9 - Perhaps the greatest response to an R Kelly song you will ever read – Mychemicaltoilet

8 - Brooke Hogan’s new album cover is the single worst thing any of you will ever see - Amygrindhouse

7 - Some Very Important Headwear News – Interestment

6 - Public etiquette upon meeting females, as explained by a potential germaphobe - Shoutingatcows

5 – Here’s the end to your problems, you oniony wuss – Domesticsluttery

4 - Here’s our old friend Mr T singing a song about baseball - Bestweekever

3 - These fossils are quite breathtaking – Geekologie

2 - Oh Courtney Love, have you EVER made sense? - Twitter

1 – Here’s a video of the Beastie Boys from the other night. Not funny or thought-provoking, but we quite like the Beastie Boys, so shut up…

Last year Ne-Yo was on tour supporting R Kelly, but he got the sack after two shows because he says the crowds preferred him and R Kelly got the hump. A quick court case later, and Ne-Yo seems to have had his argument upheld – he’s just been awarded $700,000 from the tour’s promoter for sacking him so quickly.

So congratulations Ne-Yo – you’re now sort of officially more popular than a man who until recently was thought to have starred in a piss-sex video with a child. That’s just a level of popularity we can only ever dream of reaching. Tell us Ne-Yo, how does that feel?

Even though he’s got two songs currently in the top 40 and he’s rapidly approaching the top of his game, we haven’t really discussed Ne-Yo a lot here. Why is that? Well, it could be because Ne-Yo’s name is a pain in the arse to type, but it’s probably because Ne-Yo seems like a work-obsessed dullard who wouldn’t even be remotely exciting if you gave him a box of fireworks and a kitten.

But all that’s about to change, because Ne-Yo has just won a lawsuit against a concert promoter. Crikey – that’s about as thrilling as it gets, right? Gosh!

No, wait, come back – the lawsuit was sort of about R Kelly acting like a dick, so we’ll let Ne-Yo off just this once.

At the end of last year, Ne-Yo was booked as R Kelly’s support act on tour. However, since Ne-Yo is a hot young thing, an accomplished songwriter and the star of hit movie Save The Last Dance 2 – and since at the time nobody was sure if R Kelly was into weeing on children’s faces or not – the crowds seemed to prefer Ne-Yo’s performances. Weirdly, it was at about this time that R Kelly sacked him. And that’s where BBC News can take over:

R&B singer Ne-Yo has been awarded $700,320 (£395,580) after he was dropped from a tour with R Kelly… In January, Ne-Yo sued tour promoter Georgia-based Rowe Entertainment Inc. The company never responded to the case. Last week, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ordered them to pay Ne-Yo and his touring company damages.

So that’s it? No statements from Ne-Yo or R Kelly, who denies that Ne-Yo was sacked for being too good? When do we get to hear about all the searing maneuvering that went on behind the scenes of this pedal-to-the-metal contract violation lawsuit?

It better be soon, because a blow-by-blow account of exactly what happened in the run-up to the lawsuit could be just the thing to inject a little bit of pizazz into Ne-Yo’s public image.

That’s right, we’re basically suggesting that Ne-Yo would be more interesting if he discussed the ins and out of legal admin with us. What of it?

Everyone knows Osama Bin Laden – he’s that crazy foreign guy with a vengeance against the west – and then there's R Kelly, a successful singer who officially doesn’t love children a little bit too much. Imagine those wacky characters shacked up in a flat above a chip shop – it would be a certain ratings winner. 

The chances of these two ever bumping into each other over a packet of pork scratchings in the local ale house, though, is quite unlikely. Still this hasn't stopped R Kelly from comparing himself to the world’s most hated terrorist.

After going through a serious court hearing, you would be forgiven to presume that R Kelly would be a bit shaken and not his normal self. But even so, there's shaken and there's saying:

“Osama Bin Laden is the only one who knows exactly what I'm going through.” 

Unless Osama Bin Laden is sitting in a tricked-out cave somewhere in Afghanistan sipping on the finest camel’s milk and eating the priciest rice, we wouldn’t have thought so.

Granted, a lot of people despise the leader of Al Qaeda, but probably not as many as a man who legally didn't force a 14-year-old girl to piss herself to the sound of the Backstreet Boys. Still wounded from the ordeal, R Kelly said: 

“They can criticise you without even knowing you, and hate you when they don't even know you. All of a sudden, you're, like, the Bin Laden of America.”

Hecklerspray admits to making rude rhymes up about R Kelly during the case, but we never realised he’d take it so personally. We are sorry Robert, and promise to never call you a kiddy fiddler again.

