There’s nothing better than the smell of a burger chargrilling over an open flame. That is, unless you’re vegetarian or can’t eat pork for religious reasons. Maybe you don’t like burgers. Okay, so there are several things that are- in reality- better than the smell of a burger chargrilling over an open flame but we can assure you of one thing, a fast food burger is not one of them.

It’s not for us to tell you the problems with fast food and to preach to you like grimy facsimiles of Nigel Slater would be hypocritical. We’ve all been drunk, hungry, in desperate need of an escape from the rain that we’ve been in one of the American burger giants- there’s no denying it. Find us someone who’s never been over the door and we’ll point and gawp in sheer amazement.

We can however, tell you the problems with fast food advertising. After all, that’s the entire point of this column. You see, fast food chains suffer from the same problem as booze peddlers: when all’s said and done, they’re advertising something that’s bad for you.

So how do you dress it up?

It’s relatively simple and you’ll be familiar with the way it’s done almost instantly. Groups are the usual ones like the KFC adverts where, on a lovely sunny day instead of having a barbeque, a group of family and friends have opted to share a feast of KFC delights that must have cost somewhere in the region of £13,000 to put on the table. They’re laughing, larking about having a great time. Why? They’re sharing that grease around. Bargain bucket for one? Why not make that for four and quadruple your lifespan?

It’s easy.

However in recent years McDonalds- the last bastion of the seedless bun- have opted to show as many demographics in their restaurants as possible to prove that McDonalds is a classless, raceless, genderless outlet designed for both everyone and no-one in equal measure. It’s much like their customer service model.

They’ve moved away from gaudy luminous furnishings and away from the restaurant model that they began with in the 50s’ as a car-service diner. They’ve replaced most restaurants with a dull green ‘eco-cafe’ which is designed to “remind” their customers that what they’re eating is actually 100% beef that can be traced right the way back to the cage it came out of.

Their latest advert takes these values which they have espoused from on-high over the last couple of years and turns them into implied values, perhaps the most dangerous of the values.

This particular ad shows a loner. A cheery loner, we’ll grant you that but a loner nonetheless. It’s quite a concept to spend most of an advert for fast food with most of it spent wandering the streets of (what we assume is That London) and not focussing on the burgers and how full of meat they are. They’re implied values though. Wide demographic of people, home-spun, clean-cut chap doing some walking. He’s picked up a paper (probably The Mail) and is singing a song about being on the street where his sweetheart lives.

Nice, isn’t it?

“On The Street Where You Live” is a song which was originally used in the musical ‘My Fair Lady’ and has since been covered by a huge range of artists from Bobby Darin to Steve Hogarth from Marillion and is, largely speaking, quite a romantic number. Isn’t it the perfect song to sing to your sweetheart?

It’s not a huge leap of logic to assume that the young man in this advert is singing the song to the Big Mac which he is about to sink his teeth into. He’s about to eat the object of his desire. He’s fallen in love with a burger that he’s then going to devour. It’s a one minute tragedy.

If you’re to believe this advert, you’ll believe that McDonalds encourage the love of burgers with a strange serenade from a lovestruck 20-something. Does it make you want to eat one of their heavily-salted treats or vomit into a happy meal box? Either way it doesn’t matter. Where you stand on McDonalds, their products and their advertising is of little to no importance in the grand scheme of the Happy World of the Golden Arches. All we’re trying to say is; bring back the Hamburglar.

Zane Lowe is an unbearably smug son of a turd and if you disagree with that statement then you’ll probably disagree with most of this article. Ever since the days when he was sitting on a badly green-screened couch, chumming up to the Foo Fighters, Lowe has maintained the air of a man whose every musical opinion is based not on a love of music, but on a love of his own opinions on music.

The Smug-Meister-General of BBC Radio 1′s musical output has a long-running tradition of forcing his opinions down the throats of his listeners by choosing a series of “Masterpiece” albums to play, in their entirety, during his show. Thankfully this only happens once a year.

However, things are different this time.

If Zane Lowe thinks that he can force his idea of what makes a musical classic down our throats then we’re going to do the same thing to our readers, hopefully making you realise that this kind of behaviour isn’t okay. We might strap you all down and force the sounds of The Sugababes’ classic “Hole In The Head” into you, or we might just leave a link and some impassioned words from our writers.

We’ll see how we feel.

For those of you who still care about what the people who employ Chris Moyles think, the Radio 1 press person wrote these words to accompany the email:

Each show will include interviews with the artists and others involved in the making of the album, giving a fascinating insight into the stories behind the songs. Zane also takes a look at how each album since its release has influenced other artists with contributors including Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Blink 182 and Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner.

