that is.

Read more:

Foxy Gives Judge Earful, Gets Denied - E! Online 

Today: Britney Spears goes to court to get her kids back but forgets to actually go all the way into the courtroom. Again.

Honestly, this stuff better be entertaining for Britney Spears, because it's starting to drain our will to live.

She enjoys toying with us, that Britney Spears. Witness the way she goes shopping for pregnancy kits when she's not even pregnant just to whip us all into a froth. Or the way she almost called her new album What If The Joke Is On You? when even a spak-brained village idiot would realise that the joke has actually been on Britney Spears for quite some time now. And wasn't even particularly hilarious to begin with. 

Or the way that Britney Spears gives the world just the slightest glimmer that she isn't a hermetically-sealed hopeless nobsack, only to prove a couple of days later that, yes, actually Britney Spears is a hermetically-sealed hopeless nobsack. What a tease, eh?

If you hadn't already guessed, Britney Spears has just done the latter. Again. After her weird hospital meltdown earlier this month, Britney Spears knows that the only way she has a fighting chance of seeing her two children again – even for a second through four sheets of reinforced glass – is to play the game and show up at court and do what the commissioner tells her. And when Britney Spears took her deposition earlier this week, it looked like she'd finally turned a corner.

But, with stunning inevitability, that corner turns into Shithead Avenue. Yesterday Britney Spears was due in court to seek restoration of her visitation rights. And she went to the courthouse, too. It's just that Britney Spears bricked it and ran off home as soon as she was through the doors. ABC reports:

Britney Spears came to a courthouse Wednesday for a hearing to seek restoration of her rights to see her two little boys, but suddenly left without entering court. "I want to leave," Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini quoted her as saying. Parachini said Spears was driven away. Upstairs, Commissioner Scott Gordon went ahead with a closed hearing. "Notice was taken of Miss Spears' absence" during the hearing, the spokesman said.

Sound familiar? It should – Britney Spears did exactly the same thing last Tuesday. And, as with last Tuesday, Britney's weird no-show meant that she won't be seeing her children again until next month at the earliest.

So what now for Britney Spears? Well, she's due back in court in 11 days, but only because her lawyers want to leave. And then she'll have to wait until February 19 before she gets another crack at fouling up regaining custody. And February 19 is a long time away, so there's a very good chance that at some point before then Britney Spears will go through a period of at least 24 hours without doing something so absurdly gormless that we feel obliged to write about it.

Oh, who are we kidding? That's never going to happen.

Read more:

Britney Spears Arrives at LA Courthouse, Then Leaves the Building - ABC 

However, if Britney Spears is serious about clawing at least some semblance of custody back after her recent episode, she should probably listen to the advice telling her to show up to a court hearing today. Britney Spears has been warned that this could be her last chance at gaining visitation rights.

However, Britney Spears is so unlikely to show her face in court today that we'll get our arses out on the internet if she does.*

What with the not-especially naked Britney Spears pictures and the probably non-existent Britney Spears sex tape, there's a strong chance that you're too busy hurling up in a wastepaper basket to care about the ongoing slow-motion car crash that is Britney Spears' custody battle. 

And, look, we know that you probably weren't even that interested in the Britney Spears custody battle in the first place, ever since it locked into a spiral of Kevin Federline calling emergency hearings every time Britney Spears so much as sneezed in front of her kids and then Britney Spears never showing up for anything anyway.

But, handily it looks like we might be entering some kind of endgame. Well, handily for us at least – probably not so much for Britney Spears, who looks set to lose her kids for months unless she attends a court hearing later today. The hearing, understandably, is set to deal with the events 11 days ago that ended up with Britney Spears being wheeled off to hospital for brain tests. And family lawyer Scott Weston – who isn't involved in the case – has told People just how important it is for Britney to show:

"Britney needs to be there because it's much easier to defend your client if he/she is present to refute what witnesses say. Whether she takes the stand or not depends on what witnesses say, and whether or not her lawyers think her testimony may backfire. But they've got nowhere to go but up at this point. Also, if she doesn't attend, it shows a lack of interest on her part in getting back her kids." 

