Usher really must have thought he had it all going for him.

He had a multi multi multi million selling album, a wife (eventually, a few times), a child with his name and some hats. Things were looking rosy for the dancing pop prat.

Then he brought out a new album, ‘Here I Stand’, and – compared to his last one, ‘Confessions’, at least – it flopped something rotten. While still selling just under a million copies to date, this is considered a failure by both Usher and, more likely, his record label.

So what’s the solution when you’re known around the world, popular, good looking and – apparently – talented?

Why – sack your management and go running to your mum. Obviously. Which is exactly what Raymond has gone and done, re-employing the mother he sacked just over a year ago as a part of his throwing his toys out of the pram reaction to not selling enough records.

Aww, bless him.

Instead of doing what any self-respecting person would do on realising a failure – acknowledge it, shoulder the blame and move on having learned something – it would seem that Usher believes he couldn’t possibly be at fault for his record not selling too well. Not that we’d sniff at 1,000,000 sales for hecklerspray: The Record, it’s just it seems that that many copies doesn’t count as ‘too well’.

Regardless, instead of realising that maybe he was just something of a R&B flash in the pan – a nobody in a sea full of nobodies – some pretty big changes have been made.

Splitting from his management arrangement with Benny Medina, manager of such incredible acts as Mariah Carey and cancelling his arrangement with W&W Public Relations, Usher has gone full circle back to his dear old mama, Jonetta Patton. As the statement from his LaFace/Zomba label… stated:

“[Usher] has dissolved his management arrangement with Benny Medina and has re-engaged (his mother) Jonnetta Patton as his manager.”

Well at least it makes sense – who can talk up a person better than your own mother? And who’s better at arranging to do things for you than your own mother? Plus he’s sure to always look good on public appearances, and she’ll hopefully make sure that he doesn’t forget where he is again, thus making him look like less of a complete dick.

She’s also sure to keep him on the straight and narrow, avoiding the temptation wherever his dancing penis may take him. Though as a result of this, he may inadvertently create more lesbians – lord knows Usher is knowledgeable on their kind.

What we really hope will come from all this though is the overwhelming realisation that’s sure to hit Usher right in his big smug face. When he sees that re-hiring his mother has no effect on his floundering sales and he thinks, just for a second, that maybe he isn’t all that good. He sees for the first time in his life that people were only ever slightly entertained by him because he could dance like a twit while going “YEAH!” every second or so of a song.

But he’s sure to find comfort in his collection of hats. As long as he doesn’t go driving in them.

Kerry Katona might whore herself out for reality TV shows and adverts for frozen prawn rings, but never for sex with men – and now that’s super-official!

Yesterday Kerry Katona won five-figure damages from The Sunday Mirror after it claimed that her mother was about to write a book claiming that Kerry was a massive prostitute before she became famous. Which obviously isn’t true for a number of reasons.

Firstly, anyone who’d consider buying a book by Kerry Katona’s mum about how Kerry Katona was a hooker is obviously stupid to the point of illiteracy, which tends not to be a good demographic to market books to. Secondly, and most importantly, Kerry Katona can’t have been a prostitute because most men would rather attack their own genitals with a claw-hammer than pay Kerry Katona cash to touch them with her hands or mouth.

Kerry Katona has been several things in her life – singer, actress, reality TV show star, fat idiot – but she has never ever been a prostitute. That’s because she’s already a bipolar, chainsmoking, recovering drug-addict who’s been held up at knifepoint and is in the middle of a vicious custody battle for her children that’s humiliatingly being played out in public. Being a prostitute on top of all that would just be over-egging the whole ‘bad mother’ vibe, wouldn’t it?

However, that didn’t stop The Sunday Mirror from claiming that Kerry Katona used to be a prostitute back in June. Actually that’s not strictly true. Rather than claim that Kerry Katona used to be a prostitute, the paper claimed that Kerry Katona’s mother was writing a book in which she’d claim that Kerry Katona used to be a prostitute. Which is completely different.

However, the article – given the headline ‘Betrayed by Mum: Kerry’s mother dishes the dirt in explosive new book’ – was still wrong enough for Kerry Katona to march the paper to court and get a great big stack of libel cash out of it, as The Sun reports:

David Price, mum-of-four Kerry’s solicitor-advocate, told London’s High Court the claim was “completely false”. He added: “Sue Katona has never alleged that the claimant worked as a prostitute.” He said the claim “particularly distressed” Kerry, 27, as it allegedly came from her mum, “giving it added credibility”.

In fact, more than writing a book about Kerry Katona’s hooker days, Old Ma Katona hadn’t even written a book or got a publishing deal in the first place. That sort of makes sense, because if Sue Katona is the woman responsible for making Kerry Katona the woman she is today, then we’d expect her manuscript to basically be just three sheets of dribble-covered Crayola scrawls. Although we could be wrong. Nobody sue us.

Besides, Kerry Katona doesn’t need books written by opportunistic third parties to reveal how much of an intrinsically terrible person she is – she’s already got her own MTV reality show, and that does the job perfectly well thank you very much.

So Kerry Katona has definitely never been a prostitute. That’s good news for Kerry but bad news for Iceland. It’d already planned out its next advertising campaign, you see, centred around Kerry Katona standing on a street corner in a miniskirt, leaning into cars to offer dirty old men bags of cook-from-frozen chicken strips and then being beaten up by her pimp.

After constantly denying any interest in rejoining his nemeses in Take That, it looks like Robbie Williams now may return to the group.

Robbie's biggest fan is his mum, and she spoke to the illustrious Stoke Sentinel about Robbie's Take That return. She's probably a more reliable source of information than Robbie Williams, too, because we've always got the feeling he'd say he went down on a horse if it gave him an ounce of extra publicity.

Robbie's mum said:

"On the question of him doing something with them, I feel that will happen. It would be something he wanted to do."

Well, getting your mum to do your PA work for you is new for Mr. Williams, who normally just gets his head fried with drugs and then goes to rehab and blubbers to the tabloids about his 'hell'. Personally we'd prefer to see Robbie's old-school, sad masochistic destructive form of promoting his albums.

His much publicised fall-out with Take That singer Gary Barlow might stand in the way of a reunion, but these two media whores will gladly let bygones be bygones if it gets them mentioned by the 3am girls. Robbie has continuously denied he would rejoin the group, but seeing as how his last album was panned by critics and Take That's album was a commercial success, a reunion looks very likely, especially when his mum added:

"I'm thrilled that out of all the negative stuff that happened in the past, there's now something great happening".

Well, keep your eyes peeled over the next few weeks, as there will probably be some response from Robbie's agent soon. In the meantime Take that will be arranging the necessary changes to their touring schedule, such as finding arenas which can fit Robbie's huge stomach and unbearably big ego, along with buying every packet of Walkers Crisps they can find.

Read more:

Robbie Williams Might Rejoin Take That – NME

[story by Paul McLoughlin]