Chris Brown, the R&B singer, is unsure of how he is perceived by his fans. We know this, because that’s what he said in an interview.

Do they still love him for his music? Or have his tender sex songs lost a little bit of their appeal since he decided to practice Kung Fu on his ex-girlfriend Rihanna’s beautiful face? Yeah, it’s a concern, isn’t it Chris?

Unfortunately, sensual declarations of love to a backing track do tend to sound a bit watery, once you know that beneath the gargantuan teeth, and the promises of a better future, beats the thumping heart of a maniac just seconds away from a red mist. Sneeze at the wrong moment, and he might come at you with a brick. Still, all is not lost for Chris Brown. Using some templates from other famous people who have been unmasked for dodgy wrong-doings, here are a few paths that he could choose to tread…

1. Make a joke out of it

When Hugh Grant was caught having his gentlemanly penis attended to by a street-side prostitute in his car, it could have spelt curtains for the actor. Yet, Hugh turned the whole thing to his advantage by upping the ‘bumbling aristocrat’ setting on his personality, and doing the talk show rounds making stuttered apologies, and quips about not wanting to blow his own trumpet. George Michael was equally light-hearted when he was arrested for his penis-related misdemeanour in a local toilet. Hence, one option for Chris would be to hilariously send-up his violent outburst in a music video, or laugh hysterically and start clapping his hands whenever the incident is brought up in an interview. “Yeah, what a crazy night that was – you should’ve seen the other guy!” laughs Chris. Silence.

2. Divert attention by becoming increasingly weird

Phil Spector killed a woman. Seriously, actually killed one. With a gun. You were probably aware of that fact for about a second, before becoming distracted by the wild manner in which he wore his hair. During the murder trial, he became so odd looking that most people completely forgot that he once placed a pistol into a lady’s mouth, then pulled the trigger, because they were too busy wondering how he managed to achieve so much frizz without getting an actual perm done. Taking a similar line in distraction, Chris could perhaps fashion an interesting beard, or take to wearing a dress? Then will they be talking about the time he punched Rihanna in the face? No, they’ll be asking why Chris Brown appears to be wearing a woman’s frock. Bingo!

3. Deny everything

Yes, everyone seems pretty sure that they know the truth, but OJ Simpson has spent years denying any wrong doing on the night that Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman were stabbed to death, even though he was then chased by the police, before providing a case that Columbo would probably crack in seven seconds – including a five second break to scratch his nose. Still, the constant denial worked for OJ as he was declared not guilty, and went back to his old life. Only with considerably less friends, money, or prospects. This could work for Chris. Simply backtrack, then deny everything. Yes, you won’t work again, but at least you wouldn’t spend long nights awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, regretting what you did…  Oh, you still would? Fine!

This was a guest post by Josh Burt from Interestment, who rules

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Imagine a world where OJ Simpson wasn’t allowed to run around freely with the wind billowing in his hair.

What a rubbish world that would be. Sports memorabilia dealers would be able to conduct hotel room transactions without the constant threat of being raided by a disgraced celebrity and his gang of armed thugs. Nobody would write books explaining how they’d murder their ex-wife if they’d murdered them before they were actually murdered. Sadly, since OJ Simpson was imprisoned, that’s the world we live in now.

But not for long – OJ Simpson might be released from jail soon! Hooray!

Thanks to his conviction for armed robbery and kidnap last year, OJ Simpson won’t be released from jail until somewhere between 2018 and 2042. He’s 62 now, which means that OJ Simpson is going to leave prison a very old man. And, if you ask us, that’s a dreadful shame.

True, he might have masterminded an alarmingly violent criminal operation simply because one man had something that he may have possibly once owned, and phoning up to ask for it back didn’t seem to occur to him. And, yes, he was found responsible for the murder of his ex-wife in a civil case. But even if OJ Simpson is a dangerous, violent lunatic – and for all we know he is – isn’t he too much fun to keep locked up?

We want our old OJ Simpson back. The OJ Simpson who wrote If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened. The OJ Simpson who thought that making a hilarious prank-filled hidden camera DVD would be the best way to endear him to the public again. The OJ Simpson who we now feel sort of uneasy about finding funny in The Naked Gun. That’s the OJ Simpson we want to see back on the streets, and we don’t even care if he goes on a berserk indiscriminate stab-rampage immediately afterwards, either.

And neither does his lawyers, because he’s busy trying to get OJ Simpson released from jail ahead of his appeal, although somewhat inexplicably he isn’t using the argument that the planet needs a second volume of Juiced released on DVD. The New York Times reports:

O. J. Simpson’s lawyer asked a three-judge panel of the State Supreme Court to release Mr. Simpson on bail pending the appeal of his 2008 kidnapping and armed robbery convictions. The lawyer, Yale Galanter, said that the trial had been riddled with legal errors and that Mr. Simpson did not pose a flight risk.