If Britney Spears doesn't attend the hearing – which, let's face it, looks likely – then she'll lose her chance to argue for visitation rights and it'll be easier for the judge to just ban Britney from seeing the kids until April, which is when their actual custody trial begins. 

And that won't just be hard on Britney Spears – we'd imagine you could just draw faces on a couple of pillows and she wouldn't notice the difference – but it'll be little Sean Preston and Jayden James who'll be worst affected. Kids needs constants in their lives; be it a loving parent, a group of peers or a mental, swearing, Prozac-spazzed topless woman who regularly locks herself in the bathroom with them. That's just common sense.

*No we won't. That's not fair on anybody. 

Read more:

Britney 'Strongly Advised' by Lawyers to Attend Hearing - People 

That's partly because R Kelly keeps successfully managing to push court dates further and further back every time things start to look serious for him – but no longer, because if R Kelly doesn't turn up to court in the next 90 minutes, he's going to be arrested. R Kelly was due to appear in court in Chicago yesterday, you see, but he failed to show up because his tour bus was crocked first by snow and then by a slightly overzealous group of Utah police officers. Hopefully, though, this threat of arrest will force R Kelly to show up in court once and for all, where he'll do the decent thing and get his child porn trial pushed back a couple of years again.

Utah's not a good place to go if you're famous. It's a place where you can't even angrily attack the interior of your own car without attracting a crowd of rubber-neckers, and the threat of bumping into Lindsay Lohan is so high that the CIA has put the state near the top of its official Idiot List.

But worse than that, Utah is a state with a police force so officious that it even stops controversial R&B singers from attending child porn hearings, as R Kelly discovered yesterday.

R Kelly has been waiting since 2002 to go to trial over charges that supposed sex tape of him allegedly having sex with what appears to be a 13 or 14-year-old girl and then doing a wee on her. If he's convicted of all charges, then R Kelly will end up spending anything up to 15 years in jail.

But that's only if R Kelly hasn't died of old age by the time the trial actually starts, because it's been pushed time and time again thanks to burst internal organs and ladder-related accidents. Most recently, the R Kelly child porn trial was set to start in September, but that fell through because his lawyer had a sore tumpsy from giving birth. So yesterday R Kelly was due in a Chicago court to hear when the new trial would start.

Except he didn't show up. Why? Had R Kelly gone on the run to found a brave new land where grown men can film themselves widdling on teenagers' heads whenever they want, unless they didn't do it in which case they'd be perfectly free not to? No, R Kelly was stuck in Utah because a policeman had decided that his bus driver wasn't properly rested and ordered him to pull over for eight hours. According to E! Online, this annoyed the prosecutors somewhat:

"It is an abuse of the process and disrespectful of the court and your honor for everyone who has come prepared to go," said Assistant State's Attorney Shauna Boliker. "The very least he could do is be here for his appointed court date."

And because of the Utah-enforced no-show, the judge decided to put an arrest warrant on R Kelly's head unless he shows up in court by 9am today, Chicago time. It could be one of the most important court hearings of R Kelly's life, too, because it's expected to be when the judge will give him a final start date for the trial.

Well, OK, maybe not a final start date – what's more likely to happen is that someone vaguely related to the case will trip over a skateboard, push the trial back again and give R Kelly the chance to record a couple more slightly inappropriate albums all about the way his penis resembles a car key.

Read more:

R. Kelly's Bus-Stop Blues – E! Online 

Shia LaBeouf was arrested in a Chicago branch of Walgreens last month for appearing drunk and not leaving when a security guard asked him to – but all that trouble is far behind him now. Less than one minute after his hearing started earlier today, Shia LaBeouf quickly found out that Walgreens had written the court a letter wanting to drop the charges against him. Nobody knows what cause Walgreen's sudden change of heart, but it's thought that the key phrase from the letter was "Oh, how could I ever stay mad at an adorable face like yours? Ubba dubba dubba. Ubba dubba dubba. Ubba dubba dubba dubba dubba."

