Here’s some good news – New Lindsay Lohan has regressed. Long live Old Lindsay Lohan. Or New Old Lindsay Lohan.

Or something. Anyway, Lindsay Lohan is brilliant again. Hooray! Just a few days after she was hauled to court, Lindsay Lohan has regressed again and apparently decided to take a restraining order out against her father in case he decides to kidnap her. It’s just like the good old days!

Although let’s just pray that Lindsay Lohan doesn’t keep regressing too much – if she regresses back to her childhood then she’ll start making films that aren’t terrible again, and where’s the fun in that?

We hinted at it last week when she was ordered to court for alcohol-related matters, but now it’s official – Lindsay Lohan has started being interesting again. She’s emerged from her lesbian phase and – if the stories about her and Balthazar Getty are true – defaulted back to the phase where she just has a load of disinterested sex with a bunch of desperately unsuitable men all the time.

But most importantly, Lindsay Lohan has fallen out with her dad Michael Lohan again. Actually, no, we take that back – she hasn’t fallen out with him so much as started to take a restraining order out against him because she’s paranoid about being kidnapped by him. And, to be fair, she might have a point. Just last week Michael Lohan told X17:

“If I can’t get a conservatorship, then I’m going to take her to an undisclosed location and get her straight. But I know I’m gonna get charged with kidnapping.”

Although that seems unusually on the button for a kidnapping threat, Lindsay Lohan should know by know that her father would never do anything to hurt her. Just because he’s a washed-up ex-jailbird absentee father with a proven history of telling the press every last secret about Lindsay’s private life in a harrowing effort to ride the coattails of her constantly diminishing fame until she drops dead, it doesn’t mean that Michael Lohan is a bad person. Oh, wait, sorry. It might do. Sorry.

It’s hard to know who to side with here, isn’t it? On one hand Michael Lohan is saying that he only wants the best for his daughter. On the other hand, the thought of spending any amount of time in an undisclosed location with Michael Lohan makes us want to start systematically removing the skin from our face and torso with our fingernails. Then there’s Lindsay Lohan – she might have a troubled relationship with her dad, but is seeking a restraining order against a member of your own family really necessary?

After some consideration, we’ve decided that we can’t side with Lindsay Lohan or Michael Lohan here. Instead, we’re going to side with Dina Lohan. Or, to be more accurate, we’re going to side with Dina Lohan as soon as she decides to never have any contact with the rest of the human race ever again. As would anyone.

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And what’s Unbearably Dirty-Looking Nobsack Lesson One? That you don’t let them near you. That’s why Kirsten Dunst has just got restraining order against Christopher Smith, a man who was allegedly caught trespassing on her property.

Now everyone’s happy. Kirsten Dunst no longer has to live in fear, and Christopher Smith can just start stalking things that remind him of Kirsten Dunst, like a drunk horse that’s fallen face-first down a giant flight of concrete stairs or something.

Whisper it, but it looks like the fun’s gone out of stalking lately. Sure, once stalkers could get their kicks by sending packets of dildos to Britney Spears or hurling bags of screwdrivers onto John Cusack’s lawn, but the whole stalking game became a little bit more depressing after that American Idol contestant killed herself outside Paula Abdul’s house.

Now the stalkers sort of seem like their hearts aren’t in it any more. Just look at Christopher Smith. He was arrested last month because he apparently showed up at Kirsten Dunst’s house and claimed that he had a ’spiritual connection’ with her. That’s it. He didn’t threaten to blow up an airport in her name. He didn’t draw any pictures of Kirsten Dunst digging his grave in a wedding dress and giggling. He just said that he had a spiritual connection with her.

That’s not so unusual. We’ve got a spiritual connection with Kirsten Dunst, too – Kirsten Dunst says she wants to give up acting, which is actually something we’ve heavily lobbied for since the release of Marie Antoinette. See? That’s about as spiritually-connected as it gets.

Anyway, spooked by Smith showing up at her house and being weird, Kirsten Dunst has taken out a restraining order out against him, as E! Online reports:

A Los Angeles judge has granted a permanent protective order against the man who paid an unannounced visit to Dunst’s Hollywood home professing a “spiritual connection” with her. Superior Court Judge Richard E. Rico prohibited Christopher Smith, 25, from coming anywhere near the actress, her personal assistant, her residences and her places of business. The L.A. native is also barred from owning or possessing a gun.