Without wanting to burst OJ Simpson’s bubble, this doesn’t sound very hopeful. Asking the same authorities that are still kicking themselves because they didn’t get you for murder to release you from jail because there may have been some administrative inconsistencies while they were convicting you of that thing everyone says you did sounds like a bit of a stretch.

But even if OJ Simpson’s bid for freedom doesn’t work out, there’s still hope that he’ll release Juiced 2 from jail. True, all the hilarious hidden camera pranks will largely involve OJ Simpson pretending to be the sexually-available wife of violent inmate called Hank, but that’s still worth watching, right?

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This may come as a shock, but apparently Hulk Hogan isn’t most famous for his intelligent thought-processes.

And that’s not the only shock. Apparently spending your entire career feigning deafness, ripping a series of deliberately flimsy T-shirts in half and calling everyone ‘Hulkamaniac’ regardless of level of mania might – just might – make you say the occasional ill-advised thing. Like, ooh, that if OJ Simpson killed his wife then you can totally sympathise with him because your ex-wife can be a bit of a bitch sometimes too.

Yes. Hulk Hogan said that. To Rolling Stone magazine. On purpose, presumably. Nice chap.

Things haven’t been going so well for Hulk Hogan lately. His son went to prison for driving so ridiculously that his friend will need permanent care for the rest of his life, his wife has left him for a man less than half his age and his daughter looks like a cross between Paris Hilton and an infected shrapnel wound. What’s more, Hulk Hogan’s arms don’t even look like sausages any more. Well, they do, but they’re the ropey-looking European sausages you buy at Lidl. If anything that’s worse.

So, yes, Hulk Hogan is in a bind. So what’s a man to do? Well, he could always tell a popular magazine that he often fantasises about returning to his family home and murdering everyone in the most bloodthirsty way imaginable, just like OJ Simpson was acquitted of doing all those years ago. We’re being serious here. Hulk Hogan told Rolling Stone:

“I could have turned everything into a crime scene, like O.J., cutting everybody’s throat. You live half a mile from the 20,000-square-foot home you can’t go to anymore, you’re driving through downtown Clearwater and see a 19-year-old boy driving your Escalade, and you know that a 19-year-old boy is sleeping in your bed, with your wife … I totally understand O.J. I get it.”

Even ignoring the fact that professional wrestlers by nature have a worrying habit of going berserk and murdering their families, this is still a monumentally regrettable thing for Hulk Hogan to say. In fact, it might be the most regrettable thing any wrestler has ever done, right up there alongside Mr Nanny and… wait, no, Mr Nanny is the all-time pinnacle of regrettable wrestler decisions and will be forever. Anyway, at least this has given Hulk Hogan’s reps something to choke on their tea and get into a flap over. One of them told Access Hollywood:

“Hulk in no way condones the O.J. situation. As part of a lager conversation, he referred to it to exemplify his frustration with his own situation.”

So that’s that all sorted out then. There’s not going to be a new reality TV show called Hogan Homicide or The Voices In Hogan’s Head Know Best. As ridiculously moronic as Hulk Hogan’s comments were, we all know deep down that he’d never try to kill his wife. Because, seriously, have you seen his wife? She looks like a Terminator crossed with a bulldog, for crying out loud. Hulk’s probably as terrified of her as we are.

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On Friday OJ Simpson was sentenced to anything between nine and 33 years in jail for his part in last year’s bewildering hotel room armed robbery. If he serves the full term, we’re looking forward to reading the book that 94-year-old OJ Simpson will publish on his release, tentatively titled If I Did It, Wait, What’s My Name Again? Who Are You? Are These My Trousers? They Smell Funny.

That’s unless OJ Simpson’s appeal is successful. Oh, didn’t we mention that part?

We’ve got the right hump with Nevada at the moment, we don’t mind telling you. Why? Because it’s spoiled our fun, that’s why.

For years OJ Simpson has been livening up our gloomiest moments with his inimitable presence, either by getting thrown out of restaurants by men who think he’s a murderer, writing books so galactically ill-advised that they barely seem conceivable or losing his possessions to a family who seem convinced that a dodgy knock-off Rolex will somehow ease their grief.

But that won’t be happening any more. On Friday, during his sentencing for the armed robbery that he was arrested for last year, OJ Simpson discovered that he’d be spending anywhere between nine and 33 years in the slammer. That means that, if he’s fortunate, OJ Simpson will be released from jail in time to see work begin on an actual elevator to space and, if he’s less lucky, OJ Simpson will be released from jail in time to see the last remaining polar bear drown as the arctic icecap melts away to nothing.

