And you can’t put a price on emotional trauma like that – not knowing whether your own children are going to live or di… what’s that? You can put a price on emotional trauma like that? And that price is $750,000? Sweet!

Dennis Quaid’s family has reached a settlement of $750,000 against the hospital where his children almost died. And they were just tiny children – imagine how much we’d get if we almost died in a nightmarish medication mix up! To the hospital! It’s label-swapping time!

Dennis Quaid isn’t the box office draw he once was. Time was he could get any film made, no matter how obviously ridiculous it sounded – a movie about a tiny man flying a rocket through Martin Short’s arse, a confusingly-accented detective movie, a version of Jaws that’s in 3D where the shark’s jaw gets exploded off at the end – but those were the good old days.

You know what Dennis Quaid has been reduced to starring in now? Vantage Point. And that wasn’t even a film – that was just 10 minutes of Forest Whitaker looking confused repeated for what seemed like an eternity. The poor man has to really graft to make a wage now, so he must be thrilled to high heaven about the cheque for $750,000 because his newborn babies almost died agonising deaths because of a staff blunder, right? Right? Anyone? No?

You may remember that last year Dennis Quaid’s baby twins were lucky to escape with their lives after inadvertantly being injected with 1,000 times the recommended dose of an anti-coagulant. And the incident changed Dennis Quaid for the better – though grateful that his children eventually made a full recovery, he also realised that the overdose was completely preventable and took it up with the drug company responsible.

And the hospital responsible too, apparently, because its just given him $750,000 as a settlement. People reports:

Dennis Quaid and his wife Kimberly have reached a settlement of $750,000 against Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for the accidental overdose of their newborn twins in 2007. “The settlement is the result of extensive negotiations between the parties and their respective legal representatives, and is intended to avoid the time, expense and uncertainty of litigation,” say papers filed in L.A. Superior Court on Monday.

Dennis Quaid hasn’t yet said what he’s going to do with the settlement yet – there’s a chance he could use it to found an organisation to lobby for clearer labelling on medication boxes, or maybe he’ll put it into a trust fund that’ll give his children the lifestyle that Smart People can’t. Or maybe he’ll just spend it on publicly slagging off Meg Ryan as viciously as he can some more. Honestly, we’d be fine with any of them.

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Yeah, she’s not lovely. Madonna is an awful person. And, as a reminder, Madonna has rushed out a statement suggesting that she wouldn’t dream of giving a cloth-eared bellend like Guy Ritchie that much money.

However, both Madonna and Guy Ritchie have said they’re happy with the divorce settlement – Madonna because she can keep her money and Guy Ritchie because he doesn’t have a wife who looks like a pensioner’s scrotum wrapped around a set of antique dentures any more.

Oh, we thought it was all over, you know. Madonna and Guy Ritchie were divorced, Madonna did some weird pneumatic vaginal thrusts at a man at a concert – thereby making him her new boyfriend according to Madonna Law – and Guy Ritchie probably shagged an actress in Chatham. Madonna gave Guy Ritchie a ridiculously large pile of money as a settlement and, bish bash bosh, everyone could get on with their lives again.

Except no. No, that’s not the case at all. Madonna wants you to ignore all the reports saying that she’d given Guy Ritchie $76 million, a gigantic country pile and a London boozer in her divorce settlement, because it couldn’t be further from the truth.

And, yes, even though news of the divorce settlement seemed to come directly from Madonna’s own henchwoman Liz Rosenberg, it still isn’t true. The new story is that Madonna is big and mean and nasty, and all she gave Guy Ritchie in the divorce was a kick in the bum and a nasty case of the herpes. Or something else entirely. Nobody’s saying for sure. However, Madonna and Guy did release this joint statement:

“We have tried to maintain a dignified silence regarding the details of our divorce for the last few months whilst accepting the obvious media interest. A misleading and inaccurate statement, specifically in relation to the sums of money involved, was wrongly issued to AP this week. The financial details of the settlement will remain private, save to say that both of us are happy with our agreement. Our primary concern, like any co-parents, is the care and well being of our children.”

