Well, OK, not all of her films. Not yet, anyway – although we do hear that Angelina Jolie plans to use her love scene with Antonio Banderas from Original Sin as a sexually-confusing substitute for her childrens’ birds and bees talk – just Kung Fu Panda.

To promote the DVD release of Kung Fu Panda, Angelina Jolie has once again decided to mine the limitless marketing resource that is her children, telling anyone who’ll listen that they just love the movie. Luckily for Angelina Jolie, she didn’t try this trick with A Mighty Heart – apparently Pax Thien found it ‘ponderous’, with Shiloh Nouvel dubbing it ‘transparent award-bait at best’.

It must be brilliant being one of Angelina Jolie’s children. You’re rich, you see the world, your name is one of the top-scoring words on Boggle and, since you’re almost certainly not biologically related to her, it’s impossible to rule out the chance of Angelina Jolie going a bit Woody Allen once you hit puberty. Who could ask for more?

And being surrounded by children is equally beneficial to Angelina Jolie, because now she doesn’t even have to think when it comes to promoting a movie. Look at Changeling – if Angelina Jolie couldn’t give her kids knives or breastfeed them from the front of a magazine or blame them for her inevitable marriage to Brad Pitt, what would her promotion of Changeling consist of? A brief speech at an awards show. Rubbish.

And it’s not just Changeling that’s feeling the benefit of Angelina Jolie endlessly blabbing about her children. Angelina’s decided to adaptation of this tactic to push the DVD release of Kung Fu Panda as well.

Tragically, it’s working. When we heard that Kung Fu Panda was being released on DVD, we thought “Pah, we’re not going to pay any attention to this – it seems like another generic animal-based animated movie starring a bunch of moviestars cynically trying to appeal to the young.” But then Angelina Jolie told this to People:

“I think it’s a great film, and it’s brought a lot of joy to children – and to my children, absolutely. My kids love it. They’re very very proud, they’ve got mom [Tigress] dolls.”

And that changed everything. “What’s that?” we thought. “Kung Fu Panda is bright and colourful enough to distract some toddlers from crying and crapping themselves for up to an hour at a time? Why it must be a MASTERPIECE!” After all, if Kung Fu Panda is good enough for the flick knife-wielding adopted Cambodian infant son of two jet-set millionaires, it’s bound to be good enough for us. Right?

Maybe we’re being too harsh here. Maybe Angelina Jolie was just recounting a personal anecdote because she’s a proud mother and we shouldn’t read anything more into it than that. Besides, as dull as it is, listening to Angelina Jolie prattle on witlessly about her kids for the millionth time this year is nowhere near as irritating as the alternative method for promoting Kung Fu Panda – a repeat of this soul-destroying abomination…

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Or at least that’s what we thought. Now, as part of her confusing ‘go against everything she’s ever said, done or thought’ promotion for The Changeling, Angelina Jolie has admitted that she will inevitably get married to Brad Pitt, but only to stop her children from pestering them for a wedding.

It just goes to show how persuasive a small army of multinational children can be. If they can make Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie get married, just think what else the Jolie-Pitt kids could achieve if they harnessed their pester power properly. They could even aim for the impossible. You know what we mean – if they all work in unison, they could convince Angelina Jolie to make a film that doesn’t stink like a corpseful of turds for once.

Is it just us, or has Angelina Jolie been promoting The Changeling for longer than time itself? It certainly seems like it. All we can conclude is that Angelina must really want that Oscar, because the tricks she’s pulling on the promotional circuit are getting more and more desperate.

To begin with, things started normally enough. We thought that, for such a highbrow film, the only publicity that Angelina Jolie would need to do was return to the USA from Europe. But we underestimated wildly there – we didn’t know about Angelina Jolie’s tattoos. Or the way that she’d be photographed with a baby chowing down on her nipple. Or the way she bought her infant son a deadly weapon.

Most recently, like a boxer in the 35th round, Angelina Jolie has become so exhausted by all this promotion that she’s just throwing tired, opportunistic punches at whatever’s easiest. Not so long ago, Angelina Jolie admitted that she and Brad Pitt fell in love on the set of Mr & Mrs Smith when Brad was still married to Jennifer Aniston, despite making endless claims to the contrary for the last three years.

And now Angelina Jolie has reached down deep for one last push, just to make you go and see that bloody film of hers – she’s declared that she’s going to get married to Brad Pitt.

That’s a surprise, since Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt both declared that they’d never get married until gay marriage was legalised across America. But that was before they had kids. And, cuh, you know what they can be like right? Right? The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

[Angelina] says, “Usually people fall in love and everything revolves around the ritual of marriage, children are an afterthought. We did everything backwards. But sooner or later it will be the kids who ask us (to get married). You know, they see films and start asking questions. Such as, ‘Why are Shrek and Fiona married and you’re not?’”

