You might want to steady yourself for this news – apparently Rosie O’Donnell is difficult to live with.

Who knew? We always thought that living with Rosie O’Donnell would be adorable – realising that she’s finished off all the biscuits again, getting into stand-up arguments about the war seven times a day, faking enthusiasm whenever she suggests that you rewatch her turn as Betty Rubble in the 1994 live action Flintstones movie for the billionth time – but apparently it’s not.

Because Rosie O’Donnell and her partner Kelli Carpenter are calling it quits. Or they might be about to. Form an orderly queue, boys.

Things were so much better when Rosie O’Donnell was on The View, weren’t they? We saw a Rosie-less episode just the other day and it shocked us – people were actually agreeing about things. Watching it didn’t make us feel like the abused child in a loveless marriage. We might be wrong, but we actually thought that we saw someone smile at one point. We were trying to convince ourselves that it was a grimace of anger, but deep down we knew it was a smile. We were sickened. Sickened!

But now that Rosie O’Donnell isn’t on The View any more, where is she getting her fix of rabid, terrifying, full-volume, split-screen screechfests from? At home, apparently, which is possibly why Rosie is doing her best to heavily imply that it’s curtains for her and Kelli Carpenter, her long-time partner.

Readers of Rosie’s blog may have noticed a few cryptic allusions to marital strife being posted in recent days. We didn’t read the offending posts, because our tolerance for meaningless, woolly, punctuation-free new-age haikus is so low that we tend to spend a few hours dry-heaving if we even so much as think about looking at Rosie O’Donnell’s blog. But whatever was written was apparently enough for the USA Today to corner Rosie and ask her what the deal is. And this is how she replied:

“Kelli and I love each other very much and we are working on our issues. Those are the only words I am ever going to say. Ever. And that is something that has been agreed upon by all parties.”

You see? There’s nothing to worry about. Rosie and Kelli are as good as they’ve ever been. They even have a cute little couple name for themselves, see? They call themselves ‘all parties’. We just love the way they’ve taken a bland piece of legalese most commonly used to describe a couple going through the process of separation and totally made it their own. Great job, guys!

And if Rosie O’Donnell really is splitting up with Kelli Carpenter, we’ve got two words for her: Donald Trump. Boy oh boy, is that an internet sex tape we’d pay to see.

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Instead, it marked Rosie O’Donnell’s big return to TV. Last week saw the premiere of Rosie Live – a big balls-out, unashamedly old-fashioned variety show hosted by Rosie O’Donnell. And Rosie Live would have been great, too, if only more than about four people watched it, and those who did watch it didn’t hate it.

So, with a heavy heart, Rosie O’Donnell took to the internet this weekend to announce that there would be no more Rosie Live. But, undeterred, Rosie O’Donnell has sworn to return to TV soon with a format that suits her better. Working titles for that show include Rosie’s Hour Of Screaming, Rosie Puts You Off Your Dinner, Rosie Punches The Homeless, Rosie Kicks Down People’s Doors With A Knife In Her Mouth and Not Rosie.

Ever since leaving The View because she once got so angry that she psychically set fire to Barbara Walters‘ hair – or something – Rosie O’Donnell has been struggling to get back on TV.

First there were rumours that Rosie O’Donnell would get herself a show on a rolling news station, presumably for people who don’t think current affairs make them irrationally angry enough as it is, but that failed. Then Rosie set her sights on The Price Is Right, only to end up not getting the job because producers baulked at her proposal to rename the show The Price Is ARRRRGH! I’LL KILL YOU, YOU BASTARD, I’LL KILL YOU!

But a force as powerful as Rosie O’Donnell couldn’t stay in the wilderness for long, which is why last week all of America got to see Rosie Live, a great big Thanksgiving variety show featuring turns from every celebrity on earth who Rosie O’Donnell hasn’t started a crackpot paranoid feud with recently. So three. Three celebrities.

Rosie Live looked like it couldn’t be anything other than a big hit – it had a giant potential audience rendered inert by food, it had all the old-time razzle dazzle you could ever ask for and it had a host who was prepared to badmouth anyone she liked so long as it gave her a sliver of publicity. Rosie Live couldn’t fail.

And then Rosie Live failed.