There's no doubting that Shia LaBeouf's face is his fortune. Made of marshmallows and kitten fluff and the innocent daydreams of children, Shia LaBeouf's face has got him out of all kinds of trouble in the past. For instance, blabbing the title of the new Indiana Jones movie could have been a sackable offence, but it took just three seconds of Shia making his eyes all big and sad and adorable for Steven Spielberg to forgive him of everything, grab him by the cheeks and go "Ubba dubba dubba" at him for upwards of 90 minutes.

And now Shia LaBeouf's inherent adorability has even beaten the law. Last month, you'll remember that Shia LaBeouf was arrested in a Chicago branch of Walgreens because he appeared to be drunk and refused to listen to the security guard's requests to leave. Hit with a misdemeanour trespassing charge, Shia politely posted bail and was released, pending a following hearing.

That hearing's just happened in a Chicago courtroom, and Shia LaBeouf has got off scot free. Not that he wasn't prepared to fight, you understand – Shia LaBeouf apparently turned up to court with two of Chicago's most expensive lawyers – but he just didn't have to.

Less than a minute into the hearing, the judge revealed that he'd received a letter from Walgreens stating that it no longer wanted to pursue the case against Shia LaBeouf and that all charges had been dropped. The judge then added that he could have informed everyone of this by the phone, but he just wanted to see if Shia was as adorable in the flesh as everyone says. Bringing his gavel down with a crack, the judge ruled that Shia LaBeouf was indeed highly adorable, then leapt over his podium, grabbed Shia by the face and went "Ubba dubba dubba dubba dubba" at him. For all we know they're both still there now.

So Shia LaBeouf is off the hook for now. The test for him now will be to see how many more terrible crimes he can commit with his adorable little face. Oh, who are we kidding? Shia LaBeouf could poison our local water supply and burn down our hospitals and we'd still forgive him. With that face? Ubba dubba dubba.

Read more:

Trespassing charge against Shia LaBeouf dropped – Chicago Tribune 

But this time, wow. The judge presiding over OJ Simpson's preliminary hearing has ruled that there is more than enough evidence to put OJ Simpson through a full criminal trial for his part in September's supposed armed robbery in Las Vegas. That means that OJ Simpson will have to adjust to being the centrepiece of a blazingly high-profile trial in the 21st century, with all its trappings. OJ Simpson's trial is set to begin in 2008, when you'll be able to stab someone to death with a remote-controlled nanobot and buy food that tastes like anything up to three different types of wood shavings. Sadly, though, the internet still doesn't exist, which means you're imagining all this and should probably get your brain checked out.

2008 looks set to be a golden age of very serious celebrity court cases. Not only will it see Phil Spector's retrial for murder but it'll also be the home to at least some of OJ Simpson's armed robbery trial, for which he could get life in jail. Maybe the Spector and Simpson trials will even run simultaneously, which would be a rare reprieve for OJ Simpson – after all, if that were the case he'd surely get second-billing to the crazy would-be murdering midget in the lesbian get-up.

But that's all speculation – what's important here is that a Las Vegas judge has inevitably ruled that there's easily enough evidence against OJ Simpson to take his armed robbery case to a full criminal trial – where OJ Simpson will face 12 felony counts that could see him thrown in jail until he dies. The ruling came yesterday at the close of OJ Simpson's preliminary hearing, a hearing that has seen OJ Simpson accused of knowing about the guns brought to the raid, then denying any knowledge of them, by two of his accomplices who chose to testify against OJ in return for a lesser punishment.

Yesterday, before the judge made his ruling, OJ Simpson's lawyer Gabriel Grasso did his best to convince the judge to drop the case, saying:

"There has been no showing by the state that there was anything other than the intent by Mr. Simpson to recover property that he reasonably believed was his own property … this is clearly overcharging … Sunglasses? Hats? Cell phones? Twelve counts over that? What are we doing here?"

Meanwhile, after the decision was made, OJ Simpson spoke to reporters, saying:

"This is what we expected. If I have any disappointment it's that I wish a jury was here. As always, I rely on the jury system."