It’s a good point, and when that day comes it’ll probably be best if Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie respond using a similarly fairy tale-themed metaphor, about evil old ugly Queen Aniston who used to keep Prince Daddy locked in a cage and will probably throw herself off a building if they ever get married.

Or, you know, they could tell the truth and say that they’ll probably split up withing the next five years and not getting married will save the cost and mess of divorce proceedings. Either one’s fine, really.

But this is all hypothetical. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie won’t get married for a long time yet, because the kids haven’t asked yet. That’ll be years away – half of them are too young to communicate effectively now, and the other half still have to learn English.

Despite have six of the little sods running around already, Angelina Jolie has decided that she’s going to go on the hunt for more. During an interview on the Today show, Angelina Jolie was asked if she’s going to adopt any more children, and she responded by nodding like a wizened old bearded monk who lives on top of a mountain.

Adopting a seventh child is all well and good, but Angelina Jolie has obviously forgotten one important point – having already adopted children from Cambodia, Ethiopia and Vietnam, the most impoverished place left to her is the Isle Of Wight. And, urgh, who’d want a baby from the Isle Of Wight?

Angelina Jolie will do anything to make you go and see her new movie The Changeling. Literally anything. She’ll cover her body in tattoos, she’ll go on the front of magazines with babies chewing on her knockers – literally anything that draws attention away from the fact that The Changeling looks like the sort of dreary nonsense that people only make because they think they’ll get an Oscar out of it at the end.

And Angelina Jolie is even willing to roll out her greatest hit for the cause as well – the good old adoption speculation.

You see, it isn’t enough that Angelina Jolie already has six children – three of her own and three shipped in from elsewhere – because it’s Angelina’s life ambition to keep adopting children until she’s absolutely exhausted every single possible combination of letters and numbers that she can use as a kid’s silly name.

And that’s why, during an interview on the Today show yesterday, Angelina Jolie admitted that she was on the look-out for another baby to adopt. People reports:

The wheels are already turning in Angelina Jolie’s head, the Changeling star admitted in a lengthy Today show interview Thursday: She and Brad Pitt are considering another adoption. “Soon?” asked host Matt Lauer when the actress and mother of six nodded in the affirmative.

Now, don’t expect Angelina Jolie to go and adopt another child tomorrow, because she can’t – her baby twins are only three and a half months old, and the adoption process can’t start until they reach six months – but time is of the essence. After all, one of the children has a knife now, so Angelina Jolie will probably need to start adopting new babies quite prolifically soon, otherwise we get the feeling that her child tally is going to decrease somewhat.

Nobody knows where or how Angelina Jolie is going to adopt her next baby from, but the competition is going to be tight – it’s well-known now that if Angelina Jolie adopts you, you get to live a life of unbridled luxury. That’s why we’re hoping that Angelina starts a Britain’s Got Talent-style elimination process of all the world’s most harrowingly impoverished children to whittle down her options.

It makes perfect sense – you get 10,000 kids in, ask them to tell you a sad story, make them do a dance or sing or juggle or something, get rid of the rubbish ones and in the end, bingo, you’re left with a bald midget landmine amputee orphan from Chad who can play the ukulele. Imagine how many magazines that would sell.

However, little things like common sense and concern for the future of humanity don’t matter to Paris Hilton, which is why she’s told People that she’s desperate to have children.

Don’t be too alarmed by Paris Hilton’s claims, though – if she does have a baby it’ll be an interesting genetic experiment – in four short generations the Hilton family has gone from billionaire hotel chain founder to Paris Hilton, so if our charts are right the fifth generation will mostly resemble the mutant teleported dog from the beginning of The Fly 2.

We might be wrong here, but we get the horrible feeling that Paris Hilton is starting to grow up. No longer does she spend her days idly flitting between making obscene internet films of herself and getting thrown in jail for driving around shitfaced. Instead, Paris Hilton has become quite the model of sophistication.

How sophisticated is Paris Hilton? So sophisticated that when she launches her own tawdry MTV reality TV show she has the nous to accompany it with her own tawdry song which, we think you’ll find, is a level of sophistication right up there with taking tea on the bombardier’s croquet lawn.  And, as such, Paris Hilton has declared herself ready for motherhood. People reports:

“I definitely want three or four [children],” she told PEOPLE in Las Vegas Saturday night, while partying at Pure Nightclub for her sister’s birthday. As for a timeline? “Soon,” she said. “Maybe a year or two.”

But, listen, we don’t want you to worry that this is some sort of mind-destroying mating call from Paris Hilton. She doesn’t want you to strut about naked in her front garden or wank through her letterbox or anything like that, because Paris Hilton is perfectly happy and settled with Benji Madden from Good Charlotte.