So fair enough, maybe Guy Ritchie isn’t getting $76 million from Madonna in his divorce settlement after all. It doesn’t matter – what’s important is that he still gets to keep the love of his children. Or at least a generic expression of their love in the form of a three-line acknowledgment of his existence that Madonna will grudgingly pay an orderly to type out once every year.

The bad news, of course, is that a $76 million divorce settlement would have easily been enough to ensure that Guy Ritchie never had to direct another film again. And now he almost certainly will. Thanks a lot Madonna, you massive bitch.

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It was about the children. And it was about having the freedom to do whatever he wanted. And it was about going to bed each night with a woman who didn’t feel like a half-chewed steak. But Guy Ritchie definitely didn’t divorce Madonna for the money.

Except now Guy Ritchie’s divorce settlement from Madonna has come through at close to $100 million, including a dirty great mansion and pub. It’s so much money that Guy Ritchie never has to work again. Guy, read that last sentence again. Read it!

Now that Madonna and Guy Ritchie are properly divorced, we can take off our rose-tinted glasses to inspect its carcass objectively and – you know what? – in hindsight, it’s obvious that, apart from his son Rocco, not one single decent thing was ever produced from that marriage.

It’s true. Madonna’s influence led Guy Ritchie to produce the most hamfisted movies of his career. Guy Ritchie’s influence led Madonna to start talking in the most bizarre stab at a British accent we’ve ever heard. Madonna released possibly her two worst albums ever in American Life and Hard Candy. An African kid got taken away from his father in the name of adoption.

And – worst of all – to try and cover up the cracks in their marriage, Madonna even wrote a song about having sex with Guy Ritchie. As if our lives weren’t horrible enough without the mental image of the withered corpse from the end of Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade grinding away on Mr Potato Head’s lap to contend with.

Actually, we’re lying. There was one good thing to emerge from Guy Ritchie’s marriage to Madonna. And that’s the gigantic pile of money that Madonna’s just handed Guy Ritchie as a final divorce settlement. People reports:

Madonna has reached a divorce settlement with Guy Ritchie, according to the singer’s rep. The pop star will pay her ex between $76 million and $92 million, her spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg tells the Associated Press. Rosenberg says the figure includes the value of their country home Ashcombe, in western England, as well as the couple’s London pub, the Punchbowl.

That is a phenomenal amount of money. Guy Ritchie must be counting his lucky stars – eight years of standing slightly out of frame on red carpets with a handbag swinging from his arm while his elderly wife jiggled her genitals around in a special orthopedic leotard for the paparazzi and he gets almost $100 million? That’s incredible – even if most of that sum is in the form of property and will therefore only be worth about 50p by the middle of next week.

But Madonna is a canny businesswoman, remember that – this huge divorce settlement won’t come without any stipulations. Madonna and Guy Ritchie have yet to reach a formal agreement regarding child custody, for example, so don’t be surprised if Guy’s time with his son Rocco and adopted son David is greatly reduced now. In fact, for $100 million, don’t be surprised if Guy Ritchie’s only contact with the children is a single Christmas card each year addressed from Anonymous Father Figure B.

Still, what does Guy Ritchie care? He’s rich! Rich enough to buy his own children! Rich enough to buy 100 children and run through meadows tossing them all in the air like confetti.

Well, it’s what we’d do. Don’t judge us.

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But we’re sorry to say that it won’t be happening any more. Michael Jackson was due to show up at the High Court today to argue his case in the big ‘a sheikh gave Michael Jackson millions of dollars to sing his songs and Michael Jackson couldn’t be bothered so he’s being sued’ lawsuit. But now he won’t because, shame of shames, a settlement has been reached.

Now, we’re not exactly sure what this settlement involves, but one thing’s for sure – it had better involve Michael Jackson singing those songs that the sheikh wrote. If we have to go one more year without hearing future classics like That’s What Siddiqui Are For and Yummy Yummy Yummy I’ve Got Labaneh In My Tummy then we just don’t know what we’ll do.

