A few things immediately leapt out at us after viewing this advert.

First of all, John Lennon was dead the last time we checked. So how could he donate his cheeky Scouse tones to a charity appeal nearly thirty years after his death? Did the cocktail of drugs he took in his lifetime finally cause his decayed corpse to rise from the dead and seek out charitable causes? Though it would be slightly creepy and cool, it turns out that pesky Yoko Ono has donated his voice and image to the campaign. Now we know you can donate these alongside blood, sperm and the flu.

Now, don’t get us wrong, the campaign is a great one – it supplies computers to the world’s poorest children, so that they can read hecklerspray and leave badly-spelt comments for us to laugh at. But, really, the advert’s creators should have chosen someone other than John Lennon. He hails from Liverpool, so he’ll no doubt be able to get the laptops a little bit cheaper off the back of a lorry from his mate’s brother’s cousin.

Once a Scouser always a Scouser. Even from beyond the grave.

The same rule of thumb however doesn’t apply if you happened to enjoy the titillating musical delights of The Beatles, though.

Liverpool’s finest export have been delighting music lovers for generations. Their songs about peace, love and the results of multiple drug binges helped them to keep a presence in the public eye. During their career, The Beatles didn’t do much to piss anyone off, apart from the time John Lennon claimed that his band were “more popular than Jesus” in 1966. For 42 years, The Vatican has never forgiven the Beatle for what he said. But in a swift change of heart, they’ve decided to kiss and make up. Not literally of course, kissing the corpse of a dead man would be sick and wrong.

Since The Beatles split up, the four members have been doing their own respective thing. Paul McCartney continued to knock out record after record, tour around the world, get threatened by terrorists and marry a peg-legged vegan who he eventually managed to shake off. Ringo Starr on the other hand evolved into moody old bastard who would shout at the people who supported him and make crap records about Liverpool which made everyone cry.

George Harrison never really had any crazy moments during his solo career – though if today’s society is anything to go by, we expect a salmon farmer to come forward and claim that George Harrison signed him the deeds to his entire assets after a night on the drugs in the old days.

It was John Lennon who gave one of the most memorable quotes during the legacy of The Beatles. During an interview with the London Evening Standard newspaper in 1966, he said:

“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first – rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”

Now if Lennon had actually said The Beatles were bigger then Jesus, he could have technically been right. Remember, Jesus had been kicking around the planet a few thousand years before the band had been born. In terms of physical height, we’re pretty confident that Jesus would have been quite a small chap. Thanks to something called evolution, John Lennon would have surely been taller than him. Even if it was by a few inches.

Because the Vatican Church been keeping up with the latest events in pop culture, they’ve finally decided that John Lennon was having a bit of a joke. The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano which normally reports on hot topics involving The Pope has issued a statement about the incident. Remember, John Lennon was killed in 1980 – perhaps it was a slow news at L’Osservatore Romano regarding The Pope. Or he fell off the toilet and injured himself and they didn’t want to make The Pope look like a stupid twat. Anyway, the newspaper issued a statement saying that Lennon was:

“Showing off, bragging by a young English working-class musician who had grown up in the age of Elvis Presley and rock and roll and had enjoyed unexpected success.”

Of course, it all makes sense now! He was a mischievous rascal from Liverpool who was easily influenced by a cheeseburger-munching American, so all is forgiven. We have to blame Elvis instead for corrupting the mind of an innocent youth. All because the Vatican says so.

With the hatchet buried between the two, we can only hope that Jim Davidson gives every ethnic minority a cuddle to make up for being an obnoxious old bastard to them and that Bono will finally realise no-one cares about him, his music or his plans to single handily save Africa.

Well we can imagine can’t we?

Recently a 15-second clip of Imagine was used in a weird creationist documentary by the man who played the teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and it caused Yoko Ono to hit the roof. Yoko sued the makers of the movie for copyright infringement, but it looks like she’s been unsuccessful.

Yoko Ono has now dropped the lawsuit against the movie, presumably because the use of Imagine was covered under ‘fair use’ rules. So it looks like it’s one-nil to the creationists! You see, they’re always right! Apart from, you know, all their basic religious tenants and stuff! But still! Party time!

There’s just something about Imagine by John Lennon that has caused it to remain in the public consciousness for so long. Maybe it’s the fact that the lyrics seem to have been copied from a motivational fridge magnet, or the way that the piano sounds like it’s being played by a depressed man trying to gently headbutt himself into unconsciousness. We just don’t know.

