Only joking. That’s got nothing to do with the outcome of OJ Simpson’s trial at all. Well, technically it probably has got a bit to do with it, but let’s not get into that. In actual fact, the whole OJ Simpson trial revolves around a secret tape of the whole shebang, recorded by an auctioneer.

Sadly, though, as the court found out yesterday, the tape is just vague enough not to mean anything at all. Oh OJ Simpson, why couldn’t you have stormed into the hotel and said, clearly and within earshot of the microphone “What-ho, I’m OJ Simpson and these gun-wielding chaps here – boys, say hello, there’s no excuse for rudeness – are here to take these items which don’t even belong to me. Pip pip!” or whatever the opposite of that is that proves you’re innocent? You’d have saved us all a lot of time either way, you selfish git.

The OJ Simpson trial has been sort of interesting so far, but only because of all the berserk old men who keep pretending to have heart attacks on the stand and the way that somebody’s going to cry racist whatever the verdict. Other than that, things have felt a little staid.

Why’s that? Because there was one piece of evidence that the lawyers had been holding back on. One impossibly vital piece of evidence – the secretly-recorded tape of the alleged armed robbery.

It’s been a frustrating wait, because everyone has known about the existence of the tape ever since a clip of OJ Simpson bellowing “You think you can steal my shit?” leaked out onto the internet. And yesterday the jury at the OJ Simpson trial got to hear the tape.

Well, some of the tape, at least. The man who recorded the incident – auctioneer Thomas Riccio – seems to basically make weird little secret recordings of everything he ever does on the offchance he’ll be able to sell bits of it to TMZ. And the clips played yesterday were of an encounter with OJ Simpson prior to the alleged robbery and of the police officers who were combing the hotel room after the incident but didn’t find Riccio’s recordings.

First, OJ Simpson’s tape. What the prosecution would have really loved is a long discussion about guns and how none of the sports memorabilia he was seeking actually belonged to him. What they actually got was this, according to the LA Times:

“I’m gonna show up with a bunch of the boys and take the [stuff] back,” said the man prosecutors contend is Simpson… Prosecutors played the jury a second recording, made in Simpson’s Palms room after he returned from the pool, in which Simpson said, “I gotta be at my intimidating best.”

Now, although your vision of OJ Simpson’s intimidating best will vary depending on if you thought the book If I Did It was a work of fact or fiction – hint: one’s got knives in it and the other one hasn’t – to be fair, the tape recording doesn’t actually prove anything. But nor does the recording of the police officers, either, other than that they sound quite a lot like glory-hunting bellends:

“This is great. John said uh, yeah — he is like California can’t get him. . . . Now we’ll be like . . . got him.”

Maybe this will change in days to come, when the meatier chunks of Riccio’s recordings will be played for the jury. Or maybe they’ll just play all of Riccio’s secret recordings from beginning to end, starting with a recording of his kindergarten teacher on the toilet and ending with a recording of the jury listening to a recording of the jury listening to a recording of the jury listening to a recording of the jury that Riccio recorded when the jury were listening to a recording of another recording Riccio had recorded in secret earlier.

Great, we’ve broken our brains. Thanks a lot, OJ Simpson.

Because yesterday at the R Kelly child pornography trial… not much happened. Not much happened because the judge halted the trial for a day. And the judge halted the trial because a brand new ultra-mysterious secret witness for the defence has just descended onto the scene.

According to R Kelly’s defence, nobody knew this witness even existed until 9am yesterday morning when it received a phone call. It’s exciting, dramatic stuff and not even the judge knows what’s going on. We can’t wait! We want to be profoundly disappointed by the inevitable anticlimax now!

Although we’re aware that R Kelly’s defence hasn’t had a proper go yet, the R Kelly child pornography trial hasn’t especially been going great shakes for the singer so far.

The trial revolves around a video of a girl, possibly as young as 13, having all sorts of illegal piss sex with a man to the sound of the Backstreet Boys. Since R Kelly denies it’s him on the tape and the girl suspected to be the victim also denies that she’s on the tape, the onus is on the prosecution to find people who’ll identify both R Kelly and the girl.

Apparently, that’s not as hard as it seems, because everyone from friends of the girl to family members of the girl to R Kelly’s old employees have been lining up to claim that R Kelly is the man in the sex tape.

