You want a comparison? OK. Onscreen, the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy revolved around a bunch of doctors wondering who’d be asked to perform some surgery on a patient. For approximately the billionth time.

But off-screen? Off-screen the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy revolved around dollop-faced actor TR Knight throwing the mother of all strops and walking off the show because nobody’s giving him the attention that he obviously deserves. See – which one would you watch? Oh, neither? Actually, us too.

We’d love to be a fly on the wall behind the scenes of Grey’s Anatomy. That’s mostly because we’d love to vomit on everyone’s lunch and give them all food poisoning, but because it’d allow us to see the extent of the rumours that the actors all hate the writers, the producers all hate the actors and the actors all hate each other.

It certainly seems that way, what with actors fighting, actors screaming homophobic slurs at each other, actors turning down awards because they thought their scripts were terrible and producers firing actors because everything was getting a bit gay. And now, the cherry on the cake – there’s been a Grey’s Anatomy walk-off.

TR Knight – who plays, um, someone on Grey’s Anatomy - has apparently decided to leave the show because producers refused to change the title of the show to The TR Knight Medicine And Meaningful Looks Hour, change all the characters’ names to ‘TR Knight’ and make everyone walk around the hospital in TR Knight masks singing a song of TR Knight’s composition entitled Ooh Yeah TR Knight Is So Flipping Great. Or, you know, something. People reports:

Why does Knight, who remains a fan favorite, want to leave? “Have you seen the show lately?” says a source. Knight has received little screen time this season, with the show focusing on controversial storylines like the romance between Katherine Heigl’s Izzie and her long-dead lover, Denny.

We can’t help feeling that TR Knight is acting like a little bit of a petulant brat here. After all, Grey’s Anatomy is an ensemble show, and sometimes everyone can come to the forefront with a storyline about hardcore necrophilia. It happened with Cheers and it’s damn well going to happen with Grey’s Anatomy.

But still, you can see why TR Knight is so keen to quit Grey’s Anatomy – stars like Sandra Oh and Katherine Heigl and Patrick Dempsey have long since started to make the transition to movies, and there’s little doubt that TR Knight wants to follow suit.

True, he’ll have to wait until someone writes a movie script about a tubby-faced Little Lord Fauntleroy who looks like he’s about 12 years old, and then cross his fingers and pray that the director’s top 35 choices for the role all turn it down. But that day will come, we’re sure of it.

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True, Angelina Jolie may have only hinted at an eventual retirement some time in the future, and only because fame no longer provides the same spiritual nourishment as raising a family or being committed to charitable work. Nevertheless, the message is clear – Angelina Jolie is quitting acting because Jennifer Aniston called her uncool this week.

Great, that’s just what we need – a power-crazed Jennifer Aniston. Now that she knows what can happen when she deploys the word ‘uncool’, we doubt very much that she’ll stop at Angelina Jolie. All we’ll say is this – don’t be surprised if Vince Vaughn suddenly decides to retire from acting as well or if, you know, Brad Pitt develops a horrible wasting disease on his penis. Or something.

Today hasn’t been deemed an international day of mourning just yet, but give it time. Angelina Jolie has decided that she’s probably going to retire from acting at some point in the future, and that’s probably the worst news we’ve ever heard in our entire lives.

After all, who’ll star in all the moronic movies about tattooed women who shoot cars until they explode and little worthy Oscar-baiting movies about beautiful women who fight against serious real-world issues? What’s that? Milla Jovovich and Charlize Theron respectively? Oh.

But anyway, that doesn’t detract from the fact that Angelina Jolie is retiring from acting. Probably. One day. Probably. People reports:

“I don’t plan to keep acting very long… I’m ready to do a few things now and fade away and get ready to be a grandma one day. I won’t work again probably for another year. So maybe it’ll be once a year, then maybe it’ll be once every three years. I’m not so worried that I want to keep this pace up and try to be something and be a celebrity and be a successful actress forever.”

