This week’s uppers and downers.

Folded:

• Clothes on Film (cool site about clothes in movies. Goodness the editor is handsome)
• Edge of Darkness (Gibbo’s back like it’s 1995)
• David Lean in Close-Up with Jonathan Ross (BBC4, the only reason we pay a licence fee)
• Champagne price drop: pour it on your cereal (by Christmas a bottle of Moët will cost £15, or thereabouts. Possibly)
• Damien Hirst’s return to painting (critics say rubbish, so who cares what we think? It will irritate the hell out of people and that’s good enough for us)

Creased:

• PlayTV (you lose Freeview channels and the crappy PS3 remote can’t adjust volume on your telly. Nice menus though)
• Leona Lewis getting a slap (okay she’s annoying, but if that’s all the justification we need why didn’t someone just bat Lindsay Lohan or Peaches Geldof instead?)
• White Lies by Mr Hudson (this is why the Rusko remix works so well, because the original is downright dull)
• Robbie Williams on X Factor (pop stars singing live always sound cack, but blimey Robbie, it’s not like they put you on the spot)
• Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes (far worse than you’ve read. Even worse than the film in fact)

Leona Lewis was attacked at a booksigning event yesterday, and this has raised some important questions.

Like how did it happen? Was there enough of a security presence? Why on Earth would anyone stand in line for five hours just so that they can hit Leona Lewis on the side of the head? Haven’t they got anything better to do? Do people actually care enough about Leona Lewis to attack her? What the hell is Leona Lewis doing writing a book anyway? What’s it called, My Year And A Bit Of Being The World’s Dreariest Pop Star?

All important questions. None of them will be answered below.

The world is still reeling from yesterday’s news that Leona Lewis was struck in the side of the head during a booksigning event in London yesterday. We’ll just dive in with People’s report of the incident:

Lewis, 24, had been signing autographs at the bookstore for about 90 minutes when “a guy came up and punched her to the side of the head.” Though she didn’t need to go to the hospital, Lewis was “understandably badly shaken,” her spokesman says. According to an eyewitness at the store, “[the attacker] walked up there with the book, she signed it and, as she looked up, he just punched her.”

Shocking, isn’t it? Someone actually has enough of an opinion about Leona Lewis to summon the energy to punch her in the head. That’s just wrong.

No details have been released about the attacker yet, so we don’t know if he planned to hit Leona from the moment he joined the queue or if it was a spur of the moment decision based on a nagging suspicion that her book had been thrown together by a professional ghostwriter. All we do know is that the attacker is lucky that he that he didn’t try and approach Leona Lewis from behind, because he would have probably ended up being kicked in the teeth. In some lights, you see, Leona Lewis can look a little bit like a horse. That’s what we were trying to get at.

Nevertheless, the attack must have been terrifying for Leona, and it seems certain that she’ll beef up her security from now on as a precaution. It’s such a shame – everyone knew that Leona Lewis wanted to be Whitney Houston, but that didn’t mean we wanted her to identically copy the plot of the movie The Bodyguard. It’s just not a very good movie.

Similarly, it’ll be interesting to see how this attack will affect the celebrity autobiography trade. Let’s hope it doesn’t put anyone off – because if it stops Jamie Afro or Joe Pasquale or the third one in from the left out of Loose Women from telling their boring life story to a disinterested ghostwriter who’ll pad it out into a generic 500-page indentikit book that only idiots would buy, there’ll be hell to pay. You hear us? Hell to pay.

The attack on Leona Lewis just goes to show the dangers of winning a show like X Factor, doesn’t it? Your increased profile means that there could be any number of nutters out there just waiting to punch you in the face as hard as they can.

Sort of makes us wish that we’d voted for Ray Quinn, really.

