If this is the case we’d like to make a two-part apology. 1) We’re sorry you’re an idiot and 2) you’ve obviously wasted your time, because not even anyone involved in the Britney Spears hit and run trial had any emotional investment in the Britney Spears hit and run trial.

Yesterday, after the jurors took twice as long as the length of the trial itself to decide that they didn’t know if Britney Spears was guilty of hit and run or not, the judge officially called a mistrial. What’s more, nobody can be bothered to go through a retrial, so Britney Spears is in the clear. Don’t get us wrong – everyone wanted a retrial, but they had more urgent things to do, like repeatedly bashing their head on a desk and weeping.

If the OJ Simpson murder trial was the trial of the century, then that must make the Britney Spears hit and run trial the trial of possibly some of yesterday. Dealing with the heinous crime of slowly dinging another car and walking away, the Britney Spears hit and run trial literally monopolised the attention of a handful of people with nothing better to do.

There were thrills – like when Britney Spears’ father told the court that Britney didn’t need a California driver’s license because she didn’t live in California. There were spills – like when the prosecution told Britney’s dad that she did too live in California and that Britney’s dad was a big fat poostick (we’re paraphrasing).

And, most importantly, there were ills – like when the jury couldn’t work out if Britney Spears was guilty or not even though they’d spent three entire days arguing over something of such little importance that, at worst, Britney Spears would have had to pay a fine equivalent to what she earns in about 10 minutes.

Because of this chronic inability to reach a unanimous decision, the judge has decided to call a mistrial on the whole shebang – a move that was met with a great big shrug. E! Online reports:

City prosecutors have announced that they will not retry the pop star in the wake of her mistrial. “I talked to the foreman, and while I was troubled by the jurors’ outside impressions, I won’t ask the court to retry the case,” Deputy City Attorney Michael Amerian told the court. The case has been formally dismissed.

As pointless as this entire exercise has been, at least everyone can get on with their lives now – Britney Spears can continue her resurgent pop career, the court can return to doing things that are actually important and the jurors can now all go and write their obligatory trial memoirs, titles of which will include I’m An Idiot, Indecisive Twit and The First Time I Wrote This Book I Was Just Hammering My Fingers On An Upside-Down Biscuit Tin Because I Thought It Was A Typewriter.

The main point, though, is that Britney Spears gets away without a criminal record. Her character is completely unblemished – you know, apart from all those rehab stints and public meltdowns and battles with mental illness and repeated examples of her bad motherhood and bald head and everything. Apart from those, Britney’s a saint.

You were? Well relax. This is Britney Spears we’re talking about – a woman who’d have trouble boiling an egg without ending up in a mental hospital because she’d had a hysterical breakdown and attempted to dip one of her own son’s ankles into the water halfway through – so of course it hasn’t gone smoothly.

In fact, the Britney Spears hit and run trial has managed to foul itself right up, with the jury completely unable to decide if Britney is guilty or not after four separate votes. Oh, if only Britney Spears’ was charged with being the adorably kooky queen of American pop, it’d be much easier to reach a unanimous guilty verdict. In fact, she’d be so guilty that we’d probably have to sentence her to the electric chair. That sweet, sweet electric chair.

Do you own some tenterhooks? Well if you do, this Britney Spears hit and run trial probably has you on them – it’s literally the most nail-biting trial about a celebrity doing something so pathetically minor that nobody even noticed it when it happened so long ago that everyone’s forgotten that it even happened ever.

To refresh your memory, last year – when Britney Spears was still in her bald-headed weepy phase – Britney allegedly knocked into a car when she was parking her car and walked away, only for the police to discover that she didn’t even have a valid California driving license anyway. And last week it finally went to trial.

Over the course of the trial we heard all the arguments – the defence’s argument that Britney Spears didn’t need a California driving license because she didn’t live in California, and the prosecution’s argument that, yes, actually she did live in California and that she definitely did the hit and run because there were about 150 paparazzi who filmed her do it – and on Friday the trial went to jury.

It was a simple enough request – go away, think about what happened and reach a unanimous decision. It didn’t even matter one way or the other, because even if she was found guilty Britney Spears would most likely be hit with a tiny fine and everything would be forgotten about instantly leaving her to concentrate on her ongoing comeback – but it’s all turned into a bit of an embarrassing failure, because the jurors can’t make their minds up. AP reports:

Jurors left for the day after saying earlier that they were hopelessly deadlocked. A foreman said they had voted three times since Friday, and each time failed to reach an unanimous conclusion. The three votes were all 10 to 2, the foreman said. The jurors appeared glum after lunch, with many on the panel telling Superior Court Judge James A. Steele that they didn’t think an agreement could be reached.