What? Smith’s been banned from owning a gun? That seems a mite unfair – by all means go ahead and ban him from going anywhere near Kirsten Dunst, but if you take away his gun, you’re stripping him of his ability to partake in perfectly normal Kirsten Dunst fan activities, like buying 100 copies of Spider-Man 3 on DVD, piling them up outside and unloading round after round into them while screaming “YOU BITCH! I’LL KILL YOU, YOU BITCH!” and that’s a stalker’s bread and butter.

Actually, speaking of Spider-Man 3, we’re pretty sure that that’s the reason Smith allegedly became so infatuated with Kirsten Dunst – there can’t be a man alive who didn’t see that scene of her making an omelette with James Franco and dancing the Twist in a painfully self-conscious way and thought “That’s the woman I want to be with!” Right? Right? No? Just Christopher Smith? Oh. Actually that might explain a lot.

But anyway, Kirsten Dunst’s stalkee days are probably at an end now, if reports of her being written out of Spider-Man 4 and 5 hold any water. Sure, there’s a chance that she might get the odd unwanted drop of attention from people who liked her in How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, but they’re all probably the sort of weirdos who display their love by hiding in a bush with a sniper rifle trained constantly at your head, so that’s nothing to worry about.

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Unless, you know, those fans keep turning up at his house without permission because they’re fanatical veterans’ rights activists with a history of psychiatric issues who keep shutting down freeways by allegedly waving flags and guns around.

That’s bad news for Edward Van Tassel – he’s exactly that, and he’s been given a restraining order forcing him to stay away from Tom Cruise. Phew, that was close – it’s a good job these mentally ill gun-toting rogue soldiers respect court orders so diligently, eh?

Tom Cruise’s powers are perfectly self-evident to everyone. He can help car crash victims better than people who know how to help car crash victims, he can impregnate virgins young enough to be his daughter and he can also take any number of sure-fire hit movies and make people not want to watch them just because of who he is. It’s incredible.

But Tom Cruise is only human – or part-human and part-Jesus alien or whatever – and so sometimes his powers fail him and he needs outside help. Like when mentally-troubled Iraq veterans come to his house and try to hand him slightly unsettling letters, which is the case with Edward Van Tassel.

Van Tassel is a former soldier who gained notoriety recently for walking into a radio studio in fatigues and a mask with a gun as a massively ill-advised Halloween stunt, and for shutting down a freeway by standing on an overpass waving a flag and a gun around. Oh, and for spooking Tom Cruise out by visiting him with letters and books and friendship requests and whatnot now, too.

But it’s OK because, as E! Online reports, Tom Cruise has managed to get a restraining order taken out on Van Tassel:

Darryl Perlin, senior deputy district attorney for Santa Barbara County, tells E! News the order issued Wednesday bars 28-year-old Edward Van Tassel from having any contact or communications with the 46-year-old Cruise. It also forbids Van Tassel from coming anywhere near the actor’s Beverly Hills estate. “He’s definitely a threat. He’s a celebrity stalker,” said Perlin.

We know what you’re thinking – why would anyone want to stalk a film star as creepy and unapproachable as Tom Cruise when it’d be easier just to draw macabre pictures of Uma Thurman or send Britney Spears a big box of dildos?

Well, given that Edward Van Tassel is a veterans’ rights activist, and in Born On The Fourth Of July Tom Cruise played a veteran struggling to come to terms with civilian life, there’s a good chance that that’s the link.

Or maybe Edward Van Tassel just really, really liked Lions For Lambs. We suppose statistically someone had to. No wonder the poor chap seems so disturbed.

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Not only did she star as Tony Danza’s midget lover on the eighties sitcom Hey You Guys, Who Is The Boss Here?, but more recently she was also in some show where she played the ghost of Shannon Doherty or something.

We thought we might have some of those details wrong, but on review everything actually looks pretty accurate. Possibly.

But just because we don’t remember the specifics doesn’t mean nobody does – one fan, for instance, just walked miles and miles through some woods to try to force an in-house meeting with her.