You see? Angelina Jolie knows that there’s more to life than being an actress – like curing diseases in poverty-stricken African nations, or drawing attention to the unthinkable plight of the world’s refugees, or seeing the magic in a child’s smile. Plus making films is boring, and now she can stay rich and famous forever because Brad Pitt got her pregnant a couple of times.

But why now? Why has Angelina Jolie announced her retirement from acting now? It’s simple. It’s because – by calling her uncool earlier this week – Jennifer Aniston managed to get more headlines than Angelina Jolie, and the only thing Angelina Jolie could do to wrestle them back was to say that she might quit acting one day.

This was a dangerous move, because it means that Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston are now locked into a quickly-escalating spiral of death for headlines that nobody will be able to survive. You see, now Jennifer Aniston will try and top Angelina’s announcement – perhaps by getting married this weekend – and then Angelina Jolie will have to come back with something even more sensational. So, to save everyone some time, here are the next three months of headlines we can expect from Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston:

ANGELINA JOLIE: I’M ADOPTING AGAIN

JENNIFER ANISTON: YEAH? WELL I’M PREGNANT

ANGELINA JOLIE: I’VE GROWN A PENIS

JENNIFER ANISTON: I’VE GROWN TWO PENISES AND A LOVELY SET OF BALLS

ANGELINA JOLIE: I USED TO BE ADDICTED TO HEROIN

JENNIFER ANISTON: I KILLED A MAN WHILE DRINK DRIVING AND I DON’T EVEN REGRET IT

ANGELINA JOLIE: I’VE CURED AIDS WITH MY BARE HANDS AND CAN TRACE MY BLOODLINE DIRECTLY TO JESUS

JENNIFER ANISTON: EVERYONE LOOK! LOOK AT ME! I’M STANDING ON TOP OF A CHURCH IN A CROWDED SQUARE AND I SWEAR TO GOD I’LL BLOW MY OWN BRAINS OUT UNLESS ALL OF YOU LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME NOW! I’LL BLOODY DO IT!

Etc.

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But all good things have to come to an end at some point, and that’s why David Tennant yesterday confirmed everyone’s worst fears – he’s making four more Doctor Who specials. No, that’s not it. We meant to say that after making his four Doctor Who specials, David Tennant is going to leave Doctor Who.

It was a sad announcement, and it’s left Doctor Who fans profoundly upset. But at the same time, the news has also kickstarted speculation over who’ll become the next Doctor Who. Finding an actor who can encapsulate David Tennant’s bravery, enthusiasm and range of zany facial expressions won’t be too hard, though, and we hear that fictional 1980s cartoon puppy Scrappy Doo is top of everyone’s wishlist.

Doctor Who has been good for David Tennant. Before he landed the role, he was just a lanky Scottish actor who could effortlessly pull a number of faces that made him look as if his balls were being tasered.

But now? Now he’s Doctor Who he has it all – fame, money, a crowd of people constantly mistaking him for Richard Hammond, a distantly incesty girlfriend – but that isn’t enough. Because of Doctor Who, David Tennant has got to play Hamlet with the Royal Shakespeare Company, albeit a wacky Hamlet who we assume interrupts his famous ‘To be or not to be’ speech 14 times to pull a face like Kenneth Williams being bummed by a goat.

And once you’ve played Hamlet, you can hardly be expected to chase some alien wheelie bins around Cardiff with Catherine Tate again, can you? And that’s why David Tennant has decided to leave Doctor Who at the end of next year. Reuters reports:

“I’ve had the most brilliant, bewildering and life changing time working on Doctor Who,” said Tennant, who described the part as the “best job in the world.” “I have loved every day of it. It would be very easy to cling on to the Tardis console forever and I fear that if I don’t take a deep breath and make the decision to move on now, then I simply never will. You would be prising the Tardis key out of my cold dead hand.”

So what happens now is anybody’s guess. A new Doctor Who will have to be picked for a start, which means that James Nesbitt should probably start talking to boxy robot dogs as training. But before the new Doctor Who is introduced, David Tennant still has to make four specials to be broadcast over next year. Will they remain standalone and episodic, or will they be take the form of one long, doom-laden story that builds up to Tennant’s death? That remains to be seen.

