Actually, come to think of it again, we do know why Yes Man topped the weekend box office – nostalgia. A movie where Jim Carrey isn’t blatantly gunning for an Oscar or playing a cackheaded number-obsessed maniac is a throwback to his golden age.

That means the weekend box office success of Yes Man sends a clear message to Jim Carrey – that message is ‘Dance, monkey-boy, dance! Pull a funny face! Ha ha, look at stupid monkey-boy Jim Carrey’s funny face!’

The box office success of Yes Man, we’ll admit, is a bit of a shock. This is for two reasons: 1) Will Smith had a new film out this weekend, and Will Smith films always enter the weekend box office at number one and 2) we didn’t expect that anyone would want to see Yes Man because you can pick up Liar Liar for pennies in the bargain bins of most DVD stores now and it’s THE EXACT SAME FILM.

But, still, if watery remakes of his former glories are what people want, then watery remakes of his former glories are exactly what Jim Carrey’s going to give them, starting next year with The Number 73, a remake of The Number 23 where Jim Carrey becomes obsessed with the mid-1980s Sandi Toksvig-hosted ITV Saturday morning kid’s TV show and goes on a stab rampage. And it’ll be all your fault. Here’s the US weekend box office top five…

1 – Yes Man (Aside from being Jim Carrey’s biggest hit in forever, Yes Man also marks the start of Danny Wallace’s tenure as Hollywood hot property. We can now look forward to seeing the movie adaptations of his other books, such as Join Me, Random Acts Of Kindness and Other Arbitrarily-Chosen Sunday Newspaper Magazine Feature Ideas Padded Out To Fill An Entire Godforsaken Paperback Stocking Filler) $18,160,000

2 - Seven Pounds (Look at this – Will Smith’s first flop movie for as long as we can remember. What could have caused this? The vague premise? The way the title steals from 21 Grams in an obscenely shameless way? Will Smith’s recent links with the Church Of Scientology? No. It’s the fact that Will Smith doesn’t rap the theme-tune. Will, if you’re reading, you have time to change this before the European release. And remember, ‘Seven Pounds’ rhymes perfectly with both ‘release the hounds’ and ‘I want to hump your sexy mounds.’ Bill us accordingly, Will) $16,000,000

3 - The Tale Of Despereaux (’Despereaux’ is, of course, the French for ‘Desperately ripping off Ratatouille‘) $10,507,000

4 - The Day The Earth Stood Still (Slipping down the weekend box office because, gee, standing still is so boring. The Day The Earth Did A Bodypop While Catching Peanuts In Its Mouth? Now that’s a hit!) $10,150,000

5 - Four Christmases (Humbug) $7,745,000

Read more:

Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo

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Another way is to read the news today. You see, Britney Spears turned up at a charity party at Jim Carrey’s house this weekend not looking as if she’d spent the last month wide awake and screaming at the ceiling. And that’s a news story, apparently.

Of course it is – we all care about Britney Spears, so it goes without saying that everything she does should be held up as a shining example of what other mentally unwell, legally unfit mothers can be capable of with a nice dress, some expensive hair and make-up and a brief appearance at a movie star’s fancy charity party.

One of the most heartening things about 2008 has been Britney Spears’ gradual rehabilitation. It was just a few short months ago, remember, that Britney got naked and held her son hostage in a locked bathroom until the authorities came and wheeled her away to a psychiatric hospital for urgent treatment. But now everything’s just rosy.

True, Britney Spears has just lost custody of her children forever, her last CD bombed and she still can’t be trusted to spend any of her money without her father’s permission, but it’s a long hard road. With a lot of time, hard work and dedication, we might even be able to see the old Britney Spears again before long – you know, the Britney who vomited up a lot and thought she was the devil. They were golden times.

Things certainly look good for Britney Spears, because last weekend she attended a party at Jim Carrey’s house to raise funds for the child autism charity he’s so heavily involved with. What’s more, she was wearing all her clothes the right way round and didn’t once try and smash anything up with an umbrella. The Telegraph reports:

“She looked great and seemed really happy,” a guest told a US magazine at the party held at the actor Jim Carrey’s home in California. He said she kept close to her assistant and didn’t speak to other guests, but seemed happy and relaxed. “She smiled and clapped during the video about autism,” he added.