We’ll make this very clear – if any wealthy Arab sheikhs want to give us $7 million to write an autobiography, release an album and produce a stage play, we’ll do it. Seriously, we’ll do it. In fact for $7 million we’d record an album entitled Everyone Who Has Ever Written For Hecklerspray Is Riddled With STDs, produce a stage play that grossly besmirches the character of our own parents and write an autobiography in which we confess to over 45 unsolved murders. Just so you know. We would.

But Michael Jackson probably wouldn’t. In fact, if you listen to Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Khalifa of Bahrain, you’d think that Michael Jackson would take the money without doing any of those things. That’s essentially the reason why the sheikh is suing Michael Jackson, and it was supposed to be the reason why Michael Jackson was due at the High Court later today to testify his side of the dispute, which is apparently just that the sheikh gave him all that money because he quite liked The Wiz. Or something.

But that won’t be happening any more. According to reports, Michael Jackson has cancelled his visit to London because he’s reached a settlement with the sheikh. Reuters reports:

“As Mr. Jackson was about to board his plane to London, he was advised by his legal team to postpone his travels since the parties had concluded a settlement in principle,” a London spokeswoman for Jackson said on Sunday. “Therefore, he will not be attending court on Monday,” said the spokeswoman from PR company Outside Organization.

Michael Jackson’s settlement will come as a profound disappointment to the people of London. After all, it’s not every day that they get to see a gaunt, confusingly androgynous zombie-like figure with seemingly no sense of self-awareness and a horrifically alien face drifting through their streets. Well, unless you count Trinny out of Trinny and Susannah, in which case it is every day that they see that.

The settlement also means that some of the biggest questions surrounding the lawsuit will now go forever unanswered. For instance, did Michael Jackson really believe that the $7 million was a gift? Did he ever intend to honour the alleged contract? And why on earth did Sheikh Abdullah bin Hamad al-Khalifa think it’d be a good idea to spend millions of dollars on a new album by a frail, creepy, squeaking middle-aged man who hasn’t had a number one record for 13 years partly because everyone used to think he was a child molester?

Honestly, that last one has us stumped.

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Well tough luck, because Alex Rodriguez doesn’t care about what you want at all. In fact, Alex Rodriguez hates you so much that rather than drag the divorce from his estranged with Cynthia out for months and months of hateful squabbling, he’s decided to quickly and privately reach a confidential settlement with her instead. The great big tosspot.

Still, at least now that Alex Rodriguez is properly divorced he’s free to chase after his soulmate Madonna. Or, if Madonna still hasn’t left Guy Ritchie yet, the nearest alternative – the wizened old lady who lives near him and sits on the park bench playing with herself all day. Go hit that, A-Rod.

As non-followers of American sports, we never really knew who Alex Rodriguez was – we think he’s the fifth back quarter for the New York Antelopes in the National Conkers League, but that’s a guess – until all that stuff about him and Madonna got out.

For those with either short memories or impressively effective tosh filters installed in their brains, it was widely reported earlier in the year that Madonna and Guy Ritchie were splitting up – reports apparently backed up by rumours that Madonna and Alex Rodriguez were having it off.

While Madonna’s marriage managed to withstand the claims, Rodriguez’s marriage didn’t. Incensed by reports that Alex Rodriguez called Madonna his “fucking soulmate” – and possibly by the way that Rodriguez ran off to be with Madonna about 30 seconds after the birth of his own child – his wife Cynthia Rodriguez started divorce proceedings. And maybe a bunk-up with Lenny Kravitz, too, although God knows what all that was about.

The stage was set. One one hand was a superstar athlete, on the other hand was the furious mother of his children and on the third had was a 50-year-old woman with a Nazi fixation and a number of leotards that don’t quite cover up her clodge properly. It was going to the divorce to end all divorces.

Except it wasn’t, because Alex Rodriguez has just decided to give his wife some cash, she’s decided to accept and everyone seems happy. Rubbish. The New York Post reports:

Yankee superstar A-Rod and his long-suffering wife slugged it out quickly and quietly – and now have reached a settlement to end their troubled marriage, a source told The Post last night. “They reached a settlement agreement,” said the source close to Alex Rodriguez. “It was very amicable.” The terms were not immediately disclosed.