We wonder if Bin Laden will feel Kelly’s pain of not having a decent record in such a long time. People we know tell us that the people in Afghanistan weren’t taking well to Bin Laden's last pop hit – The West Are Pigs And They Must Be Destroyed.

The guy just wants to live his life making A-material albums and wonderful music videos. And, of course, the last thing he wants to do is diddle people too young to get onto the big-kid rides at your local Six Flags.

Why is that? Well, it’s because R Kelly may be a lot of things – like the victim of a horrific back-mole that can sometimes be confused with a camera-lense speck, or tone deaf, but a kid-diddler he most definitely is not!

The man’s been acquitted, you know. You probably guessed that from the title up there.

Prison, put away your R Kelly cell-designation chart. He’ll not be living inside you anytime in the near future! Which is actually quite a shock for most people – even though Kelly says it wasn’t him in the video, the young victim says it wasn’t her in the video, and Snuffleupagus says he doesn’t really remember, but he’s almost 50% sure it’s a different orange, fuzzy elephant on that sexy, sexy screen.

The Kelly jury, after hours of deliberation and eating meals at cost to the legal system, found the R&B star not guilty of all 14 counts against him, despite the fact that his hair often looks wet and gross. Here’s a quote on things from The New York Times:

“It took more than six years for prosecutors to get the R&B star R. Kelly into court on charges of child pornography. It only took a few hours for a jury to declare him not guilty on all 14 counts. Mr. Kelly had been accused of making a 27-minute sex tape with an under-age female. But a high-powered defense team convinced the jury of nine men and three women that the identity of the girl was not conclusive.”

That’s what those big-wig attorneys do though, don’t they? We had one once when our neighbor had ‘film’ of us lying naked in his petunias no less than 14 times. That neighbor was so dumb. Without our face on-camera it could have been any nude, genderless, black-haired albino throwing up on his lowest porch step. What an idiot.

In other news we can use any public bathroom we want.

In the same news though – Kelly is off the hook. Especially seeing as how the alleged victim apparently wants nothing doing – we’re told she didn’t even testify in the first place. The NY Times has a quote on that too:

“In the same courtroom where the trial was conducted, five jurors told reporters that the absence of testimony from the alleged victim was a big handicap. ‘All of us felt the grayness of the case,’ one juror said.”

Strangely enough, these things are also associated with the jury in the R Kelly child pornography trial.

Would you believe it? Of course, this brings up a wonderful revelation – it shouldn’t be too long before hecklerspray can refer to R Kelly in whatever terms we see fit, with the full backing of the law on our side.

Yes: the jury have heard the prosecution, the defence, rebuttals, witnesses and counter-cross-ultra-examinations, and they’ve run off to that room probably occupied by Twelve Angry Men to decide once and for all what the media are allowed to refer to R Kelly as.

And probably, more importantly, if the man is to serve jail time or if he is cleared of the charges held against him.

The future looks bright.

That’s as in ‘the future looks bright because it means we don’t have to pussyfoot around as much with our language for fear of being sued’, of course, and not some other misconstrued meaning attributed to the phrase. Obviously.

The case has been through a lot over the last few months, most recently the confusion as to who in the blue hell was in the video presented to the courts. Though whoever it was may have definitely had a mole – or did they? So no one is really sure who it was in the video, but whoever it was may have had a mole, though it may have been an ‘artifact’.

Good lord the jury must be confused by now.

It didn’t help that the defence were throwing around biblical quotes:

“Second Corinthians 11, verse 14. And Satan shall come disguised as an angel of light. That is what she is. She is a liar. She is an extortionist.”

And it can’t have made it easy when the prosecution relied on one of those pesky ‘experts’ to back up their case.

Though we would likely be the best one on the planet, hecklerspray would hate to be a juror in this case. And it’s clear that the actual jurors are taking their time on this one, since they’ve been deliberating for around a day now after starting on Thursday afternoon. According to CBS 2’s legal analyst Irv Miller this may very well be a good thing for R:

“A lot of people who have seen the entire trial say this is a slam dunk guilty and others are saying, ‘Hey, listen, there’s reasonable doubt there’.”

Time will tell. A verdict will come. And when it does, hecklerspray will know – either way – how we stand legally when talking about R Kelly. It’s been a long ride, but we’re nearly at the end of this particular legal tunnel.

Oh, and so is R Kelly. Forgot about that fact for a second there.

Even Shaggy relied on it at one point, though the dolt did ruin the get-out clause for the rest of us by making it public knowledge.