Chris Martin?! BLINK 182?! ALEX TURNER?! Why, Radio 1, with these leviathans of popular music, you are truly spoiling us but what does the Git-In-Chief have to say about his little collection?

“It gets harder every year to pick them, but this year’s four albums each hold a special place in the record collections of many, whilst at the at the same time influencing on many of today’s most successful and brilliant artists.”

It gets harder because you’re trying so hard to look like you know music Zane. The identity of the albums that Lowe has chosen (by committee) isn’t a secret but we genuinely couldn’t care less what they are so you’ll have to look elsewhere for them. Sorry chumps.

Anyway, taking a leaf out of Lowe’s Big Book of Self-Importance, we’ve come up with a list of our ‘masterpiece’ albums. No committee, no real thought. Everybody in the hecklerspray bedsit got the chance to pick one. It’s only fair.

Dare – The Human League

Mof Gimmers: Synthpop was always a ludicrous (gloriously so) genre, which showcased a retrofuturism hatched up in bedsits and motorway cafes by young men with dreadful haircuts and worse clothes. Then, Phil Oakey & Co. realised that they were sitting on something that was plain futuristic and went about making one of the finest, weirdest pop albums ever made. While ‘Don’t You Want Me’ is standard wedding fodder, it’s still a bona fide masterpiece. Backed by the catchier-than-mumps ‘Love Action’, the fierce ‘Sound Of The Crowd’ and the thunderous ‘Do Or Die’, ‘Dare’ is just about the most perfect pop-art LP ever made.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Check Your Head – Beastie Boys

Si Sharp: ‘Paul’s Boutique’ may have seen them at their lyrical peak, but 1992′s Check Your Head is the grooviest hip-hop album of all time.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Lungs – Florence & The Machine

Joanna Bolouri: Original, beautiful, quirky and downright genius. An album that could bring back longing and joy to an otherwise dead heart.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Beat Me – Electric Eel Shock

Kris Silver: An album that perfectly sums up this band of Japanese outsiders, fusing pop, punk, metal and comedy to make a collection of riotous, yet still catchy, and often funny songs about everything from politics to fishing.

Listen to it on Spotify.

We Are The Pipettes – The Pipettes

Robin Darke: Failing to invigorate the market with a reinvention of the traditional 60s girl group, this album breathes a modern interpretation into a staple of Motown history; catchy, feminism-infused and highly underrated. Get them before they turn eurodance and shi…oh.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Mr Beast – Mogwai

Michael Park: Mogwai have been producing exceptional album after exceptional album right back to 1997′s ‘Young Team’ but this attempt from 2006 is one of their most accessible. Rolling crescendoes and haunting lulls, what’s not to like?

Listen to it on Spotify.

Actually – The Pet Shop Boys

Sophie Hall: It’s the one with ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This?’ on it – a song which would upgrade ‘Disappointing second Hear’say Album’ to ‘Best contribution to sound in the universe’ in a mere moment.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Hootenanny – The Replacements

Lauren Mullineaux: It might not be their finest album, but it captures a band on the brink of unappreciated greatness and showed the self-deprecating maturity of Westerberg’s lyrics.  Besides the man is a genius.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Second Toughest In The Infants – Underworld

Matthew Laidlow: Comprising multiple styles from lounge to drum & bass, progressive electro to full-on acid, Second Toughest In The Infants is an album that sounds as fresh today as when it first came out, especially when coupled with the rambling, confusing lyrics of Karl Hyde.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Get them all on one, big Spotify playlist so that you can impress people at parties.

So there you have it, readers. Nine classic albums from the furthest reaches of musical taste (and decency), all delivered to you without the need for a three hour retrospective starring Chris Martin and Alex Turner.

You might not like all of the albums on our list but do feel free to tell us your ‘masterpiece’ albums in the comments. Or slag off Zane Lowe. It’s really up to you.

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The Rocky films are great aren’t they? They started off as a gritty fictional document of a rising boxing star, closing with a film that showed Rocky Balboa resembling a relaxed, tanned phallus that has been dipped in a particularly aggressive wasp nest.

And while you think that Rocky was out for the count (or, It Really Should’ve Thrown The Towel In At Rocky IV Because It Was Ace), you’d be massively wrong.

That’s because Rocky is climbing up the ropes again in slow motion, this time with another hugely stupid idea which sounds like the work of a satirist. Ladies and gentlemen, in the blue corner we have decency which is already weeping… and his opponent, in the red corner, Rocky: The Broadway Musical!