One thing’s for certain, though – if he’s leaving Doctor Who, David Tennant has probably scuppered plans for that Doctor Who movie. We’d be sad, but anything that keeps Catherine Zeta Jones unemployed is probably for the best in the long run.

No? Nobody liked that film? OK, well we have some unbearably sad news if you happened to like Reservation Road. What? None of you liked that either? The Village? Ladder 49? Signs? Brother Bear? Nothing? You didn’t like any of them? What about 8MM, for crying out loud? Everyone liked 8MM, right? No?

Christ, alright, look. What we’re trying to tell you is that Joaquin Phoenix has decided to quit acting forever. But before you start shrugging, bear this in mind – Joaquin Phoenix has quit acting so that he can focus on his music career. That sound you can hear right now? That’s the sound of your soul groaning.

If there’s one thing that actors like to do it’s complain about their job. As everyone from Keira Knightley to Sienna Miller has informed us, there’s literally nothing harder in the world than to be grossly overpaid to spend four months of the year being prettied up and expected to memorise some words off a piece of paper a small chunk at a time. It sounds like hell.

But while the likes of Keira Knightley only threaten to quit acting, Joaquin Phoenix has gone one step further. At the age of 34, Joaquin Phoenix has had enough of the slog and the graft of acting. And the enormous paycheques. And the constant string of willing sexual partners. And the comparatively slight workload. It’s all too much for him, so he’s off.

According to Joaquin Phoenix, you see, his new movie will be his last. That’s right, Joaquin Phoenix has a new movie coming out. No, we didn’t know about it either. And, no, now that we do know about it, we’re probably not going to watch it either. Anyway, The Telegraph reports:

The US star, who has twice been nominated for an Academy Award, said that his latest film, Two Lovers, would be his last. “I want to take this opportunity… also to give you the exclusive and just talk a little bit about the fact that this will be my last performance as an actor,” he told the television programme Extra. He added: “I’m not doing films anymore.”

The reason for Joaquin Phoenix’s sudden desire to stop making films? Because he’s an artist in the truest sense of the word and he wants to pursue a music career. After all, Johnny Cash was a famous musician, and Joaquin Phoenix played Johnny Cash in a movie once, so logic dictates that Joaquin Phoenix will be a famous musician too.

Just look at Jamie Foxx. He played Ray Charles in a movie and then released an album and… OK, bad example.

But good luck to Joaquin Phoenix. It isn’t easy to give up a successful and financially-rewarding career to try something brand new. So we wish you well, Joaquin Phoenix, and look forward to ignoring your songs with all the fierce concentration that we’ve been ignoring your films.

We’ve got something much more important to tell you, something that will cause the world’s population to sigh in unison.

It’s James Blunt. He might write all sorts of songs that get used in chick flicks, love albums and as a weapon to torture terror suspects, but this could soon stop. You see, James Blunt has promised to sew his mouth shut for the right amount of money. Or never step foot in a recording studio again, at least.

We’re usually quite reluctant to back any sort of fundraiser, but this one is too good to ignore. So pull the cushions from the sofa and hunt for all those fluffy two pence pieces. As he’s come to realise, the general music appreciating public don’t take that kindly to the songs of James Blunt. So he’s prepared to reach a compromise with us all. Speaking to Uncut magazine, he said:

“If someone is prepared to pay me enough, I’ll stop.”

Buts what’s the catch? Well, from what we can tell, he won’t settle for the £2.36 that was rustled up between the various hecklerspray writers. You know he’ll be a complete twat and demand millions in order to stop making more records that contain the words “love” “dove”, “forever”, “kiss”, “danger”, “octopus” “cuddle” and “chat.”

There are always plenty of fundraisers for various causes. If we need to feed the world again, Bono is quick to step in. When it comes to stopping the UK reaching a decent temperature, you can rely on Madonna to wiggle her arse on stage for a bit and tell us we’re all shafting the planet by leaving the kitchen light on all day.