Because of this, there will be no more Rosie Live, as Rosie O’Donnell has revealed on her blog in her own inimitable way. Did we day ‘inimitable’? We meant ‘illegible’. Our mistake. Anyway, the New York Times reports:

“Rosie Live” attracted just five million viewers, according to Nielsen’s estimates. Ms. O’Donnell responded to many messages on her Web site over the weekend, writing in her style that eschews traditional spellings. To another viewer she acknowledged, “I gave it my best shot.” She also wrote that “its up to nbc,” but added, “bad ratings and reviews usually mean no more.”

But, look, it’s important that Rosie O’Donnell doesn’t get downhearted by the failure of Rosie Live. She gave it her best shot, she failed and now the only way she’ll manage to get on television again is if someone makes a retrospective TV show called Fat Lesbians We Barely Remember, but Rosie O’Donnell should take solace in one fact – Rosie Live didn’t make anyone fall to the floor with red-hot fountains of blood jetting out of their ears. And that’s something that Elisabeth Hasselbeck Live would have almost certainly caused.

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And it’s true, too. Just the other week, Star Jones was screeching about The View like a fat lunatic and we don’t even know who she is. And now it’s the turn of Rosie O’Donnell to do the same, although helpfully since she acts like a fat lunatic most of the time anyway, it’s easier for her.

Rosie O’Donnell has been involved in a spat with the old Skeletor lady from The View because Rosie O’Donnell says everyone on The View hates each other and Skeletor lady says they don’t. But it’s much more interesting than that because… no, wait. It’s not more interesting than that. That’s literally as interesting as this gets. A fat lady has shouted at an old lady. As you were, everyone.

Next week, some bright spark has decided to let Rosie O’Donnell back on the TV, where she’ll host her very own primetime variety show. It’s Rosie’s big chance to prove that she’s more than the angry red-faced one from The View who looked like she’d come round and shove firecrackers into your dog’s anus if you ever disagreed with her about anything.

So the promotion of this new show was always going to need a full-on charm offensive from Rosie. No wailing about the war, no being a lesbian any more than she had to, and definitely no starting fights with anyone. And definitely no mentions of The View.

So naturally Rosie O’Donnell decided to start a fight with everyone on The View. Rosie told reporters:

“[Barbara Walters] wanted everyone to believe and think and act as if [the women on The View] get along and are really good friends and happy and hang out together, and, you know, that’s just not the reality. I’m not saying they loathe each other, but the fact of the matter is there was not a lot of camaraderie off camera.”

But, hey, that’s just Rosie O’Donnell being Rosie O’Donnell. Being forthright and sort of obnoxious is what she does best. And gracefully ignoring problems to the extent where you think she’s either dozed off or died peacefully while nobody was looking is what Barbara Walters does, which is why she didn’t react to Rosie O’Donnell at all. Apart from when she did, by going on The View and saying this:

“There are some people who have done this show and then for years feel they have to dump on it, maybe for publicity, and that not only hurts me, but I resent it. So if the shoe fits, lady—ladies—get on with your lives.”

Notice that Barbara Walters referred to ‘ladies’ there. That’s either because she was talking about Star Jones who recently had a similar outburst about The View, or because Rosie O’Donnell is now so fat she can only be alluded to in the plural. We can’t really be bothered to find out.

Anyway, so that’s it. Rosie O’Donnell said something mean about Barbara Walters, Barbara Walters said something mean back to Rosie O’Donnell and that’s it. Oh, except that Rosie O’Donnell has decided to say something mean back to Barbara Walters in a webcam message on her blog even though nobody really asked her to. E! Online:

O’Donnell posted a video item titled “Lady,” which shows the former talk show host making faces in response to Walters’ remarks. “Whew, I do not know what Star Jones and Debbie Matenopoulos did,” O’Donnell sarcastically adds at the end, name-checking two other examples of View cohosts past. “Whew, lady, she is pissed off.”

And that’s definitely it now. Both women have said their piece and both The View and Rosie O’Donnell’s show have got piles of publicity because of it. True, this Rosie O’Donnell/ Barbara Walters fight will probably result in an attention-strapped Elisabeth Hasselbeck trying to muscle in on the spotlight by setting herself on fire while running around kicking puppies in the sternum within the next few days, but we should probably just deal with that when it happens.

After spending 17 months in the television wilderness, where she’s filled her time with nothing but failed comeback attempts and screwy pronouncements about other gay celebrities, it’s been announced that Rosie O’Donnell will host a live one-hour primetime show on NBC the day before Thanksgiving.

