Remember the Backstreet Boys? They had… um… they had that song that went “Backstreet’s back, alright!” *dng, dng-nr nr nr nr nr, dng, dung dng dong* and… uh… Justin Timberlake was in them. And someone called Carter. Jimmy Carter! That’s him! And, the… ummm… the other guy. The blonde one with the square head.

And who could forget New Kids On The Block? There was Jordan, Joey, Chandler, Monica, Rachel, Ross and Jeremiah-Jehosaphat and… uh… that song they had… “New Kids’ back, alright!” *dng, dng-nr nr nr nr nr, dng, dung dng dong*

Anyway, both of these teams of humans are going to tour together in a move that will see the Earth creating more ozone to be destroyed especially by the hairspray of the band and fans combined.

The tour, when it kicks off, will no doubt send poor janitor types skidding around the vast concert halls of America as women of all ages remind themselves of just how much they used to fancy [Insert Band Member Here], turning their gussets into something rather similar to a mop being squeezed out into a mucky plastic bucket.

The shows will take place next summer and will cover the entire United States. Every single inch of it. You can sue them all for every penny they earn if they don’t cover every last blade of artificial grass in America.

Further details like the whens and wheres are still to be announced, but you barking mad fans out there will no doubt see this news as a reason to simple sit at your computer hitting refresh repeatedly on your chosen fan forum, without regard for job, social life or body odour.

So there you have it.

Some blokes who everyone used to fancy are joining forces in one giganto nostalgia trip and presumably, the fun will really start when each member takes to the stage to thinly conceal their antipathy/rage for their band mates.

It’s going to be fun. With bad white boy rapping.

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Scorpions will kill you. Don’t argue with us, they will. Klaus Meine, the lead singer of the German heavy metal band, is responsible for the deaths of almost 1,000 people alone!

NOTE: Sony Germany’s lawyers have asked us to point out that Klaus Meine has never been convicted of, charged for or even accused of murder. That opening paragraph was just an hilarious joke that we used to indicate the tone of the piece (irreverent/jokey). Although admittedly, the joke only really works if you’re familiar with obscure European hair rock bands of the 1980’s. Statistically, our readership profiling research suggests that less than 5% of you will have heard of Scorpions, so that opening really should probably have been rewritten. Come to think of it, this second paragraph explaining the Scorpions reference and then explaining itself also should have been cut.

Who knows? Maybe that Scorpions reference and the second paragraph will get subbed by the editor. In which case this third paragraph here will make no sense. NOTE TO EDITOR: If you’re going to cut the first two paragraphs, cut this one as well.

NOTE TO EDITOR: And this one.

In fact, the readership profiling research we had commissioned suggested that less than 5% of you will have even heard of scorpions, the stingy little animal things, so this whole post is pretty much a waste of time.

You want to read about young people’s things, don’t you? Not boring old predatory arthropods. You don’t care that scorpions are fluorescent, can survive for a year without food or water, that after mating, the pair fight with the winner eating the other or that they are responsible for over 1500 deaths per year.

Our market research tells us that all you lot want to read about is your New Kids On The Block, your Jason Priestleys and your Scatman Johns – all those types.

So, y’know… Sorry and that.

FINAL NOTE TO EDITOR: Shall I ditch this and do something about Kim Kardashian’s tits or something instead?

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Have you ever dreamed of having New Kids On The Block perform at your child’s birthday party? You have?

Well hold that thought for a couple of months. Because, at the rate they’re going, New Kids On The Block would probably do it for pennies before too long. And that’s because New Kids On The Block have signed up for a concert on a cruise ship.

Sure, they’ll be surrounded by shuffling old pensioners who stink of piss and can’t remember their own names – but we’re sure that the other passengers will get used to New Kids On The Block eventually.

Let’s play a game of Worst Thing Imaginable. First you need to remember New Kids On The Block – the 1980s boyband who you’d feel uneasy about leaving your car keys with. Remembered them? Good. Now age them all by 20 years so they resemble Albert Steptoe, Herman Munster, latter-era Donny Osmond, an extra from the set of Goodfellas and Harry Potter on crystal meth respectively. Sounds terrible, doesn’t it? Sounds like the Worst Thing Imaginable.

Well it’s not. Now we want you to imagine being trapped in a giant floating tin can with the haggard old New Kids On The Block. Worst Thing Imaginable? No – now we want you to imagine that you’re hundreds of miles from dry land, and that there are sharks in the water so you can’t jump out and swim to save yourself, and most mornings you keep bumping into Danny Wood in the breakfast queue and he keeps trying to engage you in conversation. Congratulations, you’ve reached the Worst Thing Imaginable.