If only these people would get involved and help to raise some money for a really good cause – to ban James Blunt forever. We’re sure our buddy Lee Ryan would love to do a gig for us. And we know he wouldn’t con you by miming at our first annual ‘James Blunt The Cunt Aid’. See, we can even write songs that rhyme like him!

If that falls through, though, we know we could always rely on our darling readers to donate a couple of quid. After supplying you with thousands of badly-spelt and grammatically-incorrect stories, we’re sure you’ll repay us with a charitable gift to a worthy cause. Not that we’re forcing you or anything, but you’ll only have yourself to blame if you continue to see a weepy man continue to make music that is no better then the local SuperBrewed-up busker at a bus stop.

Blunt also appears to be going a bit mental, and has also taken an unprovoked swipe at cake. What’s cake ever done to him or anyone? It’s, sweet, sticky and the reason why we can’t walk very far without wheezing heavily. Seemingly pissed off with the fact that people find him annoying, Blunt said:

“If someone puts some chocolate cake in front of you and you don’t like it, but there’s some cheesecake to the right, would you start screaming at the chef? Just eat the cheesecake without calling the chef the Antichrist.”

What? Does he mean Satan is actually made up of yummy icing, a calorie-laden body and not a fiery hot centre? Umm, even our minds aren’t warped enough to work that one out. Answers in the comment box below please.

Mr Blunt, if you name your price we will attempt to raise the desired amount to stop you from making music ever again. A dedicated Paypal account will be set up for people to donate to. A deal is a deal after all. If not, we’ll, er… get our PR people to send you cake and make you cry.

And that what Carol Vorderman earnt on Countdown. That’s Countdown, mind you – the mid-afternoon Channel 4 gameshow watched exclusively by ironic students and the infirm. A million quid for sticking bits of card on a wall and pretending to find Des O’Connor amusing. Still, it’s a million quid she won’t be getting any more.

Carol Vorderman has quit Countdown, you see, claiming that her bosses demanded that she took a 90% pay cut. And, insulted, Carol Vorderman has taken to just about every newspaper on the face of the earth to bitch about the injustice. On the plus side, at least now Carol Vorderman will be best known for being greedy and vindictive instead of for thinking she’s about 500 times more attractive than she actually is. That’s a step up.

Countdown has a special place in the hearts of the British. It was the first show broadcast on Channel 4, it has survived for 26 years without any format changes and they repeat it at about 3am so you can be comforted by it even when you’re having a panic attack because you’ve just chased some masked intruders out of your house.

Countdown has been defined by those who appeared on it. Richard Whiteley made the show his own before his untimely death, Des Lynam briefly hurtled the show into the realms of frighteningly raw animal sexuality and then Des O’Connor was, well, Des O’Connor. Pfff. Even the Dictionary Corner lady, Susie Dent, has made an impression as the most confusingly alluring female Jimmy Carr impersonator in the land.

And then there’s Carol Vorderman, the woman who’s been there from day one, slowly morphing from a chubby geek with a bad fringe into the sort of alarmingly sexual old lady who dresses like a girl a quarter of her age and looks as if she spends her weekends pinning frightened young men up against the railings at yacht parties to their obvious discomfort.

But Carol Vorderman isn’t going to be on Countdown any more. This is because, as she told every single newspaper in the country yesterday, she was forced out by evil TV bosses who demanded that she took a 90% pay cut. Here’s one of Vorderman’s shorter diatribes, this time to The Sun:

“It was such a callous thing to do. What on earth was possessing them to behave like this. They knew which buttons to press and were just kicking me.”

And it does seem that a 90% pay cut does constitute something of a kicking, at least until you discover that for being the assistant on Countdown – which, let’s face it, is hardly deep sea trawler fishing – Carol Vorderman was paid a million quid a year. That’s just a bewildering amount of money, like suggesting that John Craven gets paid in giant ruby statues of himself for presenting Castle In The Country.