The show is to be entitled Rosie’s Variety Hour. It’s an accurate name, since the entire show is going to be an hour of Rosie O’Donnell destroying a variety of things that make her angry with a cricket bat – like a bible, the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, the headquarters of an anti-abortion lobby group and, as a finale, a 30-storey slime-filled papier mache sculpture of Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Donald Trump holding hands.

It’s so strange to think that Rosie O’Donnell hasn’t been on TV for a year and a half, because she’s actually an incredibly versatile performer.

Just look at the things that Rosie O’Donnell has done in the past – she’s been a stand-up comedian, she’s hosted her own daytime TV show, she’s starred in sitcom and she’s destroyed the notion of Betty Rubble being sexy for about five separate generations. Oh, and she’s the queen of bellowing furious abuse at shrill conservatives, too.

However, it might have been this last one that’s kept Rosie O’Donnell off TV. After her final berserk days on The View, nobody wanted to touch her. The producers of The Price Is Right shied away from Rosie because she’d probably want to change the name to The Price Is RAAAAARGH! and would only ever ask questions about the price of the illegal war that America is waging in the Middle East in both financial and human terms.

But at least Rosie O’Donnell can put all her failure behind her now, because she’s just landed what might be the biggest job of her career – her very own primetime NBC show. EW reports:

Appropriately titled Rosie’s Variety Hour, the special will kick off with a topical monologue and feature celebrity guests, musical acts, comedy skits, and a “giant” giveaway for both the in-studio and home audiences. “This is a dream come true for any performer,” O’Donnell said in a statement. “Old time variety, live from New York with a nod to Ed Sullivan, Carol Burnett and memories of Sonny and Cher.”

We’re really looking forward to Rosie’s Variety Hour, you know – we hear that the giant giveaway at the end comes in the form of knowledge, as a giant flashing sign that reads YOUR GOD IS DEAD AND ALL LIFE IS A MEANINGLESS STRING OF EVENTS WITH NO UNIVERSAL CONSEQUENCE.

But, regardless, we’d like to extend our sincere congratulations to Rosie O’Donnell. This is her dream job and, if the special is a success, it’s bound to run forever.

Or until Rosie decides to blurt out some sort of massively controversial rant about something sensitive enough to alienate her advertisers and put an end to the show, at least.

So about three weeks, then.

For example, Clay Aiken might find himself starting to enjoy the music of Bette Midler more that he did before, and there’ll be moments when he finds the movie Mamma Mia genuinely touching rather than tacky and bad. But most of all, Clay Aiken will find himself at the centre of a Rosie O’Donnell statement.

In fact, Clay Aiken already has. In a brief statement given hours after it emerged that Clay Aiken was gay, Rosie O’Donnell told the world that she ‘loves’ Clay. Oh Rosie – Clay Aiken isn’t going to love you back, you know. He’s gay now, and that means he doesn’t like women. But don’t worry Rosie O’Donnell, you’ll find a good man one of these days.

Now that she’s not on The View any more, and all of her subsequent television plans have fallen through, Rosie O’Donnell only has two ways to remind people that she exists.

The first of these is her blog, where readers can discover exactly what Rosie O’Donnell thinks of topics as varied as what she thinks of Dancing With The Stars and… wait, no, that’s it.

The second of Rosie O’Donnell’s ways is to make declarations on the newly-gay. Essentially in this respect it’s best to think of Rosie O’Donnell as the gay version of the nice woman who shows you round the office on your first day of work – you know, the one who only does it because she’s alienated herself from all the other workers and has to latch onto the new-starters for company, and who you feel bead for ignoring after a week because she sort of smothers you.

So obviously, Rosie O’Donnell was going to be all over yesterday’s news that Clay Aiken is gay. This is her bread and butter – after all, Clay Aiken is so newly gay that he probably doesn’t know any of the conventions yet. Like the one about only wearing semi-transparent mesh vests that show off his nipples from now on, the one about the compulsory moustache and the all-important left to right gloryhole entry system that was implemented to stem the tide of excruciating penal collision.

That’s the stuff Rosie O’Donnell can help with. So, what did Rosie O’Donnell decide to say to Clay Aiken? E! Online reports:

“I love Clay,” she said. “He is a beautiful man in every way.”