However, that could all be about to change dramatically with the sudden appearance of a previously-unknown witness for the defence, who’s apparently going to swoop in and save the day. BBC News reports:

Dramatic claims of a potential new defence witness have interrupted the trial of US R&B singer R Kelly on child sex charges. A lawyer for Mr Kelly informed the court in Chicago that the defence had not known about the new witness until he called them on Wednesday morning. The judge halted the trial for a day to allow time for the man to fly in from another state and make a deposition. “I have no idea what’s going on,” Judge Vincent Gaughan told the court.

Dramatic, huh? It’s just like an exciting courtroom drama, only it’s far slower and it’d never get shown on TV because a grown man shags a child and then pisses on her head in it.

We’re not too sure about what happens now. Will this surprise defence witness get wheeled out in court immediately, drop a giant bombshell and bring the R Kelly child pornography trial to a premature end? Or will the prosecution finish up its business before the witness is allowed to make a grand game-changing entrance?

Most importantly, do we still get to hear the witness’ testimony even if he turns out to be a funny-looking R Kelly superfan whose argument just consists of singing “I don’t see nothing wrong with a little bump and grind” several times in a row while doing a creepy little shuffle dance in the witness box?

Because we get the feeling that’s what’s going to happen, and we’d quite like to see the pastel courtroom sketch of that, please.

And it's worse than it ever seemed – forget the string of public meltdowns, there's a chance that Britney Spears secretly got married to her paparazzo boyfriend Adnan Ghalib last month.

Of course, nobody knows the truth and the marriage is void anyway because Adnan's already married, but getting married to Adnan Ghalib? Britney's lucky she only got sectioned after that – we'd have held her down and lobotomised her there and then if we'd have caught wind of it.

You might not think so now, but history will define Britney Spears and Adnan Ghalib as the purest example of overwhelming love in creation. People will look back on Britney Spears and Adnan Ghalib and think to themselves "Why can't I find myself a much older, married, shit-bearded paparazzo to follow me about spending my money when I'm emotionally vulnerable to the point of disability?"

You see, Britney Spears and Adnan Ghalib have it all – they're young (well, one of them is), they're happy (well, one of them is), they took naked pictures of each other that they tried to sell for a million dollars (well, one of them did) and they talk in preposterous British accents all the time (well… no, actually they both do that).

But there was one little blip last month where Britney Spears dumped Adnan Ghalib and he rushed off to do as many tawdry tell-all interviews as possible and then they got back together pretty much the next day when Adnan's wife filed for a divorce.

What kicked that off? Was it that Britney Spears and Adnan Ghalib got married in secret in Mexico, only for Britney to realise that Adnan was already married, break it off with him, pay him to hurry through a divorce and then get back together with him again? Seems so, as OK! reports:

The couple allegedly secretly wed while in Mexico last month but sources are saying the ceremony was illegal as boyfriend Adnan is still married. Reports in the Daily Star have said the couple hired private jets and security in Hawaii, Las Vegas and New York in an attempt to trick photographers away from Mexico. The secret ceremony apparently took place on January 9th followed by a night at the Rosarito Beach Hotel.  A source said, "While in Mexico, they went through a quickie marriage ceremony."  Britney, 26, was said to be fuming when she realised Adnan was still married and broke it off before allegedly slipping him £125,000 to help with the divorce proceedings.

It wasn't long after this that Britney Spears was carted off to the loony bin, and with good reason. In fact, we'd even go so far as to suggest that anyone who sees Adnan Ghalib's straggly little beard-worm and feel anything other than furious rage probably needs locking up too.

Of course, this all happened in the past. And now that Britney's dad is tightly controlling his daughter's life, nobody knows what the exact status is between Britney Spears and Adnan Ghalib. Although now that Sam Lutfi isn't around to mash drugs into Britney's food, we're guessing that she's probably gone off him a bit.

Read more:

Could Britney be Married Again?  – OK! 

And with age comes inevitable health problems, which explains why Paul McCartney had a sly coronary angioplasty recently. According to reports, Paul McCartney had the routine heart operation in secret at a private London hospital in the autumn after consulting his doctor, and has since recovered well. That'll be good news to everyone except for Ringo Starr, who must accept that Paul McCartney's refusal to die means that he has to shelve his plans to remaster the life out of all the old Beatles albums until all that's left is some drumming and a 15-hour selection of out-takes from the seminal Octopus's Garden sessions.

