Mindy McCready seems to have got the other memo, about it being the time of the year that’s so oppressively harrowing that you may as well get really drunk and try to kill yourself by overdosing on pills and slashing your wrists. Because that’s what she’s done.

However, Mindy McCready is now stable following this suicide attempt – which means, following celebrity suicide attempt law, she now gets to make a film about a funny dog with Jennifer Aniston. Yay!

There may well have been a time when Mindy McCready’s life was so unrelentingly horrible that it made Britney Spears look like the tapdancing queen of the rainbows in comparison, but if there was we certainly can’t remember it. And now she’s apparently tried to kill herself.

Whereas the Owen Wilson suicide attempt came completely out of the blue – or not, depending on how you feel about having to accompany Kate Hudson to the premiere of all her rubbish films – Mindy McCready’s suicide attempt seems like it’s been a long time coming.

Along the way there have been drug addictions, DUI arrests, affairs with athletes that started when she was 15, episodes of domestic battery against her, episodes of domestic battery by her against her own mother and, most recently, a full-scale nervous breakdown. So we should have seen this suicide attempt coming – if not from all this then in the cries for help that her songs Lucky Me and Have A Nice Day obviously were.

The details of Mindy McCready’s suicide attempt are obviously too bleak for us to write about. But here’s what AP said about it:

Country singer Mindy McCready was hospitalized after she cut her wrists and took several pills in an apparent suicide attempt, Nashville police said. A police report said McCready’s brother discovered her at home Wednesday. Timothy McCready told police his sister had been “very intoxicated” after a night out. A hospital spokeswoman said the singer was in stable condition.

As clearly horrible as all of this is, at least Mindy McCready was caught in time and can now get the help she obviously needs. Now she’s hit rock bottom, maybe she can start to concentrate on getting better.

That’s provided that this is rock bottom, of course. True, getting shithammered beyond comprehension, gulping down mouthful after mouthful of pills and slashing your wrists a week before Christmas might count as rock bottom for most people, but this is Mindy McCready we’re talking about here – so we sort of get the feeling that she won’t have truly reached rock bottom until she gets drunk, throws herself down a lift shaft, sets herself on fire and pulls out all her teeth on the way down and then makes an obscene internet sex tape with a grotesque homeless pig-man once she’s smashed into the basement floor.

But let’s hope that’s not the case, eh?

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The body of Paula Goodspeed was discovered yesterday near Paula Abdul’s mansion in a car with a Paula Abdul-referencing license plate, next to pictures and CDs of Paula Abdul. It’s thought that Paula Goodspeed overdosed on prescription drugs, following a less successful suicide attempt near Abdul’s home earlier this year.

It’s sad news, and Goodspeed’s death might even make reality producers question their vetting process or treatment of contestants. Maybe they could just let Randy Jackson judge the next season of American Idol alone. After all, nobody can like him that much, can they?

There have been all manner of celebrity stalkers in recent years, all with varying degrees of scariness. Some are happy to draw creepy pictures of their victims, others will try to run them over on their driveway. But none have ever been willingly insulted by the object of their affections on national television.

Tragically, that happened to be the case with Paula Goodspeed, the Paula Abdul fan who yesterday killed herself close to Paula Abdul’s home. Paula Goodspeed auditioned for the fifth season of American Idol in a televised segment that now seems to be uncomfortably stuffed with warning signs…

As BBC News reports, Paula Abdul has already expressed her sadness over Goodspeed’s death:

The 30-year-old was discovered in a car alongside prescription drugs, CDs and pictures of pop star Abdul. The car was found near the singer’s home. Abdul said in a statement, released by her publicist Jeff Ballard: “I am deeply shocked and saddened at what transpired yesterday. My heart and prayers go out to her family.”

The news of Paula Goodspeed’s apparent suicide will no doubt affect Paula Abdul deeply. Every episode of American Idol these days seems to come complete with a little montage of fans telling Paula how much they love her, and this news might force her to be a little more hands-off with them in the future.

Whatever happens, though, we expect that the knock-on effect of Goodspeed’s death will be a toning down of the early American Idol stages. Simon Cowell has already been criticised in the past for his treatment of homosexuals and the disabled and so, to avoid a repeat of this sad news, we’re predicting that American Idol will cut back its attacks on the less talented audition performers in future seasons.

And what will that leave us with? Six months of David Archuleta clones. Who’d watch that?