So at least there’ll be an interesting level of anticipation should Paris Hilton and Benji Madden have a baby. Will the child gain be half-Paris and half-Benji and grow up learning from their collective wisdom, or will it get lucky and be kidnapped at the maternity ward, dumped in a forest and raised by wolves? We’ll be on the edge of our seats when the time comes.

Of course, we’re only joking here. Paris Hilton looks like she’d be a very good mother, and then knowledge she’d impart on her baby would be monumental. It wouldn’t be able to read or anything, granted, but at least it would be able to say “That’s hot” whenever it was hot. Or whenever it wasn’t hot. Or when it was hungry. It’d have a two-word vocabulary, basically.

This is very important news, and we’ll tell you why soon. Anyway, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie arrived in New York for the first time since the birth of their last children so that Angelina can promote her new movie The Changeling.

We said we’d tell you why it was so important that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were returning to America, didn’t we? Well, alright, we will – it’s important because, um, well, Brad Pitt is, um… and Angelina sort of… no. We’ve got nothing. Literally nothing. Maybe they left the gas on or something. We genuinely couldn’t care less.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s newborn twins haven’t been on this planet for long, but the time they have spent on it has almost exclusively been in France. Imagine that – 10 weeks surrounded by nothing but onion trees, shrugging mechanics, afternoon naps and excessive female bodyhair. That’s tantamount to child abuse in our books, and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie should bloody well be ashamed.

Which we assume they are, because Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have decided to return to America with all their children, where they can be brought up the way God intended – on a diet of Ritalin, incessant flashing images, processed food containing constituent parts that have never seen a speck of sunlight and brightly-coloured cartoon dinosaurs that shout the alphabet.

Yes, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have decided to return to America with their entire flock of culturally nonspecific offspring to allow Angelina Jolie to promote her new movie The Changeling. It’s an important movie for Angelina Jolie, because it’s the first role for several years where she hasn’t just played Angelina Jolie. Also, it’s a Clint Eastwood film, so there might be an Oscar in it for her if she licks enough arse. Access Hollywood reports:

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have brought their six kids to New York City for the first time since the birth of their twins, Vivienne and Knox. The actress and mother of six is scheduled to walk the red carpet at the film’s premiere for the first time since giving birth to her twins.

As nice as it must have been for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to spend time in another country with less media intrusion and a slower, idyllic pace of life, it will do everyone some good to return to America.

More people will recognise Shilou Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, for example, so she’ll find booking a table at a restaurant much easier. And Brad Pitt’s bodyguards can beat up people who they actually understand for once. And lovely old Olivia Poupot gets to go a few days without giving a hilariously disdainful police statement about what a dreary couple of bastards she thinks Brad and Angelina are.

But the break won’t last – Brad Pitt is filming Inglorious Bastards in Germany at the moment, so after a few days, the entire brood will decamp back to Europe again. But no matter where they go they’ll always have a little piece of America inside them. True, it’s an impacted clump of hamburger that’ll cling to the inside of their colon until they day they die, but it’s good enough.

However, it seems as if Britney Spears might actually be getting better in leaps and bounds, because she's just been granted that most valuable of parenting rights – the overnight visit. 

Sean Preston and Jayden James being able to sleep at their mother's house isn't just good news for Britney Spears – Kevin Federline will also benefit from the ruling – it means he'll now get to wake up some mornings without the hassle of dealing with crap and piss-covered bedsheets. Seriously, sneaking them into the washing machine before the kids woke up and wondered why daddy's room smelt funny was such a chore.

It's been a long, hard, harrowing journey so far – sometimes it felt like being trapped in a tunnel with no beginning and no end. There have been tears, there have been tantrums, but finally the clouds are starting to lift – Britney Spears might be getting well enough for us not to feel like monsters for taking the piss out of her. Hooray!

Ever since she locked herself in a bathroom topless with one of her kids and didn't come out until the brain doctors turned up, we've had to say goodbye to comically unaware Britney Spears, and had to make do with a Britney Spears who was such an unfit liability that she wasn't even allowed to go to the toilet by herself for fear that she'd wind up trying to strangle herself with her own piss-stream in a traumatic cry for help.

However, with the help of her parents, Britney Spears has been fighting to get better. And this has been for one reason only – to get her kids back. Sure, Britney might have behaved slightly irresponsibly with them in the past but – spurred on by the knowledge that her sons probably lose two or three of their already meagre IQ points for every hour they spend in direct contact with Kevin Federline – she's made winning them back her absolute goal.

And yesterday Britney Spears took a very definite step forward. That's right – Britney Spears has now been granted permission to lie unconscious in an entirely separate room to her equally unconscious children. Happy days! E! Online reports:

The court session, attended by both Spears and Kevin Federline, resulted in "a change of visitation status" for the new aunt, Los Angeles Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini told reporters at a brief posthearing press conference. Sources told E! News that Court Commissioner Scott Gordon granted Spears overnight visits with her sons, beginning as soon as this weekend.

