Guess what happened on American Idol last night. Everyone sang songs. And Adam Lambert sang the best song. Shocking.

Oh, wait. No. We meant massively predictable. But still, even though we all know who’s going to win American Idol but still have to suffer through everyone else lumbering cluelessly through songs they’ve clearly never heard before, at least the judges can mix things up.

During last night’s American Idol Ratpack Night, Paula Abdul told Adam Lambert that he was ‘Michael Phelps‘. Or an ‘eyeball whelk’. Or ‘my heel yelps’. Honestly, who knows what that bloody woman was babbling on about.

After a few weeks of dangerous experimentation – yes, for American Idol two Bryan Adams songs in an hour does constitute dangerous experimentation – American Idol was back in familiar territory last night with its annual Ratpack night. You know, the night where the remaining American Idol contestants are schooled in old-fashioned power and charm by a twinkly veteran like Tony Bennett.

Well, replace ‘Tony Bennett’ with ‘Jamie Foxx‘, ‘old-fashioned power and charm’ with ‘just being thankful that they were getting to spend some time within touching distance of the superstar Jamie Foxx’ and ‘twinkly veteran’ with ‘objectionable bellend’ and that’s exactly what last night’s American Idol was like.

Oh, we’re being too harsh on Jamie Foxx. After all, he once starred in a film that was set in roughly the same time period as when the Ratpack were alive, so he’s clearly an expert. Also if any of the American Idol contestants wanted to learn how to desperately try to distance themselves from offensive comments they made about a child, mentors don’t come any more experienced than Jamie Foxx.

But anyway, onto last night’s American Idol performances. Danny Gokey was told he was better than usual because he didn’t blink as much (or something), Allison Iraheta was told that she was a laser-eyed robot programmed to destroy humanity (or something), Kris Allen was told that he was a dark horse because he can crap and walk at the same time and often lets Irish midgets ride around on his back in his leisure time (or something) and Matt Giraud was told that he was rubbish (he was rubbish).

And then there’s Adam Lambert, the obvious winner of American Idol, who last night performed Feeling Good in such a preposterously gay way that we were half expecting to see a chorus line of kittens dressed as the cast of Sex And The City get shot out of a glitter cannon at the midway point. Following his performance, Paula Abdul told Adam Lambert:

“It’s like watching the Olympics and you’re our Michael Phelps.”

Let’s hope for all of our sakes that Paula Abdul is right here. Not because it’d be an outrage if Adam Lambert and his abundance of talent didn’t end up winning American Idol, but because we’re quite looking forward to the time when Adam Lambert gets photographed smoking drugs at a rubbish house party and isn’t allowed to endorse breakfast cereal any more. And that’s the only reason. What of it?

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OK, maybe his second-darkest day. It all depends on how dark you imagine the day that Michael Phelps realised that his face was going to dramatically outgrow his head was. But, nevertheless, the bong thing was pretty dark.

And although he’s escaped serious punishment for it, Michael Phelps’ Olympian spirit has spurred him on to apologise on TV. OK, not apologise as such – it was more of an inarticulate rant about how crappy his friends are – but it’s a start.

The world of faddy internet outrages moves pretty fast, so there’s a chance that you’ve forgotten that Michael Phelps ever got in trouble. But he did – before Chris Brown and Rihanna, before Christian Bale, before Octomom thought about a career in porn, there was Michael Phelps and his bong.

There he was, the world’s greatest Olympian, getting hammered on performance-enhancing drugs in an evil drug den. OK, maybe they weren’t performance-ehnacing drugs – at best it was marijuana, a drug about as performance-enhancing to a swimmer as chainmail flippers and a pool full of treacle, and even that’s not known for sure. And it wasn’t a drug den, either – if we’re honest it looked like Michael Phelps was at the home of one of his friend’s parents. Let’s redo this paragraph.

There he was, the world’s greatest Olympian, possibly taking some mostly-useless drugs in a tatty living room that looked as if it hadn’t been decorated since 1974. Yes, that’s better.