And for some lucky holidaymakers, it’s about to be their Worst Thing Imaginable. After reforming last year and managing to stay together long enough to produce a photo, a haphazard live TV appearance and an album, New Kids On The Block have decided that the only thing left for them to do is become tawdry cruise ship entertainers.

Now, true, the common image of a cruise ship entertainer is that of a plump, desperately unhappy former star trying and failing to recapture whatever glory he ever had by murmuring along to a backing tape in front of a tinselly backdrop, but New Kids On The Block absolutely stand by their decision to play their cruise ship concert, as the New York Daily News reports:

“Our manager tells us this is not a cheesy thing, this is not a step back,” says Joey McIntyre in the video. And Jordan Knight wants fans to know his birthday falls during the cruise dates, on May 17. “I’ll be looking for presents,” he says. The New Kids ship hits the water from May 15-18, launching from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., then heading to the Bahamas. It will include musical performances and schmoozing.

OK, three things:

1) When Jordan Knight says he wants presents, he actually means food. The New Kids On The Block are very hungry, and their deal on the cruise ship included either beds or food and they chose beds. So, please, if you’re going on this cruise, don’t forget to spare Jordan Knight a ham or a couple of carrots or something.

2) “Our manager tells us this is not a cheesy thing to do.” Joey McIntyre, your manager is a liar. He’s also lying when he says that all band are required by law to fart in each band member’s mouth twice weekly. Be careful.

3) Schmoozing. Heh.

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Hey, there, New Kids on the block fan(s?)! Good news!

Your favourite band member that isn’t Jordan or Joey or Jonathon or Danny is on the market again, and just in time for the NKOTB reunion tour.

That’s right. Donnie Wahlberg is available now that he’s getting a divorce.

Word is that he wants to be unfettered for the band’s reunion, which is totally smart because you never know when some chick is going to mistake you for your hot, drastically more successful younger brother. And you gotta be ready for that, man.

Today’s been a good day. We were able to avoid complete self-loathing by not being able to recall off the names of all 5 members of New Kids on the Block without looking them up. The day that we’re able to do that is the day we move to Cambodia with a faulty metal detector and wander around in some abandoned fields.

It’s also been a good day because we realized that Donnie Wahlberg isn’t dead. Wait, let us clarify…that’s why it’s been a more of a good day for Donnie Wahlberg as opposed to ourselves.

To tell you the truth, the news of Donnie Wahlberg’s non-death came as quite a shock, because we thought he was dead after shot himself and Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense. What’s that? Bruce Willis didn’t really die, either?? Then why has there been such a shocking lack of Look Who’s Talking sequels as of later?? We demand answers!

Anyway, Donnie Wahlberg is also not dead, but he’s also not fully married anymore. Both he and his wife of nine years, Kim Fey, filed for divorce on August 13th.

This is really sad news because everyone knows that it’s the dream of every impressionable, weepy, boy crazy preteen girl to marry the boy band member of her dreams.

That is until the young girl becomes a grown woman and realizes that a 40 year-old trying to relive the glory days of youth actually makes him look like bit of a twat, and she wishes she would have gone for the hotter, more successful brother with monster biceps.

You've been waiting for this day for years – well, probably more 'dreading' than 'waiting' but let's not split hairs – New Kids On The Block are officially back!

Not too long ago the reformed New Kids On The Block made their first public appearance on the Today show. And after the shock of realising that they all still have fully-working sets of eyes and limbs subsided, we heard New Kids On The Block tell the world that "Music brought us back."

We presume that'd be Music O'Kneesmash. the famed Boston debt collection agent, then. Anyway, video of the New Kids On The Block Today appearance after the jump. 

Hey you! Are you a slightly odd woman in her mid-to-late thirties who can't stop living in the past because that's when you were popular and boys liked you and you didn't have a job and a screaming baby that you secretly regretted having since the moment you gave birth to it? If so, we've got some really exciting news for you – New Kids On The Block are back!

Yes, we know that you knew New Kids On The Block were back because you heard the reports and listened to the song and looked at the ropey new photo of them – but New Kids On The Block are back! They're really back! Talking and moving around and everything! 