So that’s two days of deliberation and they still can’t decide. That’s longer than it took a jury to send OJ Simpson to jail for the rest of his life. Maybe the jurors need some more persuading – can someone please go and stand outside the jury room window playing Womanizer on a loop at full volume? We get the feeling that it’d only take three spins for everyone to reach a unanimous verdict.

True, it’ll probably make all the jurors mentally ill for the rest of their lives, but a little thing like that shouldn’t stand in the way of justice.

In fact, we miss the old red-eyed, crazy British-accented Britney Spears who was allowed to stumble around everywhere followed by a pack of screaming paparazzi. And that’s why we’re clinging to the last remnant of that era as hard as we can – Britney Spears’ hit and run trial. Even though it’s plainly rubbish.

So far, the trial has lasted about 30 seconds and Britney Spears hasn’t once been anywhere near the courtroom – and now it’s down to the jury. After deliberating furiously over the trial, jurors expected to return soon with their verdict. And, given the special nature of this trial, the verdicts open to them are ‘Shut up’ and ‘Nobody even cares’.

We’re so happy that Britney Spears is number one in the charts again – it means that now, when she annoys you, you don’t feel waves of guilt because you essentially hate the mentally ill. Which is just as well, because thanks to this poxy hit and run trial of hers, it’s almost a scientific impossibility to not be annoyed by Britney Spears a little bit.

It’s hard to describe the importance of the Britney Spears hit and run trial, but we’ll have a go. Imagine the Phil Spector murder trial but, instead of murdering anyone, Phil Spector was accused of gently hitting a car with his car and then walking off. And the case lasted about a day rather than several weeks. And Phil Spector didn’t turn up in court. And nobody cared. That’s roughly the sort of level of importance that the Britney Spears hit and run trial currently occupies.

It didn’t even have to go to trial. Britney Spears allegedly knocked into a car over a year ago, and a plea deal was set out so that she’d take the rap but avoid any real form of punishment. But Britney Spears turned that down because she didn’t want a criminal record, so everything got forced into an actual criminal trial that could actually result in Britney serving a jail sentence.

The trial mainly revolves around Britney’s lack of a valid California driver’s license at the time of the crash. But Britney Spears’ lawyer J Michael Flanagan claims that she didn’t need a California driver’s license because she’s from Louisiana, not California. AP reports:

Flanagan tried to establish that Los Angeles is a temporary home for Britney Spears and that she will likely leave once she has custody of her young sons. Flanagan gave jurors three examples of her ties to Louisiana: she is registered to vote there; she takes a homestead exemption on her property taxes there and until late last year, she had a Louisiana driver’s license.

That’s all well and good, bar the facts that Britney Spears isn’t registered to vote in Louisiana and just about every piece of legal documentation she’s ever had anything to do with over the last few years – including divorce records that were signed right before the alleged hit and run – says that she lives in California.

The jury is due to give its verdict soon, but Britney Spears doesn’t have to worry, because even if she’s found guilty she’s unlikely to go to jail. She would get a criminal record though. Just like the one she’s got already, except this new one wouldn’t repeat the word ‘womanizer’ 42 times in the space of three minutes.

Criminal record. Because, you see, Womanizer is criminal, and it’s a record, so, you know… oh, forget it.

And what was the most regrettable thing that Britney Spears did during her barmy lost weekend? No, not proving herself to be an untrustworthy mother or consistently becoming more and more of a global embarrassment with every single passing second – we’re talking about the time that Britney Spears sort of gently drove into a car in a car park. It was, quite frankly, outrageous.

We know this because people still aren’t shutting up about it – Britney’s lawyer is still trying to appeal against a criminal trial for the hit and run scheduled for next month. Experts have responded to the move by Michael Flanagan with shock. Slowly punching yourself in the face again and again while murmuring “Make it stop” does still count as shock, right?

As we will never tire of telling you, Britney Spears is back. Back back back. Britney Spears is back with awards, Britney Spears is back with a new album and Britney Spears is back with an exploitative book about Britney Spears written by her mother. That’s literally as back as you can get.

But it’s a tentative comeback. Over the last few months, Britney Spears and her family have worked as hard as they can with only one goal in mind – to get straight Britney back on the treadmill that almost destroyed her a few months ago. And, given all her recent psychiatric episodes, the smallest bump could demolish Britney’s painstakingly-constructed house of cards.

A bump like, ooh, a reminder of a crime she committed in her darkest days, for example? Say, the minor hit and run incident that Britney Spears got into over a year ago?

Some of you may remember that in the middle of all the fuss made about Britney Spears and the shaved head and the custody battles and the accusations of child abuse and the vomiting and the collapsing and the vaginas, Britney Spears knocked into the side of a car in a car park and walked away from the scene. Well, that’s what people are still banging on about.