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9 – Here’s a frankly incredible music festival in London that you should all go to – Freshonthenet

8 - Important boot news - Interestment

7 - Like Doctor Who? Like Doctor Who enough to watch an entire video about its new logo? You do? You’re weird – Watchwithmothers

6 - Sign this petition and make an old man (Stu) very happy – 15andcounting

5 – Leona Lewis looks a bit like an expensive prostitute in a rainstorm on her new album cover - AmyGrindhouse

4 - GIGANTIC CUPCAKES! GIGANTIC CUPCAKES! – Bestweekever

3 – Amy Winehouse to go on Strictly Come Dancing and somehow make everything even worse – Popsugar

2 - Antisocial youth in action – Mychemicaltoilet

1 - You know that thing that you think bus drivers do when nobody is looking? Turns out that’s what they do. No, no that. The other thing…

There are two ways of summing up Leona Lewis.

As the majority of people know, she is the only real winner of X Factor who has released a string of hits and hasn’t had to resort to gigging in Butlins. On the other hand, she is devoid of a personality, doesn’t do anything, looks like a horse and could give you the same level of conversation as a plastic bag.

After sucking on the musical teat of Simon Cowell, Leona has pretty much shunned the UK to be over glossed and Americanised. We rarely hear from our favourite cockney reality show wailer. However, it comes as a surprise to hear that she’s spoken to someone outside her circle of arse-licking minders. Leona only bloody went and talked to a tramp!

Tramps are a breed of people that are loathed by the public. Even Mexicans are appreciated a little bit more then the homeless. All they do is nag you for money for a cup of coffee or a sandwich. If they were at least being honest and said they were going to use the money for heroin or cheap cider, we’d hand over some spare change. But liars get nothing. Fibbing tramps will always get told to piss off.

Because Leona Lewis is a global superstar, you’d expect her entourage to plan her movement 70 hours before she steps out into the real world. Of course, there’d be nothing offensive in her way. It could cause her to literally fall over, cry and realise that she’s living in a make belief bubble that the majority of the world don’t live in.

How she encountered one of human nature’s greatest mistakes if beyond us. Surely the streets around her should have been roped off so Leona could wander around in her own world. Obviously, the FBI and CIA couldn’t work in time to turn dogpoo into flowerpots and the homeless into marble statues. Those are two of Leona’s favourite things, fact fans. Digital Spy tell us all about her homeless capers:

“She was shopping on Melrose Avenue last week when she spotted it being kept on a lead by a homeless man. She didn’t think life on a lead was any way for a rabbit to live – then when he said he was going to eat it she knew she had to save it.”

At this point, we need to make it clear that the rabbit was one of the cute and cuddly varieties that get ran over by cars. It wasn’t one of the evil-looking contraptions that ladies shove up themselves for seventh-heaven pleasure. Though a crazy tramp waving a vibrator around and proclaiming it as Jesus would have been a much more amusing sight. We’d toss money at it. But Leona has a golden heart and wouldn’t let the tramp BBQ it to bunny heaven:

“The tramp apparently offered to sell it for only $20, but she gave him $100 and told him to spend the rest on food.”

Now it’s free to roam around in Leona’s company! Perhaps she’ll base her second album on the furry creature. Under the working title Happy Fuzzy Wuzzy Cutey Bunny Wunny it’d be a concept album about the life of a rabbit, from eating lettuce and constantly shagging. It’ll be available soon featuring eleven soulless songs.

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One such prediction made by us would be when the plug would be pulled on X Factor winner Leona Lewis.

We assumed that after 18 months she’d call Kofi Annan a tit, lose all credibility and end up with a job in Runcorn. But apparently not – Brand Leona is still steadily growing. You’ve sung along to a soppy ballad and danced awkwardly to one of her routines, now prepare your nostrils for the Leona Lewis perfume and ghostwritten Leona Lewis book.

So what would an autobiography from Leona Lewis be like? From what we’ve gathered, her clean-cut media image may not make for interesting reading. Instead of discovering her once-crazy antics at house parties where she necked four pills and drank nothing but Special Brew, we expect something much duller. Something like this is more likely to be in her book in the form of diary entries.

Friday 16th March 2001

Instead of rescuing crushed hedgehogs and injured pigeons by the side of the motorway, me and my best mate Becca did something a bit more adventurous tonight. Emma the lezza at school said that if you shout ‘awoooooooga’ four times in a mirror whilst holding a glass of water, it’ll turn in to fizzy pop. Goodness, we did have a giggle.

