If only R Kelly had a bunch of events in his life that we could hang some jokes on. We’ve been wracking our brains here and can’t really think of anything that he’s done which we can mock, apart from some of his desperately awful records, that In The Closet lark and the fact it appears that he likes having sex with minors.

Wait! He liked hanging around with Michael Jackson didn’t he? That’s pretty funny isn’t it, because Michael Jackson had a face like a haunted hamstring by the time he died. There must be some correlation between R Kelly’s fondness for minors, allegations made against Jackson and, of course, our penchant for the most obvious jokes in the world.

But before all that, R. Kelly won’t be singing shit as he’s had to have some emergency throat surgery which means he won’t be performing for an indefinite period. Real talk. Or… y’know… No talk.

Anyway, R Kelly (real name Percival Eugene Derek Oswaldtwistle) noted that his throat was, to use his vernacular ‘fucking ragging him’, and so, was whisked off to a Chicago hospital where an abscess on one of his tonsils was drained, according to a statement from spokesman Allan Mayer, who was dry-heaving at the time, thinking about pus being drained from someone’s neck.

This, of course, means he’s mercifully out of action for the foreseeable future, although, this poses two problems. Firstly, it isn’t hard to imagine that Kelly thinks he knows better than the doctors that treated him and will promptly go about recording a new LP, despite the fact he’ll sound like Tom Waits.

Secondly, when R gets bored, his mind starts to wander… and when his mind starts to wander, we end up with a scenario where police end up finding dodgy video tapes wrapped up in towels which imply that he may have been following in Michael Jackson’s footsteps and fiddling around inside some underage fan, starstruck and covered in jizz.

Now read this recent tweet of his.

“I feel like my throat is coming back. I’ve been in bed sweating like crazy. Thanks guys.”

Brrr.

Recently court documents have shown that R is a year behind on mortgage payments for his multimillion-dollar mansion in suburban Chicago, which means he’ll be back doing stuff really soon. Hilariously unaware stuff like this with any luck…

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R Kelly is being sued by former manager Jeff Kwatinetz for over $1 million. While that’s all very interesting and we’ll mention it later in the article, this is obviously not the reason we’re running the story. Clearly, we want to make jokes about R Kelly and sex with minors.

Of course, Kelly hasn’t ever been to prison or anything like that, so we can’t say he’s properly guilty of it. However, we can join the scrum and snicker about the rumours. And for those thinking we’re being racist, we’d do the same if Woody Allen was in the news more often (c’mon! You don’t think his relationship with Soon-Yi is weird as shit?).

Alas, we’re looking at R Kelly.

So, Kwatinetz reckons he played a massive part in resurrecting Kelly’s career. He claims that the ‘Ignition’ singer agreed to pay 15% him commission and, of course, he’s failed to do so. That’s why they’re going to court, dummy.

Kwatinez is saying that Kelly’s business manager said that The Kwat (we invented a nickname for him) wouldn’t get paid “because the monies were needed for payments to avoid lawsuits and adverse publicity resulting from Kelly’s alleged [sexual misconduct].”

Which allows us, under the guise of giving you the back story, the chance to bring all that sex business back up.

See, Kelly started off getting bothered by the law in the usual hip hop manner, getting into a fight, which saw the victim needing 110 facial stitches… which is horrible and impressive. Then, things went a bit Michael Jackson when a video surfaced which claimed to feature R Kelly doing the sex with an underage girl.

Kelly denied that he was the man in the video, but he was still indicted in Chicago on 21 counts of having sex with a minor, which were later reduced to soliciting a minor for child pornography, seven counts of videotaping the acts, and seven counts of producing child pornography.

Maybe it was all one big misunderstanding? Well… in 2003, he got his ass arrested again on child pornography charges after the police found pictures of an underage girl as well as a video of Kelly having sex with an underage girl on a digital camera.

He’s not a man to be fucked with, clearly. Especially if you’re ten. ALLEGEDLY ALLEGEDLY.

Anyway, R Kelly isn’t taking this chat from Kwatman.

A spokesman for the artist says:

“Jeff Kwatinetz’s complaint is a collection of half-truths, distortions, and outright fabrications. Mr. Kwatinetz is a disgruntled former manager who apparently feels the need to try to seek retribution for his discharge.”

No date has been set for the trial as yet, but we’re betting that Kelly stalls court again with yet another burst appendix excuse.

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We have all seen the R’n'B opus, ‘In The Closet’ by R Kelly now. It’s an astonishing piece of work that features gay pastors and midgets and R. Kelly clearly stood at the lip of a very ugly nervous breakdown.

Since he wrote huge hits for himself and others, he developed a free-wheeling blorting streaming of conciousness which looks for all the world like he’s making shit up as he goes along. As dreadful as it sounds, it is still an improvement on filming yourself urinating on a child and marrying another, Jerry Lee Lewis style.

However, there’s a track he made which slipped under hecklerspray‘s radar which now pokes us in the brains and prompts us into thinking that R Kelly isn’t in fact as mad as a hedge full of talking spiders, but rather, a rather sophisticated internet meme.

This new (to us) clip sees R Kelly, who just happens to have the cameras rolling in the studio and not set up at all, keeping it real.

“It contains a lot of profanity… but profanity represents just how real shit gets when you’re arguing with your girl.”

We then see R Kelly getting the cigars out and pouring himself a nice drink, which is an attempt to show us just how decadent his life is. In one respect, you can’t knock him because it’s a more attractive prospect than watching an indie band smoking roll-ups and slurping over-stewed tea. On the other hand, it makes R Kelly look like a showy prick.