Now, as fate would have it and as the mole/artifact argument would have us believe, the man in the video being examined in the R Kelly child sex trial isn’t actually R himself. It is, as the defence have stated, a lookalike.

According to the defence, the man in the video must have had access to Kelly’s property and the video was edited to make it look as if Kelly himself was taking advantage of the underage girl.

Though they also claim that the girl in the video isn’t actually the one who claims to be the girl in the video, and is actually a different girl altogether. In the video.

This was ascertained by interviewing members of the original girl’s family, who all basically said ‘yeah, that’s not her’.

Still with us? We don’t blame you if you aren’t, seeing as apparently no one in the video is who they were originally claimed to be. Never mind ‘it wasn’t me’, apparently ‘it wasn’t anybody anyone knows, at all, ever, anywhere’. It’s certainly a bold defence, that much is for certain. As MTV reported:

The lawyers suggested that the man is a look-alike who lacks a large mole on his back that Kelly has, arguing that a mark on the man’s back comes and goes during the tape. However, they provided no leads on this man’s identity and admitted that he must have had access to R Kelly’s house.

The music-site-cum-ultimate-news-source went on:

The defence countered the statements from relatives of the girl on the tape by finding other relatives who testified to say that it wasn’t her, this helped their argument by spreading confusion.

You’re bloody well right it spread confusion. Now we don’t know who to believe, or what to believe, or even why to believe anything. hecklerspray prides itself on knowing everything there is to know, but these crafty lawhounds have ruined everything by being really, really, irritatingly confusing. How do they sleep at night?

Christ – they didn’t even call any star or surprise witnesses to throw everyone off and give us the surprise and joy that we all get through watching the trial of a major musician for serious crimes. Twats.

There are, fortunately, some things we do know:

1) R Kelly’s defence rested after just two days, clearly feeling confident that their campaign of sending sane minds into disarray will bring their client home free.

2) The prosecution is expected to recall video experts to analyse the footage. Again.

3) There are only a few stages left before a verdict is finally reached and Kelly is either released into a world where trial-by-tabloid incites fear in any celebrity, or he is sent down for abusing an adolescent. Neither of which will be that rosy for the R&B star.

The trial continues.

Chris, currently touring his ‘No Apologies’ show around South Africa, was the butt of a US reality TV show prank.

You ask: what was said prank? Well, he he, get this! God, we’re laughing just typing it down! Right, this TV show (which no one seems to know the name of) made accusations that Chris Rock has, wait for it… had sex with an underage British girl – when he hasn’t! Ahahahahahaha!

Genius! And yet, for some reason, Chris Rock didn’t find being accused of statuatory rape funny in the slightest. The bloody square.

Back in his 2005 HBO special, ‘Never Scared’, Chris said of R Kelly (in reference to the video at the centre of R Kelly’s current underage watersport trial):

R Kelly’s lost his mind. He gotta lotta balls saying ‘it aint me’. Motherfucker, we know what you look like!…At one point on the tape R Kelly is eating this girls ass out like it’s puppy chow. He’s in her ass like he’s got diabetes and her ass’ got insulin in it.

Oh, he can dish it out, for sure, but can he take it? The answer seems to be ‘no’. Not so funny when the jokes on you, eh, Christopher?

Chris, to be fair, has a strong defence, in as far as the whole thing is fictional, which will no doubt be R Kelly’s next attempt to clear his name:

A cast member of the anonymous show appeared in court on Monday demanding Rock be taken into custody, but the judge refused on the grounds that Rock could not be arrested or detained without a proper warrant.

Honestly, a TV show can’t even accuse an innocent black man of rape anymore!

After hearing the rumours, Chris immediately sought clarification on the charges he so foolishly believed had actually been brought against him.

Tlali Tlali, a National Prosecuting Authority spokesman, told AFP:

It was a hoax, it was for one of the US reality television programmes. They pulled one on him, information got to him that the South African Police Service was going to arrest him. Acting on that information, he quickly approached lawyers who brought an urgent application at the Johannesburg High Court ,where judgement was in his favour. This one went too far, it must have been organised quite carefully.

Really, it isn’t. R Kelly has a caterpillar-shaped mole on his back, you see, and the man in the R Kelly sex tape doesn’t have a caterp… oh wait, yes he does. Bum.

However, just because R Kelly and the man in the sex tape appear to have similarly-shaped birthmarks on the same part of their backs, it doesn’t make R Kelly guilty of anything. That’s because, according to a defence analyst yesterday, there aren’t any moles on the R Kelly sex tape at all – only artifacts. What’s an artifact? God knows. Let’s go!