Sometimes 54-year-old guys just get lonely. Take our Uncle Bernie for instance – we assume he’s lonely, but that’s only because the last time we saw him he was running for an open train door with a handkerchief-stick slung over his shoulder. We haven’t heard from him since, but the travelling band of gay hobos he took up with wrote once and told us he pretty much keeps to himself.

Poor Bernie. Ever since kindergarten you could see this coming.

So we heard.

Also take Jeff Turner, a man who might not be gay or filthy, but likely expresses his emptiness by recording all of Nick at Night, probably on VHS, and then playing it back in super slow motion – pausing whenever Alyssa Milano pops on screen wearing a particularly attractive side-pony tail.

This is all assumption of course – but it certainly seems like a safe one – at least according to All Headline News:

“Former “Charmed” star Alyssa Milano has requested a temporary restraining order against an “obsessed and mentally unstable fan.” Per the court documents the actress filed on Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Jeff Turner, 54, tried to break into her home on two occasions. He also made repeated attempts to contact Milano over the past two years…Turner’s most recent attempt to break into the 35-year-old actress’ home was on November 16, when he was confronted by her agent, David Bugliari, and her uncle, Mitch Carp. He told the two that he was a friend of the family and admitted to them that he had “bypassed around the guard gate and hiked through the woods” to get in.”

You know to be fair – Milano is a tough read. Whenever she’s on the TV in Turner’s basement apartment she probably beckons him with her eyes. Then when he does as she’s obviously telling him – which is probably something like – “Pry open one of my windows and then wait in my room until I find you comfortably lounging in my lavender bathrobe,” people freak and the cops are called. Why is it always back and forth with these women?

Milano should be thankful – at least her stalker is alive. Paula Abdul is gonna have to spend the rest of her life wondering what could have been. Why is it celebrities only want what they can’t have? Why even Jennifer Garner – there she had a perfectly nice nutter who never wanted anything more than to sniff a pair of her dirty, inside-out pants, and what does she do?

We’re not sure what she did, actually. It was probably something legal.

Don’t be a Garner, Milano – or before you know it you’ll be an Abdul. And then of course you might get billed by the city when they come by to clean up your guy’s body… and there’s the fees for the incineration – or a taxidermist should you decide to go that route. Those restraining orders can really add up fast, financially speaking.

And these are not the times for additional bills, what with the current state of Wall Street and what-not.

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The interview is to be broadcast tonight – a fact which has got Christie Brinkley into a flap. Christie Brinkley has tried to take a restraining order out against Peter Cook because he’s due to have their children this weekend, and she’s worried that he’ll spend that entire weekend showing them his interview.

But a judge has rejected the restraining order, partly because Peter Cook plans to take the children on a trip this weekend. But what Christie Brinkley doesn’t know is that the trip is to the television department of an electrical goods store, where the children will see their father explaining what a cold-hearted witch their mother is on 50 giant HDTV screens at once, and all in crystal-clear surround sound. Eat that, Uptown Girl!

What sort of a world do we live in when a divorced man who had extramarital sex with a teenager can’t even go on TV and whine that he only did it because his wife didn’t hug him without repercussions, eh?

It makes us feel for Peter Cook, it really does. True, his marriage to supermodel Christie Brinkley may have ended when he shagged an 18-year-old girl he met at a toyshop and then started spending $3,000 on porn a month, but that doesn’t mean he’s not allowed his own highly-publicised television interview where he blames Christie Brinkley for everything, does it?

That interview is broadcast tonight, and it already looks a doozy. Not least because Peter Cook gets to check his self-awareness at the door and try to explain to the world that he’s not a pervert, but also because there’s a bit in it where he tears up and calls all the stuff he’s been accused of “the elephant in the room for my kids” even though – if we were Peter Cook’s children – we’d quite like an elephant in the room to distract us from the mental image of our dad constantly beating himself off in front of the computer where we do our homework.

However, two people who won’t be watching Peter Cook’s Christie Brinkley interview are Brinkley children Sailor and Jack. The main reason that they won’t be watching the interview is because they’re young and all the close-up shots of Barbara Walters‘ nodding cadaverous head will scar them for life, but also because Peter Cook is taking them away on a trip tonight to keep them away from the interview.

