Tim Minchin has had a pop at ITV after his live performance of satirical Christmas song WoodyAllenJesus was cut from last night’s Jonathan Ross show. For the first time in his life, he can feel like he’s some kind of modern day Bill Hicks.

Bill Hicks got a routine kicked off Letterman. Don’t you pillocks know anything?

Anyway, Minchin claims that the broadcaster’s director of television, Peter Fincham, removed the song “because he’s scared of the ranty, shit-stirring, right-wing press, and of the small minority of Brits who believe they have a right to go through life protected from anything that challenges them in any way“. Fightin’ talk.

The track (watch it below if you can’t stand the thought of reading this article – suffice to say, it’s the usual whimsy you’d expect from a man who uses straighteners) likens Jesus to a whole bunch of stuff like Woody Allen, Derren Brown as well as lizards and zombies.

Minchin wrote on his whiny blog about it:

“It’s not a particularly original idea, I admit, but it’s quite cute. It’s certainly not very contentious, but even so, compliance people and producers and lawyers all checked my lyrics long before the cameras rolled… [Producer] Suzi and her team edited the show and everybody was happy.

“Suzi felt it had a nice balance of big-ticket celeb action, local talent, and a nice bit of that cheeky, iconoclastic spirit for which Jonathan is known and widely loved. And then someone got nervous and sent the tape to ITV’s director of television, Peter Fincham. And Peter Fincham demanded that I be cut from the show.”

Ross later Tweeted:

“Really gutted that the brilliant @timminchin song has been cut from my show. Decision was out of my hands.”

Of course, it isn’t surprising that ITV would act like massive bitches when it comes to anything involving something vaguely contentious, although, they’re pretty happy to film mentally ill celebrities and follow them around on ITV2 in fly-on-the-wall shows… so… who knows?

No-one really expects anything good from ITV, ever, do they?

An ITV spokesperson told comedy site Chortle:

‘It’s not unusual for there to be changes to the show in the edit, as we shoot more than goes out, and we felt the tone wasn’t quite right for the Christmas show. But we do think Tim’s very talented and would love him to work with him on ITV shows again in the future.’”

Much has already been said about the Andy Gray and Richard Keys story, with Charlie Brooker supplying one of more interesting slants on it, but we would like to point out The Sun’s sweetly optimistic approach to it on  Monday, the day after Andy’s original on-air gaffe and was tucked away on page ten in a teeny article sharing a column with a three line article about falling prices in Portugal.

The incident was treated more like something from a television out-takes show than the final piece in the trinity* of inconvenience that’s got Murdoch’s News International into a bit of a tizz.

The story was over- he had apologised and everyone was laughing about it whilst slapping the arses of passing waitresses by lunchtime. Unfortunately, the same day the Daily Mail, those masters of creating broadcasting controversies from the sparsest of ingredients, dedicated page 3 to it, and a shitstorm was born.

By Friday, the Mail were tiring of the backlash, so created the backlash of the backlash with a photograph of Richard Keys’ wife (every inch a woman Mail readers would be able to relate to) serving cake to journalists whilst dismissing the story as just ‘boys being boys’.

One of our favourite pastimes is watching the tabloids squirming when they have a story with reactionary ingredients but for some reason can’t quite bring themselves to stir it up themselves. They’ll write articles and litter it with inflammatory clues, and just pray the public decides to be outraged without the usual encouragement.

For instance the Daily Mail have dedicated a disproportionate amount of coverage to Jonathan Ross announcing (well, mentioning at least) that his daughter is a lesbian. Rather irritatingly for them, he did so in a casually dignified way.

The Mail have since repeatedly found new angles on the story whilst hoping that it’s controversial, or even just newsworthy, by virtue of having the words “Jonathan”, “Ross” and “lesbian” in it.

Or take their uncharacteristically unopinionated coverage of Elton John adopting. You would think that they were big supporters of gay adoption. That didn’t seem to be much in evidence on Monday’s page 14. On the left-hand side the editorial, in response to a Barnado’s report that white couples are prevented from adopting babies from ethnic backgrounds, the paper preached that…

“all that should truly matter is the ability of the adoptive parents to a stable, caring and secure home”.

On the right hand side of the page Melanie Phillips was less hesitant about condemning organisations putting an agenda above the welfare of children. In her piece she explained very clearly for those of us unfortunate enough to have a sense of perspective, that Catholic adoption agencies being forced to cease their policy of not allowing gays and lesbians to adopt was evidence of homosexuals being “the new McCarthyites”. **

So is it that they are scared of Elton John’s hissy fits, lawyers, or his Mail-reading fans? Either way, there’s a lot of fun to be had watching the paper acting like a prude on a nudist beach frantically looking around confused at why no-one else seems outraged.

Headline of the week that bore no relation to reality goes to The Star for…

“Alex and Andre unite against Jordan- Cage-fighter joins fellow ex-hubby Pete”.