Credit where credit’s due, R Kelly’s defence is really earning its money at the moment. Had it been us in charge of proving his innocence, we’d have sat through all the prosecution’s witnesses and video experts and then, when it was our turn, we’d have conceded because we couldn’t resist stopping R Kelly from releasing any more albums until the year 2023.

But not R Kelly’s defence, because that’s playing out of its skin right now. No matter what you throw at it, it’s got an answer. All those family members positively identifying the alleged victim in the sex tape? Here’s a bunch of family members negatively identifying the alleged victim in the sex tape. That woman who said she had threesomes with R Kelly and the alleged victim? She’s not very trustworthy, you know.

That mole on R Kelly’s back that seems to match the mole on the back of the man in the sex tape? Well, um, wait a minute.

No, hang on, that’s not a mole on Mr Sex Tape’s back. That’s an artifact. Forensic video analyst Charles Palm said so. So shove it, haterz. The Chicago Tribune reports:

When the sex tape is played at normal speed, the man’s naked back is visible for less than a second, and it’s difficult to spot any markings. But a prosecution witness last week showed jurors a freeze-frame image of the male participant’s back and pointed out what the witness called a mole to the left of his spine. Kelly’s defense team countered the potentially damaging testimony Thursday with their own expert, who described the markings as “artifacts” created by the tape’s poor quality and multiple reproductions.

It’s a completely feasible argument, because the recording in question is not the original tape, and could have been copied several times over. When that happens, all sorts of blips and scrapes can sneak onto the tape – like that old home video of us eating a picnic that, when copied, made it look as if were forcing a 14-year girl to urinate and call us ‘daddy’. It’s a common technical glitch, happens all the time.

While he was in court, Charles Palm also countered the prosecution’s claim that it would be impossible to doctor the tape in any way by showing the jury self-edited versions of the sex tape where he made the participants vanish from a hot tub and another one where he erased their heads for the duration.

According to Charles Palm, he managed to manipulate the tape in a couple of afternoons, putting a dirty, great hole in one of the prosecution’s main arguments.

True, that means he spent two whole afternoons watching illegal and degrading child sex acts in painful slow motion on a giant screen in a dark room and it’s probably made him afraid of all human intimacy for the rest of his life, but if it means R Kelly stays free to release new albums of sexy R&B every couple of years, then he can write it off as an acceptable loss.

Oh, who to believe? Well, since R Kelly’s defence began yesterday with testimonies from the accused sex tape victim’s relatives, all claiming that it wasn’t her who R Kelly was having it off with, our microscopic attention span means we’ll have to side with them.

So that’s it, R Kelly definitely didn’t have sex with the 14-year-old girl that everyone thinks he had sex with because the very few members of her family who didn’t say that R Kelly definitely did have sex with her say he didn’t. We can’t believe it was this obvious all along.

If you’ve been following the R Kelly child pornography trial so far, then a) congratulations, you’ll never be able to hear Everybody by the Backstreet Boys again without thinking of a child urinating for the sexual pleasure of a grown man, and b) you’ll have realised that everyone so far has been pretty sure that R Kelly is guilty of all the stuff he’s been accused of.

But that’s just because the prosecution has been hogging the limelight, with witnesses ranging from the alleged victim’s friends and family to R Kelly’s former employees, who all agree that R Kelly is the man in the sex tape.

And since the prosecution in the R Kelly child pornography trial rested earlier this week, it’s now time for the defence to have a bash at convincing everyone that R Kelly is guilty of nothing except making the occasional metaphor-heavy song about all the different things his cock can do.

So far it looks like the defence has an uphill task, because so far it appears that its two main arguments are that someone digitally transplanted R Kelly’s head onto someone else’s sex tape (Official FBI response: “What are you, stupid?“) and that it can’t be R Kelly in the sex tape because R Kelly has a mole on his back and the man in the tape hasn’t (Official response from everyone with eyes: “Hey geniuses, they’ve both got moles in exactly the same place”).

Chances are the defence will get to this in the coming days – but first it’s found a list of people who say that the accused victim in the sex tape isn’t who the prosecution says it is, as the Associated Press reports:

“It definitely wasn’t her,” said Shonna Edwards, when asked Wednesday whether the underage girl seen having sex with the Grammy winner on the video was her relative. The 27-year-old Edwards said she saw the tape for the first time several days ago in a lawyer’s office, telling jurors that the female’s body in the tape was too developed to be her relative at that time.

As well as Shonna Edwards, two other relatives of the accused victim denied that it was her, putting the current tally of family members who say it is her at four and isn’t her at three.