Don't get too excited about seeing OJ Simpson stand a criminal trial, though – court officials say that the trial is a year away at best. That's good news for OJ Simpson, since his supposed armed robbery has a cast made entirely from almost comically shady characters. Thomas Riccio, the auctioneer who set up the meeting between Simpson and the dealers, is a convicted felon. The auctioneers themselves are, in turn, a convicted stalker and a man so money-obsessed that he wants Jack Nicholson to star as him in the film of his own life. And as for OJ Simpson's treacherous goons, well, one of them might be a pimp.

But OJ Simpson has a year to work his defence out, which is plenty of time to solidly question the motives of everyone else involved in the armed robbery. Prosecutors probably won't have to work as hard, what with that tape of OJ Simpson robbing some men at what sounds like gunpoint and all. Either way, it'll be interesting to see how the trial pans out.

And at least this way OJ Simpson has a full year to try and find the world's most beautiful lesbian wig, since that's apparently so key to getting off celebrity gun-based crimes these days. 

Oh, it's so confusing that we think we need a lie down. Luckily it's not for us to make sense of OJ Simpson's alleged shit-stealing escapades, because that's for courts and lawyers and judges and whatnot to decide. Which is more or less what's happening now – a hearing began yesterday to decide whether there's enough evidence to take OJ Simpson to trial on all 12 of his charges. And if a trial does go ahead it's expected to be the biggest shit-based trial starring an unconvincingly innocent murder-suspect the world has ever seen.

Probably. It's not like we've researched it or anything.

It's honestly hard to know how OJ Simpson's brain works sometimes – there can't be many people who, after being cleared of murdering their ex-wife and her friend, would think "Maybe the best way to get the public to like me would be to write a book where I graphically detail the murders as if it was me doing them."

Similarly – if the current allegations against OJ Simpson are true – there can't be many people who'd see some sports memorabilia dealers selling things they assume to be under their ownership and, instead of hiring a lawyer to pursue the matter officially, decide to burst into the dealers' hotel room with a gang of armed men screaming about shit like an angry poo-fixated toddler. 

But trying to work out how OJ Simpson's brain works is now the job of a Las Vegas court which – for the duration of yesterday and today – is holding a hearing to decide whether there's enough evidence to take OJ Simpson to a full trial, which could end up with him spending the rest of his life behind bars on 12 charges including kidnap, assault and robbery with a deadly weapon.

And that means that we're getting to see a bigger picture of the alleged armed robbery than ever before. For instance, we now know that the 'meeting' between OJ Simpson and the memorabilia dealers Bruce Fromong and Alfred Beardsley was set up by auctioneer Thomas Riccio, the man who made the infamous "you think you can steal my shit?" recording; that Riccio had informed the FBI of OJ Simpson's plans weeks in advance and that – at one befuddling point – OJ Simpson wanted to make a reality TV show out of the raid.

But the real star testimony yesterday came from Bruce Fromong – a man who freely admits that he wants to write a book about the incident and then turn the book into a movie starring Jack Nicholson as himself – who got to recount the details of the so-called robbery. In court Bruce Fromong claimed that OJ Simpson and his goons burst into the hotel room and stuffed several hundred items of memorabilia into pillowcases – some of which had nothing to do with him at all – while one man held a gun to his face and threatened to shoot him in the 'ass'. Fromong said:

"I wasn't cowering in a corner, but having a gun pointed at me is an uncomfortable feeling."

Today's part of the hearing is expected to be as information-heavy as yesterday's was, and when it's done the judge will be able to decide whether OJ Simpson should be taken to a full criminal trial, which is both a good and a bad thing.

For example, a full, long court case would give the world more time to get a handle on what apparently transpired in the days up to and including OJ Simpson's raid and digest the claims in easier to manage chunks – but on the downside it sounds like Bruce Fromong is so hungry for fame that a book entitled If I Did It, I'd Have Been Basically Robbing Myself And Holding A Gun To My Own Head Which Doesn't Make Very Much Sense But Buy My Book Anyway is depressingly inevitable.