Why Rosie, that’s as sweet as it is completely untrue. However, we’re going to forgive you just this once, because you were probably just saving time by not rolling out the full-length “I love Clay. He is a beautiful man in every way. Except for his hair. And those weird wolfy teeth he’s got. And his speaking voice is really anything but beautiful. And when he smiles his eyes disappear and it’s kind of creepy. I think that just about covers it. Oh, and the way he dresses. Yeesh.”

But still, Clay Aiken must be grateful that a high profile member of the gay community like Rosie O’Donnell has decided to show her support for him in this uncertain time of his life.

It must be nice to have anyone show their support for him, in fact, just because it makes a change from the deep awkward silence that Clay Aiken has received from everyone else because they always just presumed he was gay anyway and didn’t realise there was supposed to be this big secret about it.

Well, look, OK, Rosie O’Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck obviously aren’t going to get it on at all, but that hasn’t stopped Rosie O’Donnell calling Elisabeth Hasselbeck ‘very attractive’ during an interview with Howard Stern yesterday.

We’ll get to the details in a moment, but for now let’s just mourn the fact that Rosie and Elisabeth aren’t able to genetically create their own child – because it’d have to be part O’Donnell and part Hasselbeck, and we could earn all sorts of money running a book on whether it’d come out fat and intolerant or skinny and paranoid.

Ever since her tenure at The View ended up with a blazing row and nobody wanted her to host The Price Is Right, Rosie O’Donnell has been existing in a diminished capacity lately. She’s given up booze and hung out with Cyndi Lauper a bit, but not a whole lot else. And now we know why.

Because Rosie O’Donnell is too busy daydreaming about her former crackpot right-wing co-host of The View Elisabeth Hasselbeck. So far Rosie’s got the daydream where they’re feeding each other strawberries in a sun-dappled meadow, the daydream where Elisabeth is rescuing Rosie from a burning building to the sound of I Want To Know What Love Is by Foreigner and the daydream where they’re both covered in oil and going hammer and tongs at each other with gigantic strap-on dildos on a revolving bed in a sex dungeon on a yacht.

It’s true – Rosie O’Donnell has confessed to Howard Stern that the very thought of Elisabeth Hasselbeck screeching on about the evils of abortion in her dreadful rape-alarm voice gets her so horny that she has to go and rub her crotch up and down on the corner of the nearest municipal building before she explodes.

Or, in a more truthful explanation, Howard Stern pestered Rosie O’Donnell on his radio show until she eventually admitted that Elisabeth Hasselbeck is sort of OK-looking for a hateful witch. Access Hollywood reports:

“Wouldn’t it have been the ultimate accomplishment to take this conservative girl and turn her, so to speak?… Were you not attracted to Elisabeth Hasselbeck?” Howard asked. “When you look at her physically, you don’t want her?” “See, the want is the big thing,” Rosie explained. “I find her very attractive. She’s very attractive, I think.” “Her body is perfect,” Stern commented. “Have you ever seen her biceps?” Rosie responded.

See? We knew it! That time Rosie O’Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck had a screaming argument on The View, it was all down to pent-up sexual tension. If there had been any justice, the fight would have ended with Rosie and Elisabeth sweeping the papers off The View’s desk and making out with each other with tongues on top of it for like half an hour. It would have been like that porno we saw once, Disgusting Mind-Scarring Lesbians That Nobody Finds Sexy At All 4, we think it was called. It was hot.

Anyway, we were just kidding about the fight being down to sexual tension, because that’d mean that Rosie O’Donnell wanted to sleep with everyone she had a feud with. And god knows people have gone mad for less than imagining Rosie having a three-way with Donald Trump and Hulk Hogan.

Actually, scrap that – for all we know Rosie O'Donnell has been spending her time away from TV fighting with strangers, puking vomit down her cleavage and crying a lot – but if she has, she's done it stone cold sober.

Rosie O'Donnell has revealed that she's given up alcohol because she's sick of all the adverse reactions. However, it's thought that being on the wagon hasn't affected Rosie O'Donnell's favourite party-piece – belching out a perfect rendition of the saxophone part from Baker Street so loudly that it'll loosen your fillings.

As a woman with a vaguely Irish-sounding surname, Rosie O'Donnell is no doubt very proud of her Irish heritage, and she looks like she's expert-level at all the traditional Irish pursuits – throwing ponies over small walls, jigging around a causeway playing fiddle-di-dee folk music on a tin whistle and being completely shitfaced on booze all the time regardless of the situation.