Anyway, the outrage over Michael Phelps’ alleged drug-taking was hard and immediate, in the sense that the IOC couldn’t be bothered to punish him, the US Swimming team suspended him – giving him a nice sit down when there weren’t any real competitions on anyway – and the worst thing that really happened was that Michael Phelps wasn’t allowed to advertise breakfast cereal any more.

But despite that lack of any real interest or outcry, Michael Phelps has still gone on the Today show to apologise. Well, we say apologise, but when he was actually asked if he smoked pot, the best Michael Phelps could do was this:

“I mean, we were just celebrating, honestly. There was probably two or three people there I didn’t know. It was a very small group. Like nothing major. You know, not like a giant college house party. It was nothing like that… I’ll say that there are a lot of people out there who want to take advantage of any situation they have. I trusted my friends who were there about who they were. And clearly they weren’t trusted people… Sometimes you learn the hard way.”

So there we have it. Michael Phelps went on TV to not aplogise for something that nobody cares if he actually did or not. And with that, you may get on with your day.

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Well, he hasn’t. Although the IOC has forgiven Michael Phelps for smoking pot at a student house party, USA Swimming has been a little bit tougher on him, slapping him with a three-month ban.

In effect, this means that Michael Phelps will have to spend 12 of the coldest weeks of the year far away from a freezing swimming pool, while wearing more than just a tiny pair of Speedos. We don’t know how the poor boy’s going to cope, we really don’t.

Everyone knows that Michael Phelps is a winner. He’s the greatest Olympian of all time, his dedication to training is unfathomable and the fact that he’s managed it while looking like the distressed offspring of Brundlefly and Peter Beardsley surely puts him in the league of the greats.

And if you need any more proof of what a winner Michael Phelps is, just go and visit him at the beginning of May. Not only will Michael Phelps know more about daytime TV than anyone else on Earth, but he’ll have also memorised the Dominos Pizza delivery leaflet off by heart and become the world champion of looking exactly like Fat Orson Welles.

Yes, the inevitable has happened. Following this weekend’s photos of him smoking a bong at a party in house decorated by a blind tramp from the 1970s, Michael Phelps has been banned from competition for three months by USA Swimming. It could have been a lot worse – had the IOC decided not to accept his apology like it did, the ban could have been for anything up to two years – but the three-month ban is still going to sting.

After all, what’s going to stop other aspiring swimmers from freakishly beefing themselves up and winning eight Olympic gold medals of their own in the next three months? Nothing, that’s what. Yahoo reports:

“This is not a situation where any anti-doping rule was violated, but we decided to send a strong message to Michael because he disappointed so many people, particularly the hundreds of thousands of USA Swimming member kids who look up to him as a role model and a hero,” the federation said in a statement.

But it gets worse for Michael Phelps – not only is an over-zealous local sheriff threatening to arrest him, presumably because this is the most exciting thing to happen on his turf since Old Man McDingle got his pickup stuck in a ditch in the summer of 78, but he’s also starting to lose sponsorship deals, too.

And which company has decided that Michael Phelps no longer fits its image? Visa? Speedo? Omega? AT&T? No – Kellogg. That’s right, the company that would have gone bust decades ago if it weren’t for all the potheads eating bowl after bowl of dry Frosties in their dressing gowns at 3pm is no longer endorsing Michael Phelps because he may have inhaled some marijuana once. What next – will Phelps lose his valued Hacky Sack sponsorship, too?

But anyway, we’re sure that Michael Phelps will come back harder than ever after his suspension time to prove the world wrong. It’s just like Rocky, if Rocky had been about a champion boxer who got shitfaced on drugs and ended up spending quarter of a year sitting in his pants watching I Dream Of Jeannie DVD boxsets all the time.

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But Michael Phelps’ Olympic career has taken a massive blow. It’s all thanks to that pesky picture of him filling his ridiculously oversized lungs with drugsmoke at some sort of awful-looking teenage party.

Usually this behaviour comes with a two-year IOC ban, but Michael Phelps has got away with it. The IOC has said that the matter will end because Phelps looks ashamed of what he’s done. Silly IOC – that’s not shame, that’s just what Michael Phelps’ mangled-up face normally looks like.

