That dog. Haha! It nearly killed a load of deer and everyone laughed. The man. The man he chased the dog. He shouted Benton! Wait. It transpired it was called Fenton. Some people said “See, I always knew it was Fenton” in the world’s crappiest ‘toldyaso‘.

Then the man said ‘Jesus Christ!’ and every single gusset moistened with laughter before, in unison, the whole universe saw a gigantic hole split in its side. Quite simply, this is the funniest thing to happen to us poor creatures since Del Boy fell through a bar.

And now, this wretched meme is going to bother the charts this Christmas and it’s backed by the odious Fearne Cotton. Oh, how the British public love a novelty record. This can’t possibly fail. Basically, do a Carluccio and stick a bread-knife through your heart now. Not convinced? Listen to it over the jump, now.

So, hecklerspray got a press release alerting us to this meme-based track. It’s the archetypal lifestyle house music, complete with obligatory elastic band bassline.

The press release read thus:

If there is anyone who can take on Simon Cowell and win, it’s a dog, and that dog is called BENTON (or possibly Fenton). The internet sensation is taking on Simon Cowell in the charts this December, as The Hoxtons release a charity single featuring a remix of the now famous “Benton! Jesus Christ” clip in a bid to save the UK from another X-Factor Christmas number one.

The track, produced by Toolroom Publishing in collaboration with Pitch Sync and titled “Benton! Jesus Christ!”, will be released on Monday 18th December. The Hoxtons (feat. Benton Against the Machine) remixed the not-for-profit single and have chosen to donate all profits from sales of the single to Battersea Dogs and Cats Home.

Listen to “Benton! Jesus Christ!” by The Hoxtons (feast. Benton Against the Machine) here.

The YouTube video, which became an international internet hit, shows a hapless pet owner in an escalating situation when his dog starts a stampede of deer across Richmond Park. The man can be seen running after his Labrador repeatedly shouting what sounds like “Benton!” as the pet chases dozens of terrified deer. It later emerged that the dog’s name was actually Fenton.

A Facebook group entitled “Benton vs. Cowell” has been helping the track gain traction with the British public. Support the campaign by joining the “Benton vs. Cowell” group on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/groups/bentonvscowell/

“Benton! Jesus Christ!” will be available to download from iTunes on Monday 18th December.

Even though this is a charity record, it’s still unswervingly hateful. You’d be better off snipping your ears off with safety scissors and posting them to Battersea Dog’s Home, wrapped in a bloody £20 note.

Fearne Cotton played it on her woeful, dismal, vapid radio show this morning (invariably referring to it as ‘genius’ as she is wont to do) and it is quite clear that, despite everything in our constitution telling us that this is the most grisly record released in years, it will do very well because berks like dogs, memes and vaguely comedic topical records at this time of year.

Still, better than those pious twerps who bought Rage Against The Machine last year. Anyway, listen to this awful track. You’ll probably end it all after a minute of listening.

See you in the soil.

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Today, Mexico is mostly known as a place you don’t want to vacation for fear of getting kidnapped, murdered, then chopped up and stuffed into a pinata for your little nephew to discover at his sixth birthday party.

If drug cartels ever actually use that technique, please accept out apologies in advance. Seriously. And tell your nephew we’re sorry in advance too. Also tell him that should this ever happen, you’ll be in a better place.

The point being – Mexico is a pretty strange place. It’s jam-packed with all sorts of paranormal mumbo-jumbo. The most recent we’ve learned about is called the Zone of Silence – and it’s complete with disappearing radio transmissions of all sorts and disappearing men in bright yellow slickers.

Paranormally speaking, Mexico is full of all kinds of awesome stuff. Remember the flying witch? What about the UFOs as documented by the Mexican Air Force? Throw Quatzequatel on top of that pile and you’ve really got something.

Well today we’re bringing you another story from the land of salsa and dirt. It’s about a place known as The Zone of Silence. The Zone of Silence is called that because it’s thought to suck up any sort of transmissions emitted – be they radio, cell phone or what have you.

As Mexicolesstraveled.com explains it:

“…in 1970 a faulty American Athena missile fired from the White Sands Missile Base in nearby New Mexico went off course inexplicably and crashed into the mysterious desert region and made the world aware of the unique and apparently unusual properties of the area. Subsequently a team of U.S. Air Force investigators, with Mexican government approval, journeyed to the crash site and made an unexpected discovery. Within an unspecified and sometimes shifting area within the Zone, radio signals fail to travel through the air, creating a type of dark zone. No television, radio, short wave, microwave, or satellite signals seem to penetrate this zone. The name, Zone of Silence, was quickly adopted, and researchers began flocking to the remote location shortly thereafter.”