It's a proud moment for Britney Spears' recovery, that's for sure. In effect the Court Commissioner has said that Britney Spears isn't as likely to stay up all night letting off an unrelenting stream of harrowing animal yowls as she was before. Or that she is as likely to do that but it'll sound like a beautiful lullaby to the kids after six months of hearing Popozao all the poxy time. We haven't quite worked that one out yet.

Anyway, congratulations to Britney Spears for reaching this important landmark. We look forward to the day when we can once again mock you for your dreadful fashion choices without having to quietly wonder if you're dressing like that because you're actually insane.

But the particular time she seems to want to return to is the one where a drummer from a bit of a crap, over-hyped band who likes to get his junk out on stage gets to stick it to her on a regular basis.

Yes, kids, Pamela Anderson is back with Tommy Lee.

Unfortunately not Tommy Lee Jones. Mind – that would be both hilarious and perfect for Pammie’s reality TV show. Especially if Jones was in full ‘Two Face from Batman Forever’ makeup. Seriously – we at hecklerspray should be television executives, we’d make things worth watching again.

But that’s beside the point here.

The point is that Pamela Anderson is in a relationship with a man she’s known for more than 30 minutes – a revelation in itself – and if you add up all the time that she and Tommy Lee have been together it actually comes to more than a week or so. Surely a record for the ex-Baywatch star?

The groundbreaking, world-moving and earth-shattering news came about in an interview with RollingStone.com, when Tommy told the interviewer:

“Pamela and the kids have moved in with me. It’s awesome, man. It’s definitely working. You can tell on the kids’ faces — they’re happy when we’re together.”

Well, who wouldn’t be happy with the news that an ageing rocker from a substandard hair metal band and the woman that adorned the walls of every red-blooded male throughout the 90s – purely because she looked good running in super slow-mo – have shacked up (again)?

We certainly are. Because it means we are unlikely to have to report on the trials and tribulations of that no-talent berk Rick Salomon or his equally-pointless, though somehow marginally more annoying (probably because he’s an irritating, weasel-faced little prick) counterpart Kid Rock.

Yes, the world of a semi-stable relationship – that is, semi-stable in the world of Pamela Anderson, of course – is the perfect one for both hecklerspray and Pammie for a couple of fantastic reasons:

1) It means she may actually manage to stay with one man for more than 13 seconds, thus giving her kids the slimmest of chances that they won’t grow up to be utter, complete and total fuck-ups.

2) We won’t have to report on those utter, utter wastes of skin mentioned above any more.

Though we are likely to have to talk about Tommy Lee. Shit.

But get this – now Charlie Sheen is saying that he’s right and Denise Richards is wrong! That’s crazy – it’s like everything we know is a lie! Or it’s like Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards are a couple of utter shitbaskets who can’t stop bickering in public even though it’ll obviously be detrimental to their childrens’ development.

Anyway Denise Richards has been saying that she only made her reality TV show because she hasn’t got any money, and Charlie Sheen has hit back saying that actually he gives her loads of money. Not all of it, though – he needs the rest of it for his whore fund. That’s if he has a whore fund, obviously. Legally we wouldn’t like to speculate.

A question – has this sudden flurry of televised mad-eyed bitterness from Denise Richards recently made you a) eager to watch her E! TV show Denise Richards: It’s Complicated, b) eager to avoid her new E! TV show Denise Richards: It’s Complicated or c) eager to run over half your own head in a car and then stagger through a crowded area, all one-eyed and bloody with your half-head sloshing gore and membrane everywhere, pleading with screaming children to kill you because you’re in so much pain?

Funny, it was c) with us too. It’s always c). How strange.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter how you answered because Denise Richards has a reality show to promote, and if that means she has to crawl around as many TV shows as she can and pick away at the festering scab that is her divorce from Charlie Sheen in public with the least amount of dignity she can, then so be it.

So far Denise Richards has been on Larry King, the Today show and The View, and while Denise hasn’t quite managed to hit the heady heights of the time she strongly implied that Charlie Sheen was a prostitute-murdering borderline paedophile yet, she has often pointed out that the only reason she agreed to appear in her reality show was because she doesn’t have enough money to support her children.

That appears to have made Charlie Sheen angry. That’s not something you want to do, by the way, not unless you want to wind up getting called a “sad jobless pig” or a “fucking cunt. Fuck you. You’re a coward and a liar and fucking nigger alright so fuck you.”

Anyway, this time Charlie Sheen has decided to give a more sober response to Denise’s claims, via the medium of mathematics. The New York Post reports:

“Denise gets $52,000 a month tax-free in child support,” a Sheen insider fumed. “Most people in America can figure out how to live on that, but Denise can’t?” In addition to the child support, Richards got $60,000 a month (also tax-free) for two years in alimony – adding up to a whopping $1.44 million. Richards also gets a chunk of Sheen’s hot sitcom, “Two and a Half Men,” which “eventually will net her up to $25 million,” the source said.

Who to believe? Oh, it’s so difficult. On one hand, Charlie Sheen has got the backing of numbers and facts, but on the other hand Denise Richards looks like she hasn’t had a decent meal in years.

It’s a tricky one, that’s for certain.

Read more:

SHEEN CALLS RICHARDS UNREAL - NYP

But this was a success. An actual success. The court commissioner has increased Britney Spears’ child visitation rights, you see.

Three cheers for Britney Spears! If only there were more heartwarming stories about women too mentally unwell to care for their own children except for occasional strictly court-imposed appointments in the presence of a psychologist and an external child safety monitor, maybe the world would be a better place.

There’s a lot of talk about Britney Spears being a bad mother just because she drove with one of them on her lap once and seems constantly on the brink of a messy bipolar sobbing suicide attempt – but it’s clear that actually Britney Spears is a good mother.

Why? Because there’s a statue of Britney Spears with a baby poking out of her minge. Is there a statue of a baby poking out of your minge? Thought not. And when Britney Spears had a harrowing breakdown that resulted in her admission into a psychiatric hospital, who did she think to take hostage in a locked bathroom until the police were called? That’s right – her children. Would you think to do that? No, no you wouldn’t. You’re the bad mother here. Britney Spears is the best.

That’s not just our opinion either – that’s the opinion of the commissioner in charge of yesterday’s custody hearing between Britney Spears and Kevin Federline. OK, maybe ‘the best’ is an overstatement. Let’s try ‘marginally less likely to cause her children harm than three months ago’ instead.

That’s right – yesterday Britney Spears was told that she can see her children slightly more often than before, as the Los Angeles Times reports:

The singer’s visitation rights to sons Sean Preston and Jayden James were expanded Tuesday after a custody hearing with her ex-husband, Kevin Federline. According to Usmagazine.com, there was no change in custody. Federline’s attorney Mark Vincent Kaplan merely said that her time with the boys will be “more than it has been.” But according to TMZ.com, Spears will get three days supervised visitation a week and visitation on Mother’s Day.

This result is a good sign for all involved, notably Britney Spears. The more time she gets to spend with her children, the more she’ll become aware that she has a wider responsibility than to just herself. But Britney Spears isn’t the only one to feel the benefit of the commissioner’s decision.

Kevin Federline now gets a little more free time to research answers to some of the tricky questions that his children ask, like ‘why is the sky blue?’ and ‘how many legs does a doggy have?’

And, best of all, the kids get to see Britney Spears again. Not the singing, dancing pop princess Britney Spears from the TV that the rest of us get to see, but the dead-eyed, emotionally brittle psychiatric patient Britney Spears who gave birth to them. Heartwarming.

Read more:

Happy Mother’s Day, y’all: Britney Spears allowed more time with her boys – LA Times

And that was mostly to do with whether she or Kevin Federline should be able to look after her kids. And guess what – there’s a custody rematch scheduled for today!

It’s so exciting – Britney Spears and Kevin Federline have spent so long out of court that they’ll probably be straining at the leash to tear into each other for control of their kids once they get inside. Without a doubt, this is the most eagerly anticipated 30-second court hearing to quickly decide that Britney Spears is still too unwell to look after her children for, ooh, like a month or something.

Having seen Britney Spears on How I Met Your Mother, you’ve probably come to the conclusion that she’s fully recovered from that nasty gravely disabled thing from three months ago. After all, only someone irrefutably sane can make a brief, mediocre sex joke at Doogie Howser after a week of parrot-fashion rehearsals, right?

But that’s where you’re wrong. Although Britney Spears has made some progress since her father took conservatorship of her estate – by now the sight of Britney Spears’ vagina is a distant, though still admittedly nightmare-inducing, memory – she’s still not well enough to have full visitation rights with her children.

It’s not quite as bad as it was – the risk of Britney Spears locking herself in the bathroom with the kids and giving off the vague impression that she might kill one of them has fallen slightly – but as it stands Britney only gets occasional time with her kids, and they’re always in the presence of a court-appointed monitor who’s probably armed with a taser and a net or whatever the modern-day equivalent is.

But today Britney Spears gets to face her ex-husband and current primary guardian of her children Kevin Federline in court for a custody hearing. Could this finally be Britney’s chance to win her children back? Could it?

No, of course it couldn’t. Britney Spears is mental. Weren’t you listening to anything we just said? People reports:

Britney Spears and Kevin Federline are both expected to attend a hearing in Los Angeles family court Tuesday for a progress review, sources confirm. Though Spears has spent the last several months keeping a relatively low profile – and staying out of trouble – experts say it’s unlikely the pair’s current custody arrangement will change. “As long as Britney remains under a conservatorship, she has a long way to go before the court views her as a capable mother,” says L.A. family lawyer Scott Weston, who is not involved in the case.