Still, it’s too late now. Carol Vorderman has left Countdown, so she’s given herself a 100% pay cut. We just pray that churning out endless volumes books and games about Sudoku, banging on in public about detox diets like she invented them and doing adverts for everything from dubious-sounding loan companies to butter pays the bills.

And will Carol Vorderman be able to get any more TV work after this? It’ll be a brave executive who hires Vorderman now, knowing that she’ll run screeching to the press as soon as she’s made to do something she’s not keen on. What sort of show will want a vindictive, over-opinionated middle-aged woman with an unusually high opinion of herself anyway?

Loose Women? Oh.

Dead? No, of course he's not dead. But Sir Alan Sugar has stepped down as chairman of his company Amstrad after 40 years. That means that all those wonderful jokes about the crappy-looking, pointlessly impractical email telephones he hawked so mercilessly during the first few seasons of The Apprentice are all worthless now. Really, he may as well be dead.

Anyway, even though he's left Amstrad, Sir Alan Sugar's still going to be the terrifying boss figure on The Apprentice. However, there's bound to be some changes – those taking part in next year's Apprentice will now be battling for a prestigious £100k a year job keeping watch for the rozzers while Sir Alan flogs boxes of unsold email phones from the back of a van in an MFI car park.

Listen to the intro to The Apprentice long enough and you'll believe that Sir Alan Sugar is a genius. A stone cold genius so unashamedly geniusy that everyone he works with happily puts up with his bellowed insults and belligerent manner because they understand that he knows more about business than anyone else alive.

Sir Alan Sugar even has the ear of the Prime Minister, we're told. He literally has it. He tore it off during a heated conference about proportionate enterprise regulation procedure. The Prime Minister doesn't even mind, because Sir Alan Sugar is that much of a business genius.

And as a business genius, Sir Alan Sugar knows that the recession is affecting two things more than anything else – rising fuel prices and tumbling property prices. Which is why he's chosen now to step down as chairman of his electronics company Amstrad to build up his, um, property and private jet businesses. Whoops.

That's right – Alan Sugar is no longer in charge of Amstrad, the company that's been his life for 40 years. The Times reports:

Sir Alan Sugar, the multi-millionaire star of The Apprentice TV series, has stepped down as chairman of Amstrad, the company he founded aged just 21. Sir Alan insists he is not retiring but that it was the “right time” for him to step down from his role at the company, which he sold to broadcaster BSkyB for £125 million last year.

You know what that means, don't you? it means all those ghoulish Amstrad animatronic Alan Sugar toys will be going cheap! They're the perfect Christmas present for anyone you want to curse into a lifetime of petrified insomnia thanks to the latex cockney robot sat in the corner of their room constantly bellowing insults at them. 

Anyway, it doesn't matter that Alan Sugar has quit Amstrad, because he'll still be presenting The Apprentice and making appearances in all kinds of television commercials. However, let's just hope that his property and private jet interests hold up, because otherwise he'll have to change his catchphrase from "My fee from this ad is going to Great Ormond Street hospital" to "Up yours, sick kids – Daddy needs a hot tub."

In the beginning, Big Brother was a crazy experiment which for once didn’t involve cutting people open or giving them drugs which would result in the growth of an extra eye. Instead, it was set to monitor the results of living in a controlled human environment. Or as most viewers interpreted it, a chance to maybe see some people have sex. But as time has gone on, the experimental phase has vanished and contestants have used Big Brother as a platform to launch a career. None are ever successful and, brilliantly for us, we get to see them crash and burn.

It’s now the turn of Chanelle Hayes.

The ninth series of Big Brother is due to hit the UK in a couple of weeks, which only means we will be in store for more tantrums, bitching, crap romances which will end six months after the show finishes, swearing, potentially racist comments and someone to become the new national idiot.

Every year, one of the contestants annoyingly lingers around like a bad fart once the show has ended. Unfortunately for us, it’s Chanelle Hayes, a woman who still seems like the hideous creation of someone determined to show us the opposite of how humans should act and behave around around others.

Jesus, was she an annoying cow. Listening to a car alarm for half an hour or shitting glass seemed more appealing that sitting through her endless tyrant of squeaks, moans and arguments with anyone who’d listen.

