When you’re in trouble, don’t call Batman, call Billy Crystal. Especially if you’re in need of a host of the Oscars. In fact, specifically if you’re in need of a last minute host for any awards ceremony.

That’s because Billy Crystal is pretty much unable to do anything other than be a vaguely charming awards presenter these days.

So good thing Eddie Murphy quit the job after some gay slurs made everyone quit the gig, right?

Oscar organizers got Billy back AGAIN to host the film awards after the departure of one producer and his handpicked master of ceremonies Eddie Murphy.

See, what happened was that producer Brett Ratner used the gay slur “fags” at a screening of his movie Tower Heist, which stars Murphy.

Naturally, gay rights groups went nutso and Ratner ended up losing his job. He probably muttered something far worse than ‘fags’ under his breath when the shitstorm failed to dissipate.

Of course, during all this brouhaha, Crystal’s spidy-sense went off and he spent three whole days sat besides his telephone, answering with “Good day, Billy ‘does a great Oscar ceremony’ Crystal speaking!” to absolutely everyone who called him.

Eventually, it came good and he announced the gig – which he’s done eight times previously – on twitter:

“Am doing the Oscars so the young woman in the pharmacy will stop asking my name when I pick up prescriptions. Looking forward to the show.”

It almost seems like Billy Crystal is becoming the new Bob Hope, in as much that he’s famous for simply existing rather than doing any proper work.

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Have you seen how outrageously great Eddie Murphy was back in his SNL days? Think about those fantastic films he made way back when! Beverley Hills Cop(s), Trading Places, Coming To America, 48hrs… not to mention stand-up films like Raw.

He was untouchable for a while. And then he went rubbish. Really, really dreadful.

In fact, it all started going wrong in the ’90s with dreck like The Nutty Professor, Shrek, Dr Dolittle and anything that enabled him to play all the characters at once. So what went wrong? It seems he stopped drinking, that’s what.

According to the man himself, he hasn’t touched a drop of booze in 18 years. Apparently, he can no longer drink because it makes him sick.

The last time he had a hangover was after he consumed three paltry glasses of champagne on his honeymoon following his marriage to now ex-wife Nicole Mitchell in 1993.

He said:

“The last time I got drunk was … on my honeymoon, maybe 18 years ago…. I only had three glasses of champagne. It don’t take a lot … I was feeling great for about five minutes, thinking this is a wonderful honeymoon.”

So then, think about this – he was a clean living, non-boozehound when he was stopped by police with a transvestite prostitute in his car.

He was stone cold sober when he had sex with Spice Girl Mel B. He was clean as a whistle when he told everyone that he didn’t want anything to do with the baby she had with him.

Amazing.

And now he’s making a Hong Kong Phooey film and generally being about as humorous as a Stanley Knife blade being jammed up your fingernails.

Eddie. Please start drinking again.

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The Oscars are great aren’t they? Tara Reid likened them to spending a few weeks in the Big Brother house… it really doesn’t get any better than that does it? And now, Eddie Murphy appears to have signed up for the show.

Now, you may be thinking that Eddie’s not done much since (allegedly) groping a drag queen’s bulge and successfully having sex with Mel B with no condom on, but you’d be wrong.

See, as Mel B found out when she had group sex with Murphy (Eddie playing the other six participants, including the token amusing overweight elderly lady), the Beverley Hills Cop has a plan to host and win all the Oscars in 2012.

No official decision on the 2012 Academy Awards has been made, but sources close to the awful festival of self  congratulatory fellation say that our Ed is the top candidate to do the honours in February.

Producers of the Oscars – Brett Ratner and Don Mischer – will first have to decide whether they can handle the logistical nightmare that is having a host who wants to not only host it, but also win and present every award under a variety of broadly stroked characters, not to mention performing songs and routines while under 40 inches of latex and make-up.

Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis will probably get asked if they can’t be bothered with Eddie Murphy’s increasing and self-imposed loneliness.

In fairness, Murphy might be a great shout. He’s clearly having a nervous breakdown, so it’ll be more fun to watch him forgetting which character he’s playing and crying through a Valley Girl mask, in comparison to recent squibs like James Franco and Anne Hathaway, or the regrettably disappointing Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.

He’s not even listed at the bookies, so get your money on now before realising Billy Crystal gets given the gig AGAIN.

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Eddie Murphy is a jealous, jealous man who doesn’t like to share screentime with anyone else. This is why he plays every single character in the films he makes. Of course, sets must be incredibly lonely for him.

Why else would he have willingly had sex with Mel B?

Anyway, Murphy is all set to be the voice of cartoon character Hong Kong Phooey in a new feature length caper. Don’t remember Hong Kong Phooey? Let us fill you in while being dismissive of stuff.

Murphy, of course, has previous in feature length animations as he provided the voice for Shrek’s Donkey. Now, he’ll get centre stage (as well as stage right, left, top, bottom and whatever else there is going) as he voices the ‘number one super guy’.

Of course, Hanna-Barbera’s Hong Kong Phooey (which kicked off in ’74) isn’t particularly super at all. In fact, he’s hopeless.