This strategic alliance simply consisted of Alex Reid refusing to comment on his separation from Jordan. The conclusion being that this was, y’know, kinda like the way Pete cares about the kids, so they are therefore “united in keeping their dignity”. That’s the dignity shared by a (bad) transvestite, reality TV-starring topless model-marrying cage fighter and a tabloid-courting reality TV-starring, topless model-marrying ex-pop star. Rosa Parks ain’t got nothing on those boys. Either way, hats off to The Star for basing a front page story around a ‘no comment’.

…and finally…

Childish headlines about Ed Balls that the Daily Mail’s copy editor must have been really tempted to drop words from

Monday- “Miliband urged to rein in aggressive Ed Balls”

Tuesday- “’Explosion warning’ over Balls and Miliband”***

*= the other two being the proposed buying of the remaining shares in Sky, and the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

**= sorry for the patronising link to McCarthyism, but it seems unfair that you can’t fully enjoy the irony of this story just because you weren’t paying attention that day in history.

***= whist  Balls is the surname of a Labour politician, it is also slang for testicles. Thus exploding and/or aggressive balls is funny.

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter or join our Facebook group or BUY ONE OF OUR STUPID T-SHIRTS!

10 - Look! Sarah Jessica Parker and some babies! Exciting! – PopEater

9 - You know who we’ve been neglecting lately? Female rappers – Interestment

8 – This delicious-looking piece of computing equipment would last three seconds if it came anywhere near us. It looks disturbingly delicious – Geekologie

7 – Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton battle to the DEATH. Not really to the death. And not really a battle. But still, eh? – Watchwithmothers

6 - Witness Lady GaGa‘s gigantic hairy button. You heard – Amy Grindhouse

5 - It is summer. Therefore, you must make a summer pudding. Here’s how - Domesticsluttery

4 - The greatest video of people accidentally blowing themselves up that you will ever see – Holytaco

3 - Men who call the emergency services because McDonalds short-changed them deserve to be king of the world. Fact - I Am Bored

2 - This is something called a Meatini. It may very well haunt your nightmares for years to come – Rathergood

1 - Men we would give up one of our testicles to be: Isao Machii. This video is quite long, but completely worth it…

Watching Cheryl Cole on X Factor, chances are all you see is a phenomenal amount of make-up and a voice that makes you want to scratch your own spine off.

But what you don’t see is the sadness behind Cheryl Cole’s eyes. The sadness of a woman whose husband got hammered on booze once and ended up having all sorts of depraved puke-sex with a slapper who wasn’t her.

Actually you can’t see that at all any more, because Cheryl Cole isn’t sad at all. In an appearance on Jonathan Ross to be shown on Friday, Cheryl Cole wore her wedding ring and told everyone that she’s patched up her marriage once and for all. The moral of this story, obviously, is that true love endures. And that if you earn £100k a week you can probably get away with vomiting over a few slags every now and then.

Cheryl Cole has had an excellent year so far. Usually her life is full of boring stuff like squabbles with Lily Allen and not eating much, but this year it’s been pedal-to-the-metal excitement right from the get-go, the lucky cow.

In January it was revealed that Cheryl Cole’s husband Ashley had cheated on her with a rough-looking girl he ended up puking on. This sort of constant public humiliation doesn’t sound particularly brilliant admittedly, but ask yourself this -  would Cheryl still be one of the judges on this year’s X Factor if it didn’t happen?

Well, yes, in all fairness she probably would. But forget that, because this is the story of Cheryl Cole’s uplifting journey – the journey of a victim of infidelity who learnt to soar to ever-greater professional heights by casting off the shackles of marriage and becoming a free woman.

Or at least it would be if Cheryl Cole hadn’t decided to pretend that Ashley Cole had never done anything wrong in the first place and got back together with him. Then it becomes the journey of a victim of infidelity who got a job on a talent show even though she’s stupid and her husband is a wanker.

Anyway, now that she’s on the telly – and everyone knows that being on the telly is the only way you can ever be truly happy – Cheryl Cole is truly happy again, and she’s been on Jonathan Ross to tell everyone that, although it was hard, she’s completely forgiven Ashley and he’s free to go and cheat on her again whenever he wants. Or something. Metro reports:

“I was tempted to put it [the ring] back on – in his head!’ she said. She then defended her husband’s mistake telling: ‘There’s something about celebrities having a perfect life; people need to relax and realise we’re human too. There’s no such thing as a private life in this industry,’ she told Jonathan.

Actually, for all our cynicism, it’s nice to see that a couple like Cheryl and Ashley Cole can put something as serious as serial infidelity behind them in the name of love. Love and definitely not anything else, like the fact that Ashley Cole earns four times as much as the average man’s annual salary every single week. Definitely not that.

Of course, as Cheryl Cole said, we shouldn’t forget that they’re just human and, as such, they’re probably both filled with enormous regret over their actions in the last year. Honestly, Cheryl Cole must be kicking herself about patching up her marriage before she could get a couple of hacky ghostwritten books and a decent reality TV show about her struggle out. That really has to sting.