That’s right. You are not dreaming that last sentence. A team of berks, comprising of Tony Award-winning songwriters Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, alongside Thomas Meehan who has been involved with Hairspray, Annie and The Producers, are working on a musical adaptation of a bunch of films that star a central character who talks like he’s deaf.

The show is set to hit Broadway by 2013.

Better yet is that Sylvester Stallone is throwing his oar in, attending a private reading of the show which was held in New York recently.

Meehan says:

“At first I thought, all the world needs is a ‘Rocky’ musical. But then I looked at the film. I thought it had beautiful construction and such high emotion, and it was a natural musical: There is a David and Goliath story, a Cinderella story, a love story between two outcasts. It’s less about boxing than about finding self-respect and finding your soul mate.”

So, what can we expect from Rocky: The Musical?

Well, initially, we’d hoped it would just be two fellas on a stage knocking forty shades of shit out of each other, allowing pretentious theatre-goers to coo about how visceral and ‘powerfully brutal’ the whole spectacle is. However, it is clear that this wouldn’t be enough as a musical with no songs isn’t a musical at all.

As such, we’d like to see a rendition of a song called ‘Adrian’ (yes, that’s how you spell it. No, it isn’t ‘Adrienne’. We know. Don’t blame us), which sees the assembled cast delivering the name, over and over in the iconic manner that Stallone delivered it in the film, leaving audiences treated to a sound not unlike six bull seals being clubbed over the head with rubber mallets.

We’d also like to see a song based on the robot that Paulie gets for his birthday. And don’t forget James Brown’s ‘Livin’ In America’. It would be utterly, utterly pointless without it.

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Canada’s shame – Justin Bieber – has spoken of his desire to play the part of Oliver Twist as they share a common heritage. In addition to this, they also share the common trait of being easily led into money that comes around all too easily as the result of singing a few dreary,  saccharine tunes that they didn’t actually write.

Young Justin Haircut’s dream to play the rags-to-riches runt can be traced back to being laughed out of Selena Gomez’s trailer after crawling towards her sighing “Please miss, I want some more.”

Unfortunately for Bieber, no-one on Earth can actually believe that he’s ever read the source material for Lionel Bart’s  “classic” Oliver! Sources close to the star who, like most newspapers, we’ve made up claim that Bieber refuses to go to sleep unless someone reads the novelisation of ‘She’s All That’ to him every night but nothing has been conclusively proven yet.

Libraries up and down Britain have reported that copies of the Dickens classic Oliver Twist which has been dramatised and adapted on numerous occasions have been seen trying to set themselves on fire in anticipation of another screen adaptation starring a doe-eyed, gooey idiot.

In an interview with The Sun, who appear to have a direct line to Bieber, probably through some kind of massive, novelty red phone, he said of his upbringing in a Canadian council flat:

“That place was really dirty. We had mousetraps everywhere because there were mouses – uh, mice – in the house.”

Yes. Justin Bieber thinks mice are called ‘mouses’. We almost did a whole article on that.

“I didn’t have a real bed. I slept on a blue pull-out couch in my room. We didn’t have anything in the fridge, except maybe luncheon meat for school and macaroni and cheese. I’d love to play Oliver Twist.”

Oliver Twist. An orphan who lived in a work house and ate gruel under the draconian “Poor Law” before running away and getting involved with a “lovable” gang of pick-pockets, a violent drunk and a paedophile. Yes, the similarities between the fictional Twist and the seemingly equally fictional Bieber are almost too obvious to be ignored.

Naturally, Oliver came good in the end as Bieber has, becoming a super-rich, in-demand popstar. Of course in the conclusion of Oliver Twist (not the musical) most of the people that had wronged him were either shown the error of their ways, hanged or maimed in preposterous circumstances. Perhaps Bieber and his army of Beliebers will be hoping that the same fate will befall the hecklerspray team.

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Stan Lee must be spinning in his specially-dug-grave-for-embarrassing-situations right now. Why? Because Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark is doing its darnedest to take massive great turds all over the legacy of one of the most famous superheroes ever.

From the curtain opener that saw sets not assembled properly, actors hanging limply in the rafters and more, we now have the story that one of the stuntmen of the show nearly died after plummeting to the ground like a pig kicked from a plane with a parachute made of anvils.

And of course, this is all very funny solely because U2 are involved and as we all know, Bono is a gargantuan ball bag of impressive proportions.

Bono and The Edge (real names – who really gives a monkeys?) have written a score for the play which seems to be based on endangering human beings.

One actor fell 20 feet (or about 6 metres if you prefer) and apparently, it was down to human error according to the actors’ union. That, or the actor in question felt the whole thing was so dreadful that they’d try and commit suicide on-stage rather than continue with the unravelling farce that theatre goers have been enduring thus far.

