You. You’re a massive wimp. Why? Because we’re all wimps when compared to the most immense man the world has ever seen! We are, of course, talking about walking deity, Vladimir Putin!

There’s nothing that ol’ Pute can’t do. Seriously. If there was a sex-tape leaked starring him, it would be so impressive that our collective genitals would crawl up into our bodies in shame.

This week, Rad Vlad decided to go diving. Pretty simple in terms of pleasures, right? However, this is Super Putin! On his first go, he just so happens to come back with some ancient treasures, just like that! Should we be surprised? Like hell. We’ve got loads of videos to show that he’s the greatest human who ever walked this disgrace of a planet.

Putin uncovered a 6th Century urn from the Black Sea all by himself, just to show you how much better he is than us plebs.

In seven months, Russia will be voting for a new president, so we’re here to remind you why you’d be an idiot to doubt this man.

Seriously. There’s nothing he can’t do.

As such, we’ve yoinked his finest moments and put them all in one place so you can weep with jealousy and hope for a time we live in a country with such a brilliant leader. He can shoot, sing, rap… he can even fly and shoot tigers!

Here we go! Take notes, losers.

Putin finds ancient jugs!

Putin sings!

Putin enjoys graffiti and rap

Putin shoots a gun with men in balaclavas!

Putin flies a plane through a fire!

Putin is all action horse riding, swimming man!

Putin does martial arts!

Putin drives a car really fast

Putin shoots a tiger!

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Gordon Ramsay has a fascinating face. Even though he’s had botox injections to smooth it out, he still resembles a discarded scrotum from the Mount Rushmore project (he would have been Abe Lincoln’s balls for the record).

Not only does he look like a granite teste, but he’s also more irritating than a Jonas Brothers gig.

And so, take great joy in the knowledge that, while in Costa Rica, someone tried to shoot Gordon Ramsay’s face off.

So why was Gordon Ramsay in Costa Rica? Was he there to shout at small cafe owners until they actually placed their heads in their own ovens for a mass-suicide? Nope. He was trying to uncover the illicit trade in shark fins as part of Channel 4’s Big Fish Fight series.

Of course, shark fins are something that figure highly in all of our daily lives aren’t they? Only this morning, hecklerspray had shark fin flakes with Frosties and a shot of blended shark fin with our shark tears and milk combo.

Ramsay said:

“It is a multibillion dollar industry, completely unregulated. Uh? (YES CHEF!) We traced some of the biggest culprits to Costa Rica. Big boy. Uh? (YES CHEF) The day before we got there, a Taiwanese crew landed a haul of hammerhead sharks – uh? (YES CHEF) – police searched the boat and found bails of cocaine. *jigs up and down like he needs a piss*

“These gangs operate from places that are like forts, with barbed-wire perimeters and gun towers. At one, I managed to shake off the people who were keeping us away, ran up some stairs to a rooftop and looked down to see thousands and thousands of fins, drying on rooftops as far as the eye could see.”

Don’t care. Don’t even slightly care. When are you nearly getting shot?

“When I got back downstairs they tipped a barrel of petrol over me. Then these cars with blacked out windows suddenly appeared from nowhere, trying to block us in. We dived into the car and peeled off.”

They tipped petrol over you? Did they set it on fire?

“In a quiet moment I dived from the boat to swim with marlin. I swam under the keel and saw this sack tied to it. I opened it and it was full of shark fins. The minute I threw this bag on deck, everyone started screaming and shouting.

“Back at the wharf, there were people pointing rifles at us to stop us filming. A van pulled up and these seedy characters made us stand against the wall. The police came and advised us to leave the country. They said ‘if you set one foot in there, they’ll shoot you’.”

The crushing reality of this, is that this story is only going to make Ramsay feel more bloody worthy, making him reach critical mass of ego. We can only hope that, during 2011, he actually explodes during one of those awful live cookathons that he used to do.

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John Lennon, one quarter of The Beatles and writer of stone cold classic tracks like ‘It’s So Hard’, ‘Meat City’ and ‘My Mummy’s Dead’, got bumped off this Earth in one of the most oddest of fashions.