R Kelly’s defence also punctured the credibility of prosecution witness Lisa Van Allen – the woman who said that she had threesomes with R Kelly and the accused victim – with a witness who claims that she sought $300,000 from Kelly to keep quiet.

But with the R Kelly child pornography trial more than halfway over, what have we learnt so far? Well, not much. Except that if you keep writing about 14-year-old girls who wet themselves at the sound of the Backstreet Boys, eventually you’ll start instinctively wetting yourself at the sound of the Backstreet Boys as well, something we learnt recently in a crowded lift where some idiot decided to use Quit Playing Games With My Heart as their ringtone.

That’s right – a woman who says she’s been in underage threesomes with R Kelly and the girl everyone thinks is in the R Kelly sex tape, and who also claims that R Kelly used to carry around a giant duffel bag full of his own sex tapes no matter where he went.

Well it’s your lucky day, because that’s exactly what happened to the R Kelly child pornography trial yesterday, and it’s all thanks to star prosecution witness Lisa Van Allen, a woman who bursts into tears whenever anyone asks her what sex with R Kelly was like. That makes us doubt that Lisa Van Allen actually did have sex with R Kelly, by the way, because the correct response to that is prolonged projectile vomiting. Again, that’s prolonged projectile vomiting.

It took a while, but the R Kelly child pornography trial finally looks like it’s starting to get exciting.

Although it opened strongly, with the prosecution playing a sex tape of somone they say is R Kelly having some fairly urine-intensive sex with a 14-year-old girl, it’s since slid into one dreary positive identification after another, with the occasional FBI officer popping up to call the defence stupid. Hardly edge of your seat stuff, is it?

But that was before the prosecution called Lisa Van Allen, by far the most entertaining witness of the lot so far. Why? Because she says she’s had sex with R Kelly. And with the girl who’s thought to star in the R Kelly sex tape. At the same time. And she says that R Kelly recently offered her $250,000 to recover one of his old sex tapes. And that he carries all his old sex tapes around with him in a duffel bag like some kind of creepy, old bastard.

Sadly, R Kelly must have forgotten the duffel bag in court yesterday, because that would have probably made the prosecution’s job a little bit easier, all said. Anyway, according to the Associated Press:

Star prosecution witness Lisa Van Allen cried on the witness stand, pausing to regain her composure, as she described several alleged three-way sexual encounters with the R&B star and the alleged victim, some of which she claimed Kelly videotaped… Van Allen told jurors Monday she first had sex with Kelly and the alleged victim in 1998. Kelly would have been around 30 years old at the time, Van Allen about 18 and the alleged victim would have been 14, according to prosecutors’ estimates.

There were other threesomes, too, she claims – once where Lisa Van Allen started crying in the middle, and one that was interrupted by a knock on the door that sent the underage girl running.

However, there are a few things that might cause Lisa Van Allen to be looked upon as not completely trustworthy. Firstly, there’s the fact that she admits stealing one of R Kelly’s $20,000 watches. Then there are claims that she’s only testifying against R Kelly to get her boyfriend a reduced sentence for a gun crime. Then there’s the defence’s secret new witness, who can apparently prove that Lisa Van Allen is making it all up.

And then there’s the way that – if she’s telling the truth – Lisa Van Allen actually had it off with R Kelly and a 14-year-old girl, so her judgement is clearly all spazzed and out of line and she shouldn’t be trusted, even with factual recollections of things that definitely happened.

Still, all that’s for the defence to worry about. And it gets to have a crack at the R Kelly child pornography trial starting tomorrow. Countless witnesses spending days on end saying that R Kelly definitely isn’t the man in the sex tape? We’re not sure if we’ll be able to take the excitement.

Of course you do. That’s terribly exciting news. But you’re not going to hear anything about that for a while – not when an expert FBI forensic video analyst has dropped the huge bomb that the man in the piddle-heavy R Kelly sex tape is probably R Kelly.

Alright, so maybe ‘probably’ is pushing it a little. What he actually said was that it wasn’t very likely that anyone had digitally superimposed R Kelly’s face onto the sex tape – a shock testimony that, if it is to be believed, immediately narrows the list of potential suspects down to a) R Kelly and b) every single man on Earth who isn’t R Kelly. This is nailbiting stuff, people.

But first! The mystery R Kelly defence witness from yesterday – what in the name of heck is all that about? Well, a few details have started to emerge, and now we can see why everyone’s got so poopy-pantsed about it.

Apparently, the witness is a woman who can refute another woman’s testimony that she had a threesome with R Kelly and the 13-year-old Backstreet Boys knicker-wetter.