Oh come on? Cynthia Rodriguez doesn’t even hate her ex-husband enough to string it out for a bit more? Christ, that’s pathetic. We were expecting something at least equivalent to the whole $3000 a month on porn Christie Brinkley divorce.

What could have happened? Maybe Cynthia was right all along, and Madonna can brainwash people. Maybe Madonna got to her, too, before she could reveal anything too spectacular. Still, at least we know that we’re safe from Madonna’s brainwashing. She’ll never got to uszzzz…

Madonna is good. Madonna’s new album Hard Candy is still in stores. Buy it. It’s good.

Just joking. It’s shit.

But, at long last, Britney and Kevin have managed to stagger to a full, final custody settlement. And it’s not particularly great news for Britney Spears – Kevin Federline has been granted sole custody of Sean Preston and Jayden James.

Britney Spears will still be able to visit her children, but that’s hardly enough time to build a loving relationship between mother and sons – all the time she gets with them will be spent frantically trying to make them unlearn whatever dumb lessons Kevin Federline has been teaching them, like ‘Cornrows make you look cool’ or ‘Jamming knitting needles into plug sockets is fun’. Poor Britney won’t even have a chance to hug them.

The child custody battle between Britney Spears and Kevin Federline never really took off the way anyone expected it to. While Charlie and Denise and Alec and Kim spent their time lashing out at one another in public, Britney and Kevin seemed to genuinely want the best for their children. Which is good for the kids but rubbish for us. Nobody ever thinks of us.

The potential was there – it’s not often that a child custody case comes along where the mother is a woman who shaves her head and calls herself the devil and the father sometimes goes to court dressed as a pirate – but the sparks never really flew between Britney Spears and Kevin Federline the way everyone expected them to. Stupid anti-psychotic medication.

But now it’s over. It’s all over. Rather than allow the court commissioner to give the children the best possible chance at life they had – by sending them to Cambodia to stitch footballs together, or giving them to a pack of hungry bears, or just letting them crawl around on the motorway – Britney Spears and Kevin Federline have reached a custody settlement.

And that settlement is sole custody for Kevin Federline with occasional visits from Britney Spears. E! Online spoke to Federline’s lawyer Mark Vincent Kaplan:

“The case has been settled. The court still has to approve it. As of this evening there is a fully executed deal memo… All the issues that would have been addressed at trial have been settled… Kevin is absolutely delighted.”

That’s not to say that Kevin Federline will have sole custody of the kids forever, though – once Britney Spears has recovered to the extent that she no longer needs a conservator, it’s thought that Federline is open to the idea of giving her co-parenting status again.

But that’s just a possibility to deal with in the future. For now Kevin Federline has sole custody of his kids. And, you know, perhaps it’s for the best.

After all, Britney Spears obviously still isn’t well enough to look after herself, let alone her children – and this means that she’s freed up to concentrate on making a professional comeback to the best of her abilities.

And this custody settlement has also boosted Kevin Federline’s credibility as a father. He’s had to put up with jibes about his ability for a couple of years now, but gaining sole custody means that he’s clearly a very capable father.

Plus it’s wicked funny when he dresses the babies up in tuxedos and gets them to act as beer butlers at house parties until 4am, too – now he gets to do that whenever he wants.

According to reports, lawyers for both Christie Brinkley were thrashing out a divorce settlement until 6:15 this morning, and everyone’s got what they wanted. On the surface of things, Christie Brinkley has come out on top – she’s keeping sole custody of her kids.

You’d think that Peter Cook would be disappointed to discover that he’s never going to be able to spend any quality time with his own children for the rest of his life, but that’s not the case either – Christie Brinkley has to pay him $2.1 million. That’s enough money to keep him in porn for 58.3 years! And, as we all know, porn wins over kids every time.

We’ve long maintained that if anything is more heartwarming than an estranged couple coming together to reach an amicable divorce settlement, it’s an estranged couple coming together to reach an amicable divorce settlement after the wife has exposed to the whole wide world that the husband spends $3,000 on internet porn every month.