How many people’s ghosts can say ‘Well, I got shot dead by a man who asked for my autograph hours before I departed this shitty little planet.’? Not many.

And now, if you’re wealthy and fond of macabre artefacts, you can buy an album covered in murderer’s fingerprints. Yesireebob! An American dealer is selling the copy of John Lennon’s ‘Double Fantasy’ LP which he signed for Mark Chapman the day he thought he should kill a really famous person.

It was just before Christmas in 1980 that Chapman was photographed approaching Lennon to get him to stick his autograph on the Double Fantasy album. Then, later in the day, Chapman shot Lennon outside his home. That’s not a very nice thing to do (even if it did spare us from any potential embarrassing ’80s output from Lennon. Yeah, we’re being a bit selfish on that one).

The dealer, who is selling this grisly piece of pop culture said that the LP was found by a maintenance man in a planter and handed over to police. Officials later returned it to the owner, “with a letter of extreme gratitude from the district attorney”.

A spokesman for the seller says:

“The album is the most extraordinary artefact in rock’n'roll history. I have never come across a piece with such provenance. Police reports, fingerprint documentation, letters from the [district attorney], it goes on and on.”

The original owner sold the LP for $150,000 (£94,000) in 1999, and now, it’s looking like it could fetch up to $850,000 (£535,000).

The chap who is selling the album is keeping his identity secret.

“[He] doesn’t want to be named because he received death threats,”

Not from Chapman though because he’s serving a sentence of 20 years to life and is continually denied parole year on year. Of course, if you want in on Lennon’s death (let’s face, everyone does these days), but can’t afford over a half a million quid to buy one of Lennon’s weakest albums, you should be aware that we’re selling a t-shirt regarding Mark Chapman, to be worn the next time you go watching The Bootleg Beatles.

What do you mean it’s in bad taste? Worse taste than Apple Corps butchering of ‘Real Love’? Give us a break!

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John Lennon wrote some great songs didn’t he? He’s responsible for more great songs than your average band manages in a lifetime twice as long as Lennon’s musical career. As it would have been Lennon’s birthday this weekend, everyone has been heaping praise on The Beatles’ number one corpse.

However, we don’t much care for eyeless fawning at hecklerspray and knowing damn well that all musicians deserve to be treated with utter contempt, we’d like to put forward the reasons why John Lennon, when he was in the mood, was one of the worst song-writers on the planet.

And he was y’know?

Of course, there’s some of you out there who will be appalled at the very notion of such a list. Sure, everyone is entitled to make a few duff records now and again… but with Lennon, it’s worth reminding ourselves of just how utterly awful he could be.

Seriously. Don’t canonise him. He made some absolute howlers. And, for once, this is a Worst Lennon/Beatle list that won’t include Revolution #9.

Why? Mainly because it’s a boring choice and furthermore, Revolution #9 is really funny. It’s a lovely artefact of what happens when the lunatics take over the asylum.

Anyway, here’s a bunch of really crappy John Lennon songs.

Dear Yoko

‘Dear Yoko’ is, no questions, the worst thing Lennon ever committed his voice to. It’s saccharine and topplingly woeful. This is from 1980′s ‘Double Fantasy’ album which is dreadful start-to-finish and perhaps a beacon of what would have come should Lennon have survived Mark Chapman’s murderous afternoon. It’s listening to this that, pop-culturally at least, we can be grateful that Lennon is no longer with us.

Imagine

A terrible record. Lennon preaches about imagining no possession and being a dreamer. Fair enough, if you’re a multi-millionaire who has piss-all else to do in a day. Life in the late ’60s and early ’70s wasn’t that great for people, so mewing at them with sixth form philosophies is a bit rich. It’s like a fat man telling you to eat healthily. Of course, this is not a new theory and has been wheeled out time and time again against Lennon, but y’know, that’s for a very good reason.

