Derren Brown, the British mind magician and all around annoying show off, has wowed the slackjawed public with his latest special, Hero at 30,000 feet, in which he takes a bad actor an average guy and turns him into a hero… at 30,000 feet (this is achieved with a plane in case you haven’t yet realised it).

Now, I’m not one to nit-pick (not true, I really am), but I had a bone to pick with this show. Most people will tell you that it was all staged and that it was done with split screen technology or something equally annoying, but that wasn’t the problem.

The problem was… Derren Brown appears to have just made a mockumentary version of Donnie Darko.

Let’s examine the evidence. Donnie Matt is an average guy who isn’t fulfilling his potential and is yearning to be special. One night he sleepwalks after being woken up by a mysterious voice that tells him he has about a month until a life changing event will occur. By this point all that’s missing is an 80s soundtrack and some rabbit ears on Brown. I half expected Matt to reveal he was just Jake Gyllenhaal wearing a, “stupid man suit.”

Derren, who is now quite obviously channelling Frank the Rabbit, then wakes up Matt again, to bring him into the middle of a field to explain how his life is unfulfilled. We are then introduced to an animal that Matt is told represents power, a crocodile, in the film this part was played by the statue of the school’s mascot. As much as I wanted to see Matt put an axe through its skull it, unfortunately, never happened.

Matt then goes through a series of events that includes theft, breaking into the house of a respected member of society (the police commissioner, who isn’t a paedophile in this show, or so we’re lead to believe) and a feat of super human strength when he breaks out of the strait jacket on the train tracks.

At one point, Brown even says Matt is going through a, “transformation from ordinary to extraordinary,” you know, like that high school kid who could time travel and had superpowers. What was his name again? Oh yeah, Donnie Darko.

But most of all, at the end of the show, a plane carrying some of his loved ones is supposed to be falling out of the sky and only he can save them!

Also the whole thing made about as much sense as Donnie Darko, but at least Drew Barrymore wasn’t in it.

We’ve often found that things slip your mind when you’re repeatedly having it off with a 20-year-old Russian cocktail waitress.

Things like, ooh, let’s say, the fact that you’ve been married to a non-Russian who isn’t a cocktail waitress for longer than your new conquest has been alive. It’s perfectly natural, so it’s perfectly understandable that that’s exactly what Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood seems to have been doing lately.

But no more. According to reports, Ronnie Wood has decided to return to the UK and plead for forgiveness with his wife Jo. It’ll be an important moment for both of them, but if Jo can find it in her heart to forgive Ronnie Wood then at least he’ll know she’ll probably forgive him the next time he picks up a skanky-looking Russian girl in a prostitute club too. Like we said, important.

We’ve never really given too much time to Ronnie Wood. That’s partly because he looks exactly like one of the Skeskis out of The Dark Crystal in a Chuckle Brothers wig and it freaks us out, and partly because he hadn’t ever done anything interesting, like, say, run off to Ireland on a booze-soaked sex holiday with a hollow-faced Russian 20-year-old he met at a notorious Soho sex club.

Luckily, though, that’s exactly what Ronnie Wood has been doing lately. Welcome aboard Ronnie. Welcome aboard.

According to all reports everywhere, Ronnie Wood has been drunkenly holed up in Ireland with Ekaterina Ivanova, a young Russian girl who’s a waitress or an escort or something, causing his wife Jo to inform him that their marriage is over.

Yeah, OK old lady. Nice one on deciding that you’re leaving your husband about a week after he’s starting having it away with a girl who a) is 33 years younger than you, b) has an exotic accent and c) is so good at sex that she quite possibly gets paid to do it. Way to empower yourself, sister.

However, the ploy might have worked, because now The Sun is claiming that Ronnie Wood has flown home from Ireland to try and patch things up with his wife:

The Rolling Stone, 61, caught a private plane out of Ireland after a heart-to-heart with son Jesse, 30. The guitarist, wearing his wedding ring and visible through a porthole, cannot accept his life with wife Jo, 53, is over and will plead with her to take him back.

Will Ronnie be able to win Jo round? Nobody can be sure, but at least Ronnie has one thing on his side – the new range of Hallmark ‘Sorry I had a giant alcoholic relapse and ran off to a different country to embark on an ill-advised love affair with a Russian girl who’s three times younger than me and possibly involved in the sex trade, wife of 23 years’. They almost seem tailor-made for Ronnie Wood’s predicament.

But let’s be positive here, and hope that Jo Wood takes pity on Ronnie and forgives him. She probably will, because any woman who can put up with her husband having a haircut like that for two decades can’t have all that many standards, can she?

If Michael Jackson ever lost Neverland, he'd be a broken shell of a man – or at least more broken and shelly than he is now, if that's even possible.

Luckily, though, we don't have to concern ourselves with that any more – Michael Jackson isn't going to lose Neverland any more.

Although it had been up for public auction next month, Michael Jackson has worked out a private agreement with an investment group to make sure that Neverland stays his. Bad luck everyone else – you'll just have to find another spooky dilapidated old ranch complete with its own nightmarish arrested-adolescent fairground and hard-to-remove, albeit legally-nonexistent, child abuse connotations to spend your money on.

Chances are if you're reading this, you're probably some sort of ghoulish millionaire interested equally in gaudy decor and inviting underage cancer sufferers round to get drunk on booze. And if that's the case, we've got some bad news for you.

Yes, we know that last month we told you that Neverland ranch was getting auctioned off next week because Michael Jackson defaulted on a property loan worth $24 million. And, yes, we know that the news got you quite excited and that in your head you'd probably already decided that your coffee table would look nice next to the creepy oxygen tent and that a new lick of paint would partially remove the unfounded sensation that Michael Jackson wanked off a lot of boys there. But we've got bad news.

Somehow, Michael Jackson has found the $24 million to save Neverland from being auctioned. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Michael Jackson reached an 11th-hour deal to refinance his troubled Neverland Ranch, his lawyer said Thursday, avoiding a public auction of the property that had been scheduled next week. Jackson attorney L. Londell McMillan told The Associated Press the pop star has worked out a "confidential" agreement with Fortress Investment Group LLC allowing him to retain ownership of the famed property in Los Olivos, Calif. "Neverland and MJ are fine," McMillan said.

And good for Michael Jackson – if Neverland was sold it'd probably be sold off as condos or turned into the world's least pleasant hotel resort, and the place has just got too much history for a sad ending like that. Who can forget, for instance, where Michael Jackson's staff all walked out because they hadn't been paid? Or the time when Michael Jackson was accused of treating his zoo animals with inhuman cruelty? Golden times, golden times. 

However, just because Michael Jackson has fended off the threat of public auction for now, don't think that he'll keep Neverland. He hasn't lived there since he was acquitted of molesting those children in 2005 and it's thought that he's now trying to sell it.

So maybe your dreams of owning a large property that you don't like to stay in because the creaking of the ferris wheel sounds like the tortured screams of the young can come true, after all!

Read more:

Michael Jackson will keep Neverland Ranch - LA Times