The poor sod in question is called Christopher Tierney and is listed in not-very-funny serious condition.

One spectator said:

“Spider-Man was on a bridge, and Mary Jane was dangling from it.”

“I think he was meant to sort of swoop over there, but he just fell off. … The harness, you could see it just flick off his back and fly backward.”

“[Afterward] it just went black, and the producer came on and said we’re going to pause for a moment. You could hear Mary Jane weeping.”

After that, it appears that some people clapped awkwardly, not knowing what the hell they were supposed to do. Disapproving glances were thrown at one woman (presumably was a hecklerspray reader) who laughed mockingly at the whole debacle.

The finale of the show was to see the performer being wheeled away in a neck brace.

Show director Julie Taymor said the accident was

“obviously heartbreaking for our entire team and, of course, to me personally.”

“I am so thankful that Chris is going to be all right and is in great spirits. Nothing is more important than the safety of our Spider-Man family and we’ll continue to do everything in our power to protect the cast and crew.”

Apart from putting safety harnesses on properly of course. Maybe the assembled crew actually believe Spiderman is on-board with the project and on-hand to swing through the air to rescue plummeting actors before they hit the ground like a bag of spanners?

Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah! Bono and The Edge… most expensive show in Broadway history… ha ha ha ha… serious injuries to people with more talent than us… har de har har…

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There’s a collective will for U2 to fail at the moment. Such is Bono’s intense smuggery is that the ill-feeling toward him even extends to Spiderman, who everyone loves. Seeing as Bono and The Edge did the score for Spidey theatre production Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark, we’re all wishing it nothing but bad luck.

And hilariously, it seems to have befallen just that… and in bucket loads.

Last night’s opener of Broadway’s most expensive production ever, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark was a ripsnorting flop! That’s $65 millions worth of high-tech gadgetry fail and bad music soundtracking a utterly baffling script. Hahahahahahahahaha!

The poor sods who went to the opening left scratching their bonces, wondering if they’d entered some kind of weird dream-state where the very fabric of everything began to fray around them and slowly fragment like crumbing cheese.

They hadn’t. They had spent a lot of money on a shoddy production which saw them ducking out of the way of falling equipment and actors dangling helplessly from the ceiling. The Foxwoods Theatre on West 42nd Street has probably shrivelled up and vanished in embarrassment today. Go check. It’s not there any more.

Seriously though, bits of this aren’t made up. Reports state that overhead stage wires dropped on the audience and scenery appeared on stage missing big chunks and the star of the show was left dangling like a warm bollock in mid-air during the climatic end to the first act. For eight minutes.

After what must have seemed like an age, the stage manager just gave up and announced over the loudspeaker, “Give it up for Natalie Mendoza, who’s hanging in the air!”

Then the show had to be stopped for a further four times thanks to technical hitches.

Later on in the show, Spiderman was supposed to zoom off with some high drama, except, he got stuck in the rafters with three stagehands leaping up and down trying to grab at his legs to pull him down.

At another baffling juncture, the Goblin is seem playing a tune on the piano and again, thanks to a massive fuck-up, was left play and play and play while stage workers dashed around him trying to fix faulty equipment. Things got so bad that the Goblin broke out of character and started ad-libbing, breaking into ‘I’ll Take Manhattan.’

This went on for 3½ hours.

Sadly, Bono and The Edge missed all this as they were in Australia with U2. Shame. It sounds like they have missed one of the most hilarious nights out of 2010.

Poor ol’ Stan Lee. He must have dug himself a grave, just so he can spin in it for the rest of the day.

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September is the month when hopeful nobodies dream of being the next Matthew Fox or Eva Longoria.  This season there are some new faces staring down the precipice preparing for instant fame or instant coffee.  Could the six Friends have known their fate when the pilot aired?  One of them did – but that was later with the spin off.  

There are some key things to look out for that might help the success of a new show: A familiar face – Worked with: Frasier. Not so much: Joey.  A familiar crew – Worked with: Frasier. Not so much: Joey.  An established audience – Worked with: Frasier. Not so much: Joey. You can see where we’re going here. Clearly, there is no science to what is popular and what is not.  

However, Twentieth Century Fox’s new musical Glee has been picked up for a full season after only two episodes.

“Musical”, I hear you groan! If it’s a comfort to you I am not a musical fan and even heavily dislike the film Grease.  I would go so far as to say that I prefer the sequel – inventively titled Grease 2.

For most people, watching musicals is probably about as entertaining as listening to someone learning Letzebuergesch at the bottom of a well. So imagine my relief to find that this new series is for adults and appears to be actually funny, entertaining and a little bit dark.  It may even contain scenes of a leathery nature for you Grease/Formula One fans.