And the call from this witness couldn’t have come at a better time for R Kelly’s defence, because it’s been proverbially shitting the bed so far. But not in a sexy underage way that R Kelly would probably find arousing if he was guilty of his charges, which he so far isn’t – this is more in a ‘do a bad job and send R Kelly to jail for 15 years’ way.

So far, the R Kelly child pornography trial has basically been an unceasing stream of witnesses taking turns to identify the man in the R Kelly sex tape as R Kelly and the girl in the R Kelly sex tape to be who everyone thinks it is. And even though both R Kelly and the girl deny any involvement in the tape, R Kelly’s former assistent says that it’s him and the victim’s friends and family say it’s her.

But that meant nothing because, from the noises it was making during cross-examination, the defence had an ace up its sleeve – what if the sex tape had been digitally manipulated? What if the R Kelly sex tape didn’t star R Kelly at all, but instead was the work of someone painstaking grafting an image of R Kelly’s face onto the man’s body? What about that, huh? Argue against that! Why don’t you get an FBI forensic video analyst in to say it isn’t reasonably possible? Huh?

So the prosecution did. And that’s what he said. E! Online reports:

George Skaluba, a forensic video analyst for the FBI, testified Thursday during the R&B star’s child-porn trial that the copy in the court’s possession depicts “real people in a real environment,” although he couldn’t be absolutely certain that the original wasn’t doctored in some way. Skaluba couldn’t determine how many levels of copying the tape currently in the court’s possession went through, but he concluded it would have been costly and “very, very time consuming and very hard” to manipulate the faces and/or the actions of the male and female on the original copy.

with this video alteration argument ruled out for the time being, that means that the man in the tape definitely is the man in the tape. Honestly, we don’t see why they don’t just lock R Kelly up now. Or anyone else who looks enough like R Kelly to feasibly pass for him in a blurry, almost decade-old illegal sex tape. Where’s the justice?

Because yesterday at the R Kelly child pornography trial… not much happened. Not much happened because the judge halted the trial for a day. And the judge halted the trial because a brand new ultra-mysterious secret witness for the defence has just descended onto the scene.

According to R Kelly’s defence, nobody knew this witness even existed until 9am yesterday morning when it received a phone call. It’s exciting, dramatic stuff and not even the judge knows what’s going on. We can’t wait! We want to be profoundly disappointed by the inevitable anticlimax now!

Although we’re aware that R Kelly’s defence hasn’t had a proper go yet, the R Kelly child pornography trial hasn’t especially been going great shakes for the singer so far.

The trial revolves around a video of a girl, possibly as young as 13, having all sorts of illegal piss sex with a man to the sound of the Backstreet Boys. Since R Kelly denies it’s him on the tape and the girl suspected to be the victim also denies that she’s on the tape, the onus is on the prosecution to find people who’ll identify both R Kelly and the girl.

Apparently, that’s not as hard as it seems, because everyone from friends of the girl to family members of the girl to R Kelly’s old employees have been lining up to claim that R Kelly is the man in the sex tape.

However, that could all be about to change dramatically with the sudden appearance of a previously-unknown witness for the defence, who’s apparently going to swoop in and save the day. BBC News reports:

Dramatic claims of a potential new defence witness have interrupted the trial of US R&B singer R Kelly on child sex charges. A lawyer for Mr Kelly informed the court in Chicago that the defence had not known about the new witness until he called them on Wednesday morning. The judge halted the trial for a day to allow time for the man to fly in from another state and make a deposition. “I have no idea what’s going on,” Judge Vincent Gaughan told the court.

Dramatic, huh? It’s just like an exciting courtroom drama, only it’s far slower and it’d never get shown on TV because a grown man shags a child and then pisses on her head in it.

We’re not too sure about what happens now. Will this surprise defence witness get wheeled out in court immediately, drop a giant bombshell and bring the R Kelly child pornography trial to a premature end? Or will the prosecution finish up its business before the witness is allowed to make a grand game-changing entrance?

Most importantly, do we still get to hear the witness’ testimony even if he turns out to be a funny-looking R Kelly superfan whose argument just consists of singing “I don’t see nothing wrong with a little bump and grind” several times in a row while doing a creepy little shuffle dance in the witness box?

Because we get the feeling that’s what’s going to happen, and we’d quite like to see the pastel courtroom sketch of that, please.

Anyway, our point is that the very first act of the R Kelly child pornography trial involved showing everyone the infamous alleged R Kelly sex tape. And since it’s physically impossible to top the sight of a full-grown man ordering a 13-year-old girl to wet her knickers to the sound of the Backstreet Boys, the trial’s got a little dull.