It was perhaps the most poorly-kept secret since Jennifer Lopez's pregnancy, but New Kids On The Block made their first public appearance on the Today show this morning. Meredith Viera and the Today team kindly shuffled around their traditional swearing pensioner-heavy schedule and had the boys on to announce their new tour and album and, well, here's the new-look New Kids On The Block in all their balding, quietly-desperate glory… 

Quite the sight, huh? We especially like watching the New Kid On The Block who gets caught behind the other New Kids On The Block and keeps politely trying and failing to push his way forward. Foolish New Kid On The Block – doesn't he know that only Marky Mark's brother is allowed to talk?

Anyway, if you can't quite bear to sit through an entire video of some old men getting screamed at by some women old enough to know better, then here are the main bullet points of the New Kids On The Block reunion.

• The first reunited New Kids On The Block performance will be on the Today show on May 16.

• New Kids On The Block have been working on a new album since last summer and it'll come out in the autumn.

• They'll tour the album, but they want to focus on new material. Possibly because they're idiots who don't realise that they'll only be popular to drunk hen parties who want to screech along to Step By Step then go home.

• It's very clear that some members of New Kids On The Block really, really don't get on.

That is all.

Read more:

NKOTB Are Officially Back – Hollyscoop 

Ask anyone which band they'd most like to see reunite and they'll probably say The Beatles – but if you drug their water or concuss them a bit there's a chance they'd say New Kids On The Block.

And if that's the case then their dreams have been answered, because New Kids On The Block are back!

After a few months of sly non-commitment, New Kids On The Block are expected to officially announce their reunion on Friday's Today show. And, as an appetite-whetter, New Kids On The Block have released the first group photo of the reunion. At least that's what we think it is – it could just be a page ripped out of Middle-Aged Weekend Father At A Court Appearance magazine that someone published as a belated April Fool joke. Who knows?

What with war and recession and global warming and Jessica Simpson's stinky piss, the world needs cheering up. And there's no group of people more likely to do that than New Kids On The Block. Not because New Kids On The Block are cool or good or anything, but because it will make the entire world briefly come together in a universal sense of brotherhood and think "Whew! It doesn't matter how bad things get for me, because at least I'm not in New Kids On The Block."

Quiet murmurings of a New Kids On The Block reunion started in January, quickly followed by a snatch of a new song. But then everything suddenly went quiet. We'll admit that part of us hoped that the New Kids On The Block reunion had come to a premature end, possibly because they all started punching each other until one was dead and the others had dislocated jaws. But more fool us, because New Kids On The Block are definitely back and raring to go.

All of them – Mark Wahlberg's Brother, Captain Dungaree, New Geek On The Block, Frankenstein and Generic Other are all set for their big comeback. And that's a comeback that starts on Friday's Today show, where the group will make their first joint televised appearance in an age – to announce a new album and tour to mark the 20-year anniversary of Hangin' Tough.

But Friday is, like, so long away! We want to see a decade of failure etched across their old faces now. Lucky, then, that Yahoo has published the first group photo of New Kids On The Block since before all of them had pubes, or something. And from the sight of it, you'd think that they've all spent the last 14 years hanging out in Marks And Spencer trying to land a job as a catalogue model instead of appearing on British reality TV shows with the skinny one from Little And Large.

What hints about the reunited New Kids On The Block can we glean from this new photo? Well, all five of them are wearing suits instead of ridiculous bandanas and nasty Michael Jackson-style leather jackets, so that probably means that they want to be taken seriously as mature singer-songwriters this time around. Plus four of them have their hands in their pockets, so it looks as if one of them may have become a pickpocket in the years since the band split up.

What else? Nothing. That's literally it. For other clues, we'll all have to watch New Kids On The Block on Friday's Today show. But we've heard one of them now has a voice like Estelle Getty from The Golden Girls and at least two of the others loudly whistle every time they try to pronounce a word with an 's' in it thanks to their ill-fitting dentures. 

Read more:

New Kids On The Block release first group photo in 15 years - Yahoo

Some of you may have laughed off the imminent New Kids On The Block reunion as a casual threat invented by someone who clearly hates mankind.

But that's where you'd be wrong. The New Kids on The Block reunion is happening. The group couldn't be more serious about it happening. They're so serious that there's a brand new song on the New Kids On The Block website.

And you know what? The new New Kids On The Block song is actually really goo… no, we're just kidding. It's crap.

If any of you see Take That out and about on the street, be sure to poke them in the eye quite hard, won't you. Because ever since Take That reformed to vague success, every bugger's been at it, from the Spice Girls to Indiana Jones to Rambo.