The series follows a teacher (Matthew Morrison) who, with the help of some geeks and freaks, tries to save a High School Glee Club (basically a musical group) from going under. Unfortunately an evil cheerleading coach (Jane Lynch) is out to sabotage their musical endeavours.

And while that might sound awful, the show is from the creator of Nip/Tuck, so no doubt it will pack some punches, or at least a sexy rubber doll. Fox also has a pretty good reputation and is responsible for shows such as 24, House and the ever-popular I started this but don’t know how to end it series, Lost.

Let’s face it – only Family Guy the Musical would get the ratings Fox are gunning for. But hopefully this is something to distract the world from High School Musical (which none of us have secretly seen). 

To inspire us and to show good musicals exists I shall now quote Grease 2. Ahem… 

“We’re going to die and I’m wearing my mother’s underwear!”

Yeah, actually, I really wouldn’t recommend the sequel.

Poor Michael Jackson – creatively spent, reportedly too ill to perform, lacking the qualifications necessary to become a kindergarten teacher.

The man is just running out of options. Apart from one – it’s been reported that Michael Jackson is putting together a big-budget Mamma Mia-style musical based on his album Thriller. The Thriller musical is thought to be based on the video to the album’s eponymous single, featuring legions of grotesque undead cadavers who terrify you witless the second you glance at them.

Goodness, we didn’t know that Michael Jackson was going to be starring in it as well.

Mamma Mia has a lot to answer for, doesn’t it? Simply by plopping a load of Abba songs together around a painfully contrived storyline and presenting it in a way that appeals to both hen-parties and people who like things that aren’t good, Mamma Mia has become a global sensation and, more importantly, inspired other acts to copy the formula.

So far there have been musicals based on the songs of Madness, Queen, Take That, The Proclaimers and – hopefully in the very near future – the album The Moment by Kenny G. But there’s one artist with a catalogue that’s crying out to be turned into a musical. And that artist is Michael Jackson.

We’re not saying that because we think that Michael Jackson’s songs would make for a good musical, mind you – we’re just saying that the poor chap probably needs the cash at the moment. In recent months Michael Jackson has been forced to sell his home, become the target of a lawsuit from the world’s angriest sheikh and has reportedly developed lungs the size of peanuts that could do him in at any minute.

So this news couldn’t have come at a better time – apparently Michael Jackson is putting together a stage musical based on his album Thriller.

Now, the more eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that there’s already a London musical based on the music of Thriller, but it hasn’t been sanctioned by Michael himself. This new musical will be completely official and creatively masterminded by Michael Jackson, so it’ll probably feature an extended mid-section where the audience is forced to stand up and salute a big picture of Michael Jackson nailed to a cross like Jesus and crying tears that spell the words ‘Love me’ in a puddle underneath him. Anyway, BBC News reports:

[Producer] Mr Nederlander’s organisation said the Broadway production “will be the exclusive Michael Jackson authorised version of Thriller.” The show is expected to be based around the video for Thriller, which was first shown in 1983 and starred Jackson as a werewolf and featured dancing zombies. No details of the musical have yet been revealed.

Now, look, don’t get too excited about this – for all we know, this Thriller musical could go the same way as other proposed Michael Jackson endeavours of late, like the charity singles and the comeback albums and the 50ft laser-eyed Michael Jackson robot that was going to prowl around the Las Vegas desert at night. The absence of that last one stings most of all, you know.

But who knows, maybe this Thriller musical will be a huge success. Let’s hope so, because it could mean that Michael Jackson will go onto adapt his other albums to the musical form, too – like Bad, a musical about a man who is bad. Or Dangerous, a musical about a man who is dangerous. Or Invincible, a musical that nobody will go and see because all the songs in it are donkey bobbins.

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Elton John has written some wonderful musicals in his time – The Lion King, Billy Elliot, that one where Ben Stiller gets AIDS.

With the first one, Elton John really conveyed the majesty of the African Pride Lands. In the second he managed to capture the frustration of living in the north of England under Margaret Thatcher beyond compare, and the final one – well, let’s just say that there has never been a more hilarious, dance-in-the-aisle musical ever written about Ben Stiller getting AIDS.

No, really. Elton John’s writing a musical about Ben Stiller getting AIDS. To be fair, it’s too early to say if the Stiller/John AIDS musical will be the funniest AIDS musical ever made – we hear that Billy Joel‘s adapting Philadelphia into a showstopping musical for Jim Carrey, and the song Bumming A Man At The Cinema is supposed to be particularly rib-tickling.