That’s not good enough for Christie Brinkley, though. She’s already sent a screechy retaliatory statement about Peter Cook after news of the interview got out, but now she’s followed that up by filing a restraining order attempting to keep Peter Cook away from the children in case he decides to show them the interview anyway.

But it was all in vain, because a judge has rejected the restraining order, giving Peter Cook’s attorney the perfect opportunity to call Christie Brinkley a stinkybum poohead in the process, as E! Online reports:

“They wanted to suspend Cook’s visitation for this coming weekend because they had word that there was going to be an interview with Barbara Walters tomorrow evening with Mr. Cook, and they didn’t want the children exposed to that,” Cook’s attorney, James Winkler, tells E! News. “It was a silly application. Obviously, there are TVs all over the place, and Mr. Cook had no intention of exposing his children to any interview.”

Yes, those children are never going to find anything out about that interview at all, unless they happen to watch TV, read a book, pick up a magazine or look at anything on the internet in the next few weeks. Talk about lucky escapes!

Having said that, though, we’re glad that Christie Brinkley’s restraining order against Peter Cook was rejected. Peter Cook would clearly never dream of sitting his children down and make them watch his TV interview. Because, come on, that’d really bite into his wanking time, wouldn’t it.

We just ask as it’s quite funny, seeing as Britney Spears’ one-time sidekick is named Osama and all the popular press and the like refer to him as ‘Sam’. If it weren’t for some events in September of 2001 then maybe hecklerspray would accept that this were simply a nickname, or shortened version of his given name. As it is, however, Osama Lutfi is clearly referred to as Sam for fear of being likened to a terrorist.

Silly as that may be, he doesn’t exactly help his cause when he gets the master of mental – that’s Britney, fact fans – to put out a restraining order on him. Which is exactly what happened. But fret not, as Britney no longer wishes for it to be law that he can’t come near her! Thank the almighty for that.

Osama Lutfi was at Britney’s side during a fair bit of her much-publicised spiral of insanity earlier this year, with Britney’s own mother accusing ‘he with the safely Americanised shortened name’ of holding her daughter hostage, drugging her and controlling her finances.

The obvious solution to that problem was, of course, to put Britney’s father, James, in charge of her personal life, keeping control on her movements as well as controlling her finances. This was all on top of – just to be on the safe side – putting out a restraining order on Osama.

Lutfi, that is – not bin Laden. That would be a bit daft.

For once it would seem like Britney had done something pretty sane – a man apparently contributed in an incredibly negative fashion to her life, so she got the law to tell him he can’t come within 250 yards of her. Fair play. Then she decides that she doesn’t want to renew the restraining order, but still doesn’t want him to come anywhere near hear… whu?

Ahhh – it all makes sense. Britney’s papa will just stand in the way of the door, telling Osama something like ’she’s practising her VMA routine’, ‘she’s gone to see the kids‘ or ’she’s going a bit mad for the TV cameras again’. It will all work out perfectly, we’re sure.

The attorney who must be earning a warehouse full of of cash by dealing with Britney said these words:

“Britney has made clear to everyone that she does not want to be further harassed or contacted in any way by Osama ‘Sam’ Lutfi, now or at anytime in the future.”

Take that, Osama! Hecklerspray hasn’t even had a pointless restraining order off Britney Spears in the first place, and we follow her even more than you apparently do. We even have the shape of her face burned onto our skin, and we don’t have to change our names for fear of idiotic reactions. The system works!

Whereas it would be nice to get an irate, aggressive and downright shocking reaction from Osama Lutfi, threatening to pursue Miss Spears to the ends of the earth (or just push her dad out of the way), we have to settle with what he told the AP:

“Mr. Lutfi and Mr. Spears have mutually agreed in private that no hearing or order is necessary at this time.”

And how are we meant to sensationalise that? Bugger it – he probably still has a crap beard anyway.

It’s not going to happen any time soon, though, because the restraining order that Britney Spears’ family took out against Sam Lutfi has been extended yet again – he’s not allowed within 250 yards of Britney Spears until at least August.

Obviously the courts have decided that the restraining order extension is in the best interests of Britney Spears’ well-being, but it sure is a kick in teeth for those of us who wanted to see Britney Spears and Sam Lutfi star in a hilarious Odd Couple-style television sitcom any time soon. Curses.