And that, by our estimation, makes the divorce between former supermodel Christie Brinkley and her constantly horny architect husband Peter Cook the most heartwarming divorce of all.

True, they may have had their ups and downs recently – most notably when Peter Cook ran up bills of $3,000 a month on internet porn and then started having sex with a girl he met in a toyshop, and when Christie Brinkley retaliated by demanding that their divorce was conducted in public and lined up 44 different witnesses to explain exactly why Peter Cook was such a shit – but at least the pair of them have managed to finally get to a settlement. ABC News reports:

The couple and their lawyers spent hours during the night in separate conference rooms at a Marriot hotel on Long Island. Early this morning, at 6:15 a.m., the battling couple finally struck a deal, according to Brinkley’s lawyer Robert Stephan Cohen. The settlement is expected to be revealed in court later today.

Although it hasn’t been formally announced yet, news sources are confidently predicting that the settlement will lean heavily in Christie Brinkley’s favour. She’ll not only keep full custody of her children, but she’ll also keep the couple’s houses.

It’s not all Christie Brinkley, though – Peter Cook has apparently been given $2.1 million in return for his cooperation. It doesn’t sound like a very large compensation for not being able to see your children grow up but, as we’ve said, it does leave Peter Cook with plenty of post-divorce options. For instance…

1 - On the basis that Peter Cook tried to silence his teenage toystore lover Diana Bianchi with a cash gift of $300,000, the settlement money will allow Peter Cook to embark on another seven reckless sexual affairs with suspiciously young girls.

2 - Since he hasn’t released an album of new material for 14 years, Peter Cook might be able to pay Billy Joel the $2.1 million to write a new song about Christie Brinkley with the title You Vindictive Witch or something.

3 - Porn. As we may have mentioned, Peter Cook rattles through $3,000 of internet porn every single month, meaning that $2.1 million will keep him in pixelated boobies for 58.3 years. If we’re still working on the principle that Peter Cook manages to somehow squeeze in three ejaculations every day, that’s a full 63,636 ejaculations he’s just won from Christie Brinkley.

Going further down this road, on the basis that the average volume of fluid produced by a man per ejaculation is 4ml, the $2.1 million that Peter Cook won in his divorce settlement correlates roughly to 67 gallons of jizz.

And now that they’re properly divorced, that’s 67 gallons of jizz that Christie Brinkley won’t be able to wipe off her thighs after several underwhelming bouts of narcissistic middle-aged sex with Peter Cook. Your loss Christie Brinkley. Your loss.

That’s because David Hasselhoff got to keep the thing he most treasures in the divorce settlement – his name. Or, specifically, use of the phrases ‘The Hoff’ and ‘Don’t Hassel The Hoff’. Honestly, we’re not making this up. Furthermore David Hasselhoff gets to keep the intellectual property rights to a potential TV show called Tales Of The Hoff.

Sometimes a story comes along that doesn’t need jokes to be funny. We think this might be one of them. Oh, and David Hasselhoff also gets to keep the elephant foot, too. We promise all this is true.

You know when you look at a photo of David Hasselhoff stroking a kitten in a leather jacket and a pair of Speedos and you’re never quite sure how seriously he’s taking it? Yeah, turns out he takes it very seriously indeed.

David Hasselhoff’s divorce from Pamela Bach was a stupendously messy affair. There were accusations of domestic violence, confusing fake child suicide threats, accusations of drug addiction and – gloriously – a video of David Hasselhoff lying topless of the floor failing to push a hamburger into his dribbly mouth. It was, in short, everything you could possibly ever want from a divorce.

Between that and all the urinating in his trousers in airports that he did, the divorce left David Hasselhoff a broken man. Variously throughout the course of his break-up, David Hasselhoff lost contact with his children, lost the love of his life, lost all trace of self-respect and lost a lot of money and possessions in the settlement. But there’s one thing that David Hasselhoff will never give up.