There’s nothing that Elton John can’t do. Nothing. Well, OK, nothing apart from grow his own hair, see properly or react to criticism in a fair and balanced way, but apart from that, Elton John is golden.

He’s a modern-day Renaissance man is what he is – he’s been the chairmen of a football club, the composer of hits like Crocodile Rock, slightly misguided political campaigner and the Elton John-branded smelly candles really are second to none.

But where Elton John arguably shines the brightest is in the world of musicals. The Lion King was the highest-grossing animated movie for several years – not to mention its extended run as a stage musical – Billy Elliot was a similar success and Lestat was… well, The Lion King and Billy Elliot were very good.

And now comes Elton John’s greatest challenge yet – he’s writing a musical about Ben Stiller catching AIDS. And it’s very funny. All right? According to MSNBC, Elton John told GQ:

He’s “got to try and write a film musical for Ben Stiller,” which is, “about a guy on Broadway who is gay, has HIV and AIDS, and has to go back and face his wife and his kids that he left. It’s very funny.” “It wasn’t sounding funny, so far…” his interviewer replied. “No, it’s very funny,” John responded. “The premise doesn’t sound funny, but it is. All right?”

From this snippet of conversation, if any of it is true, it looks like Ben Stiller’s going to try and out-offend everyone who was upset by Tropic Thunder – his most recent film which angered protesters by featuring a man in blackface and a comedy retard. And, to be fair, a musical about a gay man dying of AIDS does sound like it’d be more offensive than Tropic Thunder, at least on paper. But we wouldn’t be too sure.

After all, Tropic Thunder starred Tom Cruise. You can’t get much more offensive than that.

The world just can’t seem to get enough of David and Victoria Beckham.

With riveting daily appearances of the couple leaving some restaurant, and David modeling undies on banners that are so huge you can actually see his junk from space, it’s no wonder the world in obsessed with the Becks.

Luckily, Ireland has come to provide us with more Beckham madness. A Posh and Becks musical is coming to Dublin. Yes, two straight hours of a man unsuccessfully trying to feed a crouton to a broomstick is finally a reality!

David and Victoria Beckham are rather perplexing. It may be because we still harbour a deep grievance because our alter ego, Greasy Spice, wasn’t selected to be part of the Spice Girls, but it doesn’t make sense that a couple famous for being photographed leaving restaurants, walking hand in hand like two impeccably dressed zombies are such a phenomenon.

Sure, David probably wishes his popularity would invigorate interest in football in the US instead of being known for having a wife that looks like a fashionable Skeletor with breast implants, but he's popular nonetheless.

The Beckhams are like a runaway freight train you’d throw your gran in front of if you believed she could stop it. But since she probably won’t, the next logical thing is to make a musical about the couple called MacBecks, which is scheduled to open in January 2009 in Dublin. 

Okay, so the idea of a musical about David and Victoria Beckham isn’t quite as painfully disabling once a few more details are unearthed. It’s going to be a satirical mix of comedy, song, headlines about the couple, and bit of plays by William Shakespeare, including Romeo and Juliet, King Lear and, obviously, Macbeth. So, to clarify, as long as stuff is being mocked, we're all good.

Reportedly, Posh’s character will be ambitious like Lady Macbeth, whose husband will sacrifice his career for her. No report on if a Tom Cruise character will step in and encourage David’s character to relocate to a new continent where David’s fame will turn out to be over-estimated in its ability to get people interested in a sport they’re not interested in.

Sadly, it doesn’t look as though Posh’s character will be played by Posh herself, but a mop is said to be on the verge of securing the role. Luckily for the mop, Katie Holmes is already signed on for another Broadway play, eliminating the mop’s fiercest competition.

With the frenzied success of Speed Racer ringing in Hollywood’s ears, producers have been looking for another nostalgic TV show to adapt into a movie.

What’s that? Speed Racer wasn’t a frenzied success? Speed Racer has actually been one of the most spectacularly unmitigated disasters in recent box office years? Oh well, The Weinstein Co. wants to make a movie based on Fraggle Rock anyway.

Yes, you heard right – Fraggle Rock, the TV show that defined your childhood almost as much as wetting the bed and the emotional scars gained during your parent’s bitter divorce, is going to be turned into a movie. But not just any kind of movie - Fraggle Rock is going to become a musical, which is like a normal movie, except it’s for pricks.

Quickly, think of a TV show you enjoyed as a child. Easy, huh? Now think of a TV show you enjoyed as a child that hasn’t been turned into a memory-destroying shithawk Hollywood movie by a turd of a studio executive hell-bent on getting rich from raping your childhood. That’s a little more tricky, isn’t it.