Of course that’s not about the birth of the zone – just it’s discovery on a larger scale. One instance of the Mexican anomaly dates back to the 1930s. As AboveTopSecret tells us:

“One of the first known instances of “odd behavior” coming from this location…. comes from around the 1930′s…. from a pilot called Francisco Sarabia. Upon flying his aircraft over the mysterious site, he noticed that suddenly, and without any warning, his radio had completely stopped working. The rest of the instruments on the plane had seemingly either stopped working, or had gone completely wild also.”

That sounds quite a bit like the Bermuda Triangle. And although airplane gadgetry running amok is interesting and all – disappearing good Samaritans dressed like Paddington Bear bring everything to another level. This next bit is taken from Strangemag.com:

“On October 13, 1975, Ernesto and Josefina Diaz, an enterprising couple drove into the zone in a brand new Ford pickup to collect unusual rocks and fossils which can be found in great abundance. As they busied themselves in their activity, they noticed that a desert rainstorm was heading toward them. Hoping to avoid being caught in a flash flood, they wisely packed their vehicle up and sped off, but not fast enough to avoid the relentless rain: the track ahead of them turned into a swamp: the pickup was quickly trapped and began to sink in the soft terrain.

“While the couple struggled to keep their vehicle from submerging into the mud, two figures approached them, waving at them amid the torrential rain. Two extremely tall men in yellow raincoats and caps, with unusual but by no means alarming features, offered their assistance to help them get underway again. The men instructed the totally drenched couple to get inside the pickup again while they pushed. Before the couple realized, their vehicle had popped out of the hole and on to firmer ground. When the husband got out of the pickup once more to thank the two men, he realized they were gone. There were no footprints in evidence or any surface feature that could have concealed their departure.”

And there it is all laid out nice & neat. Mexico’s Zone of Silence is indeed a strange place. The government there has even set up some sort of scientific base right smack in the middle of it. They say it’s to study the plant life or something of that sort, but some believe it’s there for far more paranormal reasons.

Us – we think it’s a drug depot. After all – it’s Mexico.

Zane Lowe is an unbearably smug son of a turd and if you disagree with that statement then you’ll probably disagree with most of this article. Ever since the days when he was sitting on a badly green-screened couch, chumming up to the Foo Fighters, Lowe has maintained the air of a man whose every musical opinion is based not on a love of music, but on a love of his own opinions on music.

The Smug-Meister-General of BBC Radio 1′s musical output has a long-running tradition of forcing his opinions down the throats of his listeners by choosing a series of “Masterpiece” albums to play, in their entirety, during his show. Thankfully this only happens once a year.

However, things are different this time.

If Zane Lowe thinks that he can force his idea of what makes a musical classic down our throats then we’re going to do the same thing to our readers, hopefully making you realise that this kind of behaviour isn’t okay. We might strap you all down and force the sounds of The Sugababes’ classic “Hole In The Head” into you, or we might just leave a link and some impassioned words from our writers.

We’ll see how we feel.

For those of you who still care about what the people who employ Chris Moyles think, the Radio 1 press person wrote these words to accompany the email:

Each show will include interviews with the artists and others involved in the making of the album, giving a fascinating insight into the stories behind the songs. Zane also takes a look at how each album since its release has influenced other artists with contributors including Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Blink 182 and Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner.

Chris Martin?! BLINK 182?! ALEX TURNER?! Why, Radio 1, with these leviathans of popular music, you are truly spoiling us but what does the Git-In-Chief have to say about his little collection?

“It gets harder every year to pick them, but this year’s four albums each hold a special place in the record collections of many, whilst at the at the same time influencing on many of today’s most successful and brilliant artists.”

It gets harder because you’re trying so hard to look like you know music Zane. The identity of the albums that Lowe has chosen (by committee) isn’t a secret but we genuinely couldn’t care less what they are so you’ll have to look elsewhere for them. Sorry chumps.

Anyway, taking a leaf out of Lowe’s Big Book of Self-Importance, we’ve come up with a list of our ‘masterpiece’ albums. No committee, no real thought. Everybody in the hecklerspray bedsit got the chance to pick one. It’s only fair.

Dare – The Human League

Mof Gimmers: Synthpop was always a ludicrous (gloriously so) genre, which showcased a retrofuturism hatched up in bedsits and motorway cafes by young men with dreadful haircuts and worse clothes. Then, Phil Oakey & Co. realised that they were sitting on something that was plain futuristic and went about making one of the finest, weirdest pop albums ever made. While ‘Don’t You Want Me’ is standard wedding fodder, it’s still a bona fide masterpiece. Backed by the catchier-than-mumps ‘Love Action’, the fierce ‘Sound Of The Crowd’ and the thunderous ‘Do Or Die’, ‘Dare’ is just about the most perfect pop-art LP ever made.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Check Your Head – Beastie Boys

Si Sharp: ‘Paul’s Boutique’ may have seen them at their lyrical peak, but 1992′s Check Your Head is the grooviest hip-hop album of all time.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Lungs – Florence & The Machine

Joanna Bolouri: Original, beautiful, quirky and downright genius. An album that could bring back longing and joy to an otherwise dead heart.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Beat Me – Electric Eel Shock

Kris Silver: An album that perfectly sums up this band of Japanese outsiders, fusing pop, punk, metal and comedy to make a collection of riotous, yet still catchy, and often funny songs about everything from politics to fishing.