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Wallace was reportedly found by his wife on Friday evening. He had committed suicide.

He was best known for his sprawling 1996 epic Infinite Jest – an epic satirical panorama which simultaneously enthralls, infuriates and excites. It’s without doubt one of the most remarkable books published in … well, forever … and if you haven’t tackled it yet you should run out and buy yourself a copy.

Failing that, have a gander online for some of his journalistic efforts and check out his short stories. In an age in which Jordan’s ‘novels’ can outsell the combined Booker shortlist six-to-one, a gleaming beacon of intelligence such as DFW will be sorely missed.

But why bother, when you could just kill yourself? Well, maybe that’s a bit far, so instead why not just play the game Five Minutes to Kill Yourself? It manages to tick the right boxes – you work in an office, you’re pissed off, you want to kill yourself. Textbook.

Travelling around the workplace you can talk to people, pick stuff up and interact with objects, all with the goal being to stop yourself from being alive. It’s quite funny, if we do say so ourselves. It’s also very simple and a great timewaster – though only in five minute blocks.

Play it and help suppress the fantasies of actually killing yourself.

Play It Here:

Five Minutes to Kill Yourself

So says Dr Jack Hattem, who, backed up by secret FBI files, says the Hollywood bombshell was somehow fooled into believing she would be revived in time as part of a plot involving Senator Robert Kennedy, the brother of JFK, who was gunned down 40 years ago this week.

Instead, Monroe, who staged many fake suicide attempts throughout her life to gain sympathy, was left to die by staff and friends. It’s all in Hattem’s new book Marilyn Monroe: Murder By Consent.

Certainly, Marilyn Monroe may have been dead for 46 years, but that doesn’t mean that people have stopped speculating about the circumstances of her death. We spoke to Dr Hattem and listened to some of his more compelling claims, including where Kennedy was on the night of Marilyn Monroe’s death and why the recently unearthed Marilyn Monroe sex tape might not be the only one knocking about.

This is turning out to be quite a big year for Marilyn Monroe. Not only has Lindsay Lohan aped her by getting naked and covering herself with a net curtain, but a Marilyn Monroe sex tape has also apparently been uncovered in recent months. So with sex dealt with, what about death?

While it was ruled to be suicide, theorists have long had their doubts about the way that Marilyn Monroe died – and thanks to a set of FBI records released 20 years ago that have been inexplicably ignored until recently, those doubts seem to have some substance.

According to Dr Jack Hattem’s book Marilyn Monroe: Murder By Consent, Monroe died because Robert Kennedy, along with Monroe’s close ‘friend’ and Hollywood actor Peter Lawford, convinced her to make another fake suicide attempt.

Caught between his family, who wanted to play down its relationship with Marilyn Monroe and the fact Monroe was threatening to shop a red diary containing ‘pillow talk’ between the pair and confidential secrets about the Cuban Missile Crisis if he ever left her, Robert Kennedy and Rat Pack member Lawford hatched a plan to visit Monroe on the day of her death. Hattem said:

“It is my guess that they had discussed with her, in no uncertain terms, that they needed for her to fake a suicide attempt. They guarantee she would be woken up, and that the fake suicide attempt would gain her so much sympathy from 20th Century Fox – who had fired her – that she would get her job back. But they threatened her somehow. She could be talked into things, because she wanted desperately to be cared about.”

At the time, Kennedy denied the visit, claiming he was in San Francisco. Which he might have got away with, except for the fact the FBI just happened to be busy tracking both Robert Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe at the same time. Hattem explained:

“The CIA had long considered Marilyn Monroe a threat to national security from the time she had married Arthur Miller, because they thought of him as a leftist. Then the FBI started listening in on her phone calls and tracking her – even to Mexico, where Bobby Kennedy had a fling with her. A private detective took an audio tape of Bobby Kennedy and Marilyn in an ‘affair’. The FBI was tracking Kennedy, their boss, all over the place and listening in on his conversations, possibly because Hoover wanted something on Kennedy – and he certainly got it, because as she was dying, they were listening in.”

Adding to the muddle is Marilyn Monroe’s housekeeper Eunice Murray, who found her face down on her bed, and her psychiatrist Ralph Greenson.

Apparently, Monroe fired Murray on the day of her death – which Hattem suggests is why she didn’t rush to try and revive Monroe; and was sleeping with Greenson – who allegedly gave Monroe an extra-large dose of barbiturates on top of what she already had been given.