And now New Kids On The Block have reformed as well, all the different reunions have been mashed together in our minds to the point where we have a recurring dream about New Kids On The Block wandering through the Burmese jungle and having their throats torn out by Rambo.

It's not a bad dream, just a recurring one.

Anyway, ever since the various members of New Kids On The Block - Mark Wahlberg's Brother, Jordan Whatshisname, Joey Thing and The Other Two – announced their reunion, it's been impossible to take it seriously, not least because we clearly remember a shambolic, drunk-looking New Kids On The Block in their last throes of fame on Live & Kicking in 1994.

But despite that – and despite a confusing denial of the reunion on New Kid Danny Wood's MySpace page – a brand-new New Kids On The Block song has appeared on the band's website. According to People:

The song (its name isn't revealed) plays over a promotional video for the band that says the Kids once had it all – a $1 billion in album sales, millions of fans, with music that "influenced a generation" – but then "walked away from it all." The video next teases the comeback, asking: "Are you ready?" 

Again, no. We're not ready. We'll have sandpapered off our skin and thrown ourselves into an acid bath before we're ready to watch a gang of men on the cusp of turning 40 dancing around in oversized dungarees singing cack-handed Paula Abdul rip-offs.

But anyway, the new New Kids On The Block song. Word is that all five bandmembers (Newies? Kiddies? Blockies? It's been so long) recorded the song in Florida in November.

We could go on and on about how the untitled New Kids On The Block song sounds like what Simon Cowell would force the winner of X Factor to sing if he wanted to write X Factor off as a bloody great tax loss, but we won't. And that's because you can hear the new New Kids On The Block song by clicking the link below.

Read more:

Exclusive Video - New Kids On The Block 

Can you guess who the latest former phenomenal musical success is that needs to stage a comeback because they’re out of money? Well, unless you’re a complete tool you don’t have to guess because it says it right there in the title of this entry, genius.  

Yes, New Kids on the Block are rumoured to be coming back. That’s right; your favourite five heartthrobs – Jordan, Joey, Jonathon, Donnie and Donny – will be back in the flesh!  

Although, it’ll probably be more wrinkly, slightly saggy, muscle-tone free flesh this time around.  

New Kids on the Block, or as they’re also known by the convenient acronym NKOTB (it just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?), have sent 30-year-old women all over the world searching for their Hangin’ Tough cassette singles since a recent posting on the band’s website which suggests a forthcoming reunion. No exact date listed for the comeback, but we’re sure it’ll be nicely timed with the coming of the Apocalypse.  

The band. comprised of Jordan Knight, Joey McIntyre, Donnie Wahlberg, Jonathan Knight and Danny Wood, made their record debut in 1986, as pre-teen girls screamed and threw tear-soaked training bras at them during concerts. Since the group disbanded, each of the five members has gone on to find great success. And by great success we mean poor to mediocre attempts at music and film and melt into obscurity, providing things like VH1 with endless Where Are They Now? material.  

OK, OK. That’s not really true. Donnie Whalberg’s fame can really be pinpointed when you say his full legal name Donnie 'Mark Wahlberg’s brother' Wahlberg. There. That’s better.  

We know what you’re thinking. Will NKOTB change their name to Old Men At The Doctor Getting Their Prostate Checked, or Old Men On The Bankruptcy List (we seriously have a million of these. We could do this all day) to be current with the times? Probably not, because changing their name could mean they won’t have the same commercial success they did in the 80’s. Oh, wait, they’re not going to have the same commercial success that they did in the 80’s because these guys are neither new, nor kids, nor on any sort of block as far as we know.

The website also includes some nostalgic tidbits about the band that really have us fired up for what’s in store: 

"They rose from the streets of Boston," the site touts. "To become the biggest band in the world. They influenced a generation. They sold over 70 million albums and grossed more than one billion dollars.  Five multiplatinum albums, 10 top 10 singles, five number one singles. Then they walked away from it all. Millions of fans around the world await their return. Are you ready?" 

We fear that the question posed 'Are you ready?' is only rhetorical. Regardless of our thinly veiled, slightly sarcastic commentary on the return of NKOTB, we can’t help but scratch our heads and look at all of those record sales and wonder “why didn’t you boys listen to your mothers and save your money so you don’t have to hitch your wagon to the slightly depressing horse of band reunions?”  

We’ve just been through this reuniting garbage with the Spice Girls. We don’t need another reason to be depressed.  

Read More:

New Kids: Back On The Block? - Yahoo