We’re not sure if anyone is selling tickets for it, but we’d love to be there when Britney Spears finally gets to meet her former manager Sam Lutfi again.

Sure, the conversation might be a little stilted at first – “So, what have you been up to?” “Oh, you know, crashed my car, got locked up in a mental hospital, the usual” – but it wouldn’t be long before they were sharing raucous anecdotes about the good old days, like when Sam Lutfi mashed drugs into Britney’s food and then phoned up Barbara Walters to tell her that Britney was a psycho.

Oh, those were the days alright, but don’t think that they’ll happen again any time soon. Britney Spears’ family has decided to once again extend the restraining order against Sam Lutfi. And, as Reuters reports, it means that Britney Spears won’t be able to the experience of delicious anti-psychotic drugs smooshed into her Cheetos until the height of summer at the very earliest:

A Los Angeles judge on Wednesday extended a restraining order against Britney Spears’ former self-styled manager until July 31, under an agreement between attorneys for both sides. “We believe this is in the best interests of Miss Spears,” her attorney, Vivian Thoreen, told Superior Court Judge Aviva K. Bobb in asking for the order. Lutfi was not in court but his spokesman, Michael Sands, said he had agreed to extend the restraining order. “Sam and the family are cooperating and trying to do what’s best for Britney,” Sands said in a statement.

Not that Sam Lutfi will have to adjust too much to the restraining order – it’s been in place since February and has already been extended once before – so all it means is that Sam Lutfi just has to remain at least 250 yards away from Britney Spears all the time some more.

That’s actually harder than it sounds. 250 yards is quite the radius, and it wouldn’t be difficult to inadvertently stray within that zone. That’s why we suggest that Sam Lutfi learns exactly where Britney Spears is at all times and stays precisely 251 yards away from her, even it means sleeping in his car to do so.

Obviously to make sure that he’s always exactly 251 yards away from Britney Spears, Sam Lutfi would need a high-powered pair of binoculars, and probably some form of projectile weaponry to stop others from moving him along. But we’ve looked at the situation from every angle, and this really does seem to be the only way.

Read more:

Britney Spears’ ex-manager remains under restraining order – Reuters

But the tide has turned now, and Sam Lutfi is no longer needed in Britney Spears' orbit. And obviously by 'no longer needed' we mean 'legally required to stay at least 250 metres out of it for the next month'.

Yes, Britney Spears' friend and former sort-of manager Sam Lutfi has agreed to a new 30-day restraining order in order to hold off a permanent one. It'll be hard for Lutfi to cope without seeing Britney Spears for another month, but that's mainly because it's only the dangerously mentally ill who can hold conversations with him without being distracted by his horrible half-beard that looks like a big hairy dribble.

Looking at Britney Spears' spectacular downfall, you're confronted with no end of worthy blame-targets. Like Britney's parents, for example, who so clearly favoured professional success over personal happiness that they denied Britney the chance to learn normal social interaction. Then there's the media and the public, who can't stop consuming Britney Spears even though it's to the clear detriment of her mental health.

And then there's Kevin Federline, who just seems like a bit of a dick.

But according to Britney Spears' parents, the main culprit for Britney acting so bananas lately is Sam Lutfi, the man who's been accused of mashing drugs into Britney's food, conspiring with the paparazzi to have Britney followed all the time and phoning up The View to tell everyone what a crazy old nutter Britney Spears is.

Sam Lutfi has already been hit with one restraining order to keep him away from Britney Spears, but now he's just landed another one, as the Associated Press reports:

Britney Spears' friend Sam Lutfi has agreed to stay away from the pop star for at least another month, delaying a hearing that could have made a restraining order against him permanent, Lutfi's spokesman said Sunday. Lutfi and conservators for Spears' estate agreed to have the restraining order extended for 30 days, said Lutfi spokesman Michael Sands. "There is an agreement between Sam Lutfi and the conservatorship for the next 30 days," Sands said. "Both parties are happy and will continue to work together to further resolve any issues that may have come up in the past."

In many ways, the restraining order against Sam Lutfi makes perfect sense. Since Lutfi left the scene, Britney has managed to scrape together some semblance of a normal life under the tight rule of her father. If the two things are linked, then we can see why the order is a good idea. But not a completely good idea.