Divorce affects different people in different ways, and that's never been more clear than with Paul McCartney and Heather Mills. While the endless bickering and public squabbling caused Heather Mills to spectacularly meltdown on GMTV until all she could do was squeak the word 'paedophile' over and over like Mickey Mouse's castrato nephew, Paul McCartney has done quite the opposite.

Instead of carping on about the agony of divorce to anyone who'll listen, Paul McCartney has bravely grinned through the pain, waggled his thumbs about at every opportunity and then nearly keeled over from a heart attack. Which is probably worse, all said. 

It has been reported today that Paul McCartney had a spot of secret coronary angioplasty recently, following a stress-filled year that involved both divorce proceedings and skipping around like an elderly goblin in an iTunes ad, either of which could have finished him off, really. According to The Sun, a source said:

"Paul had been complaining about not feeling well and saw a Harley Street specialist at The London Clinic. Tests were carried out and the decision was taken to operate. Paul had the angioplasty in a private hospital. It was all very routine but any work on your heart is a big deal."

We've no reason to believe that this story isn't true, but perhaps the best way to find out for sure would be to ask Nancy Shevell or Rosanna Arquette, because from what we've heard the operation involves pushing balloons up your cock, and that sort of thing has to leave a mark, surely. Whatever, we're just pleased that Paul McCartney's last YouTube craze was called Nod Your Head – if it had been called Run Up And Down The Stairs A Bunch Of Times then the poor bugger would have been done for.

It just goes to show that you can have all the money in the world but it means nothing if your heart packs up – unless it allows you to pay for expensive private Harley Street doctors to repair your heart much faster and more effectively than if you had to go through the procedure on the NHS. Which is what Paul McCartney did, to be fair. Look, we don't know what our point is, OK?

Read more:

Macca has a secret heart op – The Sun 

Reports are surfacing that Jay-Z and Beyonce properly went and got married during a trip to Paris last week. They're completely unconfirmed rumours, of course, but we'll soon see how true they are because apparently Jay-Z and Beyonce both got their fingers tattooed instead of swapping wedding rings. That doesn't necessarily mean we should all strain our eyes trying to look for infinitesimal markings on Jay-Z and Beyonce's fingers, though – the signs will be much more obvious than that. On the basis that they both let a Frenchman tattoo their fingers last week, we just need to look out for the 'Beyonce Has One Giant Septic Hand Covered In Pus' headlines to confirm everything we need to know.

Beyonce and Jay-Z make a lovely couple, they really do. Whether they're popping up in each other's music videos, relentlessly hawking a variety of products in commercials or just sneaking around pretending to get married every couple of days, Beyonce and Jay-Z never look anything other than contented. Well, occasionally badly bruised too, but mostly contented. 

But despite looking happy enough as a couple, Jay-Z and Beyonce have never got round to getting married. Sure, they both say that they want to get married, and every time they go on holiday people start shrieking that it's because they're getting married, but it never happens.

But it's happened now. Possibly. We think.

It has been suggested that Jay-Z and Beyonce used a trip to Paris last week to get married in secret, and that they received special little finger tattoos to make sure they stay true to one another. According to a source, Jay-Z and Beyonce:

"Didn't want all the attention that usually follows them around, they just wanted it to be intimate and romantic. It was lovely and they are both blissfully happy. They thought the tattoos would be a lovely personal touch."

Uh-oh, a marriage in Paris. That means that, by the time you wake up tomorrow morning, a French model is going to be talking about how Beyonce thinks that sperm makes her spotty.

Anyway, we hear that the Jay-Z/ Beyonce wedding was just adorable to watch. For the vows, for instance, Beyonce sang and stretched out the words "to have and to hold" alone to last more than 15 minutes, with Jay-Z interrupting two-thirds of the way through to do a 25-second rap about how rich he is. Beautiful.

That's if Beyonce and Jay-Z really did get married – nobody knows for sure. One thing's for certain, though – all this mystique surrounding the wedding has turned something we absolutely don't give a badger's chuff about into something we still don't give a badger's chuff about but could use as an excuse to crack out some lazy jokes about stereotypical French uncleanliness.

Read more:

Has Beyonce Married Jay-Z? – Metro