We’re thinking of Transformers primarily here, but not much else is safe. There’s going to be a Voltron movie. There’s apparently going to be a He-Man movie. And a Thundercats movie. And a GI Joe movie. And a Tintin movie. And now, inevitably, a Fraggle Rock movie as well.

It’s been announced that The Weinstein Co. – responsible for gems like Factory Girl, Hannibal Rising and Who’s Your Caddy? – is going to make a live action musical out of Fraggle Rock, the story of some hippy puppets that live underground, eat scaffolding made from radish and occasionally talk to a compost heap.

It had quite a good theme tune, containing several words that you could change to ‘cock’ if you were six years old. Variety reports:

The Weinstein Co. will turn the Jim Henson series “Fraggle Rock” into a live-action musical feature. Cory Edwards, who directed the animated “Hoodwinked!” for TWC, will helm the picture and write the screenplay. The Jim Henson Co. will produce and TWC will distribute. Pic will take the core characters Gogo, Wembley, Mokey, Boober and Red outside of their home in Fraggle Rock, where they interact with humans, which they think are aliens.

So, basically, the Fraggle Rock movie will be the same as a regular episode of Fraggle Rock, except it’ll be three times longer, set in an awkwardly unfamiliar location, directed by the man who made the creepy Little Red Riding Hood movie that looked like it was put together with a badly-wired Amiga 500, and will have to grind to a halt every three or four minutes so that we can listen to some puppets singing a song about how everyone is special. We can’t see how it can fail.

But at least this Fraggle Rock movie marks the very last TV show from our childhood to be cynically turned into a nostalgia-gorging movie.

There’s nothing else to remake after that. Well, apart from Bodger And Badger – and whoever owns the rights to that is going to be a very rich man when Michael Bay comes knocking with his plans to turn Badger into a firebreathing robot from the future.

Read more:

Weinsteins roll with ‘Fraggle Rock’ – Variety

One oft-neglected side-effect of giving birth is the overwhelming desire to star in overtly showy prohibition-era Broadway musicals.

Just look at Nicole Richie, for example. For some logic-defying reason, she's currently weighing up an offer to star as Roxie Hart in the Broadway version of Chicago.

It'd be awfully presumptuous of us to try and second-guess what issues Nicole Richie is weighing up exactly, but we're willing to bet that they include rehearsal schedules, being able to spend time with her new baby and the fact that if she was any less talented at anything other than forgetting to eat she'd be legally reclassified as vegetation.

We might be stretching it a bit here, but it looks a lot like Nicole Richie has the beginnings of a Brooke Shields infatuation. Look at the evidence – Brooke Shields had a baby and Nicole Richie had a baby. Brooke Shields infuriated Tom Cruise and Nicole Richie infuriated Tom Cruise by driving backwards up a motorway and not crashing, thereby depriving him of being in a situation that only he can handle. And, crucially, Brooke Shields has been in Chicago.

Actually, come to think of it, that's a rubbish excuse for an infatuation. That'd be like suggesting that Nicole Richie had an infatuation for Kelly Osbourne or Claire Sweeney, when everyone knows that the closest anyone's ever come to being infatuated with Claire Sweeney is her own mother, and even then things peaked with mild, distant affection.

Anyway, we're missing our own point here. Our point is that Nicole Richie – a woman with no discernible skills other than being quite skinny and driving like a drug-addled bastard – is apparently entertaining the idea of starring in Chicago. The Daily Dish reports:

Reality TV star Nicole Richie reportedly is set to relaunch her post-pregnancy career by taking to the Broadway stage and starring in the hit musical "Chicago." Richie, who gave birth to daughter Harlow last month, is tipped to follow in the footsteps of Ashlee Simpson, Brooke Shields and Renee Zellweger as the latest big name Roxie Hart in the show… An insider tells Us Weekly magazine, "Nicole's definitely interested and is weighing it out."

Weird to think that the Chicago producers want to cast Nicole Richie when there are other young women with more music and acting experience out there. We're basically talking about Paris Hilton.

But let's not dismiss Nicole Richie's Chicago role before she's even accepted it. Needless to say the role of Roxie Hart will need to be subtly recalibrated to suit Nicole Richie's strengths – but so long as the audience accepts a Roxie Hart who, rather than being a calculating convict responsible for belting out showstoppers like All That Jazz and Funny Honey, is a scrawny fool who bumbles about and sings a song called OMG, Paris Is Such A Bitch, we're sure Nicole will do fine.

And if not she can always get a role as a prison cell bar.