The most exciting thing that can happen now is seeing people try to identify the star of the tape. People like R Kelly’s former employee Lindsey Perryman, who turned up yesterday to say that not only is it R Kelly in the tape, but the female star is who everyone thinks it is because of the distinctive way she moves her mouth. We’ll finish writing this article as soon as we’ve stopped shuddering involuntarily.

It’s difficult to find trustworthy staff these days. One minute they’re all like “No Mr Kelly, don’t compare your penis to a car key in a song, you’ve already done that. Try comparing a woman’s genitals to some salad instead” and the next minute they’re all like “That’s definitely R Kelly having sex with a minor in that video, your honour.”

That’s certainly what happened yesterday at the ongoing R Kelly child pornography trial when – following a previous positive identification by a witness – R Kelly’s former assistant Lindsey Perryman took to the stand to claim that R Kelly was the star of the sex tape in question.

And if anyone should know that it’s R Kelly, it’s Lindsey Perryman – she worked as R Kelly’s assistant right up until last year, a full five years after the scandal around the R Kelly sex tape broke. Which isn’t weird at all, as the Associated Press reports:

“I didn’t want to think it was them,” a sometimes anxious-looking Perryman said, the 41-year-old Kelly sitting at the defense table just yards away. “The image I saw looked exactly like Mr. Kelly,” she said, adding she was “shocked” and “disturbed” by the video. Perryman said she saw the alleged victim numerous times, including when she would come to Kelly’s Chicago music studio. She recognized the girl as the one in the video by her cheekbones, as well as by the “distinctive” way she moved her mouth, smiled and talked, she told jurors.

Perryman may have a point – much like a fingerprint or a snowflake, every human has a completely unique way of reacting when someone pisses on their face to the sound of the Backstreet Boys. It’s true – you know those episodes of Scooby Doo where there’s an evil imposter dressed up as Scooby Doo and nobody knows which Scooby Doo is good and which Scooby Doo is evil? If R Kelly had been around to piss all over both of their faces to the sound of the Backstreet Boys the problem would have been solved with much less fuss. It’s biometric or something. We don’t know.

Anyway, since he’s facing up to 15 years in jail for these charges, R Kelly is still maintaining his innocence over the matter. And it’s easy to see why, because Lindsey Perrymen could just be an ex-employee with a grudge and nothing more.

And by serious, we mean dull. To convict R Kelly, the prosecution needs to prove that it’s him in the aforementioned sex tape – something that’s hard to do because R Kelly says it isn’t him and the girl accused of co-starring in the tape says she’s got nothing to do with any of it either.

But yesterday a witness stepped forward to say that R Kelly is definitely the guy in the video doing a wee on a child, and that the child is who everyone thinks it is as well. So it looks like everyone can go home soon. Cocktails all round!

The R Kelly child pornography trial has only been going on for a couple of days, but it’s already taught us some valuable lessons. Lessons like:

1) Forget paper rounds – doing a wee to the Backstreet Boys for the illegal sexual pleasure of creepy men is by far the most lucrative way for 13-year-old girls to augment their pocket money,

2) Although accused of being a fan of urine, R Kelly doesn’t like it when poo vapour goes up his nose, and

Actually we haven’t got a clue whether the man in the sex tape is R Kelly or not – R Kelly certainly doesn’t seem to think it’s him – but yesterday at the R Kelly child pornography trial a witness came forward to say that it was.

Twenty-four-year-old Simha Jamison was called as a witness by the prosecution because she apparently recognises both participants in the sex tape. The girl, Jamison claims, is her friend Roshona Landfair, and the man is – wait for it – R Kelly.

Rishona Landfair is the girl widely suspected to be the female lead in the sex tape, and she’d make a valuable witness for the prosecution, except she denies that it’s her and doesn’t want anything to do with the trial.

So, with the prosecution’s Plan A – to get Landfair in court and play Everybody by the Backstreet Boys at her to see if she instinctively starts writhing around and weeing in her knickers – torpedoed, much of the prosecution’s case rests on people like Simha Jamison to go to court and tell creepy stories about R Kelly that make everyone feel a bit weirded out. Job well done, then, as BBC News reports:

Simha Jamison, 24, told the Chicago court that she recognised her friend Roshona Landfair, 23, from her face. She said the two of them often met Mr Kelly when they were around age 12… Ms Jamison said Ms Landfair had first introduced Mr Kelly as her godfather and that they often visited him at his recording studio and a Chicago basketball court. She said Mr Kelly would give Ms Landfair money – “no less than $100 (£50) and no more than $500″. Ms Landfair often stayed on with the singer after Ms Jamison went home, she said.