Amazingly, Chanelle was somehow signed by a talent agency. Not because she had any talent or credibility, but because if she took her clothes off, opened her mouth and looked vaguely seductive, blokes could imagine she was about to give them a blowjob.

After modelling and destroying TV shows, Chanelle has now turned her hand to singing. Of course, it’s absolute bollocks and Chanelle is the only one deluded enough to believe that it will actually sell. Because everyone suddenly likes dance music, this is genre that she’s gone and destroyed. Her single I Want It is a bland slab of Balearic house which hasn’t exactly had leading DJs queuing up in order to play it.

But let’s give Chanelle some credit. Because she knows it’ll bomb, she’s said:

“I’ve spent time in the recording studio and I’ve got all these songs for an album so if the single is a success then I’ll do an album. But if it’s not then I won’t inflict any more pain on you all!”

Good, she’s soon to be gone when her single crash lands in at number 178. However it’s not all good news. With a new series of Big Brother on the way, we can only guess that’ll they’ll be another gaggle of plebs emerging who’ll want to launch a dream singing career.

So more than likely we’ll run the same story next year and just replace ‘Chanelle Hayes’ with some other idiot. You’ll never notice.

Read more:

Chanelle: I’ll Quit If Single Is A Flop - Digital Spy

So if Davina McCall ever left Big Brother, the show would obviously fall to pieces. Well, either that or Alexa Chung would instantly start presenting it and nobody would really notice the difference. One or the other.

Anyway, despite a whirlpool of rumours to the contrary, Davina McCall has publicly stated that this won’t be her last season of Big Brother. Which is good for Davina McCall, but you know what that means? It means that this won’t be the last season of Big Brother, either. In fact, it’ll probably go on forever. If you need us, we’ll be crying and drinking bleach in a corner somewhere.

Big Brother has been good for everyone who’s ever hosted it. Look at Dermot O’Leary – after presenting Big Brother’s Little Brother he’s now the host of X Factor, one of the biggest TV shows in the country. Then there’s Russell Brand – the host of Big Brother’s Big Mouth – who’s now a bona fide Hollywood star. And then there’s Davina McCall.

As the host of the main Big Brother show, Davina McCall has obviously enjoyed spoils far greater than anyone else – some hair dye adverts that require her to talk to her never-seen mother in the same chilling way that sociopaths talk to corpses that they’ve just stabbed to death.

OK, so maybe Davina McCall’s career hasn’t gone as well as she expected. Other than the hair dye ads, Davina McCall’s greatest achievement was her BBC1 chatshow – a chatshow that was quickly dropped when people staggeringly decided that they didn’t want to watch a 40-year-old shouting attention-seeking questions at Max Beesley for an hour – and an equally disastrous stint as a radio DJ.

But there’ll always be Big Brother. And although this year’s Big Brother was widely believed to be Davina McCall’s swansong, Davina has publicly stated that she’s going to keep presenting Big Brother forever. Well, either forever or until people get sick of it and they stop making it, probably within in the next couple of years. Whichever one comes first. The Press Association reports:

Davina McCall has slammed rumours she is quitting Big Brother. The TV presenter has hosted the reality TV show since it began eight years ago and it has been claimed this year’s series will be her last. Asked if the rumours were true, Davina said: “No. Bollocks! Am I allowed to say that? Good!”

In a way it’s reassuring to think that Davina McCall will keep presenting Big Brother until she’s a wizened old lady rolled out once a year to pull funny faces, shout telephone numbers and ask fame-seeking dicksplats not to swear. In another way the thought of it makes us feel all claustrophobic and panicky and slightly unwell, but we’ll just stick with the first one for the benefit of this article.

Besides, it’s wise for Davina to keep hosting Big Brother, because without it she’s only got those hair dye adverts and you know what they say – there’s always someone younger and prettier waiting to babble on about hair to the dispossessed voice of their dead mother that only they can hear.