Of course you’re right, family lawyer Scott Weston who is not involved in the case, it’d be ludicrous to imagine that Britney Spears is well enough to look after two young boys if she can’t even look after herself. We never should have doubted you.

But one day maybe Britney Spears will finally get custody of her children, and the sooner it happens the better. Not because we’re emotionally invested in Britney’s mental welfare or anything, but because every day that Sean Preston and Jayden James get looked after by Kevin Federline is another day that daddy teaches them that the seventh letter of the alphabet is pronounced “grundle” and that real love involves making sure his bong water is the right temperature.

Read more:

Britney & Kevin to Meet in Court – People

Which is a shame for Geri Halliwell, because her new children’s book is being released today, and reading a Geri Halliwell book to a child is only a couple of notches down from locking them in a cellar for 24 years and getting them pregnant against their will.

We’re joking, of course – Geri Halliwell’s book is just a bit of harmless fun. It doesn’t compare at all. But Geri Halliwell promoting the book by banging on and on and on and on about herself forever? We don’t know about you, but actually that does feel like being raped by your father in an incest dungeon in Austria.

If you ever want to get a measure of how woefully narcissistic a celebrity is, look at the children’s books they write. Check the main character – is it just a slightly idealised version of the author? If it is, you don’t need to be a psychologist to work out that whoever wrote it is a dangerous egotist who lacks the imagination to write about anything other than themselves.

Take Kylie, for example – her book was called The Showgirl Princess, mirroring her Impossible Princess album and Showgirl tour. The book was clearly all about her. Kylie is an idiot. Not like us. Incidentally, be sure to check out our new kid’s book Mecklerfray The Invincible Kisses All The Girls, out soon.

But what about Geri Halliwell? After announcing her kid’s books last year, Geri has had time to work out that modelling the lead character on herself is an act of tremendous vanity that only makes her look like a clueless old spaz-clown, right?

Wrong! Geri’s new books are about a girl called Ugenia Lavender, a girl who just happens to look exactly like Geri Halliwell. Plus, if you look at the Ugenia Lavender website, you’ll notice three things - 1) It doesn’t take a lot of manipulation to make ‘Ugenia’ look like ‘uGERIa’ 2) Geri Halliwell has a photo of herself on the homepage that’s bigger than any of the characters’ faces, and 3) You’ll actually go potty if you listen to the website’s music for more than two seconds.

Still, at least Geri Halliwell wasn’t dumb enough just to base the supporting characters in the Ugenia Lavender books on her celebrity chums, because that’d be a brand new level of smugness that even tiny children could see through, right? Right, BBC News?

Speaking of the other characters in the book that did make it, she said: “There’s a celebrity chef who’s her uncle who’s slightly highly strung, so you could say there’s a little bit of Gordon Ramsay. But then you could say there’s a little bit of George Michael in there. And Victoria [Beckham], there was a Princess Vattoria and she was in the early drafts. She might have a guest appearance. But she read the originals and thought it was cute. It’s quite flattering isn’t it? It’s like the Simpsons, when you have a cameo.”

Oh.

Anyway, even though it’s the most obvious thing in the world to doubt the literary talents of a woman who named her daughter Bluebell Madonna, someone must like her books – a brand new one is being published each month until October. And, deep down, we know that Geri’s Ugenia Lavender books will be a success.

But that’s only because – faced with a choice of Geri Halliwell: children’s author or Geri Halliwell: full-time pop star – most people would happily harvest their internal organs to science for cash in order to personally buy enough books to make sure Geri never sets foot in a recording studio ever again.

Read more:

Geri Halliwell writes kids’ books – BBC News

So we have nothing but respect for the family and former manager of Ray Charles, who managed to remain peaceful and amicable until he was long-dead, completely cold and probably quite rotten, and then they started having bitter, distasteful fights about his possessions.

Ray Charles’ 12 children have accused manager Joe Adams of tarnishing their father’s memory by releasing two Ray Charles albums posthumously that Ray would have never approved. We’re not so sure about that – Ray Charles Sings The Hits Of Emma Bunton and Ray Charles Mumbles To Himself About His Slippers have always been long-time favourites of ours.

When Ray Charles died, he went out with a bang. Not literally, of course – people didn’t drag Ray Charles onto a beach, stuff him full of dynamite and explode him like a whale or anything – but he made sure he went out at the height of his powers.

The last album Ray Charles made, Genius Loves Company, won eight Grammys and the film about his life that was made as he was dying, Ray, won two Oscars. So between that – and the money that Ray Charles accumulated in the 53 years since his first recording, you’d think that everyone would be happy with their inheritance.