The Hoff. The Hoff means more to David Hasselhoff than anything else, including marriage or children. It’s The Hoff that turns David Hasselhoff from a shambling alcoholic with a messed-up personal life and zero self-awareness into an ironic cultural superhero. Hear that David Hasselhoff has stabbed a toddler to death and thrown it down a well and you’d be appalled, but hear that The Hoff has done the exact same thing and it’s high-fives and a quick burst of Jump In My Car all round.

Which is a needlessly long way to say that the most important things David Hasselhoff got to keep in his just-announced divorce settlement were use of the terms ‘The Hoff’, ‘Don’t Hassel The Hoff’ and the rights to an unmade TV show called Tales Of The Hoff.

We know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “But what about the photos of Michael Jackson and the elephant’s foot?” E! Online has more:

In the personal effects department, Hasselhoff seems to bag the best of what was known as his Encino, Calif., home’s African room. He gets the African pipe, the ivory tusk, assorted statues and the “elephant foot and two elephant stools.”

• She gets the photographs of Hollywood great Claudette Colbert and pop singer Michael Jackson that hung outside the couple’s master suite. She also gets a shot of herself that apparently ran in Sports Illustrated.
• She gets one-half of any income from his 2006 autobiography, Making Waves.
• He gets the intellectual property rights to his tome, as well as those to the “potential television series referred to as Tales of the Hoff.
• He gets the Ted Williams “baseball paraphernalia,” the barber chair, the computer, the weights, the piano and the “French maid.”

Yes, we know. French maid. Saucy. But we can’t spend too long lingering on the thought of David Hasselhoff chasing his continental cleaner around the kitchen in a pair of Speedos because a) it weirds us out too much and b) Tales Of The Hoff? What the hell?

We’ll assume that this will be a project along the lines of the still-unmade David Hasselhoff musical – a collection of dramatised autobiographical episodes solely about David Hasselhoff.

If that’s the case, we’re especially looking forward to the episode where Baywatch becomes a global success, the episode where David Hasselhoff single-handedly brings about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the episode where David Hasselhoff kids himself that his divorce settlement worked in his favour because he got to keep two meaningless phrases and a sawn-off piece of elephant.

Read more:

The “Hoff” Is All Hasselhoff’s – E! Online

After a week at the High Court failing to thrash out a deal in private, the judge presiding over the Paul McCartney/ Heather Mills divorce has decided to take things into his own hands and will decide how much cash Heather Mills gets himself.

And then, in a month, that'll be it – Paul McCartney will be divorced from Heather Mills. Unless Heather Mills decides she doesn't like the decision and drags it out through the Court Of Appeals and the House Of Lords for months and months, of course. Which, let's face it, she probably will.

By now Paul McCartney was supposed to be divorced from Heather Mills and quickly moving on to whichever middle-aged sexpot he's rumoured to be boffing at the moment, while Heather Mills was supposed to have taken the tens of millions of pounds that she got in the divorce settlement, realised that nobody particularly cares for her and disappeared out of view forever.

Hasn't happened, though.

Last Monday Paul McCartney and Heather Mills went to the High Court to finalise their divorce. A week later and things have progressed so badly that the judge has decided to take things into his own hands. Reuters reports:

Pop icon Paul McCartney and ex-model Heather Mills failed to agree on a divorce settlement on Monday after six days in court, leaving the judge to decide how much of the former Beatle's fortune Mills should receive. Judge Hugh Bennett will make his decision at a later date, probably in about a month, in a judgement that could set an important legal precedent for future short-lived marriages of the super-rich.

The last week of negotiations have been carried out in private, so nobody really has any idea what happened. We know that Heather Mills represented herself, and that she probably bought up that old wine glass-stabbing story again for everyone to hear, but aside from that nobody has the foggiest. Paul McCartney and Heather Mills might have had a fight in the court room with McCartney using platinum discs to protect himself from Heather Mills' jelly penis attacks for all we know, but it hasn't got them any nearer to an agreement.

Whenever the judge does come to his decision, it'll be closely watched. Because if both Paul McCartney and Heather Mills agree on it, it'll remain private. But if either party disagrees with the ruling – which is likely given the rumoured £25 million discrepancy between what Heather wants and what Paul is prepared to pay – then the whole thing becomes messily public as it gets hauled through an appeals court and possibly the House Of Lords after that.

So now we all just have to sit and wait. It's thought that if Heather Mills does accept a divorce settlement from Paul McCartney in the meantime, one condition will be that she has to keep quiet about the ins and outs of the deal. But we think we can do one better than that – if we all chip in a fiver each, perhaps we can get Heather Mills to shut up completely forever. Or £10 each and she'll actually sew her mouth closed with shoelaces.

Think about it, it'd be worth it not to hear her squeaking the word 'paedophile' over and over again like a morally-outrage guinea pig. Whaddaya say?

Read more:

Judge to decide on McCartney divorce deal – Reuters

And David Hasselhoff's pretty swell at idiomatically washing his dirty linen in public, too – just look at the endless public squabbling between David Hasselhoff and his ex-wife Pamela Bach during and after their divorce. However, the good news is that Hasselhoff and Bach have finally reached a settlement about their post-divorce battle over their money and children. Great news for the Hasselhoff children – this settlement means they can now play their parents off each other for material gain instead of just standing around filming David Hasselhoff rolling around the floor gurgling and pushing clumps of fast food into the side of his head because that's where he thinks his mouth is.

Even though the Spears/Federline custody battle tops it for sheer bloody tedium and the Baldwin/Basinger custody battle tops it for pig-based abuse tapes, the custody battle between David Hasselhoff and his ex-wife Pamela Bach was so spectacularly violent that we're not sure it can ever be surpassed. And in a world containing Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards, that's quite the statement.

Throughout David Hasselhoff and Pamela Bach's divorce and custody battle, accusations of abuse were constantly thrown around, as were supposed child suicide bids and the phrase "whore cunt bitch slut drug addict." And although David Hasselhoff came off far worse in the public relations battle – witness the stories of him drunkenly urinating in his trousers at an airport or that topless burger-eating video – it was David Hasselhoff who was given full custody of his two daughters, a decision which made the world wonder just what the hell Pamela Bach was up to.

However, after months and months of bitter scrapping, David Hasselhoff and Bach have reached a settlement over their financial and custody rights. It's thought that the pair of them will now share custody of their children, although nobody wanted to disclose what form of spousal support Bach was getting. According to a statement released by David Hasselhoff:

"I'm pleased that everything has been resolved and I'm proud of my
kids, who remain strong and have exhibited dignity during this very
difficult time. We are all moving on."

Apparently this settlement came about because David Hasselhoff invited Pamela Bach to temporarily live in his house. Does this mean that the old spark of romance is being rekindled? We'd like to think so, because this time of year is all about goodwill and joy – and frankly there's not much more joyous than the thought of David Hasselhoff and Pamela Bach getting back together. 

It means that we'd get to watch another round of petty divorce bitching between the two of them in a couple of years, you see.

Read more:

Hasselhoff, Bach Settle Divorce Issues – Associated Press 

Because that's what Evel Knievel does if you cross him, you see. Unless you're a millionaire rapper who makes a music video where you dress up in a vaguely Evel Knievel-ish outfit and do stunts, in which case Evel Knievel will probably just try to sue you instead, like he did with Kanye West – the only millionaire rapper so far to dress up like Evel Knievel and do stunts for a music video. Luckily, though, Kanye West has managed to see off Knievel's legal challenge against him with the aid of an undisclosed legal settlement and the world's most awkward impromptu photo session.

You know when two people meet and they're so similar that they can't get along? That's basically the case with Kanye West and Evel Knievel. One is a 69-year-old from Montana who made his living smashing his body to pieces while testing the limits of physics and human endurance via a spectacular succession of daredevil motorcycle stunts, and the other wrote a song called Drunk And Hot Girls once. Truly Evel Knievel and Kanye West are like peas in a pod.

Two peas that didn't especially like each other until recently, that is. Not only does Evel Knievel see himself more as a 50 Cent fan, but the video for Kanye West's Touch The Sky single riled him up a little too. Starring Kanye West as a stuntman character called Evel Kanyevel – who wore a costume similar to Knievel's and did a stunt that looked a lot like Knievel's Snake River Canyon jump of 1974 – Evel Knievel called the Touch The Sky video a "worthless piece of crap" that "harm[ed] the reputation of the Evel Knievel trademark" and promptly sued Kanye West for roughly everything he's got.

And although Kanye West was adamant that his video was a satire and therefore protected by the First Amendment, he's now reached a settlement with Knievel that's finally made the old man happy. According to Evel Knievel himself:

"I was very satisfied and so was he."  

The settlement is completely undisclosed, so we'll never find out exactly how much money Kanye West paid Evel Knievel to shut up, but we'd imagine that it was a lot less than it could have been, because Kanye West sweetened the deal by heading down to Evel Knievel's home in Florida to say hello and iron out the settlement in person.

This will have helped enormously because it allowed Evel Knievel the chance to hear a human explanation for the video instead of the mildly threatening legal-speak he must have been sick of hearing from West's lawyers. And not only that, but it also gave Evel the opportunity to tell Kanye that, while he's ultimately a fan of his third-party production work for the likes of Common and Jay-Z, he essentially feels that his solo work is let down by an insidious complacency when it comes down to his assonance-heavy rhyming style. Word.

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Knievel, Kanye Call Truce – E! Online 

But that's not the case at all, as Hulk Hogan is quickly discovering for himself. Just days after Linda Bollea, Hulk Hogan's wife of 24 years, surprised the Hulkster by divorcing him, it's been announced that she's after everything that Hulk Hogan's got – namely half of his $9.5 million assets plus alimony, child support fees and health insurance for their son. But Hulk Hogan and Linda Bollea are both adults and we're sure they'll reach a sensible, amicable agreement over the course of time – either that or Hulk Hogan is going to walk around in circles puffing out his cheeks, waving an American flag about and ripping his shirt to pieces, which admittedly does seem to be his answer to bloody everything.

We can't imagine why Linda Bollea is divorcing the bald, long-haired, bleach-blond, handlebar-moustachioed, saveloy-armed, grunting play-fighter Hulk Hogan, but the sad truth of the matter is that she is. Which is news to us and news to Hulk Hogan too, since he reportedly only found out about the divorce through a phonecall from a journalist.

But whatever the reason that Linda Bollea is divorcing Hulk Hogan for – officially it's because the marriage is "irretrievably broken," which could mean anything – the fun has only just begun. Because, according to the filed divorce petition, Linda Bollea wants half of everything that Hulk Hogan's got. That's right – half of the money Hulk Hogan earnt during his wrestling career, half of the money he earnt from starring in Hogan Knows Best and, oh the humanity, even half of Hulk Hogan's Mr Nanny salary.

All in all, the divorce petition claims that Linda Bollea is after half of the couple's assets – namely a mansion in Bel Air, a house in Florida and another house under construction in Las Vegas – plus unspecified alimony and child support for their 17- and 19-year-old children, along with health insurance for their son Nick just in case he drives like a turd and crashes his car again.

News of Linda Bollea's divorce demands comes at the same time as rumours that perhaps – just perhaps – Hulk Hogan's marriage has been in trouble for a while, and that perhaps he and Linda were staying together for the money from Hogan Knows Best, and that perhaps the divorce became official a few days after VH1 decided that it wasn't going to make any new episodes of the show. How correct any of that is, we don't know. After all, the thought of a couple enduring a sham marriage for the sake of a brainless reality TV and the divorcing as soon as it ends seems wholly unrealistic to us.

We're sure the truth about Hulk Hogan's divorce will come out in time, bu for now Hulk Hogan has to worry about shelling out half of everything he owns to his soon-to-be ex-wife. However, there has to be a compromise here – Hulk Hogan is a big man, so why doesn't he just give his wife half of everything that he can physically pull apart with his bare hands? It's a fair deal, we think – face it, what woman wouldn't want to walk out of a quarter-century marriage with a suitcase full of flimsy vest-tops and nothing else?

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Hulk Hogan's Wife Wants half Of Assets In Divorce - People