Read more:

Davina rejects rumours over BB exit – PA

We might soon find out, because word from America's Top Model is that Tyra Banks is getting on so badly with photoshoot coordinator Jay Manuel that she's threatening to quit the show. But is there anyone else who can say "you're still in the running to become America's Next Top Model," with Tyra Banks' utter lack of feeling or expression?

Obviously when we said "we might soon find out," we didn't mean us specifically. We wouldn't be caught dead watching America's Next Top Model. Ahem. 

Oh, who are we kidding? We watch America's Next Top Model all the time. And when we're not watching America's Next Top Model we're thinking about America's Next Top Model. And when we're not thinking about America's Next Top Model it's because we're deliberately vomiting our meals back up so we can look like America's Next Top Model.

And the reason why we literally – yes, literally – can't stop watching America's Next Top Model is Tyra Banks. That's because nothing Tyra Banks ever says or does comes within a million miles of making sense. She just sort of rolls in at the end of each episode looking like the twinkliest button in the box, hands out complicated modelling advice via a series of inexplicably abstract facial expressions, hugs some people like an autistic germaphobe and then bibbles off home again.

No wonder that guy tried to stalk Tyra Banks – he was probably trying to absorb some of her freakish oddness.

But now it seems as if America's Next Top Model might have to go on without Tyra Banks. According to rumours, Tyra Banks keeps falling out with photoshoot coordinator Jay Manuel – who we think is the fearsomely camp chap who takes two pictures of each model a week while screaming things like "Angles!" and "Really find the expression in that chin!" at them as if they'd personally offended him – and now she might leave. OK! reports:

“Tyra Banks is not getting along with Jay Manuel,” an insider tells OK! “She thinks he has become a diva and is ungrateful to her for making him a star. The way she sees it, it’s thanks to her that he now has a makeup line, a show on Style Network and hosts Canada’s version of Top Model.” So how bad has it gotten? So bad that the 34-year-old supermodel reportedly phones in all her takes for the show now. “Tyra barely interacts with the contestants and only wants to show up on judging day," the source adds."

While we couldn't possibly imagine that a supermodel is capable of being demanding and self-centred, perhaps Tyra Banks really is ready to give up America's Next Top Model. And if that's true then finding a replacement is going to be a near-impossible task Who else will be able to take a job that's broadly based upon genetics and the ability to wear clothes and make it sound even more complicated than advanced paediatric neuroscience to justify their fortune so deftly?

Well, there's always Naomi Campbell. She's got the same amount of supermodelling experience as Tyra Banks, so she's be able to pass off the same amount of invaluable modelling advice. Plus if Jay Manuel ever gives Naomi any shit, he'll be fishing a mobile phone out of his shattered skull before he knows it. 

Read more:

Tyra Banks vs. Jay Manuel? – OK 

Or he was. Or he is but won't be soon. Sorrell Trope has asked to quit the Britney Spears custody case citing a 'breakdown in communications' between the law firm and the singer. Although that's as far as the explanation goes, it's thought that the reason for Sorrell Trope's resignation is either a) that he's exasperated because Britney Spears keeps missing court-appointed deposition meetings, b) that he's as bored of this Britney Spears custody nonsense as the rest of us or c) that he's tired of having to constantly explain what a deposition actually is to Britney Spears. And what custody is. And what children are. And how pens work.

All Britney Spears has ever known in her life is success, whether it's success as a singer, success as an internet search term or success as owner of the world's most curiously nondescript female genitalia. And because of this success, nobody can tell Britney Spears what do. Nobody could tell her to rehearse for her MTV VMA performance, nobody could tell her not to drive through red lights with her kids in the car and a phone a millimetre away from her face and nobody can tell her to show up for very important custody depositions.

And that's probably why her lawyer wants to run away from Britney Spears as fast as his little legs can carry him.

Even though you got bored of the Britney Spears/ Kevin Federline custody bitchfight several months ago, as Britney's lawyer poor old Sorrell Trope has had to think about it every single sodding day since September when Britney's last lawyer ran screaming into the night. But now enough's enough and, coming to the conclusion that Britney Spears can no longer even pay people to like her, he wants to leave as well.