However, let’s not get too excited. The R Kelly child pornography trial must still be treated fairly, even if it does revolve around a man who once wrote a song entitled Come To Daddy. And, as such, we have to remember that this is just one side of the story, and that the rest will come out when the defence makes its case.

We’re particularly looking forward to that, in fact, since during cross-examination yesterday the defence suggested that the tape may have been digitally altered. Fingers crossed that its entire argument revolves around the tape being a cleverly edited fake pieced together from bits of the music video to Feelin’ On Yo Booty and segments from the underground porno classic Upset-Looking Children Urinating To The Backstreet Boys For Cash.

Hunker down kids, we might be here for a while.

Read more:

Witness friend ‘in R Kelly video’ – BBC

Because, on the opening day of the trial, the now infamous alleged R Kelly sex tape was played to jurors and – we can’t believe we have to tell to tell you something as sordid as this – it features dancing. To a Backstreet Boys song.

Oh, and also it allegedly shows R Kelly urinating, his possibly 13-year-old sex partner urinating and several creepy instances of the word ‘Daddy’. But one thing the R Kelly sex tape doesn’t feature is The Spice Girls, because as soon as one of their songs comes on the radio, R Kelly allegedly halts proceedings and switches channel. Suck it Geri Halliwell, you’re not even good enough to soundtrack lurid child sex videos! In your face!

A show of hands please – who’s ever listened to a Backstreet Boys song, say Quit Playing Games With My Heart or Everybody, and been so touched by its magic that you’ve had to immediately go out and degrade a child by urinating on its face? Most of you? Wow, you guys really like the Backstreet Boys.

R Kelly allegedly too, if prosecutors at the just-started R Kelly child pornography trial know what they’re talking about. After years of delays thanks to ladder-related mishaps and improperly-rested bus drivers, opening arguments were yesterday heard in a trial that could stretch on for several weeks. And, really, what are opening arguments without grainy home video footage of a man having sex with a 13-year-old girl?

Because make no mistake, the prosecution seemed so keen to go out and nail R Kelly from the outset that it just went and played jurors the alleged R Kelly sex tape right from the get-go – but not without getting all creepy circus ringmaster on them first. The Chicago Tribune reports:

“You will see that child perform acts you’ve never seen before,” Boliker said. The tape begins with a man handing the female participant money. At his instruction, the female dances for him while “Everybody” by the Backstreet Boys plays. At times, he can be heard telling her to “dance faster, baby,” before instructing her to urinate for the camera. The female often refers to him as “Daddy” while the two engage in dirty talk. The two pause briefly when a Spice Girls song comes on the radio and the man stops to change the station. The video ends with the man urinating and finishing the sex act.

Acts we’ve never seen before? That’s building her part up a bit, isn’t it? Hang around Chatham High Street for long enough on a Friday night and you’ll see children doing worse than that, trust us. Although, to be fair, none of them will ever be seen dead dancing to the Backstreet Boys. They’re not animals.

Anyway, it wasn’t just the prosecution that got to have a crack at an opening argument – the defence also managed to creep in with a compelling angle or two as well. According to R Kelly’s lawyer Sam Adam Jr, the man in the sex tape can’t be R Kelly because R Kelly has a mole on his back and the man in the tape doesn’t, also the girl accused of taking part in the tape isn’t who everyone thinks she is either, because:

“[The alleged victim] is sweet and nice. The woman in this tape is a prostitute.”

I’ll be interesting to see where the R Kelly child pornography case goes from here, because now that everyone’s seen the sex tape for themselves and the mole argument is already out there, there can’t be much else to discuss. It’s not like the Phil Spector murder trial, where days can be spent analysing exactly how a woman’s tongue would loll around immediately after you’ve shot her in the mouth, is it.

There’s a chance that a bunch of 13-year-old girls could be pulled into the courtroom and ordered to dance to the Backstreet Boys and piss on the floor at the same time for demonstrative purposes to see if it whips R Kelly up into such a sexual frenzy that he immediately composes another song about how his willy works in a similar way to a car key on the spot, but that seems unlikely.

Also, we should mention that a member of the jury left the R Kelly child pornography trial yesterday as well. It was the rape victim juror, who apparently wouldn’t be able to keep up her mortgage repayments if she remained on the jury. She was replaced by a man whose uncle once went to jail for child pornography offences. That’s bound to make a difference to the outcome of the trial, but we won’t find out exactly how until we’ve discovered whether he calls his uncle Uncle Disgusting Paedo or Uncle Wrongly Incarcerated And I Will Have My Vengeance. Makes a difference, see.

Read more:

Lurid opening to Kelly trial - CT