Phooey is the alter ego of Penrod “Penry” Pooch who is a “mild-mannered” police station janitor. Oddly, Penry lives in a world run by humans who don’t seem to mind a talking dog walking around on its hind legs while brandishing a mop. Indeed, Rosemary, the Telephone Operator in the show wants to have sex with Penry. Penry the dog.

Penrod also has a pet cat. Honestly. It’s never addressed. A dog with a pet cat who is the real hero of the hour. See, when Penry turns into Hong Kong Phooey, he doesn’t become brilliant. In fact, he’s a screw-up. He ballses everything up but gets all the credit for his cat’s smarts.

Think Inspector Gadget and Penny. Phooey had all his moves stolen by the famous bumbling bobby.

Anyway, this flick will no doubt be in hideous 3D with the theme redone by Blink 182 or something. It’s going to be dreadful isn’t it?

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Martial arts legend and screen icon Jackie Chan survived his own death yesterday, proving once again that he is definitely much harder than Ross Kemp.

But that really isn’t saying much.

Jackie Chan became a top trending topic on Twitter worldwide after rumours of his death began to circulate on the micro messaging site. Now, far be it from us to criticise the users of Twitter, but how stupid do you have to be to rely on it as your primary source of news about celebrity deaths?

Surely that’s what hecklerspray is for?

The dribbling morons who specialise in retweeting anything and everything they see, in some vain hope that people will care about what content they’re pissing into the vast ocean of pointless information, began spreading the news around almost immediately after the initial Jackie Chan RIP tweet was… erm… tweeted.

God forbid people would actually check to see whether a story was true before they spread it around, even we here in the hecklerspray bedsit took the time to consult our good friend Google for confirmation of Chan’s death, only to be disappointed by the news he was still alive and had also recently starred in some sort of bizarre remake of Vin Diesel’s opus, The Pacifier.

We’re putting this down to the fact that people want to be the first to break the news to you that someone famous has died. A few years ago this was done with text messages, we all remember receiving text messages informing us that Michael Jackson or Heath Ledger had died.

But no one cares about texting any more because we have Twitter, which is like texting only on a larger scale and infinitely more annoying. But because Twitter is instant you have to be quick, so those few seconds you spent Googling the facts could be the difference between being retweeted or having to retweet.

It was either that or an extremely bizarre viral campaign by Channel 5 in the UK, who were showing one of Chan’s more commercially successful films, Rush Hour, on their digital sister station 5* last night.

The best moment of this story came from the London trending topics on Twitter though, where Jackie Chan’s name appeared right next to the hashtag, #thingsblackfolksscaredof.

Come to think of it, Chris Tucker did look a little uneasy during Rush Hour…

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If Michael Jackson meets David Carradine in heaven – as unlikely as that’d be – he should expect a great big hug.

Why? Because thanks to Michael Jackson’s death, the world has forgotten about David Carradine and how he died in a Bangkok hotel cupboard wearing a lady’s wig, a set of fishnet stockings and a shoelace that was somehow tied and his neck and penis at the same time. So that’s good.

But David Carradine is back in the news again – a private pathologist has stated that he probably died of asphyxia. Funny, we had money on the cause being embarrassment.

You know David Carradine, the actor and apparent auto-erotic asphyxiation fetishist who appears to have died during a bout of auto-erotic asphyxiation gone horribly wrong? Yeah, turns out that asphyxia probably killed him. We know! We were shocked when we found out, too! We had his death down as either swine flu or a shark attack. Some experts we turned out to be.

However, it seems like asphyxia really was the cause of David Carradine’s death, because the private pathologist hired by the Carradine family said so, as AP reports:

The private pathologist who examined David Carradine’s body says Thai authorities have determined the actor died of asphyxia and so far, he agrees. Dr. Michael Baden says his examination of the “Kung Fu” star’s body and the details he’s received from Bangkok are consistent with an asphyxiation death. He conducted a second autopsy on Carradine’s body at the family’s request.

But hold on a second – don’t think that the mystery has closed just because a pathologist has stated the painfully obvious. Although he died of asphyxiation, nobody can say for sure whether David Carradine’s death was accidental and self-inflicted or, yes, if it was down to that rival kung-fu gang we’ve been hearing so much about lately.

True, the hotel’s CCTV doesn’t appear to show anyone entering or leaving David Carradine’s room in the hours before or after his death, but this is a rival kung-fu gang we’re talking about here. They could have somersaulted in through the window or burst through the ceiling armed with wigs, stockings and a shoelace long enough to tie around someone’s genitals and neck simultaneously or something. They’re the worst kind of rival kung-fu gangs – the ones with long shoelaces and an alarming sense of visual aesthetic.

Of course, in the coming weeks as toxicology and forensic test results are completed, we’ll all get a much clearer picture about the circumstances of David Carradine’s death and put all this grubby business behind us. When we said ‘a clearer picture’ just now, by the way, we weren’t talking about an actual physical picture of David Carradine’s death scene that we can all look at, because – you know – ugh. And stuff.

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