In a motion released on the very same day that Britney Spears failed to show up yet again for her long-awaited deposition, Sorrell Trope said:

"There has been a breakdown in communications between Petitioner and
Trope & Trope making further representation of her interests
impossible."

But since Trope's decision has come right in the middle of a case, he has to ask the court to leave rather than just quitting outright – a process that could take up to a month. That'll be an interesting month to play out given that in the average month Kevin Federline calls anything up to 450 emergency hearings every time he sees a picture of Britney looking a bit crosseyed on TMZ. How will Trope be able to assist Britney Spears during these? We're guessing with a sequence of embittered snorts, although perhaps he'll go up to a full-blown "pah" if the situation becomes serious enough.

However, let's not get carried away and assume that Britney Spears is completely without lawyers, because she isn't. In fact, Britney is current paying for a perfectly good legal team. Admittedly it's Kevin Federline's legal team, but that still counts, doesn't it?

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Britney's Attorneys Bail After Depo No-Show – E! Online

It's been reported that Meat Loaf has quit music forever, and this is something he apparently decided mid-show in Newcastle on Wednesday night. Mid-song, in fact – as the opening bars to Paradise By The Dashboard Light kicked in, Meat Loaf suddenly decided that he couldn't be bothered to sing for a living any more and trudged offstage. Sure, Meat Loaf's apparent breakdown might sound a little worrying, but if he really has quit music then maybe he can start to concentrate on acting again – and who doesn't want to see more films about man-titted Meat Loaf punching people in a cellar?

Everyone, if they're honest, has asked themselves "why am I doing this?" at one point or another, whether it's about work, a relationship or three seconds after you've just paid for cinema tickets to see Rendition. But Meat Loaf is a larger than life chap, so when he questions his future, he is sure to do it in front of 11,000 confused Geordies who just want to hear Meat Loaf belt out Objects In The Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are or any other of his identikit blustery songs without spazzing out in the middle bit.

Sadly, though, Meat Loaf couldn't meet those obligations on Wednesday night. Perhaps it was the breathtaking natural beauty of local attraction Jesmond Dene, or the knowledge that he was just a short distance away from the UK's first biotechnology village, or just the fact he was singing ridiculously overblown power-ballad after ridiculously overblown power-ballad to 11,000 powerfully drunk northerners and their nearly-nude Spuggie-alike girlfriends – but something caused Meat Loaf to lose control of his senses.

According to witnesses, Meat Loaf, who had been struggling to hit notes and launching into rambling emotional, if irrelevant, stories between songs, suddenly told the crowd that he would never perform another concert in his life during the opening bars of Paradise By The Dashboard Lights, and then walked offstage into the arms of some St John's Ambulance workers. Or, as Meat Loaf audience member Phil Cammish told The Times:

“[Meat Loaf] started saying ‘This is my last ever gig, this is my last ever song. Thanks for 30 years, I can’t do this anymore’… I saw a man dressed up as Meat Loaf weeping on the steps. Everyone during the gig was commenting that they thought he was plastered. He kept having emotional talks during the gig and telling stories about his children and slurring his words. He was saying things that had nothing to do with the gig. His backing singers had to carry him through most of the songs. He couldn’t finish some of his hits.”

But is this really the end of Meat Loaf's musical career? At the moment nobody knows – Meat Loaf is scheduled to perform at the NEC Arena tonight, but there's still no word about whether the show is still going ahead. Although if Newcastle was too depressing for Meat Loaf we wouldn't hold much hope of seeing him turn up in Birmingham any time soon.

But let's look on the bright side of things here. Although we hope that Meat Loaf is OK, it's heartening to see that a career of frightening egotism, disproportionately bombastic soft-rock anthems and adoration from denim-wearing older ladies with giant permed hair and a fondness for professional wrestling will only end in an embarrassing onstage breakdown.

Because, you know, we've got Rhydian from X Factor earmarked for one of these babies before the year is out.