Wednesday 20th December 2006

I still can’t believe I’ve won the X Factor singing competition. Gumdrops, it’s amazing to think I could be the next Michelle McManus! That nice man Simon Cowell said he’ll support me along the way and make sure he makes me a millionaire after he’s subtracted his 90% finder’s fee.

Monday 12th May 2008

I’m sick of people saying I look like a horse. Surely that’s Sarah Jessica Parker there talking about?

We can only wait with anticipation, we guess. As with most autobiographies penned by stupidly young people, we’re sure we’ll find out how fame has changed her rubbish ghetto family life to a more upbeat happier one.

So whilst we read her book on the train to work, we can whore out Leona even further by getting our fellow commuters to take a whiff of her self-titled debut fragrance. We can’t take an educated guess at the smell like we did with her book content, but here are a few potshots:

1 - Water – it’s dull and lifeless, like Leona Lewis

2 - Fruit – she hates meat, so you’ll essentially be spraying a fruit smoothie all over you.

3 – Bleeding love – though no-one probably wants smell like a woman’s period.

These money-grabbing ventures do seem a bit odd according to The Sun as in an old interview, it claims that Leona said the following a year ago:

“I’m totally focused on my music for now. My clothing line won’t be coming out just yet — or any perfume line.”

The chance to dress like her too! Wow, it really doesn’t get any better than this. Any fanatical stalkers out there are now 64% of the way to becoming a Leona Lewis clone. All that’s left to do now is to don a horse mask and prance around a room, eating hay and drinking from a trough.

Saying that, we’d rather have a Leona Lewis clone then a Kerry Katona a one. At least Leona Lewis isn’t as annoying and pointless.

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And with this firmly drilled in to her mind, it’s good to see Leona Lewis has taken the same advice. As her appearance on X Factor 2006 dragged on, her singing style never really changed that much. Any song with a BPM over 40 was totally inappropriate for her. Instead she belted out ballad after ballad keeping grannies, young children and people in comas extremely happy. After boring us all silly with her hit Bleeding Love she’s now done the same to our American chums. She’s only ruddy gone to number one in the album charts!

You have to hand it to Simon Cowell. He may be the smuggest twat in the world and a crap spokesman for the RSPCA, but he knows how to milk something until it’s dry. So far he’s doing extremely well at doing this with Leona Lewis. The high-trousered judge told The Press Association:

“What Leona has achieved is simply incredible. This is the hardest market to crack and for her debut album to go in at Number One is unbelievable.”

Yup, that’s true. America is pretty hard to crack. Unless you’re a country & western singer, rapper, hip-hop artist or a whiny R&B bod, you don’t have a chance in hell in denting the American chart. And you won’t get a chance to meet Oprah. That itself is an honour; to make music for women to badly dance to. Or, in Leona’s case, sing on a song that you didn’t write, produce or play any instruments on.

But where so many have failed such as Robbie Williams and Jay-Z hating Oasis, there has been a reason for this. You see, Simon Cowell is like the wicked witch of the music world. He casts evil spells that result in bland and unimaginative music. One of the people he shitted out was Leona Lewis. It also helps a fair bit that people will buy anything he’s connected to. Consequently, this means big sales:

“Spirit has sold 204,841 copies this week in the US. Her nearest rival in the Billboard Top 200, the album Troubadour by George Strait, has sold 59,000 copies.”

This comes before her appearance on American Idol which will only have thirty million Americans watching. Of course her singing on the show has nothing to do with the fact that Cowell is a judge on the US version. No, we’re being way too cynical here.

So far, the crater-faced crying Scottish boy who won X Factor in 2007 hasn’t hurt our ears yet with more mass-produced bollocks. But if Cowell is able to turn Leona Lewis – a brilliant karaoke singer, into a household American name, then God knows what will happen. The thought of him shedding his tears in other countries can only depress the people living there. And we want to spread joy, not blubbering and depression.