What’s most interesting, though, is Dr Hattem’s story of the conversation between Bobby Kennedy and Peter Lawford at around 4am the following morning:

“In the FBI files, the FBI is recording Kennedy saying to Peter Lawford ‘Is she dead yet?’”

Throw in the fact that all of Marilyn Monroe’s phone message disappeared, to later be discovered in the chief of police’s private files, and that her red diary could not be found – Hattem’s guess is that Kennedy had a large hand in it. He said:

“I’m certain Robert Kennedy stole it when he came by her house after she was dead.”

But if Robert Kennedy’s involvement in Marilyn Monroe’s death is rooted in fact so firmly that there’s even an FBI file on it, why hasn’t more been made of it?

“I think the reason is that everybody already believes the Kennedys killed her.”

Maybe that’s where we’ve been going wrong all these years. And not just us, either – Uma Thurman’s alleged stalker Jack Jordan has fallen foul of this weird quirk of female nature as well. In court yesterday, Uma Thurman’s mother described a phone call with Jordan where he said he’d kill himself if he and her daughter weren’t predestined to be together.

And, surprisingly enough, this didn’t end in Uma Thurman leaping into Jack Jordan’s arms and yelling “Oh kiss me, you great big psychologically-deranged schnookie-noogs!” Women, huh? Can’t live with them, can’t disturb them to the point of shrieking hysteria.

Court cases involving celebrities tend to be quite boring, unless the celebrities have been accused of shooting a woman’s face off, because they all usually involve drink-driving and the celebrities are usually always guilty. So thank heavens for the 12-month reign of terror that frenzied stalker Jack Jordan is accused of hammering Uma Thurman and her family with, because at least it’s a bit different.

You probably know the details by now – Jack Jordan apparently bombarded Uma Thurman with letters and emails and disturbing pictures of Uma Thurman digging his grave and would sleep in his car outside her house and whatnot. And now the case has finally reached court.

Yesterday we reported how Jack Jordan’s lawyer described his client as a kind of creepy, woefully-misguided romantic, like something out of Romeo And Juliet if Romeo And Juliet’s famous balcony scene ended with the line “Seriously Romeo, get away from my balcony. You’re creeping me the fuck out and I’m trying to learn lines for My Super Ex-Girlfriend.”

And now Uma Thurman’s parents have taken to the stand to discuss the other side of the story – the side that’s a bit less ‘romantic’ and a bit more ‘crazy man threatening to kill himself’. According to the New York Times, Uma Thurman’s mother had a particularly enlightening telephone conversation with Jack Jordan:

“I wanted to know what was on his mind, so I asked him what this was all about,” she testified. “He told me in so many words that he believed that he and my daughter had a preordained life, as it were, that they were meant to be together. He knew this. She didn’t know it. If she saw him, she would know they were destined to be together and be very happy.” She tried, she said, to talk Mr. Jordan out of his infatuation, telling him that he was “projecting” his own fantasies onto Uma Thurman’s life, and that they had no basis in reality. She testified that Mr. Jordan replied that “in that case there was no meaning in life for him. He would have to kill himself. Probably in a month or so he would be gone.”

Seriously? Jack Jordan thought about killing himself after being told that Uma Thurman probably wouldn’t want to marry him? We’d have contemplated suicide way before that – about the time we realised that Uma Thurman being the meaning of our lives would probably involve having to watch Paycheck more than once, to be precise.

Read more:

Actress’s Parents Tell of Stalker Suspect – NY Times

No. No they're not. They can't be because the woman who wrote the Harry Potter books, JK Rowling, has admitted that she's suffered from depression and battled suicidal thoughts before.

Of course, this all happened before Harry Potter got successful and JK Rowling got preposterously rich and stuff. Now any time JK Rowling gets a bit sad she'll go to a poor person's house, buy their furniture and pets for a tenner and set it all on fire in front of them until she's happy again. Works every time.

You'd think that famous people would be the happiest people on Earth, wouldn't you? They have fame, success, power, wealth, access to top-notch cosmetic surgeons, nice hair, expensive shoes, children with invented names, illogical religious beliefs and a constant access to any number of willing sexual partners. But sometimes that isn't the case, because a lot of celebrities have tried to kill themselves in the past.

It's true – Halle Berry tried to kill herself and Tom Jones tried to kill himself and Owen Wilson tried to kill himself. That's literally every celebrity in the world. Admittedly, aside from Owen Wilson – who was found in his home with blood oozing from his slashed wrists – neither of the other two actually attempted suicide, but just entertained the thought of it so they could use the experience in an anecdote years later to show how successful they've subsequently become, but it still sort of counts.

It must do, because Harry Potter creator JK Rowling has just done that exact thing. In an interview with a student magazine, JK Rowling announced that there was this time once that she got a little bit miserable:

"The thing that made me go for help was probably my daughter. She was something that earthed me, grounded me, and I thought, this isn't right, this can't be right, she cannot grow up with me in this state. We're talking suicidal thoughts here, we're not talking "I'm a little bit miserable"… I have never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. Never. What's to be ashamed of? I went through a really rough time and I am quite proud that I got out of that."

In the end, JK Rowling went and had some cognitive behavioural therapy to snap her out of it, and it worked. Now JK Rowling is a beacon of inspiration for all the other suicidal depressives in the world – she's living proof that all it takes to get out of a suicidal funk is a guilt-making baby, some therapy and the ability to write the most successful childrens' book franchise in history and become richer than the Queen out of it. Anyone can do it.

But why has JK Rowling decided to speak out about her depression now? Did the topic come up naturally in the conversation? Is this a sneaky first step towards JK Rowling writing trashy self-help books? Or is it part of JK Rowling's ongoing tactic of discussing things that have happened to her in the past to help her think up something to come after Harry Potter? We think it might be.

JK Rowling has already visited her old house and now she's recounting her almost-suicide. But surely that's it now – surely JK Rowling can't go on dredging up past memories to hold off writing a Harry Potter follow-up, can she? Because, honestly, it's just a matter of time before JK Rowling gives an explosive interview about The Time I Woke Up And Thought It Was Thursday But It Was Actually Wednesday, and we don't know how we'd cope with that.

Read more:

JK Rowling: I've thought about suicide – Now 

But Heather Locklear is made of sterner stuff than you. Heather Locklear absolutely didn't try and kill herself last weekend, even though a 911 operative, the Los Angeles Fire Department, two ambulances and Heather Locklear's own psychiatrist thought she had.

But don't worry, because it was all a false alarm. Heather Locklear wasn't really trying to commit suicide, which means that we can all go back to forgetting she ever even existed anyway again.

On average it's thought that the average Los Angeles-dweller will be falsely accused of attempting suicide 15 or 16 times within their lifespan. It happens all the time – Marie Osmond's suicide attempt was really an adverse reaction to painkillers, the Hasselhoff daughter's suicide attempt was really an adverse reaction to a kitten-scratch and Owen Wilson's suicide attempt was just… oh. 

But on the whole it's fair to say that most celebrity suicide attempt reports are just miscommunication. But who can blame the authorities for being a bit jumpy? After all, a celebrity's life is worth the same as ten normal peoples' lives. Except for Heather Locklear, of course. Her life is probably only worth the same as three or four normal people's lives, but that didn't stop the mother of all misreported suicide attempts happening on Saturday night.

On Saturday, fire trucks and ambulances were called to Heather Locklear's home because of a 911 call claiming that she was about to kill herself, even though she was actually pretty OK and the least suicidal that you can be when you know you're Heather Locklear. However, the call didn't come from Heather Locklear or anyone in her home, and 911 officials were positive that it wasn't a crank call.

So who blew the whistle on Heather Locklear's non-existent suicide attempt? As Ninemsn reports, the moral of the story is to never tell your psychiatrist that you're sad. Or at least never tell Heather Locklear's psychiatrist that you're sad:

Law enforcement sources said the call came from the actress's psychiatrist, according to celebrity website TMZ. The psychiatrist was alarmed because she was "upset and believed she might OD on medication prescribed for depression", the website reported.

It's an embarrassing mix-up for sure. Now – rightfully or not – Heather Locklear looks a bit crazy, her psychiatrist looks a bit stupid and the Los Angeles 911 service looks like a bunch of fools. But why would someone as well-known, glamorous and addicted to starring in white-bread sitcoms as Heather Locklear even be depressed in the first place?

Simple. Richie Sambora's penis. It's like King Midas in reverse. Heather Locklear was the bright young star of Melrose Place until she touched Richie Sambora's penis and now – bam! – she's on depression medication and at the centre of a suicide attempt storm. And then there's Denise Richards, who was the bright young star of Wild Things until she touched Richie Sambora's penis and now – bam! – she's a weirdly paranoid sad jobless pig who's been reduced to crawling around in the world of reality TV. 

Basically our point is that you shouldn't touch Richie Sambora's penis. Never touch Richie Sambora's penis.

Read more:

Fears held for Locklear after suicide call – Ninemsn 

So it's no surprise that Jordan got smashed on drugs not so long ago and wound up contemplating suicide.

But here's the thing – although she's admitted drug use, Jordan won't say what drug she took. But she has ruled out cocaine, which means that Jordan wanted to kill herself after a binge on either heroin, prescription pills, non-prescription pills or Fisherman's Friends. And when was the last time you saw Jordan with a cold, huh?

You might look at Jordan and think she has a charmed life, getting paid bags of money to do not very much except constantly put down her ladyman husband in public in her flat bored call-centre worker's voice and then getting it all filmed by a constantly-present reality TV film crew, but you're wrong. Being Jordan is a sack of unending misery.

So it's no surprise that Jordan tried to kill herself in a drug frenzy not so long ago. Well, she didn't try to kill herself as such, more that she kind of momentarily entertained the abstract possibility of thinking about what it'd be like to kill herself. But, hey, Jordan's got a new book out, so it's either talk about that or talk about the next most exciting thing in her life. And that's her tits, but she's done that already so drug frenzy suicide it is.

You see, in her new book Jordan: No, Honestly, My Life Really Is Exceptional Enough To Warrant 138 Different Autobiographies, Jordan reveals that she took a load of drugs to combat post-natal depression, then had a fight with Peter Andre, then thought about suicide.

But, crucially, Jordan didn't name the drug. This could either be because she's too ashamed about it or because a hokey game of 'guess what drug almost killed Jordan' would increase sales of her book by five or six. So naturally everyone thought it was cocaine. However, Jordan has revealed that, no, it wasn't cocaine. The Sun reports:

The mum of three, 29, took the substance behind hubby Peter Andre's back. But Jordan – real name Katie Price – refuses to say what she used. Last night her spokeswoman denied it was cocaine. She said: “Katie did not take an illegal substance. It was a prescription drug. She did turn to drugs in the lowest ebb of her life. She knows it was a stupid thing to do. Katie did not have to talk about this but has decided to do so as a warning. She wants to stop other people turning to drugs as a way of dealing with their problems.”

It's important that Jordan does this, because she's a role model to millions of youngsters. Having said that, if you do see Jordan as a role model you deserve to be packed into a bus and driven into a flooded quarry, so perhaps developing a debilitating drug addiction isn't that bad of a runner-up prize.

It's heartbreaking to think of Jordan's prescription drug binge. Not because it happened in the first place, or because she didn't quite take enough of this drug to make her actually try to kill herself, but because of the money-making opportunities it presents to her. After all, this revelation is bound to sell more books, and it's an inevitability that Jordan will release a cover version of Sipping On Some Sizzurp before the year is out to cash in. Still, it couldn't be as bad as A Whole New World. 

But anyway, let's just be glad that Jordan didn't die; because, if she did, the mantle of Chief Autobiography Writer would be passed down to her husband. And the world can probably live without reading a book called I Dun A Guff In A Lift And It Stunk And A Woman Woz Angri By Peeta Andrey.

Read more:

Drug hell not coke says Jord – The Sun 

In scenes eerily reminiscent of the last time she was carted off to hospital after a meltdown, ambulances, helicopters and police cars all recently descended onto the home of Britney Spears to keep her detained in hospital for at least 72 hours.

Even for Britney Spears, these last few days have been incredibly dramatic, with her manager Sam Lutfi's claims that Britney is mentally ill apparently sparking off a public roadside nervous breakdown that led to ugly squabbles between Britney Spears, her family, her manager and her boyfriend Adnan Ghalib.

According to reports, Britney Spears has been taken to UCLA Medical Centre where she'll be observed for 72 hours, with the stay extended for up to two weeks should she refuse to take her medication. The sectioning comes amid reports that Britney Spears hasn't slept since Saturday. Although rumours are circulating about an alleged suicide attempt, nothing has been made official yet.

More on this one as we get it. 

Read more:

Britney Went Willingly – TMZ