Except she's not. Even though she could probably chuck a shirehorse over a barn with one hand tied behind her back, Rosie O'Donnell's not a sweaty red-faced drunkard. Any more. As People reports, Rosie O'Donnell has decided to give up alcohol:

The former View host made the alcohol-abstinence revelation after telling one fan she'd shed pounds by giving up beer.  That prompted another to ask, "So, Rosie, alcoholic or not? Just spit it out! Don't go all Star Jones on us here. What led to you stopping the beer?" O'Donnell posted back: "'Cause I was drinking too much, 'cause I didn't want to any more, 'cause it is hard to lose weight when drinking, 'cause I can never have only one." 

Quite right – and we really have to applaud Rosie O'Donnell's strength of mind and determination for getting on the wagon.

If we'd been forced out of our job because we had an embarrassing fight with a co-worker in front of millions of strangers, only to fail to get any more work time and time again, well, we'd be wankered on beer from morning to night. And Rosie's not, so more power to her. 

Read more:

Rosie O'Donnell Gives Up Alcohol – People 

But that's exactly what has hap… no, we're only joking. Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck aren't fighting any more, but only because Rosie though to send Elisabeth's newborn some gifts.

Still, we had you with the sex thing, right? Right?

The View has always been about disagreements, and it always will be – whether it's a disagreement about how much Danny DeVito has had to drink or about if murdering dogs is really brilliant or just quite brilliant. But no disagreements on The View were ever like the splitscreen battle royale between Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck back in May. 

Founded on their inherent political differences – basically that one is a rightwing lunatic and the other is a paranoid conspiracy theorist – the Rosie O'Donnell/ Elisabeth Hasselbeck televised face-off was so vicious that we think it actually tore a hole in the space/time continuum. It'd explain a lot if it were true.

It would explain why Rosie O'Donnell left The View in a tantrum immediately and subsequently failed to find any other TV work, and it'd also explain why Elisabeth Hasselbeck got knocked up and gave birth to a baby boy pretty soon afterwards, even though we imagine that she thinks sex – even sex within a loving marriage – is filthy and wrong and will send you to hell and is something that only immigrants do.

But, despite keeping a tentative distance from each other since their on-air scrap, now it looks like Rosie and Elisabeth are ready to act like grown-ups around each other again. Apparently Rosie has decided that enough is enough, and that children are the future and that she and Rosie should teach them well and let them lead the way. Rosie's been speaking to People about her new softer relationship with Elisabeth:

"He's very, very cute. I saw him on TV, and I sent him a lovely gift, and [she and Hasselbeck] have been e-mailing each other. And peace prevails… We e-mail back and forth. She seems good. She looks like she adopted, like she didn't give birth. She looks perfectly fit and gorgeous already."

It's almost enough to bring a tear to the eye, isn't it? Not the fact that Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck are slowly becoming friends again – we couldn't give a stuff about that – but we're just overwhelmed to learn that Rosie O'Donnell doesn't speak in that ridiculous blog haiku-speak all the time. Truly, this is a time of goodwill on Earth.

Read more:

Rosie Sends Baby Gifts to Elisabeth Hasselbeck – People 

And because she's a fat lesbian, Rosie O'Donnell has incurred Hulk Hogan's wrath like no other, with the possible exception of Rowdy Roddy Piper or Nikolai Volkoff. To promote his upcoming revival of American Gladiators, Hulk Hogan has decided to tell the world that he wants one of the American Gladiators to beat up Rosie O'Donnell because "someone needs to shut that big mouth up." And quite right. It's that kind of level-headed, shot from the hip straight-talking that's made Hulk Hogan the man he is today – an old, bald, sausage-coloured, washed-up wrestler with a son who's been arrested, an expensive divorce on the go, a couple of dodgy knees and a filmography that includes Mr Nanny.

Rosie O'Donnell isn't on the telly any more. Not for lack of trying, but she just isn't. It could be because Rosie O'Donnell can't help but make enemies every time she opens her mouth, whether it's Elisabeth Hasselbeck or Donald Trump or the entire population of China.