There’s no doubting that Michael Phelps is an athletic legend. Not only is Phelps the greatest Olympian in history – a monster forged through hard work and technology who needs to consume a week’s worth of food every single day just to keep his stupidly-proportioned body moving – but he’s managed to achieve that despite being a gigantic pothead.

Yesterday Michael Phelps was forced to apologise after a picture of him smoking a bong at a grotty party in a house with nasty wallpaper was published in a Sunday newspaper. The photo had potentially serious consequences – cannabis is a substance that’s been banned both by the IOC and the World Anti-Doping Agency, and usually comes with a two-year ban.

Admittedly that’s not all bad news – a ban would mean that Michael Phelps wouldn’t be able to win any more gold medals, which means he’d have fewer to wear in all his shameless product endorsement photo sessions, which means the weight of them all would be less likely to pull his head off and spurt blood out of his neck everywhere as he staggers around like some sort of hideous bloody lycra-clad oil rig – but that’s not something we have to concern ourselves with right now.

Because the IOC has decided that, so long as Michael Phelps is sorry for what he’s done, he can keep being in the Olympics. Reuters reports:

“Michael Phelps is a great Olympic champion. He apologised for his inappropriate behaviour,” IOC spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau said on Monday. “We have no reason to doubt his sincerity and his commitment to continue to act as a role model.”

That’s definitely good news – not just for Michael Phelps but for all of those who see him as a role model. Those people, incidentally, include Snoop Dogg, Afroman, everyone in Phish, the cast of Dude, Where’s My Car and both Harold AND Kumar.

However, we see what the IOC is doing here – it’s clear that it chose not to punish Michael Phelps because his Olympic career is as good as over anyway.

Not only does all this pot smoking mean that Phelps now has a resting heartrate of, say, one lonely thump every two or three months, but it’s a scientific fact that growing a ratty beard and wrapping brightly-coloured elastic bands around it can severely cut down a swimmer’s stroke efficiency. And, let’s face it, that’s going to be Michael Phelps’ next step.

But let’s take Michael Phelps at his word anyway – if he says he won’t smoke any more pot, then we have no option but to believe him. And we’re certain that we’ll be seeing him winning even more gold medals at the 2012 Olympics, to be held in the notoriously drug-free environs of east-end Londo… uh-oh.

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Yesterday a newspaper published pictures of Michael Phelps apparently smoking a bong at a house party. And, since science proves that marijuana is at least as performance-enhancing as loads of steroids, it could lead to a competitive swimming ban for Phelps.

That’s disastrous. Take competitive swimming away from Michael Phelps and what have you got? A freakish man with a face like a clubbed seal who sort of seems like he’d be a bit of a tosser if you met him, that’s what.

When he won all those gold medals in the Olympics last year, just about every newspaper in the world ran a story about how he consumed 12,000 calories every single day. At the time it seemed like a testament to his professional dedication and unrelenting training. Now, though, we’ve woken up to the fact that it’s probably because Michael Phelps is always shitfaced on drugs.

OK, not ‘always’ shitfaced on drugs – Michael Phelps was pictured yesterday in a newspaper appearing to smoke a bong in what could very well be a one-off incident. And possibly not drugs, either – nobody can be completely sure what was in that bong. There’s just as good a chance that Michael Phelps was inhaling a nutritious infusion of steamed asparagus through the pipe. But, hey, let’s chance it and go with the drug thing anyway.

Obviously – since smoking cannabis naturally makes individuals more energetic, driven and liable to take the participation in professional sports more seriously – these pictures could well lead Michael Phelps to a ban from competitive swimming. Cannabis is banned by both the Olympics and the World Anti-Doping Agency, and a first-time offence usually results in a two-year ban.

And that’s why Michael Phelps wants you to know that he’s very, very sorry. About everything. Bloomberg reports:

“I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner that people have come to expect from me,” the record 14- time Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer said in a statement through his representatives, Octagon. “For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public — it will not happen again.”