However.

“We’re gon’ be real… I’m doin’ it for the fans around the globe who love real talk.”

We then see R Kelly on the telephone, talking to someone while someone else does his hair. We’ve all been there right? Someone is putting your corn-rows in and you have to angrily yell:

“I’m not about to sit up here and argue with you about who’s to blame, I call no names, real talk. See girl, only thing im trying to establish with you is not who’s right or who’s wrong, but what’s right and what’s wrong, real talk.”

Everyone knows that, when you’re furious with someone, the word “establish” is definitely the one you’d pluck out of thin air. That, or you’d find yourself weeping in a corner, depressed at your own jealousy and ugly need to argue with people in public.

That’s right. Throughout all this, Kelly’s band are sat behind him deep in conversation… but more on those bozos later.

What really speaks to hecklerspray though is this universal problem:

“Just because your friend say she saw me at a club with some other bitches sitting in VIP smoking and drinking and kicking it, tell me girl, did she say there were other guys there? Did she say there were other guys there? Were there other guys there?”

We’ve all been there right? It seems, the best way to resolve any untrusting spouses is to respond calmly with:

“I’ve been with you five years and you listening to your motherfucking girlfriends! I dont know why you fuck with them all jealous no man havin’ ass hoes anyway!”

Got that?

“Real talk”

Then, Kelly implores us to think about our positives and share them with the aggrieved party. Tell them what you’ve done for them, to allow them to see you’re actually a very nice chap.

“Didn’t I just give you money to go get yours hair, toes and nails done the other day, hmm? Yeah, your ass was smiling then!”

Please note the lovely use of ‘the other day’. If you’re from Northern England, ‘the other day’ is a reference to a period in history which happened at absolutely any point in history before you uttered the phrase ‘the other day’. See also ‘t’other week’. It’s also worth pointing out the talents of the girl in question. Kelly reveals the reason he fell for her in the first place as he tells us about how she’s actually able to make her colon grin. Amazing stuff.

“Real talk”

Kells then shows us how to react when your girl rings your parent’s house.

“You call my mommas house and what? Girl, my momma ain’t gotta screen no calls for me”

Again, in the heat of the moment, the words you’re likely to reach out and grab are ‘screening calls’ as opposed to indignantly yelling “Why are you ringing my mum? Why didn’t you ring me? We should talk about this like adults. Real talk.’

“Real talk and watch your mouth”

However, it probably isn’t a great idea to serve up this volley of abuse.

“Fuck me? Girl fuck you! You ain’t gotta worry about me no more and the next time your ass get horny, go fuck one of your funky ass friends! Hell yeah, you probably doing that shit anyway!”

This use of ‘funky’ probably refers to someone who is stinking up the place with body odour, rather than, say, them dressing like Bootsy Collins and being a really good dancer. Either way, the closing shot of ‘I know you are, you said you are, but what am I?’ never helped an argument flow smooth.

Then, things get a little surreal.

“You gonna burn what? Bitch, I wish you would burn my motherfucking clooooooothes, with your triflin’ ass, Milton, you bogus girl, Milton!”

Quite why R Kelly wants this lady to burn his clothes is something of a mystery. The delivery in the song suggests he was going to say something else, but alas, thought better of it. And Milton? It’s clear he’s referring to John Milton, the English poet, who is best known for his epic ‘Paradise Lost’.

Milton wrote a treatise condemning censorship called Areopagitica, which is utilised fully by R Kelly and his potty mouth. It’s a neat link to that Milton was considered to be one of the preeminent writers in the English language and as a thinker of world importance.

Just like R Kelly.

Real talk.

Now watch the video and tell us that this is part of some huge, expensive and sophisticated meme. The ‘fight’ at the close of the video is R Kelly letting us in on the joke because there’s absolutely no chance at all that he watched that back and thought ‘Shit is real’.

Right?

Real talk.

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10 - What’s that? You want a gallery of amazing mythical vegetables? Fine, here you go – Welovevegetables

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…

Ne-Yo – the only R&B singer on Earth to name himself after the Doppler effect – is a pretty popular chap, but now that’s been legally confirmed.

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?

If The Odd Couple ever returned to our screens, then there isn't a casting director in the land who could dream up an odder couple than this.

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.

R Kelly is a man who has suffered so much at the hands of the press.

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.”

Deliberation, discussion and decision-making: all major factors involved in writing about a legal case that hasn’t yet been decided either way.

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.

It’s an age-old defence and one that many, many people have relied on throughout the ages to help them avoid being shouted at, dumped, ignored or sent to prison on alleged charges of having sex with an underage girl and filming it: “It wasn’t me.”

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 Rock, until recently widely regarded as the funniest man in the English speaking world (as recent as yesterday, in fact) has all of a sudden lost his sense of humour entirely.

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.

It’s obvious to everyone with any sense that it isn’t R Kelly in the sex tape at the centre of his child pornography trial.

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.

This R Kelly child pornography trial is getting awfully confusing – one minute someone’s saying he did it, then another’s saying he didn’t.

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.

We know what you’re thinking – that there’s only one thing that’d liven up the ongoing R Kelly child pornography trial.

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.

WBet you want to hear all about the superstar defence witness who’s threatening to sew up the R Kelly child pornography trial once and for all, right?

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?

It takes a lot to upstage a video of a 13-year-old girl urinating for a grown man, but the R Kelly child pornography trial may have hit the jackpot.

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.