It’s just what Lindsay Lohan does. It’s part of the Lindsay Lohan holy trinity – rubbish films, substance abuse and epic, near-relentless nudity. We’ve got so used to seeing Lindsay Lohan naked over the last few years that we’ve become desensitised to it, just like we have with violence and women that we’ve somehow made cry.

And that’s why it’s so surprising to hear that Lindsay Lohan has turned down an offer of $700,000 to get naked for Playboy. Silly Playboy – if you want to see Lindsay Lohan in the nude, you don’t just ask her to get naked for you – you ask her to get naked for you because you’ll let her wear a Marilyn Monroe wig if she does. That’s just how it works.

Tell you what, this whole Lindsay Lohan Year Of Sex thing’s gone a bit skew-whiff, hasn’t it? It started off well enough, what with Lindsay shagging all the men in Europe and allegedly being photographed doing a blowjob on a bloke, but she’s lost a lot of ground by dragging her heels on the whole lesbian thing for so long. Come on Lindsay, it’s September now – you should have moved onto gender unspecific midgets six weeks ago! How are you ever going to hit that Christmas bestiality deadline at this rate?

Honestly, it’s like Lindsay Lohan’s not even trying any more. She’s even turned down an abnormally large sum of money to go naked for a big anniversary issue of Playboy, which hardly seems right at all. Fox News reports:

Lindsay Lohan has turned down a $700,000 offer to do an eight-page topless spread in Playboy’s 55th-anniversary issue in January, the New York Page Six gossip column reports. “If there’s nudity, then the answer’s no … She’s not going down the magazine road again.”

Yeah, because it’d be absolutely unthinkable for Lindsay Lohan to get naked in print, wouldn’t it.

What Lindsay Lohan doesn’t seem to realise is that, having been naked in a magazine before, she’s got absolutely nothing to lose by getting her kit off for Playboy. If people want to know what any part of her body looks like in the buff, they only need to jump onto the internet and it’s all there. Getting naked in Playboy should be the poor girl’s comfort zone by now.

And the shoots sound pretty much identical anyway – for New York magazine, Lindsay Lohan got naked to mimic and celebrate Marilyn Monroe, one of her big heroes. And Playboy are asking her to get naked to mimic and celebrate Ann-Margret, another hero, so Lindsay’s even got the option to pretend it was artistic rather than admit it’s just for old men to rub one out over.

In fact, the only difference we can see between Lindsay Lohan’s New York magazine photoshoot and Lindsay Lohan’s proposed Playboy shoot is her fee. Playboy want to pay Lindsay $700,000 to take her clothes off, while New York magazine let her do it for free.

Actually, in that sense Lindsay’s Playboy refusal makes a certain amount of logic. If an exchange of money preceded her nakedness, then that would effectively make her a prostitute, which Lindsay Lohan most certainly is not.

Whereas by doing it for free, Lindsay was, at best, a massive bloody slag. And that’s hardly news, is it?

But How I Met Your Mother’s Neil Patrick Harris isn’t having any of it. He’s decided to speak out about the idea of making Britney Spears a How I Met Your Mother regular, because growing an audience naturally is much better than shocking viewers into watching by parading unwell megastars around in front of them every week.

Hear hear Neil Patrick Harris – finally, someone with the balls to speak out against this increasing over-reliance on chasing ratings through cheat stunt casting. Mediocre sitcoms that people only really watch because they’re lazy and nothing else is on, you now have your champion.

Britney Spears is now safely under the care of her father, who so far seems to have done an extraordinarily good job of keeping her out of the limelight to recover from her recent patch of mental illness in private. Which is good for her Britney Spears, but shit for the rest of us.

Because, now that Britney Spears is – ugh – getting better and – bleurgh – behaving normally again, do you know who we have to rely on for stories about alarming celebrity behaviour? Do you? Vanilla Ice, that’s who. Vanilla fucking Ice. Thanks a lot Britney Spears, you arsehole.

But when Britney Spears does briefly poke her head out of the rabbit hole, all hell breaks loose. For instance, Britney Spears was recently on How I Met Your Mother. On one episode of How I Met Your Mother. For less than three minutes in total. But from this barely-extended walk-on on a show that not a whole lot of people usually watch anyway came an avalanche of speculation.

First people were clamouring to give Britney an Emmy for the appearance and then, based on the fact that a few million extra rubberneckers watched the show when she was on it, people starting talking about Britney Spears becoming a How I Met Your Mother regular.

But enough is enough. Neil Patrick Harris – who plays adorably underage doctor Doogie Houser MD on How I Met Your Mother – has said that if Britney Spears becomes a regular on the show then he’ll run through the set killing indiscriminately before turning the gun on himself. We’re paraphrasing. According to the Associated Press, Neil Patrick Harris actually said:

“I’m in the minority that our show does not need stunt casting in order to succeed. I worry that if they start `Will and Grace’-ing us too much, that the show will suffer. And we’re all really proud of the content of the show. I mean, viewership is not our game. It’s the network and the studio’s game, you know. It’s the promotion department’s game… We wish we weren’t opposite an awkward reality dancing competition. But we have no say about that. I just am a real fan of our content. I think we have a great show going, and I hope it’s not screwed up by the desire for 700,000 more viewers.”

However much sense Neil Patrick Harris is making here, we can see the other side of the argument as well. Britney Spears would bring a brand new audience to How I Met Your Mother, and – if handled correctly – could really take the show to the next level.

Also, if Britney Spears doesn’t become a regular on How I Met Your Mother, then where else is she going to be able to make public appearances? Nowhere, that’s where. If Britney Spears loses How I Met Your Mother then none of us will ever see or hear from her ever again.

Actually, maybe Neil Patrick Harris does have a point…

Read more:

Neil Patrick Harris: Say No to Britney! – AP