It’s a shame that Michael Phelps was forced to make an apology like this. As a child he was teased at school for his awkward shape, lanky frame and clumsiness on dry land, but by winning all the gold medals at the Bejing Olympics last year Michael Phelps was able to teach those bullies a lesson – now people only treat him with the utmost respect, calling him names that reflect his success like The Human Fish, Captain Penguin, Mr Olm and That Freaky Mutant Mer-Man Bastard. But now those days could be numbered.

Of course, a ban isn’t guaranteed – Michael Phelps hasn’t tested positive for drugs yet – but if Michael Phelps is banned from swimming, it wouldn’t be all bad. Give him a few years in the wilderness and we’re certain that Michael Phelps will come back stronger than ever, with a fairly good autobiography, an extensive Marion Jones-style Oprah interview and a near-professional Xbox skill level.

True, they might not be achievements on the scale of being the most successful-ever Olympian, but at least they’ll distract people’s attention away from thinking that Michael Phelps looks a bit like the inbred banjo kid from Deliverance. And, if he’s going to do anything with his life, it should probably be that.

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He’s good at swimming, isn’t he? And – boy – does he ever have a lot of gold medals.

Sorry. We’re trying our hardest to think of something amusing to say about the record-breaking Olympic champion, but to be honest we just came up with a big list of puns like Phelp, I’m A Fish. And then slapped ourselves.

Instead of straining our imagination glands, then, we’re just going to show you a remarkable video. Many of you will have gawked in amazement at what Phelps eats for breakfast every day in order to keep his strength up … something in the region of sixty million billion calories (or a ‘Chris Moyles’, as it’s known in the business). No-one has ever tried eating the same amount in five minutes, though.

Apart from this man.

The girl that could well be a lesbian, who may well be having a wedding to Samantha Ronson, who used to get off her face on all manner of things all the time and made up about 75 percent of hecklerspray’s content and who used to not just be a big pile of boredom with added boretitude may well be on the track back to loving men again.

If a brief text message that gives away very little is to be believed. And if she ever liked girls ‘like that’ in the first place.

As we all know through thorough scientific testing – when Lindsay Lohan isn’t a lesbian, or when she isn’t at least possibly a lesbian, she is entertaining. Michael Phelps may well be getting another medal, this one far more valuable than any Olympic award – the hastily made up ‘hecklerspray medal that shows we like you for giving us something to write about again’.

The possibility of us having something to get up for in the morning again came about through an interview with Phelps’ mother, which was being conducted by Access Hollywood correspondent Billy Bush. As the interview was ongoing, Bush received a text from our former favourite walking train wreck Lindsay concerning the half-fish, half-fish swimmer:

“Tell him he’s fucking amazing, and I want to meet him.”

Now that’s the Lindsay Lohan we want to know – the one that swears and is ballsy (or stupid) enough to text someone something like that, during a live interview with the man’s mother, which resulted in the text being shown to Phelps’ mama. Lovely stuff.

Surprisingly enough, Phelps’ mummy reacted to the fact that a once-off the rails starlet, now boring apparent lesbian had sent the text with a mild amount of shock and surprise:

“OK, Lindsay! Delete! Delete! Delete!”

Obviously on being shown a similar message from Lindsay Lohan, any mother would have the same reaction. And seeing as she’s a quasi-lesbian but probably still likes blokes as well, that means any mother of any person in the world has to be on the lookout for Lohan-related textual stalking.

Though we are still waiting on ours. Come on Lohan – you know you love us.

Maybe this is just Lindsay trying to tell the world she’s moved on from men, moved past women and is now on to the third of the sexes – the newly discovered third sex, simply known as ‘fish’, that Michael Phelps clearly belongs to.

She’s obviously well up for a bit of scaly fun. She wants a dishy-bit-of-fishy. She’s scaling down her options. She’d be gutted if she didn’t get him. She’s fishing for compliments. She’s… sorry. We got a bit carried away.

Regardless, if this is the newly-returned evil form of Lindsay Lohan showing its face, the whole of America simply has to be against her getting her claws into Michael Phelps. The best Olympian the country has produced, probably ever, cannot fall into the hands of the dark side. He just wouldn’t be able to swim when drunk/smacked up/fat/involved in car crashes/in rehab.

Make sure it doesn’t happen, people.