Still we can’t grumble too much – whilst America laps up Leona, she’s consequently missing from UK radio and TV stations. Something we can safely say is much more important then a credit crunch or global warming.

Read more:

Leona makes US album chart history – PA

Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis is number one in the American singles chart, proving that not even global superpowers are immune to personality-free girls doing generally passable Whitney Houston impressions.

It's worth pointing out, though, that Leona Lewis is the first British female to get a US number one single since Kim Wilde in 1987. And if Leona Lewis keeps her head down and work hard, maybe she'll reach the same dizzying heights. That's right, the TV gardener/ health food commercial actor/ novelty Christmas single with the fat one from Smith & Jones combo is now well and truly within her grasp.

Of all the megastars that X Factor has ever produced – like Chico and, um, that crying Scottish boy we just mentioned and Emily the scarily violent schoolgirl – none have been bigger or more successful than Leona Lewis. Right from her first appearance on X Factor, it was a certainty that Leona Lewis would win – she had it all.

OK, not quite 'it all' as such – try and talk to Leona and all you'll get back is a tumble of meaningless robotic statements about how grateful she is and what and honour everything is and how she's wanted to sing since she was a little girl – but Leona Lewis was able to sing a bit like Whitney Houston and looked decent in pretty dresses, which is usually enough to win these things anyway.

And now Leona Lewis has surpassed all expectations after an appearance on Oprah helped push her single Bleeding Love to a coveted American number one spot. The Independent reports:

Yesterday Lewis's single shot to No 1 in the Billboard Hot 100, knocking Usher from pole position – the first British woman to top the US singles charts since Kim Wilde in 1987 with her cover of The Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On"… Despite finding her music "very safe" and "overwhelmingly mainstream", the Billboard contributor Paul Sexton agrees that Lewis has undoubtedly hit the big time. "There's no denying she's a big star now," he said. "Getting to No 1 in America is a very big endorsement, whatever you think of her music."

What's all the more shocking is the chiming endorsement that Oprah Winfrey gave Leona Lewis when she appeared on her show: "Wow, wow, wow… Talk about a star is born. You're the real deal, girl," she told Leona on air – marking the first time in history that Oprah Winfrey has ever got excitable about anything on TV, with the sole exception of everything else she's ever encountered.

And Leona Lewis' success in America has meant that she's leapfrogged Amy Winehouse, who is yet to score herself a US number one despite all the attention she's got there. However, Amy Winehouse can win Grammys and Leona Lewis can't even win a Brit, so if Leona wants to start winning the critics over she should probably start huffing crack on videotape and cutting herself. Just a thought.

Read more:

The Oprah Effect: America's next big thing – The Independent 

The latest to join PETA’s hareem is X Factor’s second-freshest regurgitation Leona Lewis, who is going to take off all her clothes, including her bra and pants – thus rendering her naked – and pose for a photograph in a classy way, like how a lady might, or in other words, pose for a photograph in a way that demands a bit too much magic-eye effort from the masturbator to be regarded as porn. According to The Sun, a source close to Leona said:

“She’s hugely proud to have been asked. She’s a strict vegetarian so it’s a cause close to her heart.”

The list of girls who have posed for PETA’s 'I’d rather go naked than wear fur' campaign is a bona fide success story for boners; Eva Mendes, Rihanna, Christina Aguilera, Christina Applegate, Alicia Silverstone, Alyssa Milano, all of them naked as the day they were born, only more fully formed and adult-like; it’s an image so mind-swimmingly distracting that you can almost forget how forgettable these people’s careers have been – almost – whilst trying not to jettison on to the half gorged panda burger sitting beside your laptop.

Agreeing to work in conjunction with PETA comes with some baggage though, because you also have to work with in conjunction with PETA founder, Ingrid Newkirk, who says things like:

“When it comes to pain, love, joy, loneliness, and fear, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. Each one values his or her life and fights the knife.”

A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. And it all becomes clear that PETA, which undeniably makes some interesting points that we’d all do well to analyse are, in the end, are not necessarily in the best interests of humankind. Unless you think humans would benefit by allowing rats the same freedoms that we allow ourselves, like jury-duty and garbage collection, for example.