The truth is that OJ Simpson will probably end up serving a jail sentence somewhere between those two dates. But he shouldn’t get down, because it still gives him plenty of time to a) cover himself in several quickly-infected self-drawn tattoos, b) befriend a long succession of rats and birds, getting driven further into the realms of disturbing insanity each time one of them dies and c) be violently bummed so often that his rectum will prolapse and hang out of his bumhole like a smelly tail or the queen’s egg sac from the Aliens or something.

Or maybe it won’t because, somewhat inevitably, OJ Simpson has decided to question his sentence with what seems like a fairly frivolous appeal. AP reports:

“This is not a frivolous appeal,” Yale Galanter, Simpson’s lawyer, said. “There were some grave errors made by Judge (Jackie) Glass, and we think they are strong enough to overturn the conviction. We also think we have a shot at bail.” Galanter has cited six initial issues for appeal. The most significant concern could be the exclusion of blacks from the jury selection.

Oh, don’t pretend that you didn’t see this coming – the court was asking for trouble when it filled the jury with nothing but angry white people. But whether or not it’s enough to warrant a retrial remains to be seen.

But if it does, the court will need to get a wriggle on – given the sheer amount of fake heart attacks that characterised his trial, the court runs the risk of losing several important witnesses to anything from fake cardiac arrests to fake spontaneous human combustion, and nobody wants that.

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Obviously that won’t happen – OJ Simpson’s favourite things include writing books about murdering people he used to be married to, robbing strangers at gunpoint and making bewildering hidden-camera DVDs, and they all take ages – but it’s his last chance.

Later today, OJ Simpson will be sentenced to anywhere between six years and life for masterminding his calamitous hotel room armed robbery last year. OJ’s lawyers are pleading for leniency – after all, it’s not like he killed his wife or anything, is it?

It’s time to say goodbye to the OJ Simpson we know and love – you know, the one who was held legally responsible for the murder of his ex-wife, and then wrote a book about stabbing her to death – because he’s not going to be around for a while.

Later today OJ Simpson will be swapping a life of leisure, wide open spaces and nobody really making eye contact with him because they think he probably murdered his wife for a new life; a life of mailbag-stitching, claustrophobic spaces and sharing a tiny room with a mentally-challenged seven-foot arsonist who can’t make up his mind whether he wants to stab OJ Simpson with a razorblade attached to a partially-melted toothbrush or habitually sex him up the bum against his will.

Ever since OJ Simpson was found guilty of 12 counts of armed robbery and kidnapping two months ago, following his hopelessly botched attempt to retrieve some memorabilia from a hotel room, this day was always going to be an inevitability.

Today at noon, Las Vegas time, OJ Simpson will be given his jail sentence. The length of his sentence is still a mystery, but observers are currently pitching their guesses between the ’six-year’ and the ‘until mankind is removed from the planet by a race of superintelligent deathbots’ marks. AP reports:

Simpson attorney Yale Galanter has said his client won’t address the court. Stewart will, said his lawyer, Brent Bryson. “Best-case scenario we’re hoping for is six years. That’s the bottom-end number before being eligible for parole,” Bryson said… Judge Glass, known for giving severe sentences, can ignore or accept a recommendation from the state parole agency calling for at least 18 years.

It doesn’t look good for OJ Simpson, we have to say – given the severity and sheer number of charges he’s been found guilty of, coupled with what some see as a lingering unspoken resentment over his previous murder acquittal, he should probably start preparing for the worst.

OK, not the worst, exactly – the worst would be if he avoided jail and immediately set about making a follow-up to his hidden-camera prank show DVD Juiced – but the second-worst, at least.

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By now you’ve probably realised that OJ Simpson has been found guilty on all 12 charges of armed robbery and kidnapping, and that he could face anything up to life in jail for it. However, OJ Simpson now plans to appeal the decision from jail, where he’s being kept away from other prisoners to protect his own safety.

But still, OJ Simpson won’t find himself at a loss for anything to do now that he’s been found guilty on all charges. He can finally write that book he’s always wanted to, for example – the hypothetical If I Didn’t Do It, Here’s How It Didn’t Happen; a breathtaking account of how OJ Simpson was actually doing a spot of Sudoku and thinking about kittens when he was supposed to be holding some men up in a hotel room.

So that’s that, then. The jury in the OJ Simpson has found OJ guilty of all 12 charges. Who knew angry white folk could be so mean? Thanks to the jury’s verdict, OJ Simpson could be looking at life in jail when sentencing rolls around in December.

It’s an epic fall from grace for the man who, just last year, was living the high life only achieved by the select few who dare to write books on how they’d like to stab their already-murdered ex-wife to death if they had the chance. And now he might just spend the rest of his life behind bars.

