Take That are bunch of drips, aren’t they? If they’re not gyrating around in front of millions of middle-aged women or complaining about press intrusion in effete Northern accents, they’re having little panic attacks about getting felt up by giant robots. Or something like that.

Their latest woe has come in the form of a little bit of lightning which gave the lads the heebie-jeebies when their tour plane was lightly struck by it ahead of the start of the European leg of their Progress tour. Oh no! Did they survive the ordeal?!

Of course they did.

The band were travelling to their opening show in Milan when their plan hit bad turbulence at 35,000 ft. Planes never hit anything at anything less than 30,000ft. It’s a rule set down by aeronautical disaster films since the beginning of time. Seriously, you could skim a plane along the ground and it would be in less danger of running into something than at the dreaded 35,000 ft.

Of course, there’s no difference in the feeling of turbulence to the plane actually being struck by lightning. It’s not as though the wings were sheered off by the wrath of an angry god. The plane was hit by a pretty routine bit of weather. Planes are hit by lightning all the time because they have some pathological desire to fly in the ‘danger zone’ of 35,000 ft.

Some nincompoop told the Daily Mirror;

“The plane took off fairly normally, though we knew there was bad weather ahead, but mid way during the flight the turbulence was really quite frightening. Then suddenly, there was a bright flash, and the plane had obviously been struck by lightning.”

Obviously. That being said, the Take That lads were obviously and visually shaken up by the affair with Robbie Williams questioning why the strike didn’t leave them all with super powers before Mark Owen pointed out that they had always had the ability to induce the menopause in any woman over the age of thirty.

The incident was no doubt an act of God, the great and benevolent ruler in the sky that some of you believe in. However, why would God do such a thing?

A spokesman for God told hecklerspray;

“Well, that’s what you get when you release a ‘special edition’ of your old album and try to pass it off as a completely new one in order to grind more shekels out of your fanbase.”

Take note, pop stars. God is watching.

Robocop was, in a way, the original plastic police officer, except he was made of metal and could actually arrest people, unlike his real life counterparts.

Made from the parts of an old police officer who was brutally murdered by Red Foreman from That 70s Show and scraps of metal collected from a dumpster out the back of the General Motors warehouse, Robocop kicked crimes ass all over Detroit.

People loved Robocop because he stood for law and order, by any means necessary. He was also near indestructible and made an awesome whirring sound whenever he moved, plus he had a massive gun and if there’s one things American’s love, it’s a hero with a miniature cannon strapped to them at all times.

The people of Detroit, and by people we mean geeks, wanted their metallic hero immortalised in… erm… metal, in the form of a statue. After all, Philadelphia has a Rocky statue, so why not reward another fictional character from the 80s who’s no longer relevant by making a permanent shrine to them.

The Mayor of Detroit, Dave Bing, received a tweet asking for him to put a statue of Robocop somewhere in the city to boost morale. After Bing had finished laughing he rather predictably put the kybosh on the whole thing.

This angered the geeks, who did what they do best when someone tells them they can’t do something. They took to the internet.

Rather incredibly the campaign was a hit, resulting in both a plot of land being donated for the statue to be built on as well as the sum of $56,000 being raised for the statue itself, smashing the $50,000 target.

So it looks like Robocop will have his own statue built in Detroit, conveniently just in time for the new Robocop film that is due to come out in 2013, not that that has anything to do with it you understand, it’s all just a massive coincidence… maybe… probably… not.

We here at hecklerspray aren’t against the statue per se. Actually, that’s a lie, we are. It is completely stupid to try and create a landmark to a fictional character, unless they’re considered to be some sort of deity. Think about it, in thousands of years, when the statue is found in the ruins of old Detroit, what will people think? They’ll think we’re buffoons, that what they’ll think.

A Robot policeman, honestly.

Besides, it’s plainly obvious for everyone to see that the people of Detroit chose the wrong character to immortalise. So the hecklerspray team has come up with a plan:

That’s right, let’s put a statue of ED-209 on the fourth plinth. Infinitely cooler, as trigger happy as the Met’s SO19 squad and hard as a coffin nail, he’ll really put London back on the map.

Suck on that, Detroit.

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10 - Hey BBC One, now that Hole In The Wall has finished, can you please remake this inane Asian gameshow as well? If only because that way we’d be closer to understanding what’s actually going on…

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