Read more:

Richie Set For Broadway? – Daily Dish 

If you've ever wanted to get murdered by an evil clown in a thick fog while listening to someone hum an unmistakable rendition of Little Pink Houses to the beat of a clunky, blood covered chain saw – we have good news. Naomi Campbell is well on the road to recovery, and she might just do it for you if you look like you really want it.

We heard that after she eats you, her body turns you into a cyst. We really heard that. We think we really heard that. We may have heard it.

Now if you'd like to share in that experience without actually needing CPR and cyst-reversal surgery afterwards, we have good news for that too. Steven King and John Mellencamp have teamed up to write a musical. It's called Naomi Campbell's Raging Cyst.

It's not called Naomi Campbell's Raging Cyst.
In the oddest pairing since Brandon and Brenda Walsh had a dyslexic 90210 baby (that was a subplot in season two, wasn't it?), Steven King and John Mellencamp have gotten together to make a child of their own.

A musical child. Sorry  – no homosexual genetic break-throughs here. The two have written a musical. It's called Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, and Billboard lets loose with some details:

"Mellencamp wrote the score, while King wrote the script. Mellencamp previously said the play, which is set in Lake Belle Reve, Miss., in 1957, is about "two brothers; they're 19 years old or 20, maybe 18 or 21, who are very competitive and dislike each other immensely. The father takes them to the family vacation place, a cabin that the boys hadn't been to since they were kids. What has happened is that the father had two older brothers who hated each other and killed each other in that cabin," he continued. "There's a confederacy of ghosts who also live in this house. The older [dead] brothers are there, and they speak to the audience, and they sing to the audience."

Makes you think, doesn't it? If intense sibling rivalry leads to an eternal hell of being stuck day in and day out in an Atlanta based musical, then we've got some bridges to mend. Bruce – we're so sorry we whipped you with a cat-o-nine tails while you were just trying to protect those kittens. Tina – you are not the stankest ho on a planet made of stank. Alonzo – sorry we made your eye droop.

Step-siblings – we stand by our words, and we stand by our actions.

Read More:

King, Mellencamp Team for Musical – Entertainment Weekly

Singing? In film? Disgusting.

Warning: Sweeney Todd is a musical. That’s not breaking news we know, but there are some people out there that are picking themselves up off the floor following that revelation.  

The Guardian reports that there were inadequate warnings that singing took place in Tim Burton’s latest edition. “It resembles a vintage Tim Burton movie, but nowhere does the trailer mention the fact that Sweeney Todd is a musical. In fact, it goes out of its way to conceal the fact that the movie is entirely sung, save for a few snippets of dialogue.”

Despite the 30 year history of the musical Sweeney Todd (first opened on Broadway in 1979) numerous re-makes, magazine and newspaper articles, not to mention the full-length trailer where Johnny Depp breaks into song, people have been walking out of cinemas in their droves. The film now faces potential investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority following numerous complaints.

So maybe the original promo trailer failed to mention that it was a musical, so what? Clearly the advertising agency responsible is cleverer than your average Joe and Joanne. They knew that there would be sceptics out there who didn’t want to re-live the likes of Dr Doolittle, so they initially kept it quiet. Unfortunately there now appears to be hoards of people seeking revenge and something tells us they aren’t singing “I must have vengeance!”

The fact that people walked out of this film because they were unaware is disturbing for 27 reasons, three of which shall be listed here. One, this isn’t High School Musical, this is Tim Burton. Two, it’s a two-hour film, not a surprise week at Butlins. Three, this is Johnny Depp singing, it’s essentially Edward Scissorhands breaking into song. Do people have no taste?

There are bigger things in Sweeney Todd to be concerned about than the fact it’s a musical.

For example, maybe the Advertising Standards Authority should investigate how it makes you want to eat one of the meat pies, let’s face it – cannibalism never looked so good. Or maybe the fact that Burton is giving Tarantino a run for his money on the blood stakes by showing innocent punters having their Adam’s Apples sliced open.   

Sweeney Todd shouldn’t be shaved down to just a musical because it is also a great film with a strong script and a stellar cast. You certainly don’t have to be a “oh, well-oh, well-oh, well-oh, uh!” kind of person to enjoy it. Clearly it is the supposed deception that is upsetting the masses. To be fair the public have been deceived a lot of over years, first Weapons of Mass Destruction and now Sweeney Todd.   

For those of you that left the cinema disgruntled, at least now you know that the film is in fact a musical. So ‘drove’ back to the cinema, get a hot toddy and settle down, the music is about to start.

Read more:

What the Sweeney Todd Trailer failed to tell us about the film - Guardian 

[story by Gemma Addy]