Listen to it on Spotify.

We Are The Pipettes – The Pipettes

Robin Darke: Failing to invigorate the market with a reinvention of the traditional 60s girl group, this album breathes a modern interpretation into a staple of Motown history; catchy, feminism-infused and highly underrated. Get them before they turn eurodance and shi…oh.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Mr Beast – Mogwai

Michael Park: Mogwai have been producing exceptional album after exceptional album right back to 1997′s ‘Young Team’ but this attempt from 2006 is one of their most accessible. Rolling crescendoes and haunting lulls, what’s not to like?

Listen to it on Spotify.

Actually – The Pet Shop Boys

Sophie Hall: It’s the one with ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This?’ on it – a song which would upgrade ‘Disappointing second Hear’say Album’ to ‘Best contribution to sound in the universe’ in a mere moment.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Hootenanny – The Replacements

Lauren Mullineaux: It might not be their finest album, but it captures a band on the brink of unappreciated greatness and showed the self-deprecating maturity of Westerberg’s lyrics.  Besides the man is a genius.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Second Toughest In The Infants – Underworld

Matthew Laidlow: Comprising multiple styles from lounge to drum & bass, progressive electro to full-on acid, Second Toughest In The Infants is an album that sounds as fresh today as when it first came out, especially when coupled with the rambling, confusing lyrics of Karl Hyde.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Get them all on one, big Spotify playlist so that you can impress people at parties.

So there you have it, readers. Nine classic albums from the furthest reaches of musical taste (and decency), all delivered to you without the need for a three hour retrospective starring Chris Martin and Alex Turner.

You might not like all of the albums on our list but do feel free to tell us your ‘masterpiece’ albums in the comments. Or slag off Zane Lowe. It’s really up to you.

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter or face dire consequences or ‘Like’ us on Facebook or BUY ONE OF OUR T-SHIRTS OR WE’LL KILL EVERYONE YOU LOVE… & your little dog too!

Here in the hecklerspray bedsit, we’re often told off for using inappropriate words to describe the girls’ genitalia. In fact, there was a time that Matthew Laidlow had to spend three weeks hooked up to a catheter after asking Joanna Bolouri if he could cop a feel of her “pouch”. After that, Editor Mof came up with some severe guidelines on sexual harassment and the bedsit hasn’t been the same since.

The real question is, how do you refer to your genitals? It’s not because we have any real interest in knowing, you understand. We just want to focus on what’s important in this column. We want to focus on the real issues of the day and do that we need to know what you ladies call your vagina.

Okay, we’ll admit it. We don’t know, nor do we want to know.

After all, what you call your genitals is no business of ours, right? We don’t care that you named your breasts Babs & Windsor after the busty star of ‘Carry On… Whatever’ and we definitely don’t care that you named your vibrator Simon because you have a worrying crush on Simon Cowell that you’ll never admit to in public.

It’s none of our business.

We also definitely don’t care about your hygiene but fans of using Spotify for free will have noticed that it does. Not only does Spotify care about every single one of the things we’ve just mentioned, so does Miranda Hart. Miranda Hart. Come on, you know the one. She has that sitcom where she pretends to be a bumbling fool who gets into wacky, yet mundane situations to the basic mirth of a few Guardian-reading snobs who prefer to be told what they’re allowed to like.

Of course, we know there are two passionate schools of thought on Miranda Hart and her show. People either seem to love it or hate it so, in the interest of balance…

…Miranda Hart! Come on! You know her! She’s wonderful! She does the show Miranda where she preys on her own insecurities to write a wonderfully fun and heartwarming comedy of errors. She was in Hyperdrive as well- it was surprisingly good.

There. Balance. Here at hecklerspray we don’t feel passionately enough either way about Miranda Hart, her show, or all of the comedy awards she’s won to bother making this all about her. That being said, what do you reckon Miranda Hart calls her vagina?

It’s a shower gel that’s designed with the sole intention of making sure your bits stay fresh. Isn’t that nice? Nice and fresh. There’s nothing better than keeping your fandango fresh. Fandango. Fannnnndango. A fandango is a dance performed in triple-time. That implies a really quick in-and-out of the ol’ fandango. It doesn’t imply any pleasure, does it?