But still, the song’s power to invoke a furore is still there – not so long ago a school banned Imagine in case the students all decided to gang up and, um, imagine they didn’t have any stuff. Or something. And now Imagine is back in the news, and it’s all the fault of the sodding creationists.

In a documentary called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed from earlier this year – in which the actor Ben Stein asks why scientists aren’t allowed to believe that God magicked everything together a couple of hundred years ago anymore – a 15-second clip of Imagine was used.

This made Yoko Ono flip out. She hit Premise Media – the makers of the movie – with a copyright infringement lawsuit as hard as she could, either because she didn’t agree with the principles of the film the song was used in or because someone didn’t offer her a wheelbarrow full of cash for a song that she didn’t even write anyway first. Again, we just don’t know.

But, whatever the reason, Yoko Ono has decided to drop the lawsuit anyway, probably in the spirit of peace or something. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Executives at Premise Media Corp. acknowledged all along that they didn’t seek permission to use the song. But they argued that under “fair use” rules, they didn’t need to, since the film used only a brief portion of the song, to comment on. Anthony Falzone, a Stanford law professor who represents Premise, said he welcomed the plaintiffs’ decision to drop their lawsuits.

Sadly, though, this decision has come slightly to late for Expelled, because Premise were forced to drop Imagine from the DVD version in case the lawsuit went Yoko Ono’s way. So anyone buying a copy of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed won’t hear Imagine by John Lennon any more. It’s been replaced by the next-best alternative – Fuck You Like An Animal by W.A.S.P.

Actually, Premise may as well have left Imagine in, because nobody’s going to actually buy Expelled on DVD anyway – evolutionists will find the subject matter too offensive to invest in, and creationists all believe that using money to buy things is essentially witchcraft, a crime punishable by drowning.

For instance, we think Charles Manson should get another life sentence or two tacked on to that which he was already given. We’d like to see Ted Bundy get executed again, and for the love of Pete we think it high time Rachel Ray finally gets what’s coming to her.

What’s coming to her is cookies or something. As far as we know she has never killed people on a mass scale, and deserves very little incarceration if any.

Another piece of undeniable justice that deserves to be held high pertains to one Mark David Chapman. We think he killed Marilyn Monroe or something. Anyway, he was up for parole for the fifth time recently – and once again got denied.

Probably because even seventy years later, people still really, really like Marilyn Monroe.

In 1980 Mark David Chapman, in a move he has since said was ‘wrong,’ stood in front of a good man and trigger-pulled five times. He eventually plead guilty to second degree murder and was convicted to a sentence of 20 years to life.

Well the twenty years is long-since up. He’s put in for parole four times in the past, and has been shot down every time. Fitting.

He just put in for it again – and the parole board came to the same decision. We couldn’t find a transcript for his most recent hearing, but we did come across one from 2000. Here’s an excerpt [sic]:

“Q. This involves an incident occurring in December of 1980 whereby you were in possession of a .38-caliber revolver. You apparently had some premeditated thought with regard to this incident. You waited for the victim in question, Mr. John Lennon, and at an opportune time, you apparently shot him a number of times, maybe as many as four or five. The record indicates that perhaps the revolver discharged five times. You hit him four times with the hollow-point bullets, and indeed you caused his death. Is that an accurate depiction of what happened, sir?

A. Yes, sir, it is.

Q. Can you please tell us what you were thinking about at the time and why you would do something so horrible?

A. I, um, flew to New York a few months before that to do that crime with full meditation in my heart. I then was able to somehow turn myself around and came back to Hawaii, and I told my wife that all was fine. And then the urges started building in me again to do this crime, and I flew back to New York on December 6th and checked into a hotel, and then on the day of December 8th, stayed outside the Dakota waiting for him with intent to shoot him and kill him….

“Q. And, Mr. Chapman, have you given thought in those long twenty years as to what’s behind all of this and why you were so possessed with doing such harm to this person who, for all of us having read about this, was doing no harm to whatsoever on your life or your you at all, had no livelihood; have you given thought to that —

A.Yes, I have.

Q. — why you had to single this guy out?

A. I was feeling like I was worthless, and maybe the root of it is a self-esteem issue. I felt like nothing, and I felt if I shot him, I would become something, which is not true at all.

Q. Mm hmm.

A. But that’s why I shot Mr. Lennon.

Q. And him in particular because he was someone that you admired, or you locked at him and his stature, and you thought this would have some impact on your life, sir?