Not a chance. The 12 children that Ray Charles fathered by nine women have all got the hump with Ray Charles’ manager Joe Adams. And that’s either because Joe Adams has systematically mismanaged Ray Charles’ estate since his death in 2004 or because they’re pissed off that Ray didn’t leave them a bunch more money in his will and they’re lashing out. Who knows? Either way, as The Associated Press reports, now the FBI is getting involved and all sorts:

Ray Charles’ children are accusing his longtime manager of mismanaging his estate and trusts and tarnishing his legacy by releasing two posthumous CDs the late singer never would have approved, according to a published report. In allegations outlined Sunday in the Los Angeles Times, several of Charles’ 12 children accused Joe Adams of holding too much power over Ray Charles Enterprises and the Ray Charles Foundation and excluding them from business dealings. They’re seeking a formal investigation and audit looking into their father’s estate, trusts and foundation for possible wrongdoing.

According to these allegations, Ray Charles’ kids all received $500,000 each in his will, along with a woolly-worded hint about possibly getting more “down the line.” Meanwhile Joe Adams – who’d been Ray Charles’ manager since 1961 – didn’t receive anything in the will, but he stayed in charge of all the business rights.

What this scrap boils down to, essentially, is the Ray Charles’ image rights. No mention of it was made in the will and the children are trying to gain control over it. Should they win, this row will disappear instantly and everything will go back to normal.

OK, that’s a lie – what we expect will actually happen is there’ll be a bunch of new lawsuits between the various children about how Ray Charles’ image gets used. For instance, one of them will probably want to remaster his back catalogue for iTunes, another will want to make a Ray Charles museum complete with lucrative giftshop, another will want to make a Hammer Man-style Saturday morning cartoon about Ray Charles’ adventures fighting crime and another will want to sell out old Ray Charles songs for the remix album Ray Charles Says: Poop Poop! All Aboard The Vengaboys Express!

All of which we’d be OK with, incidentally. Except the museum one. Ugh.

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Ray Charles’ children, ex-manager battle – AP

That's why Britney Spears has scored herself a quiet little job on the side. But what job could you really give someone who, just a few weeks ago, was deemed to be too mentally ill to dress or feed herself?

Why, a children's dance instructor, of course. Britney Spears is now a genuine dance instructor at the Millennium Dance Complex in Hollywood and is using her considerable dance experience to teach a group of 15 five-year-olds everything she knows. In fact, next week Britney Spears has even asked Madonna to stop by and jab her ancient tongue into each and every one of those adorable infant mouths. It's heartwarming.

If you're anything like us, you're struggling to come to terms with a world where Britney Spears doesn't do something newsworthily demented every single day. In fact, entire weeks have passed without Britney Spears collapsing in a sobbing heap in front of 250 paparazzos and a couple of news helicopters. It's weird, isn't it? Weird and confusing and wrong. Without Britney Spears to laugh at, we might even have to – gulp – examine our own failings as human beings.

But that's just something we'll have to get used to, because Britney Spears' father is doing such an admirable job at keeping his daughter under control that she hardly does anything crazy any more. Reason being that Britney Spears has put all the energy she used to waste on shaving her head and barricading herself in a bathroom semi-naked with her terrified baby son until she's forcefully taken to hospital into doing something constructive – teaching children to dance. 

That's nothing new – Britney Spears has already taught dance lessons to kids since her hospital visit – but now it's more official, because Britney Spears has become an actual dance instructor at Hollywood's Millennium Dance Complex. And what's more, being close to Britney Spears in an enclosed space isn't giving the children lifelong emotional wounds that they'll never be able to recover from, as People reports:

Britney Spears headed back into the dance studio Tuesday night to teach a class of 15 children. And her pint-sized pupils are singing her praises. "I like Britney," 5-year-old Elissa Bouganim, who has taken three classes with the pop star, tells PEOPLE. “Today, first we were dancing slow, and then faster and faster … Then we did the fish-move and lots of other fun things."

This is the perfect way for Britney Spears to get better again. The children are both a symbol of Britney's lost innocence and a reminder of her own semi-estranged children, while Britney Spears gets to feel useful and in control again by passing on knowledge of what she's best at. Hey, if Britney keeps this up then those kids are going to become the world's foremost exponents of pre-school underdressed whoreish dancing. There's literally nothing that can go wrong here.

That is, unless Britney attempts to recreate her most famous dance routine with the children and three of them wind up getting eaten by the giant python she brings to class. Then it might be a good idea for her to get back to the pop music thing.

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Britney Spears Earns Raves as a Dance Teacher – People 

That's why it's so important that Britney Spears gets to see her two children. And that's what she's done – after seeing the kids for the first time in two months on Saturday, Britney Spears got to spend time with the children again yesterday.