The lesson from this is clear – if you ever want to burst into a hotel room with a gang of armed men to steal hundreds of sports memorabilia items, try to make sure that nobody’s secretly taping it at the same time. Because ultimately, as the jury pointed out, that’s what did OJ Simpson in. Sportingnews reports:

Jurors who convicted O.J. Simpson of armed robbery and kidnapping said Sunday they did not trust witness testimony in the case, and instead relied on audio and video recordings and other documented evidence to convict him. Jury foreman Paul Connelly said it was perhaps a waste for prosecutors to have given plea deals to several Simpson co-defendants in exchange for their testimony, since the jury did not rely on it.

What? You mean the court could have simply played the audio tape to the jury and they would have reached the same verdict? And we still had to wade through weeks and weeks of watching flabby old hasbeen wiseguys stumble around on the verge of heart attacks? That hardly seems like the most efficient way to go about business, does it?

Anyway, OJ Simpson is said to be ‘melancholy’ at the verdict, and he’s planning to appeal based on several factors including the racial mix of the jury and that some jurors may have believed this conviction was payback for his double murder acquittal five years ago.

That won’t happen for a while, though – appeals can’t be processed until sentencing, which won’t happen until December – so until then, OJ Simpson will have to remain in jail. That won’t be especially fun for OJ, because he’s apparently being kept away from other prisoners for his own safety.

Not because they want to kill him or anything, you understand, but because all the other prisoners are such big fans of OJ Simpson’s hidden camera prank DVD Juiced that they’d be constantly pestering him for an autograph at all hours of the day.

In fact, that’s what saddens us most about this conviction – it means OJ Simpson won’t be able to make any more volumes of Juiced. He could try it in prison, we guess, but having each prank end with the furious victim anally brutalising OJ Simpson in the municipal showers as a horrifically violent revenge act would probably get quite old quite fast.

The closing arguments were a nice reflection on the trial that had just passed – in that they weren’t really as exciting as they could have been and everyone present looked as if they’d rather be anywhere else on Earth. But that’s not what matters. What matters is that soon a jury will finally – finally – make the OJ Simpson trial slightly exciting.

So now we wait. How long will the jury take to decide OJ Simpson’s fate? What will the fate be? How many badly-written OJ Simpson: My Part In His Downfall books will the jurors release between them? Can’t they just hurry up and make a decision? Seriously, we’re losing all sensation in our feet.

In all of history, mean-looking white people have never made a decision as important as this one. And not the decision about whether OJ Simpson burst in on a hotel room with a gang of armed men as part of an armed robbery, or merely burst in on a hotel room with a gang of men who were armed against his knowledge to recover some of his own belongings in a legal yet somewhat heavyhanded transaction.

No, the important decision that the OJ Simpson jury has to reach is this – can they all reach a unanimous verdict as quickly as possible. They really should, you know, because everyone’s bored and autumn’s drawing in and the days are getting shorter and we’ve all got better things to do than watch what’s essentially a version of the plot of the Disney movie Wild Hogs that culminates in an alleged armed robbery.

Honestly, if the OJ Simpson trial has convinced of anything, it’s that we’re never going to pick a bunch of middle-aged men to be our goons in any of our future hotel room raids. First they all stab you in the back and then their litany of cardiac problems mean they’re basically too doddery and confused to actually be of any use to anyone anyway.

But hey, all this is in the hands of the jury now and, as BBC News reports, they’ve been sent away with the same of dreary cack they’ve been listening to for weeks ringing in their ears:

Prosecutor Chris Owens urged the jury to convict Mr Simpson, denouncing him for “arrogance” for thinking he could commit a crime “against the dignity and the peace of the state of Nevada”. “The kind of arrogance… that would make them think they could come in and get away with this kind of crime and that nobody would report it and they thought they could spin it that, ‘It’s all OK; It was my stuff’,” he said.

So we just have to wait and see what happens. But, actually, you know what? We’re probably going to be held in contempt of court for this, but we’d really like it if OJ Simpson was found innocent, please. That’s because we want him to keep releasing several more installments of his hilarious hidden camera pranks show Juiced.

That way, if he really is innocent, he’ll get to keep entertaining the public the way he always wanted to. And if he’s really guilty he’ll get to live the rest of his life knowing that he’s been reduced to churning out piss-weak, zero-budget DVDs that make a mockery of all his prior achievements and that nobody will ever genuinely enjoy. That’s probably worse than prison, to be honest.

9 - Anonymous philanthropist donates 200 kidneys to a hospital. In a binbag – The Onion

8 - A child shooting himself in the genitals – I Am Bored

7 - Finally! Driveshaft get the recognition they deserve – EW

6 - The logical reaction to watching this advert: Smash! Punch! Hate! Punch! Aw, Sarah Silverman is lovely. Hate! Idiot! Smash! Smug! Gah! This video is so bad it made us want to move to America for long enough to become American citizens, just so we can parade up and down outside Demi Bastard Moore’s house taunting her because we deliberately went out of our way to not vote. Seriously, this infuriated us so much we think we’re currently crapping blood.

