Britney Spears is in trouble with her daddy again. Which one would think is unimaginably hard to do since at this moment in time all Britney is free to do of her own accord is poop and jiggle her rump on stage.

Dungeon Master Spears is having to waste away more precious moments of his life that he’ll never get back on reprimanding his daughter.

This time Britney has broken one of the many restrictions placed on her by reaching out to two people with whom she is not supposed to have any contact; Sam Lutfi and Adnan Ghalib.

One could gather from the current Spears family situation that the entire barefoot, grilled-cheese sandwich-eating clan are actually living above their local courthouse and perhaps even that they find some kind of strange joy from partaking in court proceedings.

Sadly, the Spears family do not live above a courthouse, but they should. The entire family have spent so much time in court lately you would think officials were handing out free cheese grits to the first five hillbillies to enter each morning.

In this latest farce in the neverending legal battle between Britney and, um, everybody, Jamie Spears has had to take his daughter to task over some sneaky late night phonecalls to her former manager Sam and ex-boyfriend Adnan (hilariously, most forget which was which as they were both generally referred to as “the annoying lump cleverly simultaneously standing next to and sucking the life out of an over-caffeinated Britney Spears”).

In her latest attempt to throw a spanner in the works and sabotage the efforts of the one person who seems genuinely to be trying to help her, Britney has allegedly called her former manager and her old lover on the sly. Much in the manner of a wayward tweenager who has been grounded from going out and is secretly Tweeting and Facebooking their mates every five minutes and chuckling to themselves about how clever they are.

According to TMZ:

There’s a hearing underway in the Britney Spears restraining order case against Sam Lutfi Adnan Ghalib. Daddy Jamie Spears is on the stand right now, explaining that Britney somehow got her hands on a pre-paid cell phone which caused him fits because they have been strictly monitoring the phones she’s able to use.

A naughty daughter out of control, making calls to her troublesome crew is nothing new. However, the woman in question is a wise old 27-years-old. Yes, she is 27 and still pulling crap like this.

TMZ also says that Britney was ratted out by her children’s nanny, which may or may not mean the nanny is actually a robot with cameras for eyes or some kind of stealth spy planted by the FBI (I’m thinking probably not):

The nanny heard Britney talking to Sam and Adnan on the pre-paid phone in the wee hours of the morning one day. It appears Jamie believes Sam and Adnan got her the phone in an attempt to poison her against Jamie and to torpedo the conservatorship.

If Sam did have any contact with Britney, he would have violated a court order to stay the hell away from her. Jamie is trying to make the temporary restraining order against the dynamic duo permanent.

What else is there to say but… this is a woman who makes it bloody hard to help her!

This has been a guest blog by Amy Grindhouse. Go and pay her site a visit now. Do it. Now. Go.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

And that’s why Britney Spears and Sam Lutfi were so special together. Sam was always there for Britney with whatever she needed – pink wigs, empty knicker draws, some anti-psychotic drugs mashed into a pork chop – but things have gone sour.

Sam Lutfi has sued Britney Spears for defamation – a warning that people can’t just slander him without consequence. However, we’ve checked it out and we think we can still call Sam Lutfi a ‘crappy-bearded bellend’ without any trouble. So that’s good.

Think whatever you like about Britney Spears’ former manager, but history will judge him as something approximating a towering genius. We’re being completely serious here. Look at Britney Spears before her psychiatric problems – a doe-eyed virginal starlet with a pube-headed boyband singer. And look at Britney Spears after the problems – a robotic, coldly-professional singer careful never to do or say anything offensive. Boring.

But Britney Spears during her psychiatric problems? Why, them were golden times. And it all happened on Sam Lutfi’s watch, too. That means that Sam Lutfi had a hand in Britney’s most iconic moments – the bald head, the smearing dogshit on herself during a magazine photoshoot, the non-promotion of her Blackout album, the wig, the wildly and obviously inappropriate paparazzi boyfriend, the roadside sobbing, the relentless clodge-baring – and he just hasn’t been given the respect he deserves for that.