A. Well, I originally — what happened was I was in the library, and I was looking through some books, and I came across a book called One Day at a Time, and I saw him there with photographs in front of his residence, the Dakota, and I was full of anger and resentment, you know. I took it upon myself to judge him falsely for — for, you know, being something other than, you know, in a lotus position with a flower, and I got angry in my stupidity. So it started with anger, but I wasn’t angry the night I shot him.”

To read more of that hearing, click right here. Its lengthy and interesting.

That’s a little farther into Chapman’s head than you ever wanted to get, right? Us too – unless its with an ice cream scoop.

But then violence using ice cream related hardware never solved anything now, did it?

However, every successful star has a downfall, and he had a couple. But unlike today’s woozy musicians, like the moon crater face bloke from Keane, the copious amounts of drugs he took didn’t knacker him up. Instead, it was a stumpy Japanese woman called Yoko Ono.

Once she got hold of him, he kind of went a bit soppy, writing billions of songs in her honour. His other silly mistake was getting naked on a 1968 Rolling Stone cover with her. Not a pleasant sight. After John Lennon got his brains splattered across New York, she disappeared for a while. But still reappeared now and then to tell us that she was married to a Beatle.

Now she’s back to defend peg-legged Heather Mills. Another ex-Beatle’s wife. But, while Linda McCartney left us nothing but a horrible line of frozen food meals, Paul McCartney’s latest divorcee hasn’t quite done anything on such a scale. Probably because she isn’t dead yet. Though she is quite well hated now by a) gold-diggers who didn’t get to Paul first and b) legions of deluded Beatles fans who worship the ground their hero walks on.

Does it matter if he puts out a totally strange and crap classical-sounding album? Of course not, these fans will lap it up. The same fans who undoubtedly know where their hero buys his burgers and jockstraps.  

The ongoing Heather Mills v Paul McCartney feud has been gripping the nation for months. We’ve even been told that Hollywood wants to make a five-hour epic movie starring the two. Heather’s story will be told as a poor pauper girl who one day meets Paul, the man of her dreams at a vegetarian cook-off competition.

After discussing the ins and outs of leaf and pinecone soup, the two marry, argue and then fight. But it’s no ordinary fight. Their anti-meat diet gives them super powers. Powers where they fight through distant galaxies – in the past, present and future.

Rat milk drinker Heather recently got a fair slice of her ex’s wealth in last month's divorce settlement. How does £24.3 million sound? Not bad by anyone’s standards, but Heather was still hopping mad. And, no, it wasn’t because some cruel bastard nicked her false leg.

With that sort of money at her disposal, she can now afford a leg for all occasions. White and pasty; tanned and gorgeous; or battered and bruised.  

The press have never been kind to poor Heather. Ever since the two announced their marriage, plenty of people, including Paul’s own daughter Stella, said it would never work out.

Everyone was right, and if we’d been bothered to put a bet on, we would have been rolling in the money. Just like Heather is now. So while everyone shakes their fist at Heather Mills in anger, an unlikely source has come to her aid. That’s right, the former squeeze of John Lennon, Yoko Ono. She told Now Magazine:

"It's not very easy for a woman to be associated with The Beatles. I think all the wives did suffer, but suffered quietly and endured."

How it would be hard is beyond us. If we happened to be attached to someone famous, we think we could cope. Of course, our egos would swell and we’d demand vintage 1989 Tango, but is that so much to ask?

As our other-halves made all the money, we’d sit buy and count it all up – before throwing it in the air and re-counting it again.

Read More -  Yoko Ono defends Heather Mills saying its hard to be married to a Beatle – Now Magazine

And he wasn't the only one with a slightly unnatural obsession for John Lennon's hair – because this week an auction sold John Lennon's hair for $48,000. Not all of John Lennon's hair, you understand – that would be creepy – but just a lock of John Lennon's hair. A lock of John Lennon's hair in a bag that you can occasionally open and sniff, pretending that you and John Lennon are such close friends that he can put his hair in a bag and let you smell it. And that's what the mystery hair-buyer will probably do – either that or blast it into the sun, thereby creating an evil nuclear-powered John Lennon to brutally enslave the world with, like in Superman IV.

It was the anniversary of John Lennon's tragic death last Saturday, and nobody really seemed to notice. We blame Yoko Ono, obviously – not only did Yoko bugger things up by opening her John Lennon Light Tower two months early but she also failed to mark the anniversary in the traditional way, by letting a mental Turkish employee inject her with poison in her sleep. Shame on you, Yoko.

But fortunately not everyone forgot to mark John Lennon's death this week. Fans from around the world paid their respect to John Lennon by listening to his music, soaking in his peaceful Utopian worldview and selling clumps of his hair for enough money to buy a couple of good quality horses.