Luck Of The Irish

One of the posterboys for why musicians and politics shouldn’t mix. Lennon creates a half-baked protest song which naively suggests that certain Irish people might wish they were English. It’s around this time that (allegedly) Lennon gave a load of money to the IRA, which is nice. Some of his ‘world peace’ vision may well have contributed to a nail-bomb that killed someone completely innocent. Give peace a chance, eh John?

Do You Want To Dance?

Here’s an idea. When you’ve completely run out of ideas, why not do a covers LP? Hey! Why not take a stone-cold classic and do a cod-reggae version of it? That’s a good idea isn’t it? No? WELL WHY DID NO-ONE TELL JOHN PISSING LENNON THEN?

Woman Is The Nigger Of The World

Ah! Lennon drops the N-bomb to shock us all and junk! Yeah man! RIGHT ON! Wimmins Lib! You tit.

Come Together

A Beatle classic that remains as one of the most underwhelming album openers ever cut to wax. It’s slow, plodding and despite a couple of evocative lyrics in there, is incredibly dull indeed. Michael Jackson tackled it and couldn’t even spice it up.

(Just Like) Starting Over

Listening to this track is amazing painful. A happy John Lennon is not necessarily a talented one. The backing vocals in this song sound like the house band on an Eighties chat show. You can feasibly imagine Tom O’Connor tapping along on his driving wheel to this and imagining it as the theme-tune to his comeback show. Awful.

Watching The Wheels

“People say I’m crazy… doing what I’m doing…“. Nope. People say “Shit. He’s lost it.” Hokey ‘Oooh! People don’t understand me! I’m a bit of a maverick see?’ shows that Lennon is completely divorced from reality. Throughout the ’70s, men started staying home more often and baking bread after the fall-out of hippiedom, but here we find Lennon under the illusion that he’s the only man in the world who decided to take a step-back from the rat-race. Songwriting so stationary that you could hang your coat on it.

Have we missed any? Feel free to inform us of other Lennon turkeys in the comments. Or, if you prefer, you can simply say “OH YEAH? AND WHAT HAVE YOU EVER DONE FOR THE WORLD?” It’s entirely up to you.

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The day John Lennon died, the world lost one of its greatest talents. However, it also cemented a legacy as well, because, shortly before Lennon died, he was making records so bad that people started to doubt the assumed wisdom that ears were an evolutionary advantage.

Basically, John Lennon’s death ensured that his quality output would always outnumber his criminal records (something which cannot be said for Paul McCartney).

However, the collective we can’t help but wonder what Lennon would have done had he lived. Would he have had another creative spurt which would turn music on its head? Would he have let Jools Holland play that awful boogie-woogie piano on his TV appearances? Yoko Ono has a theory and it involves him pissing about on the internet.

For reasons unclear, Ono has said that John Lennon would have approved of the internet. Of course, the internet would have gone ahead with or without the Beatle seal of approval, but y’know, he would have loved it all the same.

Whether he’d have massive hissy fits over illegal downloads and keep The Beatles’ back catalogue from appearing on Spotify and iTunes is a different matter altogether.

He definitely would have sat around watching loads of porn though, that we can be pretty certain of.

Ono said on The Andrew Marr Show:

“I think he would have been going very strong and creative still.

“I think he would have been very interested in playing [on] the computer because he always jumped on some new media and that is a very interesting new media.”

Playing on the computer? That prompts the image of a dribbling Lennon in a poindexter hat, haplessly poking at buttons and gurgling with glee at the flashing pop-adverts.

Anyway, seeing as we’re based on the internet and Yoko reckons that Lennon would approve of the online world, we’ll take that to mean this:

HECKLERSPRAY: Approved by John Lennon.

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Did you know that you are legally obliged, when working for Hecklerspray, to attend Bootleg Beatles concerts in a t-shirt that says ‘I’m a Bootleg Mark Chapman’? It’s true. That’s the initiation process they make you go through. If you’re trolling people online, you have to have the nerve to do it in real life in front of mental Beatlefans.

Which clumsily brings us the news of Mark Chapman – he’s the man who shot John Lennon dead – and his parole.

Frequently, Mark Chapman asks to be released from the Attica prison in New York and he’s constantly knocked back… and he’s due a hearing soon.