There’s a chance that Britney Spears might have to face a criminal trial for the hit and run next month, but not if her attorney Michael Flanagan has anything to do with it. That’s because Michael Flanagan is claiming that Britney Spears isn’t back at all. In fact, he says she’s as mental as ever! E! Online reports:

He filed documents today in Los Angeles County Superior Court requesting a stay in the proceedings because she is remains under the control of a conservatorship. “The Probate Court has found that [Spears] lacks the capacity to retain counsel,” Flanagan writes, “as a result, [Spears] is currently unable to participate meaningfully in this matter.”

What? Surely not. Is Michael Flanagan really suggesting that robotically saying the word ‘womanizer’ 41 times in the space of three minutes doesn’t automatically give you the capacity to retain counsel any more? Gosh. Everything we thought we knew about the legal system is wrong.

Anyway, you can see why everyone is so anxious about getting this trial halted – if she’s forced to attend, the pressure could set her recovery back unbelievably. And nobody wants that – after all, crushing up Britney’s anti-psychotic medication and hiding it in her food is just so bloody time-consuming, isn’t it.

Justin Long might tell you that too, but give him a week or so. And why don’t you want to incur her anger? because if you do she’ll chase you down, pounce on your right shoulder and suck your heart out through a hole she bites in the back of your neck.

That was actually a recurring dream we had for most of the sixth grade. We still can’t watch her films without trembling. Another person who will probably never be able to stand the sight of her again (especially enlarged like that on the silver screen), is the guy that just made her the victim of a hit and run.

He didn’t get away. She chased him in her car at speeds in excess of 35 mph.

Hey – we’re serious here.

When Drew Barrymore is out for a drive, she likes to do so with whimsical music seeping out her car speakers while sniffing the wig she once put on ET. It smells cinnamony we bet.

That’s not a fact mind you – but if we were her then 90% of the things we ever did would revolve around props from that set. For instance our living-room chairs would all be bike baskets. We have all this planned in case we’re ever trapped in a situation extremely close to the plot of Oh, God! You Devil. You never know.

What Barrymore doesn’t like when she’s out driving is four tons of steel getting violently rammed up her rear end. Of her car. That happened recently – she was out driving when karma finally caught up to her for stealing Tom Green’s good testicle. Give that back and maybe your car will be magically repaired, Drew.

But the actress prefers to rely on her insurance company rather than fate, so when a car rammed her from behind, she sped after it with the most violent of intentions. And by that we mean she wanted to write down the offender’s license plate number – in blood! We mean in ink!

TMZ, please inform:

“Drew Barrymore was the victim of a hit and run yesterday — but she may have gotten enough info so cops can catch the guy…Barrymore was driving in West Hollywood just before noon yesterday when she was rear-ended… Barrymore followed the driver after he fled the scene, but eventually lost track of the car. Never fear, though, law enforcement sources tell TMZ she got the license plate number of the car and they are investigating.”

Witnesses tell us that if Barrymore took her car off any wicked awesome jumps in the chase, and maybe landed her car right on top of the other guy’s vehicle pinning him between her two driver’s side tires, nobody saw it.

But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Read More:

Move Over, Batman. We Got Barrymore – E! Online

They are accused of driving over photographer Glen Gurniak’s foot as they left a club in Los Angeles Thursday.

Gurniak was left grounded, squealing in pain, as if he were nothing more than a piece of disposable paparazzi trash.

However, he soon got up to file a police report against them with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. Spokesman Steve Witmore said:

“The incident is currently under investigation.”

Benji Madden was driving, with Paris in the passenger seat. Gurniak explained exactly what he thought happened:

“There were too many people that side of the car ,so he swung the wheels in my direction on the other side of the car and got my foot trapped under the wheel. I yelled at him, ’Dude, you’ve pinched my foot under the wheel, don’t drive, don’t drive.’ He turned and looked at me out of the window and then just drove. I fell to the floor as the car stopped and was just laying on the floor as everyone was screaming at him that he’d run me over.”

Last year Paris was jailed for violating a drink-driving probation, despite considering herself too pretty to be there in the first place. She behaved so well that she was released early, despite apparently trying to kill herself, as well as receiving death threats.

She surely wants to avoid going through all that again – sitting in the passenger seat is probably a good start.

But that’s not the end of worries; just yesterday she was officially labelled with the blame for the upcoming destruction of humanity in its entirety.

A video of Gurniak screaming in the aftermath has been posted at TMZ, showing the alleged victim’s shoe with a tyre-ish marking on it.

Read More – Hilton accused of hit and run – The Sun