After all, if Sam Lutfi was still Britney Spears' main adviser then would we have still seen a Britney Spears cameo on How I Met Your Mother? No, no we would not – and that's because Britney Spears would still be zonked out of her spaz on mashed-up anti-psychotic medication. Sometimes we miss those days. We miss them real bad.

Read more: 

Spears Pal to Stay Away 30 More Days – AP 

The restraining order that Britney Spears' mother took out on Britney's former manager Sam Lutfi has been extended until at least the middle of next month, meaning that Lutfi is still not allowed within 250 yards of Britney Spears at any point in time.

The restraining order sounds like the most helpful thing to do in Britney's current situation, but they'll be sorry. When Britney Spears freaks her trip because her food doesn't taste quite as much like anti-psychotic medication as it used to, who's she going to run to? That's right – Sam Lutfi.

They say you've got to be cruel to be kind. They also say that you hurt the ones you love. If that's the case, then Britney Spears' former manager Sam Lutfi is the most caringest, lovingest of all of God's creatures. You can see it in the way he triggered Britney Spears' last breakdown by phoning up Barbara Walters and telling her that Britney was actually mental and by the way he allegedly mashed drugs into whatever she was eating.

It's clear from this that the world could use more selfless piggybacking numbnuts likes Sam Lutfi, but try telling that to Britney Spears' parents. Not content with the one restraining order they took out against him, the Spears family has just got it extended until the middle of next month, as the Associated Press reports:

U.S. District Court Judge Philip Gutierrez extended a restraining order against Lutfi until March 17, when a hearing was scheduled on the matter. The action came on the same day Lutfi was formally served with the restraining order, which was issued earlier this month by a Superior Court commissioner. In court papers, Jeffrey Wexler, an attorney for her father, James Spears, wrote that "after three weeks of apparently evading service," Lutfi was served at 11 a.m. outside his Los Angeles apartment. The order, which requires Lutfi to stay 250 yards away from Spears and her home, was set to expire Friday. Wexler had asked for the order to be extended.

So with Sam Lutfi being kept on the backburner and Britney Spears' dad still holding the keys to all Britney's stuff, then the path looks clear for Britney to make proper inroads into getting better. But does this mean this is the last we'll hear from Sam Lutfi?

Probably not, because that lawyer who was trying to move the conservatorship case to a federal court could possibly be working under the orders of Sam Lutfi. But it gets worse, because if Britney Spears is banned from seeing her kids and Sam Lutfi is banned from seeing Britney Spears, then doesn't that make Sam Lutfi the legal guardian of Britney Spears' kids? That's terrifying, yet legally binding. We assume.

Read more:

Restraining Order Against Lutfi Extended - Associated Press

Oh goodness, no. Haven't you people learnt that this Britney Spears malarkey is going to go on forever yet? Forever. Mark these weary words.

Anyway, the new piece of Britney Spears nonsense is that Britney's mother Lynne Spears claims that Britney's manager Sam Lutfi used to grind up drugs and mash them into Britney Spears' food. Plus he hid her dog once, the big bloody bastard.

It looks like we'll just have to face it – even though Britney Spears is going to spend the next week and a half secluded to the point of being strapped to her bed in a padded room, it's not going to stop people from hitting us over the head with stories about her again and again until she's released and can go back to sobbing on pavements in front of photographers where she belongs.

But despite all this, occasionally the odd interesting Britney Spears story leaks out. No, we're not talking about Britney's Dad getting legal conservatorship of her estate – that's literally about as boring as things can get – we're talking about Britney's manager Sam Lutfi grinding up drugs and sprinkling them all over Britney Spears' food.

That's what Britney Spears' mother Lynne Spears claimed in a restraining order she's taking out against Lutfi, anyway. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Britney Spears' friend and manager exerted near-total control over the singer, cutting her phone lines, taking away her cellphone chargers, disabling her vehicles and grinding up pills to place in her food, Spears' mother alleges in a restraining order she sought against the man. Sam Lutfi also allowed paparazzi to parade through the singer's kitchen and hid Spears' dog from her, Lynne Spears alleges. Lynne Spears said Lutfi told her, "You'd better learn that I control everything."

Sounds shocking, we know – especially when you remember that Sam Lutfi once allegedly advised a friend on the best way to commit suicide – but let's be sensible for a moment. There's a chance that Lutfi was acting out of desperation, because the drugs he was apparently grinding up were Britney's anti-psychotic pills rather than, say, fist-sized balls of heroin doused in sizzurp.

Having said that, Sam Lutfi is also accused of hiding Britney Spears' dog, and that's a crime worse than murder. If you hide Britney's dog you leave her with nothing to clutch when she has a disturbing sobbing roadside meltdown in front of the world's media. Leave her arms free during these episodes and Britney will try to gouge her eyes out or jab forks into plug sockets or pick her bum and smell it. Sam Lutfi should know better than that.

But at least Lynne Spears' restraining order was successful – Sam Lutfi can't go within 250 yards of Britney Spears any more. And he was undoubtedly the cause of Britney's downward spiral – it certainly didn't have anything to do with Lynne Spears herself. She's a great mother. She even wrote a book about what a great mother she is.

Seriously, ask anyone and they'll tell you what a good mother Lynne Spears is. Not her daughters, though – one's locked up in a nuthouse and the other one's too busy being a pregnant schoolgirl to reply. But anyone else.

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Britney Spears' mom says manager controlled the singer – LA Times 

Nothing particularly unusual about that – Britney Spears seems to be contractually obliged to have a weird public meltdown every couple of weeks these days – but is Sam Lutfi really the steady hand that he's claimed to be?

Apparently not – it turns out that Sam Lutfi might be a weirdo with a bunch of restraining orders against him and a history of urging people to kill themselves. Which is, you know, inevitable.

It says a lot for the current state of Britney Spears that Kevin Federline is emerging as the most well-rounded character of the lot. And, seriously, the sight of the words 'Kevin Federline' and 'well-rounded' in the same sentence scares us as much as it does you.

Because look around at everyone else. There's Britney Spears' boyfriend Adnan Ghalib, a married paparazzo who immediately did all kinds of tell-all interviews about Britney when they split up for a day last week. Then there's Britney Spears' family – a slapper, a teenage almost-mother and some bloke respectively. And then there's Britney Spears' manager Sam Lutfi.

But Sam Lutfi is OK, because he's the man who phoned up Barbara Walters to tell her that Britney Spears is actually mental the other day. And even if that triggered off a public argument between Britney Spears and Sam Lutfi that ended up with Britney Spears crying on a pavement, Adnan Ghalib being refused entry to Britney's home, Britney's family trying to keep Britney away from Sam Lutfi and Sam Lutfi trying to keep Britney's family away from Britney, it was obviously the right thing to do because he's Britney's manager. Obviously.

And as Britney Spears' manager, it's Sam Lutfi's responsibility to protect Britney from danger, which mainly seems to involve telling people that Britney's family "have an agenda. Their agenda is jealousy," and texting Adnan Ghalib to tell him that he'll kill Britney. But despite his obvious sterling work at keeping Britney Spears on the straight and narrow, MTV has discovered that Sam Lutfi might be a teensy bit higher up the Creepy Weirdo scale than we thought:

According to three requests for restraining orders against him that have been obtained by MTV News — and are unrelated to Spears — Lutfi also has a dark side… Before Lutfi hooked up with Spears, he was a fixture in the life of Danny Haines, a former friend who claimed that their association turned sour when Lutfi allegedly sent nude pictures of him to his family, friends and employer, and tried to convince Haines to kill himself. "Seriously, sleeping pills, lots of them," Lutfi allegedly wrote to him, Haines told Blender magazine.

But, you know, other than the restraining orders and the whole suicide-convincing thing, we're sure Sam Lutfi is just lovely.

Seriously, though, we've looked at this from every possible angle and there's only one explanation for Britney Spears' current dire crisis – she has too many friends with shit facial hair. Honestly, both Sam Lutfi and Adnan Ghalib have those stupid little beardette things that run in a line from their bottom lip to their chin. Everyone – everyone – knows that people with beardettes are dickheads. So as soon as someone passes that memo onto Britney, we're sure everything will get straightened out nicely. 

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Britney Spears' Manager/Friend Sam Lutfi: Prior Restraining Orders Paint A Dark Picture – MTV