Understandably, Yoko Ono has once again written to the parole board at the prison opposing the release of Chapman.

Chapman is scheduled to be interviewed by the board next week (August 9th onward) with regard to gaining release. Of course, he is serving 20 years to life for shooting Lennon outside the Dakota Building New York in December 1980.

Ono’s lawyer Peter Shukat confirmed that a letter had been sent to the board, but refused to say whether it was the same one she has routinely submitted every two years since 2000.

The circumstances of the day Chapman shot Lennon make for eerie reading, as he re-enacted scenes from Catcher in the Rye around New York.

He then got Lennon’s autograph on the copy of (the then) new LP, Double Fantasy. Chapman said of the event:

“I waited until he came back. He knew where the ducks went in winter, and I needed to know this” (a reference to The Catcher in the Rye). Chapman shot Lennon five times, before taking out his copy of Catcher in the Rye and read it until the police arrived.

Chapman stated, “I’m sure the large part of me is Holden Caulfield, who is the main person in the book. The small part of me must be the Devil.”

Brrr.

Ono has consistently stated that, away from her personal feelings toward Chapman, she also feels that he should remain in prison for his own safety.

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Suge Knight may have allegedly hung Vanilla Ice by his ankles off a 20-storey building once, but don’t ever mess with his earrings.

Because, seriously, if Suge Knight ever comes round your house and suddenly loses one of his earrings, you’re very possibly going to get sued. Of course, it’ll help if the loss of the earring is directly preceded by an armed stranger bursting into your house and shooting Suge Knight in the leg, but mainly it’s about the earring thing.

So you wouldn’t want to be Kanye West, because he’s the man who Suge Knight is suing for the earring loss and the shooting. And Suge Knight means business, too – once he’s done suing Kanye West he’s going to punch Busta Rhymes in the face for losing one of his anklets and then twist one of Diddy‘s nipples as hard as he can until Diddy promises give back his missing cockring.

There was a time when Suge Knight ruled the world of hip-hop. Not any more, though – thanks to a variety of prison sentences and dubious business moves, Suge Knight has fallen in status to the point where he’s more or less just the fat man who looks funny when he runs for the bus.

That’s not to say that Suge is going to slip away into peaceful anonymity just yet, though – whenever his profile dips beyond a certain point he’ll bound back into the limelight by losing his record label or allegedly driving around in his car with his pockets stuffed with Ecstasy, alternately punching his girlfriend in the head and threatening her with a knife. Which, ironically, is similar to how Jesus plans to make his comeback, too.

And now Suge Knight has decided to make sure that everyone remembers him by suing Kanye West because, at a party hosted by Kanye West three years ago, Suge Knight got shot in the leg and lost one of his earrings. It’s a smart move, because it means that everyone will remember him – specifically what a lumbering, money-chasing slapheaded Uncle Albert berk he’s always been. The LA Times reports:

According to the lawsuit, Knight claims needed recompense from West for medical bills, transport and “damages for the loss of use and enjoyment” of a 15-carat diamond stud earring as a result of the attack. (The lawsuit also claims that the aforementioned earring is valued at $135,000.)

Read that again. $135,000 for an earring. That’s absurd. Think of all the other things that Suge Knight could have done with that money, like reinforcing all of his chairs with concrete or buying enough snacks to last him for about 45 minutes. And he spent it on an earring. No wonder people want to shoot him.

Kanye West has yet to comment on the lawsuit – possibly because he’s still stunned that he’s being sued because a man lost his earring in a shooting that took place in a room he happened to be hiring three years ago – but we’re sure he’s not phased by this. After all, Kanye West is a successful man, so he must be used to getting sued like this.

It’s just a shame that this has gone directly to litigation, because we’d rather have seen Suge Knight and Kanye West settle this like real men – in a boxing ring. True, Suge Knight might be roughly the size and weight of a bear, but there’s no competing against the fierce combat skills that Kanye West has. It’d be a bloodbath.