OK, so maybe Britney hasn’t completely recovered yet – smiling and clapping during a heartrending video presentation about child illness sounds like the work of a very special type of weirdo – but we can still see signs that Britney Spears is definitely getting better.

She didn’t talk to any of the other guests at the party, for example. That’s great news – Britney clearly understands that even 30 seconds of conversation with Jim Carrey when he’s being all over-exaggerated and earnest is enough to send even the most sturdy-minded individual into a shrieking spiral of tormented madness. We should take this as a positive.

The early ’90s, eh?

Who can forget those heady days of Global Hypercolour t-shirts, Monster In My Pocket collectible figurines and Channel 4’s Red Light Zone? Jesus – who on Earth can forget Channel 4’s Red Light Zone? Certainly not anyone who was entering adolescence and had a portable TV set in their room, that’s for sure.

Why are we waffling on about the early ’90s so much? Because that’s where this here clip originates from. It’s the first in a new feature called Hecklerspray Oddities (original working title: Clips That We Quite Like But Couldn’t Really Find Any Other Way Of Linking To Them On The Site), in which we present to you a series of clips that we quite like but couldn’t really find any other way of linking to them on the site.

Enjoy, then, a young Jim Carrey partaking in a spot-on sketch show spoof of The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.

We’d imagine that Jim Carrey would be the sort of parent who makes your friends say “Wow, your dad is so cool!” forcing you to explain to them that waking up every morning knowing that you’re about to be subjected to a tedious 45-minute comic improvisational display involving a spoon and pair of slippers has made your life a sheer unrelenting hell on earth.

Anyway, Jim Carrey does have a son – a six-year-old autistic boy called Evan. And even though Evan isn’t his and he’s not married to the woman who gave birth to Evan, Jim Carrey’s just gone on a march and told a magazine that Evan has ‘taught him how to love’, something that must bring tears of joy to the eyes of Jim Carrey’s 20-year-old biological daughter.

You don’t hear so much from Jim Carrey these days, do you? After every movie he was attached to got scrapped due to a combination of script concerns and fears that Jim Carrey’s huge salaries didn’t justify the days spent filming him self-indulgently riffing through every single shot, he’s been a little bit on the quiet side.

And, as we all know, when a Hollywood actor’s career starts to go south they tend to be left with three choices – voiceover work, Scientology and social activism. We could be wrong, but Jim Carrey’s gone and picked all three, the greedy sod.

Not only did he voice Horton Hears A Who – with a Robert Zemeckis Beowulf-style version of A Christmas Carol in the pipeline – but Jim Carrey has also been hanging round Tom Cruise an awful lot lately. And then there’s the social activism angle – Jim Carrey exercised that yesterday by going on a march to help make vaccines less likely to make kids all autistic and stuff, even if they don’t.

You see, Jim Carrey is romantically involved with – but will be forever unmarried to – Jenny McCarthy, the woman who wrote that film about people slipping around on vaginal blood once. And Jenny McCarthy has a son from a previous relationship who happens to be autistic. And that might be because of a vaccine he had once, even though most doctors say that it isn’t and that Evan might not actually be autistic at all.

But that’s why Jim Carrey has picked up the cause of making vaccines cleaner, because he loves that little boy so very dearly, as People reports:

As he led 8,500 people through the streets of Washington, D.C., Wednesday, hand-in-hand with his daughter, Jane, McCarthy and Evan, the actor led told PEOPLE, “He taught me how to love. And without Evan I might never have seen the greatness of Jenny’s spirit.” Carrey added to the families, lawmakers and other activists gathered to raise awareness about toxins in vaccines that McCarthy is “the source of all that is good” in his life.

Incidentally, Jenny McCarthy now calls Jim Carrey ‘the autism whisperer’ because of the apparently miraculous way that his incessant clowning helped Evan’s recovery. On behalf of all the housewives reading this we say “awww.” And on behalf of everyone else we say “Jim Carrey, if you so much as think of making a Patch Adams-style movie about any of this we’ll come round right now and lock you in a cupboard.”