Also, If any of you beautiful hecklerspray readership are wondering – and you probably are – as you’re by now totally bored of guessing if today’s Britney news will be ‘vagina, wig or kids?’, if you guys were wondering; ‘why don’t dogs get the vote?’ well, you are in luck, because PETA has put forward the following theory, which can be found on its website:

‘Animals don’t always have the same rights as humans because their interests are not always the same as ours, and some rights would be irrelevant to animals. For instance, a dog doesn’t have an interest in voting and, therefore, doesn’t have the right to vote because that right would be as meaningless to a dog as it is to a child’

That’s why they don’t vote, because they’re not interested. It would be irrelevant, guys! It is one thing we’ll always have on them though. As they’re barking for better kennels, we can smile politely in public whilst screwing them over in the polling booths, just like women and black men before them. The white man always wins! Sorry, ignore that.

Ok PETA, listen up, because here is what you really need to do, alright? Instead of getting these young females to, one by one, strip off for a picture that’ll do nothing more than raise a few phallus’ and a tiny bit of awareness, which at most will achieve a few thousand more hits for your website, you need to do this:

Focus your attention on one sector of your hate, for example, Tesco and its involvement in battery farming. Round up all these girls together, Leona, Eva, the Christinas and the rest, and march them up to Tesco HQ to speak to Lord Dick King Tesco, or whatever his name is, and say “Look, Mr Tesco, if you promise to stop battery farming hens, we will all make love to you and each other now”. That would be it! Job done. Move on to Sainsburys.

So you can do that, or just keep on giving these girls photo ops to help further stretch their elastic careers, whilst Leona Lewis and the battery chickens just ‘Keep keep bleedin, Keep keep bleedin’ a darkness into our eternal soul.

You have been warned.

Read more:

Leona Lewis' strip fur animals - The Sun 

Is that what happened, though? No – thanks to the Brits' stringent 'don't let Ozzy Osbourne say more than three words in a row' policy, the only vaguely controversial thing the Osbournes brought to the Brit awards was the way that Sharon Osbourne's face looked as if it had been attacked by jellyfish in her sleep.

Oh, and Leona Lewis didn't win any of the four Brit awards she was nominated for. That's sort of controversial, isn't it? Anyone?

The Brit Awards always manage to scrape at least one stand-out moment, whether it's Jarvis Cocker mooning Michael Jackson, that Tubthumping bloke lobbing water at a politician or Joss Stone acting like the world's biggest anus. There was plenty of scope for controversy at last night's Brits, too – Ozzy Osbourne wanted to violently attack Heather Mills, for example, and the puffy-cheeked chimney sweep from Kaiser Chiefs got in a strop because people thought he was quite a lot crapper than he thought he was – but nothing came of it. 

In fact, aside from a brief display by Vic Reeves reinforcing why he isn't famous any more, the Brit awards were so utterly incident-free that we wish we spent two hours doing something a bit more worthwhile, like trying to burp the national anthem or crying.

So, without anything interesting to discuss, the Brits can be boiled down to two things – the performances and the awards. The awards went to the artists you expected them to – Take That got a couple, Foo Fighters got a couple, Arctic Monkeys got a couple, Mark Ronson won one – and Mika and Kate Nash also won a Brit each, although they weren't so much 'expected' as 'horribly, horribly wrong'.  

Sad old X Factor winner Leona Lewis didn't win a jot, though, despite being nominated for four Brits – Best Breakthrough, Best Female, Best Album and Best Single. Leona's losses might have been down to music industry snobbery – she won a talent show contest, after all – or a backlash because you can't listen to any local radio station for more than 30 seconds without hearing Bleeding Love any more.

And then there are the performances. Despite the much-trumpeted musical collaborations at this year's Brit awards, nothing really clawed out of the realms of mediocre. Mika wanked around like a little girl hopped up on Um Bongo at a karaoke party with Beth Ditto. Rihanna and Klaxons sounded like one of those dreary mash-ups that were popular six years ago. Mark Ronson, Adele, Daniel Merriweather and Amy Winehouse made Version sound even more Stars On 45s-y than usual and Kaiser Chiefs were upstaged by some tiny buildings.