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Diddy definitely didn't know about that time Tupac got shot in 1994, the LA Times just wants you to know that.

What? You already knew that? Well, the LA Times wants to make it even clearer. It's already apologised for running the story that falsely implicated Diddy in Tupac's shooting, and now it has gone and formally retracted the story as well.  

However, the LA Times probably has another thing coming if it thinks it has wriggled out of a libel lawsuit from Diddy. An apology and a retraction just isn't enough to win Diddy over.

Now, an apology, a retraction, four free McDonald's Happy Meal vouchers, a kissogram dressed up as Notorious B.I.G and a customised Scrabble set which only contains the letters D, I and Y and it's another matter entirely. Get on it, LA Times.

Lesson number one of understanding libel law is that you're only allowed to make up lies about dead people. For example, we could easily make up a story about Charlton Heston bumming a donkey while dressed as Zorro and we wouldn't get sued, even though it very obviously didn't happen.

But libelling someone who's alive? That's another matter entirely. Were we to say that, for example, Diddy orchestrated the non-fatal shooting of Tupac Shakur in 1994 and we'd probably get in all kinds of shit. That's because we happen to know for a fact that Diddy spent so much of 1994 bumming donkeys while dressed up as Zorro that he couldn't have possibly found the time to do that.

The LA Times, though, didn't know that, which is why it published a story last month claiming that Diddy was behind Tupac's shooting and that it had the evidence to prove it. Which it did. True, the evidence was forged by a bullshitting prisoner who tapped it out on a jail typewriter, but it was still evidence.

So far the LA Times has apologised to Diddy for the mistake, but that wasn't enough. Which is why, as E! Online reports, the newspaper has gone one stage further and formally retracted the article:

"In its retraction Monday, the newspaper agreed with the investigative website's findings that 'some of the other sources relied on… do not support major elements of the story. The Times now believes that Sabatino fabricated the FBI reports and concocted his role in the assault as well as his supposed relationships with Combs, [James Jimmy Henchman] Rosemond and [Jacques Haitian Jack] Agnant," the newspaper wrote. To the extent these publications could be interpreted as creating the impression that Combs was involved in arranging the attack, The Times wishes to correct that misimpression, which was neither stated in the article nor intended'."

That should be enough to stop Diddy from launching a major lawsuit against the newspaper, right? Well, probably not. Diddy has already made noises about wanting to unequivocally clear his name, plus let's not forget that he could hire a goose in a suit to be his lawyer for this case and he'd still probably win it quite easily.

But, now that Diddy has the scent of blood in his nostrils, we'd just like to similarly clear up a few things we've said about Diddy in the past to stop him suing us as well…

When we said that Diddy punched flames out a man's ass, there was no real evidence that any fire was shat by either party. Sorry. 

Also, when we claimed that Diddy could have been sleeping with Sienna Miller, we had no proof of that. In retrospect, you'd have to have judgement so terrible that it borders on the mentally unwell to sleep with Sienna Miller. Again, we're sorry.

And we're sorry for saying that Diddy had twins. We only said that because we read about it. For all we know, Diddy's girlfriend could have hatched 2,000 babies out of a sac on her back like a disgusting half-human half-spider hybrid. We really have no way of knowing. We apologise. 

However, we refuse to retract the thing we said earlier about Diddy bumming donkeys. That definitely happened. Definitely.

OK, it didn't happen. Don't sue us please Diddy.

Read more:

Times to Diddy: Our Bad – E! Online 

What is it with female rappers we've never really heard of and jail these days?

Lady rapper Remy Ma – of hits like Guilty, Crazy, Everyday I'm Fucking Him and several other songs you're equally unlikely to have heard of that have less amusing titles – has been convicted of shooting a woman in the belly last year. 

So with Remy Ma facing a 25-year jail term, Foxy Brown still locked up and Lil' Kim's record as an ex-con, that means the only rapping female without a criminal past is now Natasha Bedingfield. And that'll only last until the police finally nail her for all those ivory tombstones she's been embezzling in her teeth.