But maybe it's not entirely down to that, because Rosie O'Donnell hasn't opened her mouth in public for quite some time now, and she's even managed to make a new enemy that way too. And a formidable one at that – it's Hulk Hogan, who for two decades was the leading proponent of ripping flimsy T-shirts open, pretending to be deaf and flexing his saveloy-style arms in slow-motion to the sound of copyright-free hard rock music on VHS compilation tapes.

You'd think that Hulk Hogan would have enough on his plate at the moment, what with his divorce and his son getting arrested for crashing his car so badly that his friend will remain in care for the rest of his life, but no. Hulk Hogan also has the new series of American Gladiators to promote.

The new American Gladiators have just been unveiled, and a group of angrier, more racially-diverse, fatter-thighed men and women you'll be hard pushed to find. But since they're all new to this fighting thing with foam-ended sticks thing, perhaps the American Gladiators should set about a celebrity first, as a sort of practise. And Hulk Hogan knows who should get it first:

"Without a doubt Rosie O'Donnell. Somebody needs to shut that big mouth up."

And this bewildering, completely outdated – the main television networks have already shut Rosie O'Donnell up, remember? – outburst gave Rosie O'Donnell the perfect chance to use her blog for something other than demonstrating hair-straighteners and wailing about dead Iraqi babies. This is how Rosie responded:

hulk hogan
the wrestler guy
wants to pummel me
isnt that sweet
and wildly odd

its like a gang of gross guys
a club almost
old dumb white and on tv

Perhaps this is the end of Hulk Hogan and Rosie O'Donnell's weird little feud. But perhaps it isn't. Perhaps it'll stretch to it's inevitable outcome – where Rosie O'Donnell dresses up in shiny silver spandex and charges at Hulk Hogan flailing and kicking, until the building sexual tension becomes unbearable and they start doing it on the floor, right in front of everyone, and then Donald Trump comes in and gets all like "I want me some of that" and strips off and starts to double-team Rosie O'Donnell with Hulk Hogan, and people watching start crying and fainting and puking and screaming at God to make it stop.

So for that reason alone, let's hear no more of this.

Read more:

Hulk Hogan Says He'd Like to See a Gladiator Pummel Rosie O'Donnell – Fox 

According to a post on her blog, Rosie O'Donnell's hopes of scoring a daily serious-minded TV show on MSNBC were over the moment she started yammering on about it to a crowd of people in Miami, and now MSNBC has pulled out of talks. While Rosie O'Donnell can cheerily put the failed MSNBC deal on the ever-growing pile of TV work she didn't manage to get, it still leaves MSNBC with a gaping hole at 9pm that it desperately needs to fill. Maybe producers were looking for a host who was a little less polarising than Rosie O'Donnell – like Joe Pasquale, maybe, or Dog The Bounty Hunter.

There are three places where Rosie O'Donnell feels most comfortable – 1) on an expensive fibreglass prehistoric movie set playing Rick Moranis' wife, 2) slumped in front of a webcam self-consciously dancing to Amy Winehouse records and 3) in front of a television camera spouting her beliefs at a bemused public. And while Rosie O'Donnell has done enough of the first one to last several lifetimes and keeps doing the second one, it's number three that's causing her problems at the moment.

For less than one glorious year recently, Rosie O'Donnell was the moderator on The View despite possibly being the least moderate woman on the face of the Earth. However, the high-profile spats with Donald Trump and the even higher-profile spats with shrieking, constantly-wrong co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck finished Rosie O'Donnell off, and since leaving The View she's had pretty much jack-all to do.

Not that the offers haven't been there, though – Donald Trump apparently extended the olive branch to Rosie O'Donnell by inviting her onto his new Celebrity Apprentice show, even though Rosie responded by taking the olive branch, snapping it in half and trying to stab it through Trump's balls. And then there was Rosie O'Donnell's quest to become the new host of The Price Is Right – a quest that failed presumably a third of a millisecond after the show's producers heard the words 'Rosie O'Donnell' and 'The Price Is Right' in the same sentence.

And then there's MSNBC. Earlier in the week the big news was that Rosie O'Donnell was in talks to be the host of a daily hour-long MSNBC show that'd put her directly up against Larry King. It would have been a dynamic show, that's for sure – at least until three weeks in where, after realising that there's only so much mileage one can get from slagging off the government and the Iraq war constantly, Rosie O'Donnell planned to either do a funny puppet show or fist-fight her own shadow for a full hour a night.