A lock of John Lennon's hair sold at auction by Gorringes this week for $48,000, smashing the original estimate of $6,000. Now, it might sound a lot, but is it something that you can put a price on? Really? John Lennon's hair? After all, mix the hair with some mosquito blood and you'll be able to start your own tropical John Lennon safari park where people can pay to see all sorts of John Lennons in the wild, like the angry beclawed carnivore John Lennons, the docile giant herbivore John Lennons and the John Lennons that look cute but then suddenly turn vicious and blind you with hawked-up globs of sticky acid. It's an investment, if anything.

Gorringes spokeswoman Francesca Collin is certainly pleased that a manky wodge of dead man's hair was capable of making so much money:

"It is astonishing that there is still so much interest in the Beatles and the sale goes to prove that John Lennon is still an icon. To have some of Lennon's hair along with a signed note from him really does give it fantastic provenance and authenticity."

However, John Lennon's hair wasn't the only piece of Beatle hair memorabilia to sell at the auction. A photo of the group that George Harrison had signed "George "Dandruff" Harrison" went for $13,000. And 18 giant potato sacks full of every single public hair that Ringo Starr has ever grown, from the first flush of puberty to the present day, was also snapped up by a mystery bidder for 12p and half a packet of Polos.

Read more:

Lock of Lennon's Hair Sells for $48,000 – Associated Press  

That's right – the annual Forbes Dead Celebrity Rich List has been published, and it's been another classic year for Elvis Presley. Elvis has managed to earn $49 million over the last year, $5 million more than his nearest rival John Lennon could muster. It's a triumphant return to the top spot for Elvis Presley, who was knocked into second place last year by Kurt Cobain, with industry experts claiming that this reflects the current public trend for favouring bloated corpses with blasted-open colons over miserable corpses with bits of their heads missing.

Elvis Presley has had quite the year. Ever since he died in 1977, the highlight of most of Elvis' years has been either when he decomposed especially slowly or when Toothless Bill the Graceland groundskeeper pounds on his grave and shouts "Guess how many times they've repackaged your Greatest Hits collection this year Elvis? Four!"

But this year was special. This year was the 30th Anniversary of Elvis Presley's death, which meant that not only did people steal his stuff and bury in a chemical toilet but they all rushed out and bought whatever Elvis-related tat his estate saw fit to hurl out, even though Elvis fans probably own it all in 25 slightly different formats anyway. And that's stood him in good stead for this year's annual Forbes Dead Celebrity Rich List, which has just been published.

You see, Elvis Presley is the daddy of rich dead celebrities. He's usually voted as the richest dead celebrity and only a last-ditch push to sell off 25% of Kurt Cobain's songwriting publishing beat him down into second place last year. But 2007 has been Elvis Presley's year, and the only way it could have been improved is if he hadn't killed himself trying to shit out a breezeblock three decades ago. He's rich, damnit! Rich! The Times reports:

Elvis earned $49 million (£24 million) in the past year, toppling the late Nirvana frontman and regaining the top spot on the Forbes.com list. Elvis’s estate continues to generate millions from music royalties, DVDs, licensing deals and tourism at Graceland, the singer’s mansion in Memphis. The website ranks 13 former celebrities according to income and proves that death is no obstacle to making money. The group collectively earnt $232 million in the past year.

Second to Elvis Presley this year was John Lennon, a man who started selling his songs online and got a giant beam of light named after him. Not that the light beam earnt him much money, of course, although Lennon is expected to top the Forbes annual 'Dead Celebrities With The Most Pointless Carbon Footprint' list when that's published next month. As for the rest of the list, it's mainly the usual suspects – Einstein, Schultz, Warhol – with the added inclusion of recently dead James Brown making his debut at number 11 with $5 million. We're sure that James Brown is thrilled by this, and thinks it more than makes up for the way congestive heart failure resulting from complications of pneumonia killed him on Christmas day.

Here's this year's list of the richest dead celebrities, according to Forbes: 

Elvis Presley $49 million
John Lennon $44 million
Charles M. Schulz $35 million
George Harrison $22 million
Albert Einstein $18 million
Andy Warhol $15 million
Theodor Geisel $13 million
Tupac Shakur $9 million
Marilyn Monroe $7 million
Steve McQueen $6 million
James Brown $5 million
Bob Marley $4 million
James Dean $3.5 million

Read more:

Dead Rich List All Shook Up As Elvis Returns To Top – Times