Who’s actually calling their vagina their “fandango” anyway? It’s a word that has been altered into the Scottish vernacular as ‘fan-dan’ which means ‘fanny’ which, in turn, means that someone’s being a bit of a berk. It’s not something that we can imagine anyone actually describing their sexual organs as. It’s also the name of a Lucasarts point-and-click adventure game entitled ‘Grim Fandango‘.

The characters in Grim Fandango are all skeletons. Essentially what we’re saying is that- in the bedsit at least- anyone calling their vagina a ‘fandango’ will instantly make us think of a grim skeleton and no-one wants to have their vagina compared to Kate Moss like that, do they?

Also, at no point does Miranda ever refer to it as “yer fanny” in a voice dirtier than a Pirate’s lunchbox so we suppose that’s something. It’s the little miracles that keep us going…

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter or join our Facebook group or BUY ONE OF OUR STUPID T-SHIRTS!

This week’s filthy likes and dislikes.

Folded:

• Scott Mills (annoying as you like on the radio, but fair play to him for making that difficult The World’s Worst Place to Be Gay? programme. Slapped repeatedly with a chicken for goodness sake)
• National Express’ profits are up nearly 40% (great news for them, though undoubtedly means we are all too poor and undignified to get the train)
• Colin Firth not winning Best Actor at the Academy Awards (c’mon let’s get behind this idea and see if the world really does end)
• Born This Way by Lady Gaga (yes it sounds like Express Yourself and yes we don’t care)
• The Social Network, out this week on DVD (populated entirely by characters you won’t give a stuff about. Still worth borrowing a copy off your mate)

Creased:

• That new Radiohead Album, The King of something or other (one step forward, two steps back)
• Jesse J (looks a bit like Katy Perry, sounds a bit bus stop)
• Talking to celebrities (what would you say to someone in the biz you actually admire if you met them? Exactly, your question is pants and/or offensive. He/she has now left and you’ve been escorted from the building)
• Martin Sheen on BBC’s The One Show (seemingly confused but still ace Hollywood megastar meets the very worst UK TV has to offer. Proud)
• Virgin Media’s ‘A More Exciting Place to Live’ advert (so painfully up its own passage that BT almost seems like a better option)

The transfer season may well be over, but the biggest football transfer of the year has just taken place. That’s right, after having their contracts terminated by Sky Sports, public whipping boys Richard Keys and Andy Gray have signed for conference side talkSPORT, in a deal said to be worth roughly the price of a few Fray Bentos pies.

Gray and Keys, or to give them their proper names, Tweedle-Chimp (have you seen how hairy Keys’ hands are? They’re not HD friendly, that’s for sure) and Tweedle-Chump, are to host a new show every weekday from 10am until 1pm.

Presumably the show will primarily involve Gray and Keys explaining the off-side rule to female callers.

A Sky Sports mole, who wished to remain nameless, described news of the signing as, “unbelievable, Jeff.”

We’re not quite sure who Jeff is, but we let the rambling idiot continue, despite the fact he seemed oblivious to the fact Gray and Keys had left. “Really… are they gone?” the mole continued, “I must’ve missed that. I saw them go off but I thought they were bringing a sub on.”

Reports we just made up also state that Gray and Keys’ new show will feature a variety of special guests, which come in the form of legends of the game as well as respected football pundits.

Keys himself did hint at the fact some guests feature more regularly than others, he was heard to exclaim that during rehearsals for the new show, “you could have gone round there any night and found Redknapp hanging out the back of it.”

Gray has found the transition from TV to radio hard though. He’s become paranoid that, without being able to draw a mess of incomprehensible lines across the screen, his analysis of key match points will degrade into a series of strange grunting sounds and attempts to put the microphone down his trousers (with or without the assistance of the nearest female colleague).

With Gray, Keys and Stan Collymore all working for talkSPORT, you’ve got to wonder how scared both the female talkSPORT employees are getting.

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter or join our Facebook group or BUY ONE OF OUR STUPID T-SHIRTS!

How much do you hate Chris Evans? Loads? The level of fury he summons in people is nothing short of staggering. People have been known to pull their eyeballs out and stick them up their arse, just so they can watch themselves kicking themselves in the rear at the very mention of his name.

According to latest audience data, the bespectacled radio jock has lost over one million listeners on his BBC Radio 2 show,  The Chris Evans Breakfast Show.

That’s not good is it?

Of course, Evans replaced the nation’s favourite man-of-tangents, Terry Wogan at the start of the year.

After an initial increase, official RAJAR figures show that Evans has lost 11% of its listeners. However, that’s not to say people at broadcasting house should be killing themselves as Evans’ show is still the most popular breakfast show in the UK.

How about that?

People really, really hate Chris Evans (by the way, you’re invited to slag him off mercilessly in the comments… or praise him, it’s entirely up to you) and yet he still manages to attract a big audience in whatever he does.

A million flies ’round dogshit can’t be wrong, eh?

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter