Look, OK, we know that technically Lions For Lambs was the movie that was supposed to be Tom Cruise’s redemption from all the berserko weirdness, but nobody watched that so it doesn’t count. Understood?

So instead, Tom Cruise is promoting Valkyrie by continuing his long, painful roadshow of apologies. This time, Tom has dropped in Matt Lauer to say sorry for calling him ‘glib’ during an interview three years ago. Great – maybe soon he’ll apologise for letting us waste our lives watching War Of The Worlds as well.
Tom Cruise has a message for us and, uniquely for Tom Cruise, it doesn’t involve either the phrase ‘Hail Xenu’ or a series of tiny sci-fi madman cackles. We know. Unexpected.

Instead, Tom Cruise’s message is that he’s sorry. No, really. He means it. Yes, he knows he went a little bit off-message a while ago, what with the couch-jumping and the Katie Holmes stuff and the terrifying rants about how stupid Brooke Shields was for taking drugs that stopped her wanting to hurl her baby against a wall, but that’s all in the past.

Even though all of that happened back in 2005, Tom Cruise still feels the need to make amends, and that’s why he’s spent the last couple of years apologising to Brooke Shields for being a weirdo and apologising to Oprah Winfrey for scuffing up her soft furnishings. And now, to complete the set, Tom Cruise has decided to apologise to Matt Lauer.

You’ll remember that in 2005 Tom Cruise reached the pinnacle of his batshit behaviour by being interviewed by Matt Lauer on the Today show, turning the interview into a bewilderingly intense diatribe about psychiatric medication and calling Lauer ‘glib’ when he tried to interject.

Well, now Tom Cruise has decided that he’s sorry for that. And that’s because he’s one of the good guys, and not because he’s got that Nazi movie coming out soon that’ll either mark the start of his comeback as a serious actor or bury him forever. People reports:

Cruise… chalked up his passion at the time to “a subject matter that’s important. It’s something that’s been debated in the public, and that’s what it should be.” Yet, he also said, he came across “not as I had intended. In looking at myself, I came across as arrogant. … I didn’t communicate it in the way I wanted to communicate it. Also, that’s not the way I am. That’s not the person I am.”

It must be a weight off Tom Cruise’s mind to say all that. We know we always feel better after making squirming public apologies for things that everyone knows we still believe in, anyway.

But still, at least Tom Cruise has finally finished apologising for everything he did wrong in 2005. So now he can start apologising for things he did in 2006. And you know what that means? He’s going to visit every single household on earth and, hand on heart, tell us all how terribly sorry he is for getting off with Katie Holmes for like 15 minutes straight at his wedding.

Which is all well and good, but it’s hardly going to bring back our eyesight, is it?

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And that’s why Lindsay Lohan’s father Michael has chosen now to do the most charming, heartwarming thing he’s probably ever done – he’s finally decided to take back his comments about Lindsay Lohan’s girlfriend Sam Ronson being “dark, hideous and a disgusting representation of humanity.”

What an incredible show of compassion! From now on, Michael Lohan will no longer use the words ‘dark’, ‘hideous’, or ‘disgusting’ in association with Sam Ronson for fear of offending Lindsay Lohan. Fortunately, that does still leave him with the adjectives ‘abominable’, ‘appalling’, ‘detestable’, ‘loathsome’, ‘repugnant’, ‘revolting’, ’sickening’ and ‘unsightly’, so look out for any or all of those bad boys in the next few weeks.

Pick an aspect of Lindsay Lohan’s life, any aspect. Chances are it’s in trouble. Professionally? Lindsay Lohan might never work again after screwing up her Ugly Betty guest spot. Personally? Take your pick – not only is Lindsay Lohan being sued by some people she supposedly drove around drunk, but she’s also spent the last few days implying that she’s only going out with Sam Ronson because she looks a bit like a man.

Worst of all, though, is probably Lindsay Lohan’s relationship with her father, Michael. They’ve never had the best of relationships – for every cabin retreat trip they’ve had together, there’s a pop song about what a shit he was for beating up a man with a shoe – but lately things have deteriorated even more, and it’s all thanks to Sam Ronson.

We don’t know why – maybe it’s because he doesn’t like Sam Ronson as a person or because he just thinks that lesbianism is wrong and that Lindsay Lohan should spend her days chewing on the end of Calum Best’s todger like nature intended – but Michael Lohan has really taken against Sam Ronson.

In September he decided to publicly call Ronson “dark, hideous and a disgusting representation of humanity” - an outburst that prompted an amusingly huffy blog post from Lindsay in response.

But now we’re sorry to say that Michael Lohan, appallingly, has appeared to have learnt from his mistakes, as Newsday reports:

“I definitely regret all the things I said about Samantha,” Lohan told New York magazine at a book party Oct. 21, usmagazine.com reports. “I’m a Christian,” he added. “I should not pass judgment on anyone.”

Take note, people – this is the first recorded instance in history of a Lohan displaying self-awareness. We think this means they’re about to rise up and start a war against the humans, but that probably remains to be seen.

Still, it goes to show that, for all his massive long list of gigantic character faults, Michael Lohan still loves his daughter very much. That’s why he’s downgraded his opinion of Sam Ronson, and will now only refer to her in print as “grubby, funny-looking and a slightly less than average representation of humanity.” Oh, we’re welling up.

However, some crazy old idiots got upset at Ringo Starr’s recent request for his fans to stop sending him stuff, so he’s decided to clarify his confusing little outburst. You see, Ringo Starr only wants you to stop sending him stuff because it hurts the environment and objects he signs only end up being hawked on eBay anyway.

Ringo’s quick decision to clear up the mess he made should be applauded – now we know that he doesn’t hate his fans, just the fans who like buying his autographs on the internet. And now we can also be sure that it really was Ringo Starr in that video earlier this week, rather than the melted underpowered robot of a kestrel in sunglasses that we assumed we were watching.

Ringo Starr might just be having the worst year of his life. Firstly Ringo Starr released a song to commemorate Liverpool’s status as the European city of culture, but the problems with it were twofold – firstly the song actually sounded like it was slagging Liverpool off a bit, and secondly he sung it in the style of a sad wounded ox.

To make matters worse, Ringo Starr then decided to promote the song by storming off an American TV show, telling Jonathan Ross that he didn’t really like Liverpool anyway and just generally infuriating people enough to behead topiary representations of him.

But Ringo’s worst moment came this week when, for reasons that we don’t even think he knows himself, he decided to post a video on his website asking fans to stop sending him fanmail all the bloody time.

At the time, Ringo’s justification for this was that he had “too much to do” to reply to fanmail. Oh really Ringo? You’re a 68-year-old millionaire who hits things for a living. What could you possibly have to do, apart from wait for the nice Meals On Wheels lady to bring you some more toad in the hole? You’re not trying to write the long-awaited follow-up to Octopus’s Garden, are you? Are you? Because, if you are, you really don’t need to. Really.

However, possibly because he was spooked by the hip young whippersnapper giving him hell on Sky News on Tuesday night, Ringo Starr has decided to hone his argument a little bit more. Rolling Stone reports:

The ban on fan mail was “in direct response to an inordinate amount of items which have recently appeared for sale on e-bay, and to those that repeatedly send cards and items to be signed.” Starr also felt all the mail was “a waste of paper and we all should be mindful of our carbon footprint… Please read this in a mellow way. Peace and love, Ringo.”

Thank goodness Ringo Starr reminded us to read the statement in a mellow way. Up until that point we were shouting it furiously in a dense Hungarian accent, so it hardly made any sense to us.

Anyway, let’s hope that this new statement clears up all the misconceptions about Ringo Starr’s original video. We’re sure that it hasn’t affected his real fans’ opinions of him at all, because we get the feeling that Ringo Starr’s fans are either dead or too stupid to work out that computers aren’t just sealed-shut microwaves.

And we say that with peace and love, which we think means you’re not allowed to get shitty about it.

Last week saw the release of a new Tim McGraw album, and Tim McGraw wants everyone to know how completely sorry he is about it. You see, Tim McGraw was upset because the new album was a Greatest Hits collection and it was full of his most famous old songs that people enjoy listening to, rather than the collection of new bad rubbish that he wanted to release.

So, to counter this, Tim McGraw has released a statement showing his anger at the album’s release and pleading with fans not to buy it. And, in turn, Tim McGraw’s record label’s next release will be a collection of Tim McGraw b-sides all performed by crying children trapped down a well with a tuba player and fanged clown.

You never really equate artistry with the country music scene, do you? Blind patriotism, yes. Alcoholism, yes. Domestic abuse and accusations of paedophilia, yes. Reckless gunplay, yes. But not artistry.

But there’s always an exception to the rule, and in this case it’s Tim McGraw. Tim McGraw is precious about his music. The conception of a new song is a tender, joyous thing to Tim McGraw, especially since he cloaks each new creation in subtle layers of sociopolitical commentary. For instance, did you know that Do You Want Fries With That is actually a critique of the Belsen school hostage crisis? And That’s Why God Made Mexico is a paean to the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003? No, us neither. We just made it up.

But just because all his songs are about chips and Mexicans, it doesn’t mean that Tim McGraw isn’t fiercely protective of his music. We already know that Tim will get medieval on anyone whose wife-beating shenanigans threaten to overshadow his songs, and now he’s proved that he isn’t even afraid to stick it to his own record company.

Last week saw the release of Tim McGraw’s Greatest Hits 3, the latest in the much-loved collection of Tim McGraw Greatest Hits albums that includes Tim McGraw’s Greatest Hits 1 and another one that we’ve forgotten the name of. All the hits are on the new album, from Angry All The Time to a collaboration with Def Leppard that should probably only be played to rapists as a form of punishment.

But McGraw isn’t happy about it, partially because he’s only released one new album since his last Greatest Hits album, and he’s released a statement warning fans about it:

I am saddened and disappointed that my label chose to put out another hits album instead of new music. I’ve only had one studio album since my last hits package. It has to be just as confusing to the fans as it is to me. I had no involvement in the creation or presentation of this record. Sure I love the songs, and I don’t want to take anything away from all the creative people who were a part of making those records. But the whole concept is an embarrassment to me as an artist. In the spirit of an election year, I would simply say to my fans ‘I’m Tim McGraw and I don’t approve their message.’

A procession of Greatest Hits albums is always a sign that an artist is creatively on the slide, and we’re sure that Tim McGraw is aware of this. He’s currently working on a brand new studio album, and he’d obviously rather be judged on that than a tired old repackaging of his older work.

So let’s hope Tim McGraw hurries up and releases this new album of his. He’d better, because there’s a Greatest Hits 4 album is due out next Wednesday, and at the moment it hasn’t got any flipping songs in it.

And, since Richard & Judy isn’t on the telly any more, that means that George Michael only has one way to respond to his arrest this weekend on suspicion of sitting on a toilet in Hampstead Heath trying to eat a chunk of crack the size of an owl, or whatever it was that he was arrested for.

In short, now that he’s been cautioned for his possession of crack, George Michael has issued an apology to all his fans promising that he’s going to try and overcome his drug problems once and for all. And a good thing too, because all the George Michael fans needed to calm down – otherwise they’d have done a really slapdash job of cutting everyone’s hair today.

When you think of George Michael, you don’t instantly think of crack cocaine. That’s because, as history has shown us in the form of Pete Doherty, the music that a crack addiction produces is a sort of off-kilter retro indie that sounds like a tranquilised cat being tortured until it makes a noise that sounds like the worst song The Kinks ever wrote.

And since George Michael deals solely in insipid, mimsying soul ballads that only hairdressers and nurses are allowed to like, nobody really made the connection.

But it seems as if the connection is there. On Friday George Michael was arrested on suspicion of the possession of a Class A drug though to be crack after a toilet attendant in Hampstead Heath saw him acting all peculiar and reported him to the police.

It’s not the first time that George Michael has found himself in trouble because of drugs – in the past he’s been found slumped at the wheel of his car with cannabis in his possession, smoking as much cannabis as possible on national television and taking loads of whatever drug it is that makes you feel up unemployed van drivers in a bush in front of the world’s press.

But crack? That’s a much more serious problem. As we all know, prolonged exposure to crack makes you grow a funny haircut and start screeching the word “BLAKE!” at intermittent points throughout your songs, and that would never do.

However, it seems as if this arrest has made George Michael come to his senses a little, because in his obligatory post-arrest apology to fans, George Michael has hinted that he might be about to attempt something of a clean-up:

“I want to apologise to my fans for screwing up again, and to promise them I’ll sort myself out. And to say sorry to everybody else, just for boring them.”

Sorry, but this sounds like the most insincere piece of tosh we’ve ever heard. Not because George Michael constantly apologises to his fans after these drug arrests and yet he never seems to do anything about it, but because George Michael obviously doesn’t care about how much he bores people. If he did, all copies of Jesus To A Child would currently be sealed inside a lead box, encased in concrete and buried 400ft underground where it couldn’t do anybody any more damage.

Still, at least an arrest on suspicion of crack possession is probably as bad as things will ever get for George Michael. And, on the bright side, he’s now got something to pin his confusing friendship with Geri Halliwell a few years ago on. After all, a fevered crack-dependent mind is just about the only logical reason why anyone would willingly want to go through a mental torture like that.

And, since this story contains a public apology, you can bet your balls that it features Miley Cyrus as well. And it does! Miley Cyrus has apologised for a YouTube video of her apparently mocking Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato, who are apparently Disney stars or something. Honestly, not a clue.

Anyway, we have the offending Miley Cyrus video for you after the jump. Chances are it’ll make just as little sense to you as did to us, but at least it proves one thing beyond reason – that Miley Cyrus has the speaking voice of an abusive, chainsmoking pensioner.

Oh for God’s sake. Stop it already. We’ve barely just got round to working out what Miley Cyrus is for (answer: paying for the upkeep of the Disney Corporation’s executive unicorn stables and speedboat lounge) and you’ve started to chuck new Miley Cyruses at us? That’s hardly on.

And, what’s more, you’ve made Miley Cyrus rivals with the new Miley Cyrus? Oh, you. If we had any idea who we were directing this angry threat at, we’d come and get you. We really would.

So. The new Miley Cyrus, then. That’d be Selena Gomez. She’s just like Miley Cyrus in that she’s the star of a Disney show and she sings a bit. There are a few subtle differences – Selena Gomez doesn’t have a creepy washed-up country singer for a dad and she wears a purity ring whereas Miley Cyrus’ motto seems to be “Wahey! Cop a load of these, boys!” – but other than that they’re mostly identical.

Anyway. The rivalry. Apparently Selena Gomez recently made a video with her friend Demi Lovato, who we assume was also squirted out of the same giant Disney child star battery womb as Miley and Selena. The video is mostly unintelligible, but the key points are that one of them wears too much make-up, one of them had a gap in her teeth fixed and one wears an ironic kid’s TV show T-shirt.

That’s important to remember, because right after Selena Gomez’s video, Miley Cyrus came out with this. We should warn you now that we can’t be held responsible for the computer monitor you’re almost guaranteed to headbutt in a furious rage within the next three minutes…

Not a clue. Seriously.

But anyway, as well as being a powerful tool of persuasion to convince normal, well-adjusted grown men into rushing out and punching the first child they see, Miley Cyrus’ video has also been seen as the opening salvo of a turf war between Miley Cyrus and her plucky young challenger. And she’s not backing down from it, either, as the New York Daily News reports:

“If we offended them, we’re super sorry. We were just, like, having fun, you know what I mean?… Elvis says imitation is the greatest form of flattery. We were like, imitating them, you know? Like, being funny.”

OK, actually Miley Cyrus is backing down from it. Quite a lot. But still, this is how celebrity feuds tend to start, so Miley would be well advised to cut out the bitching. Or at least do it behind her rivals’ backs like everyone else does.

Incidentally, what’s with the Elvis quote there, Miley? Don’t start living your life by Elvis Presley’s rules, otherwise the next thing you know you’ll be snuffing it on the shitter with 25 kilos of deep-fried squirrel burger up your arse. Is that what you want, Miley? Is it? Because you’re certainly going the right way about it.

Take Spencer Pratt, for example. We have no idea who Spencer Pratt is, and the only way we'd be able to identify him in the street is because he'd be the one loudly braying about what a tosspot he thinks Mary-Kate Olsen is.

Actually he won't. Spencer Pratt doesn't do that any more. He used to, though – not so long ago he told a magazine that Mary-Kate Olsen was a 'troll' who wasn't very cute – but not any more. Spencer Pratt has issued a sincere apology for the 'troll' jibe, finally putting an end to a celebrity feud that was so staggeringly pointless and short-lived that you didn't even care if it existed or not in the first place.

There must be something in the water, because it's turned into celebrity feud central round here lately. There's Pamela Anderson calling Jessica Simpson a 'whore', the upcoming actor strike that's pitting Tom Hanks against Jack Nicholson and Kanye West's neverending feud with reality to name just three.

But at least Spencer Pratt isn't fighting with Mary-Kate Olsen any more. Having done the absolute bare minimum of research, Spencer Pratt seems to be The Hills' resident douchehole – the kind of braying, overprivileged, permanently sneering moron who wouldn't know a decent day's work if it smashed his stupid face to pulp with a concrete bollard.

The weird, utterly inconsequential beef between Mary-Kate Olsen and Spencer Pratt started when Olsen went on Letterman and told a story about Pratt's schoolboy reputation as angry soccer player. That caused Spencer Pratt to retort to US Weekly that:

"I know I've made it in Hollywood when a famous troll is talking about me on Letterman. I forgive her, though. She's had to go through life as the less cute twin, which must be tough."

Oh, that's just rude. Mary-Kate Olsen is many things – an out-of-touch former child star with no remaining ties to the real world, an obscenely rich idiot who thinks people care about her stupid books, a cartoon monster – but she's not a troll. She probably acts like a troll a lot of the time, but she isn't physically a mythical cave-dwelling Scandinavian creature. That's just below the belt.

And Spencer Pratt knows this, which is why he's apologised to Mary-Kate Olsen in public, despite the fact that not a single member of the public needs to have their precious brain cells destroyed by being made to listen to his bleating cock-droppings for a second longer than they have to. AHN reports:

He tells [Us], "I apologize for getting caught up in trash talking, but she brought up an emotional subject when she mentioned the soccer stuff. I know Dave was just doing his job in asking her. He's the best in the game at that." He also confessed that he "respects Mary Kate as a businesswoman" and that he is "secretly jealous of her. I want my face on a lunchbox, too!"

And, peace restored, Spencer Pratt can now go back to his awful Republican girlfriend and her naked best friend and get on with whatever cloth-eared, cheaply-made probably pre-rehearsed claptrap he gets up to on The Hills.

You may now return to your lives changed people.

This doesn’t happen often, so make the most of it. After saying that the recent Chinese earthquake, which has killed 70,000 people and left another five million homeless, was the result of bad karma for the country’s mistreatment of Tibet, Sharon Stone has managed to finally issue an apology.

Sharon Stone says she’s so sorry for offending the Chinese people with her thoughtless remarks that she’s going to devote herself to helping those affected by the earthquake however she can. Does anyone else get the feeling this is going to end with a patronising feature-length documentary entitled Damage Limitation: Sharon Stone Cries At Some Chinese People And Insincerely Refers To Them As ‘Incredible Little People’? Just us?

History shows that Sharon Stone doesn’t have the best grasp of things. If Catwoman and Basic Instinct 2 weren’t clear enough signs of this, then perhaps the time she called Germans “naughty” and “nasty” will do. Still not convinced? OK, Sharon Stone may have had sex with Christian Slater. Yeah, we thought that’d do it. We’re all on the same page now.

So, given that she’s a pretty dreadful judge of, well, everything, it wasn’t really a surprise when Sharon Stone called the Chinese earthquake ‘karma’ for not giving independence to Tibet. A week after it happened. To a Chinese TV crew. On camera. Just because it’s so staggeringly ill-judged, here’s what Sharon Stone said again:

“I’m not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else. And then this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and then I thought, is that karma? When you’re not nice that the bad things happen to you?”

Retribution – or is that karma? – was swift. The largest chain of cinemas in China instantly banned all Sharon Stone movies from being shown, while it’s also been reported that Christian Dior is removing Stone from all its advertisements in the country, and Louis Vuitton is considering doing the same.

So, with so much furious criticism thundering around her, Sharon Stone has done the inevitable and released a statement apologising for possessing roughly as much basic intelligence as an infant. We’re paraphrasing – here’s what Sharon Stone actually said:

“Due to my inappropriate words and acts during the interview, I feel deeply sorry and sad about hurting Chinese people. I am willing to take part in the relief work of China’s earthquake, and wholly devote myself to helping affected Chinese people.”

And, lest you doubt, this is the most heartfelt and sincere apology a celebrity can give – the apology that can only come when a number of huge companies threaten to stop paying you endorsement deals because you’ve fucked off an emerging superpower. Sharon Stone has never meant anything more than this apology in her entire life, we’re sure.

And perhaps this experience will help Sharon Stone as a person, too. For starters it might mean that her level of interest in any causes extends to more that ‘Tibet good, China bad’, but it might also bleed into her decisions as an actress as well, as evidenced by the way we’re fairly certain that her next movie will be a dramatisation of the earthquake starring Sharon Stone in some racially-insensitive Chinese make-up.

But only if it’s written so that Sharon Stone stops the earthquake from happening by giving freedom to Tibet and then gets worshipped as a god by all the citizens of Earth, naturally. All movies need a hero.

In the past, if anybody had been stupid enough to accuse Foxy Brown of any wrongdoing, they’d have to spend a week afterwards trying to pull their kneecaps out of their nostrils with a set of blood-splattered pliers.

But not any more. Now that she’s out of jail, Foxy Brown got to go to court to face charges over that time she punched her neighbour’s head in with a Blackberry. And rather than lie and gripe her way straight back to jail, Foxy Brown unusually pleaded guilty and apologised. So it finally looks as if Foxy Brown has learnt her lesson. That’s rubbish, what are we supposed to write about now?

It’s a sad day, really. It seems as though Foxy Brown is no longer the super-violent maniac she used to be. A while a go we’d be lucky to go a couple of days without hearing about how Foxy Brown had gone around kicking nail salon workers or starting a one-woman riot in a beauty supply store, but that’s all changed now.

Foxy Brown is now – gulp – pleading guilty to things she obviously did. It’s weird. It’s freaked us out a little.

Last year Foxy Brown got arrested for punching a woman in the face with a mobile phone, an incident which left the victim with a chipped tooth and a black eye. At the time Foxy Brown pleaded not guilty to the attack and things were left there, primarily because Foxy Brown was already in jail for being the world’s angriest woman.

However, her time in jail has made Foxy Brown see the light. Now that she’s free, Foxy was called into court again yesterday over the Blackberry incident and – rather than repeatedly change her story or fake a pregnancy to hope it’d keep her out of trouble as she’s done in the past – Foxy Brown was quick to plead guilty and apologise for being a bit mental. BBC News reports:

Appearing in a New York court, the 28-year-old admitted hitting Arlene Raymond during an argument over the volume of her car stereo last July. Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge John Walsh sentenced Marchand to time already served, issued an order of protection and ordered her to submit a letter of apology. In a hand-written note, the star said: “I apologize for the incident that occurred on 31 July 2007, in that I attempted to scare Arlene Raymond and place her in harm’s way.”

And immediately after admitting her crime, Foxy Brown left court and walked into the sunset to a chorus of chirping cartoon bluebirds and adorable baby deers dancing a happy little jig. For this, readers, is what happens when you’re so shit-scared of spending seven more years in jail that you’d admit to bloody anything.

It’s always a Blackberry, though, isn’t it? If a phone’s been used to smash someone in the face it’s always a Blackberry. God knows why – if Foxy Brown’s Blackberry is anything like ours, then she’d have kept pressing the stupid massive voice dialling button on the side by accident and the attack would have been punctuated by a stupid detached woman’s voice going “Say a command” again and again all the sodding time. Blackberries are stupid. No wonder Foxy Brown’s so angry all the time.

Anyway, the moral of the story is this – someone send us an iPhone.

Read more:

Foxy Brown guilty of phone charge - BBC News

We can’t burn down Miley Cyrus’ house because she’s already apologised to her fans and blamed all the evil grown-ups for exploiting her – so that just leaves Annie Leibovitz, the woman who took the photos of Miley Cyrus in the first place. Let’s get her!

Except we can’t, because Annie Leibovitz has apologised for the Miley Cyrus photos as well. OK, maybe ‘apologised’ is a strong word – instead Annie Leibovitz has called everyone stupid for not appreciating the beauty of her art, but she phrased it like an apology. An apology that we accept. We think. Oh, we’re so confused. Let’s burn down the camera factories!

We’ve just invented a new rule by which to live our lives – we’ll never ever let Annie Leibovitz take our photo. Look at her track record – Annie Leibovitz takes a picture of John Lennon, John Lennon gets shot. Annie Leibovitz takes a picture of the Queen, the controller of BBC1 has to resign. Annie Leibovitz takes a picture of Miley Cyrus, everyone gets so offended that their eyes shrivel up and their brains explode. It’s a pattern, that’s for sure.

The new edition of Vanity Fair shows an Annie Leibovitz picture of Miley Cyrus topless, or at least topless if it weren’t for both of her arms and a giant blanket that covers 90% of her body. Not really topless at all, come to think of it, but that hasn’t stopped Disney Channel spokesmen and outraged groups from frothing and wailing about exploitation and the loss of innocence and child manipulation and whatnot.

However, even though Miley Cyrus and Miley Cyrus’ parents and some of Miley Cyrus’ representatives were present during this ‘topless’ photoshoot and were able to see exactly what all the pictures looked like as they were being taken, Miley Cyrus has already apologised to her fans, claiming that she was somehow tricked into posing for them.

So that puts the blame squarely at the feet of Annie Leibovitz, right? She’s the evil monster who took the photos, so what does she have to say for herself? Is she sorry for being such a child-manipulating witch? Is she? Huh? Turns out she sort of is a bit, as OK reports:

In a statement released on Monday, Annie said: “I’m sorry that my portrait of Miley has been misinterpreted. Miley and I looked at fashion photographs together and we discussed the picture in that context before we shot it. The photograph is a simple, classic portrait, shot with very little makeup, and I think it is very beautiful.”

Beautiful? Ugh, you massive paedo-fetishist! It’s a picture of a mostly-dressed teenager, for god’s sake! That’s sick and disgusting and it might end up slightly reducing the absurd tidal wave of cash that Miley Cyrus has created for Disney! Won’t you think of Disney, Annie Leibovitz, you disgusting monster? What’s Disney going to do for money now? The Aristocats 2? You make us sick, Annie Leibovitz. Sick.

However, if you’re a 15-year-old girl reading this, be sure to take this very important moral from the story: never let a world-renowned photographer take your picture. Feel free to take amateur photos of yourself rolling around in your underwear and upload them onto the internet, because nobody seems to mind too much about those. Just don’t have any less risque ones taken professionally, OK?

Read more:

MILEY PHOTOS WERE ‘MISINTERPRETED’ – OK

Well unremember it. It didn't happen. Yes, we know that X17 – the website that broke the story – published all sorts of saucy text messages allegedly from Tony Parker to this model, but they were faked. X17 has admitted that it was all twaddle of the highest order.

So how has X17 chosen to apologise for all the stress it's caused Eva Longoria and Tony Parker? By mumbling the most underwhelming apology in history. But at least it's an apology – we're still waiting for X17 to say sorry for making us think about Eva Longoria for any more than we absolutely have to.

It's the age-old story – boy meets girl, boy somehow remains oblivious to girl's inherent annoyingness, boy marries girl, boy meets pretty French model at own wedding, boy starts shagging model, wife remains annoying. It's a story that happens two, maybe three, hundred times every day.

But it definitely didn't happen to Eva Longoria and Tony Parker. Yes, we know that back in December there was that story about Tony Parker shagging the pretty French model Alexandra Paressant who he met at his wedding, but it was all a bunch of lies. X17 – the website that broke the story – has admitted that it was totally unfounded.

In fact, Tony Parker had never met Alexandra Paressant, nor had he sent her any filthy text messages as X17 claimed, nor was she even at the Tony Parker/ Eva Longoria wedding in the first place.

There was talk of Tony Parker wanting to sue X17 for $40 million for publishing these dastardly untruths, but X17 has had a better idea – instead of paying Eva Longoria and Tony Parker all that money, or apologising and actually meaning it, it'd just publish the crappiest and most insincere apology it could muster. TMZ reports:

X17 posted an apology Friday, saying, in part, "X17online.com and X7 [sic], Inc. regret having been misled by Ms. Paressant and her representatives and apologize to Mr. Parker for any damage or inconvenience this may have caused him or his wife." 

Yes, that should make up nicely for almost ripping a marriage apart. Well done chaps.

But at least Eva Longoria and Tony Parker's marriage is strong enough to withstand torrents of falsehoods like this – it looked as if Eva Longoria never once believed that Tony Parker would stray from her – although that might be more down to the alarmingly high self-regard she has than anything else.

And also, if the story about Tony Parker's affair is false, then the statements that Alexandra Paressant gave in her interview must have also been false. One of those statements was that Eva Longoria hated oral sex because she thought that sperm gave you acne, so that has to be false as well. Which means that Eva Longoria loves sperm and gets her way through a bucket of it every single day.

With a straw. She's not an animal.

Please don't sue us.

Read more:

X17's Apology — Greatest Understatement Ever – TMZ 

It was a serious feud, too – after Kathleen Turner accused Nicolas Cage of stealing chihuahuas and drunk driving in her autobiography, Cage took her to the High Court for it.

But now it's all come juddering to an end, with Kathleen Turner making a public apology for the claims. Thanks heavens – now we can all stop thinking of Nicolas Cage as the man who stole a chihuahua and go back to thinking of him as the man who runs up hills dressed as a bear and punches girls square in the face. It's his comfort zone, if you will.

Nicolas Cage is a man not without his fair share of weird experiences – he's confronted naked intruders in his house, named his son after Superman and starred in films noteworthy only for the bits where he shouts "How'd it get burned? How'd it get burned? HOW'D IT GET BURNED? HOW'D IT GET BURNED?" – but if there's one thing he doesn't do, it's steal chihuahuas.

But tell that to Kathleen Turner. Now that Kathleen Turner has slowly started turning into a deep-voiced bulldog, she's found it harder and harder to get acting work. So, to keep herself busy, she recently wrote her autobiography Send Yourself Roses. Trouble is, Kathleen's memory doesn't seem to be what it was, and her memories of a youthful Nicolas Cage seem to be way off.

Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage worked together on Peggy Sue Got Married and – far from presenting an accurate depiction of the wide-eyed young actor who wanted nothing more than to one day make a movie that ended with him shouting "Wha! Wha! Not the bees! Not the bees! Arrrgh! My eyes! My eyes! Arrrgh! Arrrghurbhb!" – Turner's autobiography suggested that Nicolas Cage preferred to go around stealing dogs and driving drunk.

Outraged at these lies, Nicolas Cage sued Kathleen Turner for defamation and libel in February. It could have all got very messy, but now Kathleen Turner has relented and apologised, as the New York Times reports:

"Ms. Turner, 53, 'sincerely apologized' to Mr. Cage, 44, in a statement read by her lawyer on Friday in a London courtroom. Ms. Turner’s assertion, which led Mr. Cage to sue for libel, was made in Ms. Turner’s book Send Yourself Roses and was published in a London newspaper in February. Ms. Turner agreed to reimburse Mr. Cage for court costs and to make a donation to a charity benefiting victims of elder abuse. Ms. Turner’s British publisher will place an apology or correction in the book , and Associated Newspapers agreed to remove the article from its website and to publish an apology."

Although momentarily embarrassing for Kathleen Turner, this apology can only be a win-win for everyone in the long-term. Nicolas Cage gets his reputation back, sure, but this brouhaha has probably caused thousands more people to buy her autobiography, just to see what other batshit lies she makes up about famous people she knows.

However, one sad result of this lawsuit is that Kathleen Turner will no longer be making an audiobook of Send Yourself Roses. Not because of libel or anything, but because people have just worked out that her voice is now so deep that people involuntarily shit themselves whenever she speaks.

Read more:

Turner Apologises – New York Times 

A few nights ago, while interviewing Ryan Phillippe on his show, Jay Leno ditched the usual question/answer format to basically goad Ryan into pulling his 'gayest face' until he threatened to walk offstage.

And now Jay Leno has apologised. He's now come to realise that mocking homosexuals in the 21st century is both outmoded and offensive and has promised that next time Ryan Phillipe comes on his show he'll only restrict himself to try and make him jump up and down for food in a loincloth like the black people do.

If you believe what you read, then Jay Leno is everyone's ideal dinner guest because not only would he regale you with anecdotes about his 16 years spent interviewing the world's biggest stars, but he could also bore you into a coma with endless car talk and – if you're really lucky – chuck in a few breathtakingly inappropriate cracks about gay people who pull funny faces when they talk.

Or at least that's what Jay Leno used to be able to do. Now the liberal elite have banned Jay from ridiculing homosexuals just because he made a breathtakingly ignorant remark to Ryan Phillippe during an interview with him last Thursday. What next? Telling us we can't dress in hoods and set fire to immigrant children any more? For fuel or fun? Once again, this is a prime example of political correctness gone haywire.

But anyway, back to the interview. Discussing Ryan Phillippe's first role as a gay teenager on a soap opera on his show, Jay Leno said:

"Say that camera is your gay lover. Can you give me your gayest look? Say that camera is Billy Bob [Thornton]—Billy Bob has just ridden in shirtless from Wyoming."

To which Ryan Phillippe wriggled around uncomfortably while making semi-joking threats to walk off if the gay jokes continued. Seriously, that boy. He won't talk about that time he broke up his marriage by cheating on his wife and he won't pull exaggerated gay faces into a camera. What does that leave to discuss? Igby Goes Down? Please.

Now, following and instant and audible backlash from both the gay and sensible onlooker communities, Jay Leno has issued a sincere apology from the bottom of his chin:

"In talking about Ryan's first role, I realize that what I said came out wrong, I certainly didn't mean any malice. I agree it was a dumb thing to say, and I apologize."

Of course, Jay Leno is absolutely right to apologise to his offended viewers. As others have commented, Jay Leno wouldn't have dreamt of asking Ryan Phillippe to pull his blackest face or his Jewiest face, would he? Which is a shame because, ironically, Ryan Phillippe's Jewiest face is downright hilarious. You ain't never seen a Jewier face, that's for sure.

Read more:

Jay Sorry for "Gayest Look" Crack – E! Online 

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

It's OK, nor can anyone. Because this year, the Oscars weren't about stupid things like 'films' and 'artistic excellence' – they were about Gary Busey drooling all over Jennifer Garner's neck until she looked like she was about to cry.

And now, about six weeks after everyone forgot that he even did it, Gary Busey has issued a statement apologising to Jennifer Garner for any distress he caused. Apparently he was aiming his spittle for her cleavage or something. He didn't say that, exactly, but it'd just make sense.

Generally speaking, the Oscars are a bit like Christmas. You get excited for the big day, you can't turn anywhere without being swarmed with reminders about it, and then three days after it's finished you can't remember who gave you what and the four kilograms of Haribo you ate in 36 hours have left you feeling like your brain's about to implode.

But not this year, though. This year will go down in history as the year that Gary Busey went mental at the Oscars, started screaming at Ryan Seacrest and then tried to maul the neck off Jennifer Garner with his mouth. It was a beautiful thing to watch – so much so that we didn't even bother to question why someone like Gary Busey was even at the Oscars in the first place. 

A few days later Gary Busey phoned Ryan Seacrest's radio show ostensibly to apologise, except that he didn't realise that he was on the air and just banged on abstractly about how Seacrest was an "innocent champion of honesty" and the art of catching dreams for a bit. Which is all very well and good, except that poor Jennifer Garner didn't get the apologetic Gary Busey treatment.

Until now. Even though the Oscars happened about a month ago, Gary Busey has chosen to release a statement apologising to Jennifer Garner for making her look genuinely terrified in front of an audience of millions. Well, we say 'apologise'… The Associated Press reports:

"I meant no disrespect to Ms. Jennifer Garner when I met her at the Oscars and apologize if I made her uncomfortable," the 63-year-old actor said in a statement e-mailed Monday by a publicist for his attorney, Vicki Roberts. By the time he realized Garner and Linney were being interviewed, Busey said he tried to step back but "suddenly Ryan introduced her to me… I simply greeted both actresses with joy and open arms, which is the way I would greet anyone I'm happy to meet," Busey said. "Everyone has experienced a handshake or hug which has turned awkward, and this was no different."

To be fair, Gary Busey does have a point – we've experienced plenty of hugs which have turned awkward in the past, so we know exactly where he's coming from. And, coincidentally, most of those hugs have turned awkward because we've furiously started licking at the other person's neck as well. Funny, that.

Anyway, now that Gary Busey's conscience is clear he can slowly dissolve away into big-toothed anonymity again – but things won't be so easy for Jennifer Garner. After all, thanks to video footage of the incident hundreds of millions of lonely men now know that Jennifer Garner pulls one of the most adorable faces you've ever seen if you suddenly lunge in and kiss her on the neck. Who wouldn't want to try that for themselves?

Read more:

Busey Apologizes for Red Carpet Blunder – AP