And let's not forget that Paul McCartney finished the evening with the same four-hour version of Hey Jude that he closes every single bloody event he's ever invited to with.

So that was the Brits 2008. Woo hoo. Let's put in an early motion to get Joss Stone to host next year's show. And let's fill her dressing room with Special Brew beforehand. At least that way we'll have something to talk about afterwards.

Read more:

Leona Loser - Mirror 

In fact, all the acts that scooped the most Brit Award nominations are just sugar-free versions of older performers. The three biggest Brit nod-getters were Mika (Freddie Mercury lite), Leona Lewis (Whitney Houston lite) and Take That (Take That lite).

But don't worry – the Brits also had something for you indie kids too. The Eagles are up for Best International Album. That's The Eagles.

The Brit Awards are traditionally the jewel in the crown of the British music industry calendar, when everyone gathers together to celebrate the best music that this grey little island can produce and then goes home mumbling that it wasn't as good as last year.

And although they're wrong – the worst the Brits ever got were whenever Ben Elton was allowed to be the host – this year looks set to be the best ever because the Osbournes are hosting! Yeah! That means danger and excitement and rock and roll, even though the Osbournes are actually a shaking, forgetful old man, the star of a Saturday teatime singing contest, some girl from a musical and a part-time rock climber. Danger!

However, it doesn't matter how dangerous the Osbournes are because the Brits nominations have just been announced and the likely winners are all so doggedly personality-free that the evening promises to be less fun than a regional barometer convention.

Don't believe us? OK – let's look at the acts that got multiple Brits nominations. There's Take That, the greying reformed boyband up for Best Group, Best Album and Best Live Act. Thought Gary Barlow was a wildchild when he was a kid? Well you should see him now that he's in his mid-thirties! There's Mika (Best British Male, Best Album, Best Breakthrough, Best Single), whose biggest ambition seems to be to write songs for gruesome hen-night parties to screech at full volume on their way to Wetherspoons in a tatty white rented limo.

Then there's Kate Nash, up for Best British Female, Best Breakthrough and Best Single, which means that hopefully she'll be able to give up her day job as a monotone Claire's Accessories Saturday girl. And then there's Leona Lewis (Best British Female, best Album, Best Breakthrough, Best Single) who somehow managed to make the UK's fastest-selling debut album ever, even though no living human has ever heard her say more than three words in a row.

Still, there are a handful of decent acts with Brits nominations, like Arcade Fire and Jamie T and PJ Harvey, so maybe the Brits won't be as completely boring as we're expecting them to be. But, let's face it they won't win. It looks a lot like the 2008 Brits will go down in history as the most grimly professional Brits ever.

Joss Stone, we've never needed you more. Start drinking now.

Read more: 

The Brits – The Nominations - Sky

Oh, who are we kidding? The Christmas number one is going to be flipping Leon Jackson from X Factor and his special song about believing in fairies or whatever, and that's pretty much guaranteed already. But who'll be the Christmas number one not including that travesty? Now you're interested, huh? Huh? Oh, please yourselves.

Here are the Christmas number one betting odds for Malcolm Middleton, Leona Lewis and Katie Melua & Eva Cassidy, with help from Paddy Power…

Malcolm Middleton, We're All Going To Die

Yes, Malcolm Middleton of Arab Strap and Former Boyfriend Of TV And Radio's Lauren Laverne fame has got a Christmas record out. And, by jiggery, if it isn't one of the front-runners to become this year's Christmas number one. It certainly deserves to be, if not for the perverse kick of knowing that a song with the – actually absurdly catchy – chorus of "you're going to die, you're going to die, you're gonna die alone" beat Chuffing Leon to Christmas number one, then for the brilliant video. We're All Going To Die doesn't stand a chance of topping the charts on Sunday, obviously, but just imagine what'd happen if it did – Malcolm Middleton impersonators on Stars In Their Eyes. Go and buy it now, just for that. Current Christmas Number One betting odds – 8/1  

