Without its gleam-toothed, bumpube-haired talisman Simon Cowell, American Idol has found itself in a muddle.

What happens now? Can American Idol survive? Can it bank on Randy Jackson to speak in full sentences from now on? Or Ellen DeGeneres to stop being so tediously nice all the time? Or Kara DioGuardi to finally work out what her point is? Probably not. And that’s why they might all be getting sacked quite soon.

If reports are to be believed, former American Idol producer Nigel Lythgoe might be about to return to the show. And if that happens, it’s expected that his first move will involve firing Randy, Ellen and Kara and bringing in Justin Timberlake, Elton John and Usher as judges. No word on who’ll replace Ryan Seacrest, though. He is being replaced, right? Oh, say that he’s being replaced.

Great news! American Idol is going to be all change this year. Literally every single thing about it will be completely different.

Alright, not every single thing. It’ll still probably be a singing competition. And a handful of singers will progress much further than they deserve to because of some awful family tragedy. And it’ll still be filled with a suffocating level of shamelessly indiscreet product placement. But the judges will definitely all be completely different. Returning American Idol producer Nigel Lythgoe is definitely about to sack the three remaining judges and replace them with more famous ones. Mercury News reports:

Reports said Tuesday that Lythgoe will shake things up if he returns. He is said to favor canning the judge’s panel and bringing in A-list entertainers such as Elton John, Justin Timberlake and Usher as replacements. He’s even reportedly interested in wooing departed judge Paula Abdul back to the fold.

You see? It’s all go. You can’t stop progress like this. On this year’s American Idol Randy Jackson, Kara DioGuardi and Ellen DeGeneres will definitely be out and Elton John, Justin Timberlake and Usher will definitely be in. Definitely.

Except that Justin Timberlake has unequivocally said that he doesn’t want to judge American Idol, and everyone thinks that Elton John will cost too much to hire, and Randy Jackson and Ellen DeGeneres are still under contract with American Idol, and Nigel Lythgoe doesn’t even work for American Idol yet.

But aside from that… oh, who are we kidding, it’ll be exactly the same old crap that it is every year. Sorry for wasting your time.

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Randy Jackson is outraged.

He’s so outraged that he has resorted to using his Twitter account to state that the upcoming auction of brother Michael’s memorabilia by Julien’s Auction House in Los Angeles is in some way bad taste, whilst ignoring the horrifyingly repugnant nature of the chavvy diamond-encrusted self-aggrandising tat that is actually for sale.

He Tweets: “I was in the process of expressing how distasteful it is for Julien Auction House 2 (to) hold an auction on the day my brother passed”.

Admittedly the timing is somewhat unfortunate, but the explanation from Julien’s is that “We have the same summer auction (of pop star memorabilia) at the same time every year.”

Which is surely fair enough and they’re as unhappy about the unwanted additional publicity as the rest of us.

It is not known if Randy Jackson was also referring to the auction’s location at the prestigious Planet Hollywood clip-joint burger bar.

Items up for auction consist of absolutely hideous mank that no sane person would ever want in their home, including a life-size Lego Darth Vader and – honestly – a replica of Han Solo frozen in that carbon stuff at the end of the rubbish Empire Strikes Back. Which will never ever look good as a fireplace ornament.

It is currently understood that the auction will go ahead and idiots with too much money and no understanding of the word ‘distasteful’ will attend.

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American Idol newbie Ellen DeGeneres (who has a name containing more Es than Lil Wayne’s tour bus) and head honcho Simon Cowell have reportedly fallen out behind the scenes of the talent show.

Apparently the frostiness between the pair began after Cowell pitched up an hour and a half late for the first day of Ellen’s tenure as a judge on the show. Problems have worsened recently because – and get this – Ellen thinks that Simon Cowell is quite rude to some of the contestants at times. He’s kept that quiet hasn’t he? How has no one noticed before?

Presumably Elleeeene Deegeneresee has also been surprised at how high-waisted his trousers are, how flat his hair is and how, if you drop something, that object will fall to the ground.

She has been quoted as saying that she believes he has cranked up the insults since her arrival because he knows that she doesn’t like it and he “actually enjoys pissing her off”.