Typical. Since its creation, hip-hop has always been negatively stereotyped as a music that constantly glamorises excessive street violence, and it's been a label that's been hard to shift. Then yesterday we reported that the LA Times had to apologise to Diddy for blaming him for a shooting he played no part in. Finally, with this high-profile backtracking by a noted newspaper it seemed like hip-hop was starting to turn the tide on its own self-image.

Then Remy Ma got convicted of shooting a woman in the stomach during an argument about money. Nice timing, moron.

Prior to last year, Remy Ma was best known for being the only female rapper to have a name equally inspired by the cooking rat from Ratatouille and your mother. But all that changed last July when, during an argument with over some money in New York, Remy Ma shot Makeda Barnes-Joseph in the abdomen, piercing her colon and hitting her in the rectum.

Remy Ma had claimed that the gun went off accidentally during a struggle – but yesterday a jury decided that it didn't, and Remy Ma was convicted of the shooting. And, as a tough, street-smart rapper, Remy Ma took the news on the chin. The New York Post reports:

"Oh, my God! My son! My son!" she screamed, referring to her 8-year-old, as she was hauled out of court to jail, where she faces the possibility of spending the next 25 years behind bars. Remy, 26, was found guilty of assault, weapons-possession and coercion charges for blasting Makeda Barnes Joseph, 24, with a .45-caliber handgun outside a club in the Meatpacking District on July 14, 2007… Remy initially took the verdict stoically. But after Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Rena Uviller ruled that she should be remanded to jail until her sentencing next month, one of Joseph's supporters sarcastically waved at her and said, "Bye, bye" – after which the rapper broke into tears.

It's unfortunate that Remy Ma's eight-year-old son won't be able to see his mother properly until he's about 33 years old now, but it's probably even more unfortunate that Remy Ma didn't even tell him that she was even going to court in the first place. We look forward to seeing what horrible emotional scars he'll be left to cope with from all of this.

But, as harrowing as this conviction sounds, it wasn't all bad news for Remy Ma yesterday. Her charges of gang assault, witness tampering, witness intimidation and assault in a separate incident were all dropped, which means that the next eight to 25 years that Remy Ma spends in jail for shooting a woman through the arse will pretty much be a non-stop party.

Read more:

BAWLING REMY IS GUILTY – NYP 

As everyone knows, Diddy is responsible for all the bad things in the world, from squeaky floorboards to the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur to the invention of the jellyfish.

We know this because we read the Los Angeles Times, and the Los Angeles Times definitely said that Diddy was definitely behind Tupac's 1994 shooting.

Except that, um, he wasn't. The Los Angeles Times has apologised after an investigation showed that the sources in its recent Diddy/ Tupac story were apparently fabricated. You may be off the hook this time, Diddy, but we've still got you on the jellyfish thing. Our lawyers will be in touch.

There's no doubting Diddy's charm and panache as a person. You can see it in his day-to-day life – when Diddy roughs up a scamp in a car park, he adds so much pizazz to the beating that at least one person ends up farting fire. And Diddy's just to classy to allegedly cheat on his girlfriend with Sienna Miller like a regular schmo – when you roll like Diddy you have to allegedly cheat on his girlfriend with Sienna Miller right after she's given birth to his twins.

So, yes, much like The Pink Panther, Diddy is a gentleman, a scholar and an acrobat. And, while we're on the subject, another similarity that Diddy shares with The Pink Panther is that neither of them orchestrated the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur.

Which is more or less the exact opposite of what the Los Angeles Times published earlier this month, though – an article by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chuck Philips claimed that Diddy's filthy little paws were all over the Shakur shooting and that, while he may have avoided punishment, he should feel awfully ashamed of himself, or something. We stopped reading about two-thirds in, to be honest.

But Diddy denied the Tupac shooting, and a subsequent investigation by the LA Times found out that actually, the story was pretty much a gigantic crock of poo from beginning to end, and now it's sorry. According to the Associated Press:

The Los Angeles Times apologized for using documents that were apparently fabricated in a story implicating associates of Sean "Diddy" Combs in a 1994 assault on rapper Tupac Shakur. "The bottom line is that the documents we relied on should not have been used," Editor Russ Stanton said in a story posted Wednesday night on the newspaper's Web site. "We apologize both to our readers and to those referenced in the documents … and in the story." … The apologies followed an investigation launched by Stanton after The Smoking Gun Web site reported earlier in the day that the paper was conned by a prisoner who doctored the documents.