Leona Lewis, Bleeding Love

Now, we don't know who this Leona Lewis woman is, or how her Bleeding Love song goes, but we've heard that it's basically a lo-fi version of We're All Going To Die by Malcolm Middleton. Oh, not really – Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis has been number one for about a million years already despite the fact that it's basically a Whitney Houston rip-off about self-harm sung by a woman with all the personality of a soggy envelope. But can Bleeding Love become the Christmas number one? Hardly – two months after it was released, surely everyone with even a passing interest in blasted-out powerballads already owns a copy of Bleeding Love by now, so there can't be anyone left to actually buy the bloody thing. Surely. Please. If we hear it one more time we swear we're going to shit down our leg. Current Christmas number one betting odds – 4/1 

Katie Melua with Eva Cassidy, What A Wonderful World

People, this is a warning. Someone somewhere has thought "You know what I'd like to hear? A duet between Eva Cassidy and Katie Melua. Singing a watery version of an overplayed song too, please." We don't know about you, but it scares us that people can be capable of such inhumane cruelty. And yet What A Wonderful World by Eva Cassidy and Katie Melua is the current favourite non-X Factor song to become Christmas number one. But it's horrible – an exact negative of We're All Going To Die. Instead of being a happy song about death, it's a song about life that sounds like carbon monoxide suffocation. If you see anyone buying this record, do your duty and give them a dead arm. It's what baby Jesus would have wanted. Current Christmas number one betting odds – 4/6 

Tomorrow – Strictly Come Dancing final betting odds. But if that's too long to wait – or you feel like making more money than you know what to do with – head right over to the Paddy Power Christmas number one betting odds page to see the latest, and best, betting odds. 

At times of crisis hecklerspray turns to music, but this time we can't. We can’t get away from the X Factor at all. It’s splashed across our TV screens and advertised during ITV’s endless repeats of Midsomer Murders. Amazingly, last year's X Factor winner Leona Lewis hasn’t faded into oblivion yet. In fact, she’s been plonked on top of the charts for six weeks now, with a song that we think is about about periods. Not only is Bleeding Love the best-selling single of the year, her album is also number one. Time to celebrate? No, we’d rather just crack Simon Cowell one for brainwashing ten-year-olds everywhere into buying songs about irrational female moodswings.

When you think of giant faceless corporations destroying the world, you might think of Nike forcing young Asian children to make flip-flops with just a needle and thread or McDonalds for destroying lots of trees in Brazil so there's more room for rubbery-tasting burgers and milkshakes.

And then there's Simon Cowell. Look, the top three UK albums are as follows:

1 - Leona Lewis, Spirit

2 - Shayne Ward, Breathless

3 - Westlife, Back Home 

What do they all have in common? Firstly, they all make semi-decent drinks coasters, but they're also Simon Cowell products. Leona Lewis and Shayne Ward as we all know to well have came from X Factor and are the only real success stories of the show.

So what does this mean for Cowell? His Syco Music label has put out both Leona's and Shayne Ward's album. His other imprint 'S' is also responsible for the Westlife album. And that means more money for Simon Cowell.

Could it get any worse? Well sadly it can. Not content on shitting over the album chart, Cowell has other problematic albums bubbling around from his other TV show Britain’s Got Talent. Remember every pie's worst nightmare Paul Potts? Well he is there at number 38 with a special Christmas edition of his album One Chance.

And at number 35 is the annoying little child who appeared on the show – Connie Talbot. She may look like she’s missing a few teeth from eating too many Chewits, but that isn't stopping her from mauling old favourites for cash. Never has Somewhere Over The Rainbow been so hard to listen to. 

And please spare a thought for poor Kylie whose badly-titled album X could only limp in at number four due to Simon Cowell’s grip on the chart. Still, saying that it’s not the best record in the world – it mostly just sounds like Calvin Harris tunes sung by a lady computer.

Read more:

Leona Lewis Still Strong On UK Charts – Billboard