The pair were originally seated next to each other but have since been separated. And if something like that happens, THEY MUST HATE EACH OTHER, RIGHT?

Let’s not have it be said that hecklerspray is a cynical entertainment website, but with this year’s calibre of contestant being less than impressive, it is quite handy for producers to have a hook, isn’t it?

Not content with an apparent feud with a current judge, Ellen is also involved in a row with a potential future judge. Shock Jock (you have to precede his name with those two words) Howard Stern‘s name has been mooted as a replacement for Cowell, much to the chagrin of the E-hoarding DeGeneres. Although you can see why after he said on his radio show, “I wouldn’t work with that fucking dummy on that karaoke show”.

These little stories must be made up, I mean – if you worked on American Idol, it’s Randy Jackson that you’d hate isn’t it, Dawg?

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Poor Kara DioGuardi. All she wants is to sit around pointlessly on the American Idol judging panel saying nothing of interest.

But everyone makes it so hard for her. Simon Cowell has had his run-ins with Kara. Paula Abdul disliked Kara so much that she ended up leaving American Idol after one just season with her. And the public in general eye Kara with suspicion, knowing that her most significant contribution to American Idol will be the ghastly greeting card jingle she’ll write for the winner.

But at least Kara DioGuardi can make friends with the new American Idol guest judges, right? Like last night’s Katy Perry? Who took every opportunity to snipe at Kara? And at one point threatened to throw a drink in her face? Oh.

Now that Simon Cowell is definitely leaving American Idol, it’s hard to watch the guest judges without speculating on how well they’d do as his replacement. Victoria Beckham would make a lousy Simon, for instance, because she tends to like Otzi The Iceman during an ill-advised bout of sexual experimentation. Mary J Blige would also be a bad choice, in case she lost her temper and destroyed everything in sight with the power of her mighty biceps. And, unless American Idol producers want Simon Cowell’s replacement to be unstoppably horny all the time, Shania Twain is out too.

But last night’s American Idol guest judge Katy Perry? Different story altogether. It turns out that Katy Perry is just like Simon. Simon Cowell works so well on shows like American Idol because he acts as a proxy to the audience – if we think a contestant is awful, so will he. That’s why he’s successful. Last night Katy Perry also acted as a viewer proxy, except she took the role to its logical conclusion.

Because if you were an American Idol judge, you wouldn’t just criticise the contestants, would you? You’d criticise the whole show. You’d tire of all the endless sob stories. You’d get tetchy with Kara DioGuardi. You’d tape up Randy Jackson‘s mouth and kick him down a stairwell. And, brilliantly, Katy Perry did all of these things during last night’s American Idol. Apart from the Randy Jackson thing, obviously, but if she gets Simon’s job it’s just a matter of time.

Katy, like Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell before her, ended up butting heads with Kara DioGuardi last night – with the key exchange coming after an audition by Chris Golightly, who was never hugged by his mother or something. MTV picks up the story moments after Kara said that Golightly’s rendition of Stand By Me would cause the judges to “look back on this audition and go ‘Wow’”:

The latter’s reaction to Golightly’s story elicited a bit of a catfight with Perry, who appeared to clash with DioGuardi several times. “This is not a Lifetime movie, sweetheart,” Perry said. “He has an amazing story,” DioGuardi countered. “He has an amazing story, but you have to have talent,” Perry said. “Everybody has amazing stories.”

The Katy Perry/Kara DioGuardi sniping continued for much of the episode, and culminated in Katy’s threat to throw a glass of Coca Cola into Kara’s face. See? She even cares about the American Idol sponsors. This woman is perfect.

So it goes without saying that Katy Perry should definitely be given Simon Cowell’s old American Idol job next year, just on the off-chance that she’ll lose her temper with Kara DioGuardi during one of the live shows and start repeatedly pounding Kara’s head against the judging desk until she has to be physically restrained by Ellen DeGeneres or something. It just makes so much sense.

Oh, and Avril Lavigne was also a guest judge on American Idol last night. Do whatever you want with that knowledge.

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Somewhere, right now, Randy Jackson is rocking backwards and forwards, giggling to himself like a giddy toddler.

To be fair, that’s no surprise. We like to think that ‘rocking backwards and forwards, giggling to himself like a giddy toddler’ is one of Randy Jackson’s three default modes, along with ‘pointing at things and shouting the word “dog”‘ and ‘unsuccessfully trying to high-five his own shadow’. But we digress – this time Randy Jackson is giggling to himself because it looks like American Idol just became The Randy Jackson Funtime Hour.

Why? Because new American Idol judge Ellen DeGeneres has said that if Simon Cowell leaves the show, she’ll leave too. And Simon is almost definitely leaving. That just leaves Randy, that other woman, and the two nightmarish, boggle-eyed, semi-melted ventriloquist dummies that Randy is keen to fill the vacant panel seats with. We can’t wait.

Ask yourself this – what makes American Idol popular? It’s obviously not Ryan Seacrest, because he only makes things unnecessarily distressing. It’s not the singers, because if we wanted to hear atonal, high-pitched cover versions of Ring Of Fire that bear zero resemblance to the original, then we’d go and burn down a Johnny Cash impersonator convention. And it’s not the the bit where all the contestants get to sing songs in Ford showrooms, although it’s always fun to watch people’s souls withering up in front of you.

No, what makes American Idol popular is the the judging panel. It’s got the perfect mix of personalities – Simon Cowell the acerbic authoritarian, Randy Jackson the confusingly enthusiastic dog-fixated cheerleader and Paula Abdul the dribbling, incomprehensible dimwit.

Or at least that was the case. Now there’s a fourth American Idol judge whose only role is to write piss-weak Gillette jingles for the winner to release as singles, and Paula Abdul has been replaced by Ellen DeGeneres. But that’s OK, because Simon Cowell is the glue that holds the American Idol judging panel together, and he’s not going anywhere is he?

What’s that? He is? Well, never mind. We can cope. American Idol is still American Idol, even if the judges are made of the star of unwatched 1996 movie Mr Wrong, a man who everyone wrongly thinks is Michael Jackson‘s brother and one other anonymous woman who doesn’t really have a point. At least it’s stable. It’s not as if other judges will leave just because Simon Cowell is leaving, is it? Is it, Ellen DeGeneres in the newest issue of Entertainment Weekly?

“If Simon goes, I go!” declares DeGeneres, prompting Cowell to laugh — and squirm a bit. “Oh, Ellen!… That’s quite a tricky situation you’ve put me into! I think right now we have to concentrate on the next season and just get through that and worry about everything else afterwards.”

Now, there’s a chance that Ellen was joking. But you know what? Let her leave. And let the other woman leave American Idol too. And Ryan Seacrest. And the band. And the singers. Fox is committed to continuing American Idol no matter who leaves, so this could be Randy Jackson’s moment. Imagine – a show where Randy Jackson introduces Randy Jackson, who comes on and sings Addicted To Love with a banjo and a kazoo so that Randy Jackson can bounce up and down in his seat and scream “YOU’RE GOING TO HOLLYWOOD, BABY!” into a hand mirror for 45 minutes afterwards.

Well we’d watch it, anyway.

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When Michael Jackson died the world let out a gasp.

Some did so out of a profound sadness, some out of shock, and some just because now their wee sons could go outside unattended.

Not long after, people started worrying about Jackson’s estate. Who would get his Beatles rights? Who’d inherit the dusty set of Captain EO - and what was to happen to his pickled penis?

We heard it’s had kind of a dill/vinegar wrap on since he was twelve.

It ends up the will that made such material designations – according to Randy Jackson – it has a forged signature.

It’s a rough time to be MJ. Not only have all his songs been stolen by Hispanics like 18 years before he recorded them, but at this very moment he’s probably realising that being surrounded by senior citizen women with a Jesus-juice allergy most likely implies that wherever he is – it certainly isn’t his heaven.

A harsh awakening, no doubt.

Well we only wish we could tell him that his name is still wrapped in turmoil down here too. Sure, we finally got the ultimate destination of his children figured out – but what about the rest of his crap? You know, like his pickled penises. And his pants.

It seems some nefarious fellow decided to ensure those pickled penises and pants don’t get to the person whom Michael had intended at all. We know this because it’s recently been made clear that MJ’s 2002 will has a forged signature gracing the long line at the bottom.

That’s what Randy Jackson thinks anyway. TMZ sums things up:

“Randy Jackson claims Michael Jackson could not have signed his 2002 will, because he was 2,475 air miles away from the place the document was supposedly inked. According to the will, it was signed on July 7, 2002 at 5:00 PM in Los Angeles. Randy Jackson tells TMZ he has proof MJ was in New York from July 5 through July 9, on a campaign against Sony honcho Tommy Mottola claiming Mottola had a thing against Black artists.”

Hecklerspray thinks this is most likely a matter of Randy not getting any monkeys out of the deal. Imagine, your brother Michael Jackson dies and you don’t get any monkeys. We’d probably complain too.

We’d complain until we at least got a walrus. Michael probably had dozens of those stashed away. Whoever the proper walrus-inheritor is probably won’t even miss just one.

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Like most of the planet, we’ve spent the last few weeks weeping hysterically along to the words of Dirty Diana, or turning up at beat poetry nights to deliver a sobbed version of Billie Jean with a simple bass drum accompaniment.

Our grief, it seemed, was never going to end. At one point we even considered having Michael Jackson‘s strange clown face tattooed onto our own faces, so that we could spend the rest of our lives singing Man in the Mirror in front of a mirror. To the man in the mirror.

And then we realised two things. Firstly, we realised that we prefer Prince. Secondly, there are lots of other Jacksons to fall in love with. “Could one of them replace Michael?” we whispered to a passing old man. His silence told us everything we needed to know. Yes. One of them could. But which one?

Without even a second thought, we immediately discounted both Janet and LaToya on the grounds that both of them are women. In any case, Janet is probably a bit too successful in her own right, so if we replaced Michael with her, we’d have to find someone to replace Janet. That’s too much work. And LaToya is a little bit slutty. On the plus side, she does have exactly the same face as Michael. Still, no girls, we decided. That was the rule.

Tito was also dismissed early on. Even back in the heady days of the Jackson Five, he was rumoured to be “the quiet one”, which is an astonishing feat. A bit like being considered the gayest member of the Village People. His stage dynamism let him down too. You’d never catch MJ biting his bottom lip during a boring guitar solo.

Next for the chop was Marlon Jackson, whose god-awful foray into solo work was so abominable that he ended up jacking in music altogether and becoming an estate agent.

Then Randy was thrown out, not on the grounds that he didn’t deserve a shot, but for sharing a name with the fat American Idol judge. If we were going to flounce around the world telling people that we’re massive Randy Jackson fans, we wouldn’t want to waste time explaining to every second idiot that we’re talking about the one who replaced Jermaine in the Jackson Five, not the one who makes barking noises when young homosexuals stay pitch-perfect throughout a Barry Manilow recital.

And thus we were left to chose between Jackie – the oldest of The Jackson Five – and Jermaine, who will forever be fondly remembered as the silent one in the racist edition of Celebrity Big Brother. Both men have the same childlike Michael Jackson voice, but Jermaine just nicked it for his stronger pop credentials, having forged something of a successful solo pop career for himself back in the olden days. Thus Jackie was kicked to the curb like an old hooker.

So, without any further ado, ladies and gentlemen, we give you THE NEW MICHAEL JACKSON – JERMAINE JACKSON! WOO!

Who else is feeling MUCH BETTER now?

For more gold like this, visit Josh’s real site, Interestment. It’s just like this, but more.

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American Idol is really hotting up at the moment, what with all that singing and crying and blah blah blah.

But the big question is, who’s going to win? It’d be sensible to ask the American Idol judges. But who? Not Simon because his teeth might burn a hole into your retinas. Not Paula because you’d want a legible answer and not the new judge because she looks so much like the photographer from Just Shoot Me that it honestly freaks us out.

So that leaves Randy Jackson. And he says a boy will win American Idol. So that’s that.

This week’s American Idol has been real edge-of-your-seat stuff, hasn’t it? Seriously, wow. Getting to see which singers we’re allowed to forget about instantly and getting to see which singers we can forget about in a month when they’re inevitably voted off – with the glimmer of a chance that we won’t be allowed to forget about one of them until precisely three seconds after their debut inspirational power-ballad single is released – is absolutely entertainment at it’s best. Also, we have pathetically low standards.

But you know what? All we want to do is to skip forward a bunch of months and discover who the winner of American Idol will be. This is down to our enormous impatience as human beings as well as our deep – yet entirely rational – phobia of useless Whitney Houston covers.

Luckily for us, AOL is just as intolerant of American Idol as we are, so it’s gone straight to the source to find out who’ll win. Well, not the source as such – it went to Randy Jackson, the judge who looks as though he knows slightly less about American Idol as the rest of us but is still really excited by it nevertheless.

And guess what? Randy Jackson seems certain that a boy will win this year’s American Idol:

“I just think for some reason this year…the boys are just on a whole ‘nother level. I mean, there are some great girls as well. I’ve been saying it — I said it before them [Simon and Paula], and you can quote me… These kids are different than any other season we’ve had, and I think that these boys are some of the most talented we’ve ever had.”

And, of course, one of the boys that Randy Jackson is probably referring to is Danny Gokey – the American Idol contestant who has the bland looks, tragic emotional background and instant forgetability of a winner. Honestly, the American Idol producers want Danny Gokey to win so much that they’re a whisker away from showing footage of him healing the blind with the power of his touch alone.

Anyway, it’s a gamble for Randy Jackson to bet on a boy to win American Idol so early – in the past girls have won the most seasons of American Idol, followed by boys and then Taylor Hicks who, as everybody knows, is an asexual cartoon gold prospector from the 1850s.

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Paula Abdul hasn't released an album since 1995, and the world has changed a lot in the meantime.

For example, duetting with cartoon cats is no longer in fashion, drum sounds no longer have to echo for 30 seconds and also the popularity of the internet means that people can discover how bad your new songs are before they've even paid for them. But that hasn't stopped Paula Abdul from recording a brand new album.

Paula Abdul hasn't had a UK top 20 since 1992. We get the feeling it'll stay that way.

It may come as no surprise that Paula Abdul is a woman with several fingers in a lot of pies. What may be surprising is that none of the pies are filled with psychotropic drugs that can be absorbed through the fingers. They're filled with, um, multimedia opportunities. Or something.

Obviously Paula Abdul is a fixture on American Idol, where she gets to dole out all kinds of advice to singers – some that may or may not be delivered sexually – in the form of a confused old lady who can't stop giggling for long enough to work out where she is. Then there's Hey Paula, the reality TV show which proves that, actually, Paula Abdul is like that all the time.

And then there's also film work – Paula Abdul choreographed that Bratz movie that nobody watched – and occasional appearances on the internet which mainly seem to involve gigantic sobbing breakdowns. But what about music? Yes, Paula Abdul may have been a pop sensation 20 years ago, but she's given all of that up now, surely.

No way! Paula Abdul's musical career is back! Whether you like it or not.

You may have noticed yesterday – between the commercials and the Tom Petty snoozefest and the actual sport – that Paula Abdul performed at the Super Bowl. Well, OK, maybe 'performed' is an overstatement. Paula Abdul mimed a song that sounded like a Britney Spears B-side demo at the Super Bowl and staggered around a bit. Have a look…

But that wasn't actually a Paula Abdul song – it's from Randy Jackson's new album. But the experience was so much fun for Paula Abdul that she's decided to to a full album herself. Access Hollywood reports:

After releasing her first single in ten years, the dance techno tune, “Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow”, former pop star and “American Idol” judge Paula Abdul announced on her official Web site that an entire album is coming this summer. The album will reportedly be titled, “Abdulmatic.” The collaboration on the single was a mutual decision according to Paula, who told Access Hollywood, "I didn't have to twist his arm and I didn't have to pay him and I didn't have to do the old kick-ball change, kick-ball change, back flip."

Not. A. Clue.

Whether Paula Abdul's new album will mean she has to leave to American Idol is unknown, but if Dance Like There's No Tomorrow is any indication she might have to. After all, it's going to be hard to take musical criticism from someone whose singing voice has been processed so much that she's ended up sounding like Stephen Hawking's robot wife being goosed by a toaster. 

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Paula Abdul Set To Release Brand New Album – Access Hollywood