5 – Also, how to overcome resentment – Thinksimplenow

4 - Haha Rick Astley is so funny because he’s bad lol. LOL! LOL when we say LOL!  - BBC

3 – Hey, look, a testicle cookbook - Daily Mail

2 - The perfect ice-to-drink ratio. Thanks, science! – Wired

1 – OJ Simpson’s hidden camera pranks show. We’re not joking – Best Week Ever

It’s doubtful though, because the entire OJ Simpson trial has been a bit of a snore. It shouldn’t have been – a man almost had a heart attack once and yesterday everyone heard how a man apparently threatened to go on the rampage with a gun – but it was. Not even OJ Simpson could be bothered to testify at the OJ Simpson trial, for crying out loud.

To be fair, though, we hear that’s because he’s saving his thoughts up for another book; the forthcoming If I Did It (Which I Might Or Might Not Have Done) Here’s How It Either Happened Or Would’ve Happened Depending On If I Did It Or Not.

We get the feeling that OJ Simpson might be suffering from Difficult Second Criminal Trial Syndrome at the moment. His debut was such a belter – the biggest trial of the century, some say, and for a double murder, too – that the follow-up was always going to be an anti-climax.

That’s not to say that OJ Simpson put the effort in. If he’s found guilty of the charges laid against him, OJ Simpson will spend the rest of his life in jail, and you have to admit that bursting in on a hotel room with a gang of gun-wielding thugs and holding people against their will is a pretty good charge.

But the closing arguments in the OJ Simpson trial are taking place today, which means that the whole trial has more or less vanished in a cloud of featureless smoke. Sure, it tried to be interesting at points – a bloke nearly had a heart attack, for instance, and another bloke claimed that his heart attack made his brain go all loopy – but that hardly counts.

And even yesterday witnesses were still trying for a last shot at something memorable – as the LA Times reports, OJ Simpson’s friend Tom Scotto decided to tell the court about the time when a couple of OJ’s henchmen turned prosecution witnesses decided to shake him down for $50,000 “or else”:

Michael McClinton and Walter Alexander, Scotto testified Wednesday, twice ushered him away from his pre-wedding party and into the backyard. McClinton, Scotto said, told him, “You know me, Tom, but you don’t know me that well.” Their faces were inches apart. “I’m a street [expletive] and I’ll shoot everybody up.”

We don’t know about you, but we’d love to hear what that deleted expletive was. None of them really fit as a suffix to the word ’street’, apart from possibly ‘fart,’ ‘whore’ or ‘tampon’. If you know what it was, do tell us.

Anyway, will Scotto’s testimony affect the jury, who are set to start their deliberations later today? Who knows. Some are predicting that the whole OJ Simpson trial will end in a hung jury, which we’re praying doesn’t happen because it means we’ll have to go through this whole dreary palaver all over again.

Whatever happens, though, we’re hoping that something exciting comes along before the trial finishes. Even if one of the jurors just gets their bum out. Jurors, if you’re reading, one of you get your bum out.

Just a few days after one witness in the OJ Simpson trial called a halt to proceedings because he was too busy clutching his chest and gasping for air, another witness has decided to blame everything on his dodgy heart, too. OJ Simpson’s co-defendant Charles Ehrlich says that he can’t really remember the Las Vegas hotel room raid in much detail because he’s had a couple of heart attacks and they’ve made him all forgetful.

Whoever came up with this heart attack idea is a genius, because now we don’t know what the hell’s going on at all. Except for one thing – if OJ Simpson really wants to be found innocent, he should be sure to slowly cough his own heart up and out into his hands if he ever has to testify. It’s probably the only way.

Back when he was arrested for it, the notion that OJ Simpson gathered together a gang of armed thugs to raid a hotel room, hold everyone hostage and steal a number of sports memorabilia items seemed completely absurd. If it happened the way police were making out, OJ Simpson was always going to be caught and punished for it.

But now that we’re some way into the actual trial, OJ Simpson is looking more and more like a mastermind. Why? Because it looks like he chose a gang of middle-aged men with a series of health complaints to raid a couple of old men with even more health complaints. And, as a result, nobody can remember anything.

For instance, Bruce Fromong’s heart attack scare destroyed the momentum of his testimony on the first day of the OJ Simpson trial and, as such, nobody can really remember what he was banging on about. And now Charles Ehrlich, the man who spent most of Monday saying that OJ Simpson knew about the guns involved in the alleged crime, is trying to pull a similar trick. AP reports:

Ehrlich said he had posed questions to middleman Thomas Riccio about the planned meeting at a room in the Palace Station Hotel Casino. But when Galanter asked what the questions were, Ehrlich protested…”That was a year ago.” Since then, he said, he had two heart attacks and conceded some things have become “foggy” in his memory.

Whew! Thank God for multiple heart attacks, huh? Actually, because of all these shenanigans we’ve decided that we don’t actually care whether OJ Simpson is found innocent or guilty of this crime any more, because the trial has already taught us more than we thought we’d ever learn about crime. Heart attacks make you forgetful.

It’s true – we’re going to take down the local Natwest on Friday and we need to form a gang first. Barry Pacemaker, Don The Frail, Emphysemic Terry, Bobby Fourscars, Angioplasty Maud, break out of the nursing home and be at ours by 7:30. We’re cooking some special pre-job bacon-wrapped cheesesteaks! Delicious!

According to one of OJ Simpson’s goons in court yesterday, OJ must have known that some of his henchmen were carrying guns because he shouted “Put the guns away,” at them during the raid. Unless he didn’t, which is what another witness is saying.

Incidentally, Charles Ehrlich – the man who claims that OJ Simpson knew about the guns – is an old friend of his. Or at least he was until he pleaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for a testimony against Simpson, anyway. Now the pair have probably fallen out. And you know what happens to you if you fall out with OJ Simpson, don’t you.

You get one less Christmas card a year, that’s what. Why, what did you think we meant?

We have to admit, for a case that could send a man to jail for the rest of his life, the OJ Simpson armed robbery trial isn’t exactly exciting, is it?

It should be exciting – believe the prosecutors and you’ll know that last year OJ Simpson smashed into a hotel room with a small armed of tooled-up thugs and held everyone hostage briefly. That’s exciting, right? Sure it is. Then why isn’t the trial itself exciting?

This is how dull the OJ Simpson trial is – the other day a man nearly had a heart attack and barely anyone even bothered to pay attention. Not even the secret tape – the cornerstone of the entire prosecution – managed to get much response from anyone other than “Huh? What’s he saying? He wants them to give him his sheep? Why, that hardly makes any sense at all.”

Well, you asked for it. Now the OJ Simpson trial is going to get crazy exciting? You know why? Guns. Guns are exciting, aren’t they? Especially when a man can definitely prove that OJ Simpson knew that some of the goons he’d employed to accompany him of his hotel room raid were armed. You’re going down, Simpson!

Charles Ehrlich was the man who OJ Simpson sent into the hotel room to pose as a buyer before the raid, and he’s got proof that OJ Simpson knew about the guns. The LA Times reports:

“Put the gun away,” Charles B. Ehrlich quoted Simpson as saying to one of their associates during the Sept. 13, 2007, confrontation. Shortly after the incident, Ehrlich said Simpson muttered to himself: “Why did I tell those guys to come along?”

Now, it doesn’t matter that Thomas Riccio, the auctioneer who set up the encounter who was in the room during the raid and made the secret recordings of it, didn’t hear OJ Simpson say this. And it also doesn’t matter that Ehrlich might only be making these claims about OJ Simpson because he was given a lighter sentence for his role in the incident if he promised to testify against him.

Because saying that you think you heard OJ Simpson say something out of earshot of everyone else is definitely proof of OJ Simpson’s guilt. Definitely. Isn’t it?

Not really? Bugger. The trial continues, then. More’s the pity.

Only joking. That’s got nothing to do with the outcome of OJ Simpson’s trial at all. Well, technically it probably has got a bit to do with it, but let’s not get into that. In actual fact, the whole OJ Simpson trial revolves around a secret tape of the whole shebang, recorded by an auctioneer.

Sadly, though, as the court found out yesterday, the tape is just vague enough not to mean anything at all. Oh OJ Simpson, why couldn’t you have stormed into the hotel and said, clearly and within earshot of the microphone “What-ho, I’m OJ Simpson and these gun-wielding chaps here – boys, say hello, there’s no excuse for rudeness – are here to take these items which don’t even belong to me. Pip pip!” or whatever the opposite of that is that proves you’re innocent? You’d have saved us all a lot of time either way, you selfish git.

The OJ Simpson trial has been sort of interesting so far, but only because of all the berserk old men who keep pretending to have heart attacks on the stand and the way that somebody’s going to cry racist whatever the verdict. Other than that, things have felt a little staid.

Why’s that? Because there was one piece of evidence that the lawyers had been holding back on. One impossibly vital piece of evidence – the secretly-recorded tape of the alleged armed robbery.

It’s been a frustrating wait, because everyone has known about the existence of the tape ever since a clip of OJ Simpson bellowing “You think you can steal my shit?” leaked out onto the internet. And yesterday the jury at the OJ Simpson trial got to hear the tape.

Well, some of the tape, at least. The man who recorded the incident – auctioneer Thomas Riccio – seems to basically make weird little secret recordings of everything he ever does on the offchance he’ll be able to sell bits of it to TMZ. And the clips played yesterday were of an encounter with OJ Simpson prior to the alleged robbery and of the police officers who were combing the hotel room after the incident but didn’t find Riccio’s recordings.

First, OJ Simpson’s tape. What the prosecution would have really loved is a long discussion about guns and how none of the sports memorabilia he was seeking actually belonged to him. What they actually got was this, according to the LA Times:

“I’m gonna show up with a bunch of the boys and take the [stuff] back,” said the man prosecutors contend is Simpson… Prosecutors played the jury a second recording, made in Simpson’s Palms room after he returned from the pool, in which Simpson said, “I gotta be at my intimidating best.”

Now, although your vision of OJ Simpson’s intimidating best will vary depending on if you thought the book If I Did It was a work of fact or fiction – hint: one’s got knives in it and the other one hasn’t – to be fair, the tape recording doesn’t actually prove anything. But nor does the recording of the police officers, either, other than that they sound quite a lot like glory-hunting bellends:

“This is great. John said uh, yeah — he is like California can’t get him. . . . Now we’ll be like . . . got him.”

Maybe this will change in days to come, when the meatier chunks of Riccio’s recordings will be played for the jury. Or maybe they’ll just play all of Riccio’s secret recordings from beginning to end, starting with a recording of his kindergarten teacher on the toilet and ending with a recording of the jury listening to a recording of the jury listening to a recording of the jury listening to a recording of the jury that Riccio recorded when the jury were listening to a recording of another recording Riccio had recorded in secret earlier.

Great, we’ve broken our brains. Thanks a lot, OJ Simpson.

Bruce Fromong became the headline attraction of the OJ Simpson trial on Monday, when it looked as if his heart was literally going to explode in his chest during his testimony. But yesterday Bruce Fromong got to do exactly what he came to do – testify against OJ Simpson by contradicting himself as many times as humanly possible.

According to Bruce Fromong, he wasn’t scared when OJ Simpson burst into his hotel room, but he did fear for his life. Also, although he wasn’t trying to profit from his OJ Simpson memorabilia, he did want to make big money from it. Keep this up and Bruce Fromong’s going to end up as the world’s favourite feeble-hearted flip-flopping uncle.

The pressure on everyone involved in the OJ Simpson armed robbery and kidnapping trial must be huge because, literally, the job they do will determine whether or not a man will spend the rest of his life in jail. And that pressure seems to be most evident in Bruce Fromong, one of the key witnesses to the alleged crime.

On Monday, things got to Bruce Fromong so badly that he had to interrupt his testimony to stagger around clutching his chest like Indiana Jones at the end of Temple Of Doom. But yesterday, with his internal organs tickety-boo again, Fromong managed to pull himself together for long enough to tell the court exactly what happened in that Las Vegas hotel room.

Not that we needed telling, of course – ever since OJ Simpson was arrested last year we’ve known that he burst into Fromong’s hotel room with a group of men during a sports memorabilia deal and shouted “You think you can steal my shit?” about a billion times. The important questions are whether any of OJ Simpson’s goons had guns and whether that shit was OJ Simpson’s shit or something he’d already pooped out and legitimately handed to someone else.

Did Bruch Fromong clear those points up? Not really. AP reports:

He acknowledged that he said previously, “I felt my life was being threatened.” But moments later, under inquiry by Stewart’s lawyer Robert Lucherini, Fromong said, “I was not scared.” He insisted the memorabilia Simpson sought was not stolen but said he didn’t know where some of it came from.

Well thanks a bundle Bruce. Really helpful. Almost as helpful as when you said you didn’t want to profit from the merchandise despite saying that you did before putting the merchandise on eBay with the description ‘The same ones stolen by O.J. in Las Vegas’.

So, where has Bruce Fromong’s testimony put the OJ Simpson trial? Exactly where it was before. Let’s hope that some of the witnesses called have at least some clue about what’s going on, otherwise we’re not going to get anywhere at all.

Unless they all have crazy old health scares like Bruce Fromong did. Boy, that was fun. We miss that.

What’s that? They have? In fact, one of the first witnesses in the entire OJ Simpson armed robbery and kidnapping trial clutched his chest in the middle of his testimony thinking he was going to have a heart attack because that’s how scary even the thought of OJ Simpson is to him? Oh, right, sorry.

However, this seems like a massive misstep on the part of the prosecutors. Deploying the witness with the weakest heart at the start of the OJ Simpson trial? The jury’s bound to forget about that when it comes to deliberation time. Either the prosecutors have blown their big chance to convict OJ Simpson or there’s another star witness who’ll come on at the end, spontaneously combust, pop his eyeballs out and poo fire. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Yesterday was the day so many of us had been waiting for. No, not because Britney Spears announced her new poptastic album, but because the long-awaited OJ Simpson armed robbery and kidnapping trial finally got underway in Las Vegas.

It’s been a long hard road to get here – OJ Simpson’s alleged henchmen had to be persuaded to testify against him and the court had to assemble the most mean-spirited Caucasian jury in history before anything exciting could happen – but yesterday things got going with a bang.

OK, not really a bang. To be honest it was more of a minuscule cardiovascular rupture, and it wasn’t even that. But whatever it was, it was all thanks to witness Bruce Fromong.

Bruce Fromong is, of course, the sports memorabilia collector who OJ Simpson allegedly raided with a gang of gun-toting heavies while wailing “You think you can steal my shit?” like the overzealous curator of the world’s biggest Crap Museum.

His testimony would have been one of the most compelling of the trial, since he was the man who OJ Simpson apparently robbed and who owns an audio recording of the raid that seems to back his story up. But no, Bruce Fromong had to go and make it all even more dramatic by almost having a heart attack in front of everyone during his testimony. The New York Daily News reports:

Fromong called for medical help while under a barrage of
questions from Simpson’s attorney. His testimony was suddenly
halted as emergency medical technicians rushed to the courtroom to
bring Fromong’s blood pressure under control. “He has 50% heart capacity,” said Fromong’s lawyer Louis Schneider. “While he was on the stand, he started to feel heated.”

Now, there are three ways to look at this. Firstly, it could all be true. Bruce Fromong could have an especially weak heart and the intensity of a court environment coupled with the fact that he could effectively jail OJ Simpson for life got to him. We don’t believe a word of this.

Secondly, Bruce Fromong could have faked a heart attack to either prevent him from answering some tricky questions from the defence or exaggerate the level of fear that he feels in the presence of OJ Simpson. Again, we don’t believe this either, despite the tactic’s obvious success rate.

And that leaves option three – that OJ Simpson is a Magneto-like supervillian who can destroy the bodies of his enemies with the vindictive power of his mind alone. This, we’d argue, is absolutely the cause of Fromong’s heart attack scare and OJ Simpson should instantly go to a specially-built electro-magnetic detention centre four miles under the North Pole where he’ll never be able to harm anyone ever again.

The trial continues today. Unless OJ Simpson manages to implode everyones’ ribcages with his brain-rays and make his escape on the back of a jet rocket, of course. Could happen.

They’re all white. Every single one of them. Now don’t get us wrong, it almost wasn’t an entirely white jury. It’s just that one prospective black juror was quite religious and therefore capable of forgiveness so she had to go. We’re not making this up, you know.

So, here’s how OJ Simpson stands before his trial properly starts on Monday. He’s being tried for the first time since he was acquitted of two murders he’s widely believed to have committed, for a crime with several witnesses that he was actually recorded participating in, and the only thing stopping him from spending the rest of his life in jail is a group of 12 white people who’ve been specifically chosen for their lack of forgiveness.

Yeah, we’re sure he’ll be fine.

Since he was acquitted of a double murder in 1995, OJ Simpson hasn’t exactly gone out of his way to endear himself to the public – apart from the time he tried to stab Ruby Wax in the chest with a banana, obviously. He’s not a total monster.

Anyway, since his last trial OJ Simpson has tried to keep a low-profile, only popping up occasionally to get banned from a steakhouse or write hypothetical murder books in the worst taste possible. But then OJ Simpson just had to go and get himself arrested on suspicion of armed robbery, didn’t he?

You know what happened by now – right up to the inflection in OJ Simpson’s voice during the last “You think you can steal my shit?” – and that’s the reason for all the jury-selecting that’s gone on in Las Vegas this week ahead of OJ Simpson’s trial.

OJ’s already up against it, thanks to the recording of his alleged armed robbery and the fact that all his hired goons have already pleaded guilty and will testify against him in court. But OJ Simpson likes a challenge, so let’s also make sure that the jury he faces are completely white and sort of mean-seeming just for the hell of it. AP reports:

An all-white jury will judge O.J. Simpson and a co-defendant on kidnapping and robbery charges after defense lawyers lost a contentious courtroom battle to include two African-American women on the panel… Both of the women who were removed had strong religious views, and the prosecutor said he thought one of them would be inclined to “forgive” Simpson while the other said she was hesitant to send anyone to prison.

Of course, back in 1995 OJ Simpson faced a jury that was chiefly black and he was acquitted, so now the fear is that – since the scientific opposite of black is white, and the scientific opposite of innocent is guilty – all the white people are going to find OJ Simpson guilty.

They probably won’t even be making notes on the testimonies, either – the only thing they jot down will be the word ‘guilty’ scrawled several times in a row and crude cartoons of OJ Simpson literally burning in hell while a lot of white people laugh and dance.

Alternatively, the jurors have been picked based on their open-mindedness and neutrality, two things which have never really been race-specific, and the notion that OJ Simpson will be found innocent or guilty depending on how many black faces happen to be present in the jury is completely offensive to just about everyone.

Oh who are we kidding? It’s the first one, isn’t it. Thought so.