Of course Diddy wasn't involved in a shooting – look at his adorable puppy eyes. That's all the evidence we need, although unquestionable proof that the article making the accusations was based on fabricated documents probably helps a little bit as well.

It's an awkward situation for all involved – by not being more thorough, the LA Times has now mauled its journalistic credibility for the foreseeable future, and Diddy has to live with a swirl of 14-year-old rumours that he thought had been put to bed.

Chances are that Diddy might want to retaliate against the LA Times somehow. Hopefully this will be in the form of a costly lawsuit rather than a concept album about how only God can judge him. Because that really wouldn't be helping anyone.

Read more: 

LA Times Apologizes for Shakur Story – AP

If you were Diddy, you'd probably want people to discuss your new vodka line or your perfume or your acting or your inability to stay with women who've just given birth to your children.

In fact, if you were Diddy you'd probably be happy for people to talk about anything at all, except for your alleged role in the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur.

Which is a shame, because that's what a newspaper did yesterday. But for what it's worth, Diddy has vehemently denied all the allegations against him. Hecklerspray would like to add that it had no involvement in Tupac's 1994 shooting either. That makes us as good as Diddy, which is why we're about to release our own ropey cash-in perfume as well. It's called hecklerspray: Unjustifiable. Pour homme.

We're worried. There's a disturbing new trend that's taking the world by storm right now, and the government is doing nothing to stop it. The name of this trend? Decades-old celebrity assassination attempts.

It's terrifying. Mick Jagger can no longer walk the streets for fear that someone will kill him 39 years ago, and now Tupac Shakur is thought to be in hiding in case someone shoots him and leaves him for dead in 1994. What next? Will someone stage an audacious hit on Elton John in 1973? Where will the madness end? Where?

Yesterday's Los Angeles Times contained a lengthy article about the 1994 incident where Tupac Shakur was beaten and shot in New York. It claims that the event kick-started the East Coast/ West Coast rap wars that ended with both Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G getting killed. And it's implicated Diddy in the whole messy affair.

That's right – Diddy. Lovely Diddy of I Do (Wanna Get Close To You) by 3LW guest-rap fame. Diddy the booze-hawker. Diddy, the man who can literally punch flames out of people's asses. According to the Los Angeles Times, Diddy had a hand in orchestrating the beating and shooting of Tupac as punishment for Tupac not wanting to join Diddy's Bad Boy record label.

Based on what, you scoff. FBI reports? Statements from informants? Interviews by people who were there as it actually happened? Well, actually, yes. But Diddy isn't going to take this sort of slander sitting down – he's responded with all the force that a quickly bashed-out 63-word statement can muster:

"This story is beyond ridiculous and is completely false. Neither Biggie nor I had any knowledge of any attack before, during, or after it happened. It is a complete lie to suggest that there was any involvement by Biggie or myself. I am shocked that the Los Angeles Times would be so irresponsible as to publish such a baseless and completely untrue story."

As odd as it is for a newspaper to drag up a mostly-forgotten 14-year-old story about a dead convicted sex abuse felon getting roughed up, if Diddy really did have a hand in it then it still counts as being newsworthy, if a little sensational.

But listen to Diddy. Listen to the man! He definitely didn't play any part in Tupac's shooting, no matter what anyone says. And Diddy is a trustworthy man. He might have left his girlfriend right after she had his twins, he might have accepted an advance to write his autobiography then failed to write anything while refusing to hand back the advance and he may have been boning Sienna Miller on the sly, but we'll just say this.

Diddy says that pissing is good. And pissing is good. Therefore we're adamant that he didn't help shoot some bloke a decade and a half ago.

Read more:

Diddy Denies LA Times' Tupac Story – AP