And that’s why Sam Lutfi is suing Britney Spears.

Well, no, actually Sam Lutfi is suing Britney Spears and her family for defamation and breach of contract because a) Britney Spears and her parents just took a restraining order out against him and b) he seems like such a vastly irresponsible fraction of a man that his name is now a global joke and nobody wants to give him a job.

Oh, and c) because Britney Spears apparently once sent him a text message saying that he was her manager and that he’d get 15% of her earnings for the next four years, as People reports:

Lutfi claims he and Britney had an oral agreement that he would be compensated 15 percent of her earnings as her manager. Lutfi alleges that the agreement was confirmed in a text message on Oct. 13, 2007 in which the singer wrote: “sam, so thats fine, i want you to be my manager, you were right its 15 percent of my money but for 4 years not 5.” Lutfi claims that he hasn’t received any payment for his alleged services.

We’d imagine that a lot of the lawsuit hinges on the veracity of that text message. And we’re no experts, but it seems unclear who really sent it. On one hand, the grammar’s all over the place, which suggests that Britney Spears really did send it; and on the other hand all the words are spelt correctly, which we’d guess means that it’s either a fake or Britney got one of her infant sons to write it for her or something.

Anyway, we hope that this matter resolves itself peacefully, and that Sam Lutfi can get back to managing popstars again. By the way, if we were him we’d totally be gunning for Lady GaGa first. She looks like a singer he can properly bugger up.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

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

And, now he's also been granted the power to hire and fire as he pleases, it looks like Britney's business manager Howard Grossman is going to be the first neck on the chopping block.

We're not sure what Jamie Spears' other plans for Britney Spears are yet, but we've heard rumours that he'll soon be taking her place as a recording artist soon, too. In fact, an album of bubblegum pop entitled Hit Me One More Time (No Really, I Know I'm A Middle-Aged Man Dressed A Schoolgirl And I Know That Must Freak You Out, But What Say You Hit Me Anyway) is purportedly being mixed as we speak.

We're not going to count our chickens here, but it looks like someone's got the message. It's been a few day's since Britney Spears left her mental hospital, and in that time we've hardly heard any reports of Britney staggering around car parks babbling in a funny voice or crying on pavements or the like.

What we take that to mean is that Britney's father Jamie Spears is taking his role as her conservator very seriously and protecting her the best he can. And now Jamie Spears' powers have grown just a little bit more, because, as the New York Daily News reports, he's been granted the authority to sack Britney Spears' business manager Howard Grossman if he wants to. And something tells us he wants to:

A Los Angeles Court commissioner has given the troubled singer's father power to fire her business manager, Howard Grossman, documents released Friday said. Grossman was ordered to turn over "all documents, records and assets relating to Britney Spears" to Jamie Spears, who is the court-appointed conservator of his daughter and her estate. Grossman told People.com he knew about the closed-door hearing in the case Thursday but said he had no idea why Spears' father sought the right to fire him. "The only thing I will say is my reputation speaks for itself," Grossman told People. "I couldn't tell you why they chose this path."

So that's Britney Spears' business manager Howard Grossman sacked and Britney Spears' regular manager Sam Lutfi slapped with a restraining order for allegedly grinding up drugs and adding it to Britney's food. It'll be interesting to see what Jamie Spears' next act as conservator will be – he's running out of people to fire now, unless he starts turning his ferocious boardroom dismissal skills on one of Britney's little yappy dogs or he suddenly decides to demote Sean Preston from 'son' to 'second cousin' or something.

Of course, if this sounds familiar, it's because it is. First comes the power, then the enjoyment of power. Next we imagine that Jamie Spears will surround himself with sycophants, marry a redneck, give birth a couple of times, divorce him, shave his head, stop wearing underwear and end up in the padded psycho ward of the nearest hospital. We hear it's genetic, see.

Read more:

Britney Spears' dad to sack manager – NY Daily News 

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.

Read more:

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. 

Read more:

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