That's wonderful news – not only will time with her children speed Britney Spears' recovery, but everyone knows that there's no happier time than when two innocent children get to spend quality time with their mentally unwell mother, her father, a court-appointed monitor, a psychologist, a lawyer and one of their father's bodyguards. It'll make quite the Christmas card come December.

Although we've had our differences in the past, we're honestly thrilled to see that Jamie Spears' ongoing conservatorship has forced Britney Spears into slowly getting well enough to become the old Britney Spears, the Britney who puked on boys, exposed her ladyparts at every opportunity and smeared dogshit on designer dresses while absent-mindedly pawing at her crotch but fell short of full-blown mental illness.

And a big part of that recovery involves Britney Spears getting to see her kids. Ever since Britney lost custody of her kids in October – and especially since she lost all visitations rights in January when she was carted off to the brain hospital – Britney Spears lost her one remaining responsibility. Unless you count weeping uncontrollably as a responsibility, which frankly we don't. 

And although Britney Spears tried replacing her children with a variety of substitutes, like creepy married British photographers and a terrified-looking puppy, it was obviously only going to take a visit from her children to bring Britney Spears back down to Earth. And, as we reported yesterday, that happened this weekend when Britney got to see her kids for the first time in seven weeks.

The visit must have gone well, because yesterday Britney Spears got to see her kids again. E! Online reports:

After not seeing her boys for almost two months, Britney Spears has scored her second face-to-face visit in the past three days. The embattled pop star received another in-home visit from one-year-old Jayden James and two-year-old Sean Preston on Monday, E! News has confirmed. The kids were again shuttled to Spears' home in Kevin Federline's gray Dodge Viper truck, driven by Federline's longtime security guard, at around 9 a.m. They departed shortly after noon.

Unless Britney Spears does something awful, like chew through her leash and make a lunge at Sean Preston, it seems to us that these visits will become a regular occurrence. And that's bound to be helpful for Britney Spears' progress – surrounded by family and out the way of the media, all the ingredients to make sure that Britney gets well safely and quickly are in place.

And this situation has to suit Sean Preston and Jayden James, too – after all, the more time they spend around their mother, the more of the Spears trademark charm is going to rub off on them. And, seriously, who wouldn't want that?

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More Mommy Time for Britney - E! Online 

This weekend, that situation happened to Sean Preston Federline and Jayden James Federline. Except the dotty old lady in question was Britney Spears. Their mother Britney Spears.

That's right – after almost two months of rejection, Britney Spears finally got to see her kids again on Saturday in an emotional reunion. Emotional for a couple of reasons, of course – Britney Spears was brutally reminded how much she'd lost by behaving so oddly over this last year or so and the kids were just a bit freaked out that there was also a jumpy-looking psychiatrist in the room who flinched every time Britney made a sudden movement.

This last couple of months have been hellish for every single member of the Spears family. Britney Spears has gone through the pain of being forcibly sectioned, Jamie Spears has felt the pressure of controlling all of Britney's affairs and Kevin Federline has felt the acute embarrassment of being intellectually outclassed by two infants on an hourly basis. A little light was needed to cut through all the grimness – and on Saturday, that's exactly what happened.

Britney Spears has been kept away from her children since her breakdown on January 4 when she locked herself topless in a bathroom with one of them and wound up getting her brain looked at. But, at long last, on Saturday Britney Spears was tentatively allowed to spend some time with her children at long last. MTV reports:

After the lawyers representing Spears and her ex-husband Kevin Federline reached an agreement on visitation rights Friday, the singer saw her sons Preston, 2, and Jayden, 1, for the first time since January 3, the night she was hospitalised after refusing to turn the boys over to Federline. She was hospitalized again at the end of the month. On Saturday morning, Federline put the boys into his truck and they were driven by his bodyguard to Spears' home. Sources told People that Jamie and Britney's psychiatrist were also present during the visit; another source said, "The real hero was Jamie. He has taken charge, and she has visitation again."

It's unclear whether this visit was just a one-off event or whether it'll become a regular event. Since both children left Britney Spears' house in one piece, that's probably a good indication that they'll be allowed to see her again. And maybe they'll even let Britney out of her reinforced perspex cage next time, too.

But it certainly seems fair on everyone that Britney Spears should get to see her children again. After all, if Britney is allowed to look after kids belonging to other people then it's only fair that she should get some time with her own. And the children themselves will benefit from seeing Britney Spears, because it's important that mothers and children spend a lot of quality time together, even if the mother is mentally ill to the extent that she can't feed herself any more.

And perhaps this situation is best of Kevin Federline. Now, when Sean Preston and Jayden James are with Britney Spears, he can research the answers to some of the trickier questions they've been asking him under his care, like 'what colour is the sun?' and 'which is bigger, an ant or a cow?'

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Britney Spears Visits With Sons – MTV