However, that's something we're never going to see because MSNBC has changed its mind about Rosie O'Donnell, as Rosie revealed on her blog yesterday:

we were close to a deal
almost done
i let it slip in miami
causing panic on the studio end

well
what can u do

2day there is no deal
poof
my career as a pundit is over
b4 it began

Maybe Rosie O'Donnell will realise that not getting the MSNBC show is probably for the best. After all, she's proved time and time again that daytime is her stomping ground – possibly because it's easier to shout paranoid nonsense at an audience that self-medicates itself with coffee and perm lotion than at a news channel audience which is used to listening to and questioning a series of well-rounded opinions and ideas.

But Rosie O'Donnell shouldn't get downhearted by this MSNBC snub. After all, there's plenty more TV shows that'd welcome her with open arms, like You Bet Your Life (I'm About To Force My Opinions Down Your Throat), My Name Is ARRRRRGH or America's Got Lesbians! 

If that's the case, well, we don't want you to get too excited here, but it looks like Rosie O'Donnell is going to be given her own show on MSNBC. It's early days yet, but rumour has it that Rosie O'Donnell is in negotiations to bounce back after her high-profile resignation from The View with a daily prime-time TV show where she'll be in direct competition with Larry King. Nothing's been confirmed yet, but it's thought that Rosie O'Donnell has already drawn up a shortlist of potential titles for her show, including I Hate Everything, Outta My Way Assholes and Has Anyone Else Noticed That Elisabeth Hasselbeck Doesn't Have Her Own Show? She Doesn't, I Checked. 

Although the ongoing American writer-strike looks set to tear the world of television apart, the truth is it hasn't been in great shape for a while. And we pin that firmly on the terrible state of daytime TV lesbians. What are daytime TV lesbians doing these days? Crying about bloody puppies, that's what. That's not what we want from daytime TV lesbians – if our daytime TV lesbians have been wronged by a puppy adoption agency we don't want them to cry, we want them to kill a larger animal each day and leave it on the adoption agency's doorstep until either a) the situation gets amended or b) the animal workers have to clear piles of dead pterodactyls from their front garden.

And, let's not kid ourselves, that's what Rosie O'Donnell would have done. Because when she was on The View, that's the sort of behaviour that Rosie O'Donnell did best. Starting fights with Donald Trump, calling everyone homophobes, goading Danny DeVito on to be more drunk, offending the entire population of the biggest country in the world and screaming outraged insults at anyone with a slightly differing viewpoint to her own, Rosie O'Donnell was The View.

But since her screeching split-screen showdown with right-wing idiot Elisabeth Hasselbeck saw her strop off The View forever in March, Rosie O'Donnell has hardly been on TV at all. There were rumours that Rosie wanted to host The Price Is Right, but CBS executives are said to have baulked when Rosie suggested that each show was prefaced by a 45-minute rant about how wanton consumerism is funding the war in Iraq. But now Rosie is back!

Almost, at least – and not a moment too soon. Before she starts devoting her life completely to filming squirrels and setting it to Edith Piaf soundtracks, it's been revealed that Rosie O'Donnell is in negotiations to get her own prime-time TV show on MSNBC, possibly scoring the 9pm slot that'd see her running against Larry King. That'd be perfect for Rosie O'Donnell, because – face it – given the choice of watching a woman raging about nothing for an hour or an old man asking Angelina Jolie the same question about the United Nations 700 times in a row, you'd pick Rosie. We all would. But let's not count our pudgy little chickens yet because, as one executive has said:

"It's far from a done deal."

We've heard there are a number of potential sticking points stopping Rosie O'Donnell's MSNBC show from happening. One is money, another is whether Rosie will go down as well with the highly educated, literate MSNBC audience as she did with the soft-brained viewers of The View who would start agreeing with a talking Mr T keyfob if it was given enough airtime.

And then there's the matter of counterpoint. Without someone to interject her ridiculous left-wing nonsense with even more ridiculous right-wing nonsense, there's a chance that Rosie O'Donnell could be left twisting in the wind somewhat. That's why we propose that MSNBC ships in Elisabeth Hasselbeck to team up with Rosie O'Donnell on the show. It'd be entertaining, plus it'd totally lay the foundations for that Rosie/Elisabeth remake of An Officer And A Gentleman that we've we waiting so patiently for.