Piers Morgan, the ever lovable former Daily Mirror editor and man for whom the word smarmy was invented, certainly has gotten his large, soiled knickers in a twist of late.

We’re not even half way through the week and he’s already attempted to take some cheap shots at 2 people who are infinitely more famous and loved than him.

It’s the equivalent of the school weed slagging off the popular kids because they won’t invite him to their fancy pool parties when their parents go to Tuscany for the weekend.

On Monday, Morgan went on Chelsea Lately, one of the billions of late night talk shows more popular than his own in the States, to have a pop at Madonna, claiming that the baby catcher’s Super Bowl performance was akin to that of, “a gruesome drunken Aunt.”

TAKE THAT MADONNA! You just got served. Piers Morgan, a man who will struggle to get the same amount of viewers all year that you got during your brief Super Bowl half-time show, just told you how it went down!

Why don’t you start acting your age and visit a W.I. meeting once in a while, huh!?

After dispatching of her Madgesty, Piers pointed his pistol of perfunctory towards former footballer, Match of the Day presenter and UN ambassador for crisps, Gary Lineker.

Morgan decided to brag to the former Spurs star about a review he got in the San Fransisco Chronicle, praising his talents as a football pundit on Fox TV. Lineker went on to question how long Morgan had spent searching for that, lone, positive review, to which Morgan replied, one can only assume with a look of post-mastubatory smugness plastered across his sweaty brow:

“I currently air in 200 countries/territories – how you getting on? #SmallPondMinnow”

Despite forgetting to mention that even though he’s aired in 200 territories, he still only draws a crowd of about 6, Morgan mopped the mix of bile and man lather from his keyboard and went to make a cup of tea, safe in the knowledge that he’d given Gary Lineker, ‘a Madonna.’

But our Gary isn’t Madonna, he doesn’t take things lying down, or from Malawi, he rebutted Morgan’s smugspunk with this:

“I think the 2 world cups I played in probably edged that.”

BAM! He had Morgan on the ropes, but wasn’t finished yet, fearing Morgan could possibly steal his presenting gig, Salt and Lineker wound up and struck the final, devastating blow to Morgan’s inflated ego:

“Spoke to the powers that be at the BBC and they are very interested in you… staying in America”

He may work for Walkers, but Lineker is definitely the Real McCoy.

Sorry.

Matthew Broderick is a man with a surprisingly unremarkable film career.

We don’t mean he doesn’t make money- we’re sure he’s super-successful if judged by wealth. However, before you continue reading, grab a pad of paper and a pen. If, like us, you get hand-cramp from even writing your own name, then just open up a word document instead.

Now make a list of all the Matthew Broderick films of which you can remember. Done that? Now cross out all the ones that weren’t artistic travesties. Come on, be honest with yourselves. By the way if you didn’t cross out Godzilla it’s probably best if you cease this exercie immediately.

As a reliable rule of thumb one should master cutlery before tacking cultural discourse on the internet.

Don’t look on Wikipedia, that’s cheating. Now how many films have you got? Not many eh? 3, 4, 5 maybe? Weird isn’t it for an almost 30 year career?  We were surprised because we like equine bothering super nice-guy Matthew Broderick. The reason any of us still have a soft spot for him is because of Ferris Bueller.

If you like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, then you’ll probably love the new Honda commercial/Bueller homage made for the crazily valuable Superbowl commercial break slot. We say probably because you may feel there’s some ‘selling out’ issue. If that’s the case you may just have to accept that movies aren’t early 80s hardcore punk and that Matthew Broderick isn’t Henry Rollins.

Once you’ve done that then you can sit back and enjoy. Then depending on how keen you are, watch it again and look out  for the subtle details that were put there for your nerd-ass.

Oh, and try not to think about the fact that he looks like  70 year old botoxed woman when he has the towel on his head.

The Super Bowl halftime show is a very, very prestigious gig. Some of music’s biggest stars have done a turn there. Prince. Paul McCartney. Bruce Springsteen. Er… Black Eyed Peas. In defence of the latter, they were awful and suicide rates went up six-hundredfold when they played.

Wait. That’s no defence. Did someone say defence? DE-FENCE! DE-FENCE! DE-FENCE!

Anyway, to make amends for the urine crotched BEPs, the organisers of the greatest commercial break on television have decided to announce that Madonna will be doing the halftime show at the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show on Feb. 5 in Indianapolis. Let those football tossing guys really see what a masculine, ripped Body Of David really looks like, eh?

Of course, the 653-year-old Material Girl will have other things to promote. She doesn’t sing because she loves it, y’know?

Her romantic drama W.E. just happens to be hitting theatres two days before the game. That’s handy isn’t it? She’ll probably churn out a greatest hits set while daydreaming of all those monstrously giant athletes getting rubbed down in the locker room.

For the show, she’ll collaborate with Cirque Du Soleil and Jamie King. She may well give us all a preview of a track that will eventually appear on her new LP, slated for underwhelming released in 2012.

Just remember though, if you’re working on the Super Bowl show – don’t buy Madge the wrong flowers or she’ll get those sinewy arms of hers and throttle you before your weeping family.

AND NO CLOSE UPS.

OKAY?

Have you noticed a trend in pop that sees artists sampling any old shit, rather than sourcing something that works right for a song? Eminem sampled Haddaway, Derulo used ‘Day-Oh (The Banana Boat Song)’ and Cher Lloyd unironically sang the tune from ‘Oh My Darling, Clementine’.

Who is to blame for this? The Black Eyed Peas, that’s who. Have you heard their use of ‘The Time Of My Life’? Crow-barred, lowest common denominating nonsense to provide modernity to familiarity, thereby, maximising sales and opportunities to get played at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

And now, having fully completed Operation Spoil Music For Everyone, they’re able to take a nice long break, knowing that their work is done. Seriously. They’re totally splitting up.

Pop the corks! Roll out the bunting! Put the heating on for half an hour longer than usual! The Black Eyed Peas, the scourge of ears around the world and owners of the title of Worst Super Bowl Halftime Show EVER, are going away for a long time!

HURRAY!

Of course, we won’t get rid of them that easily. They’re like cockroaches. You stomp on ‘em and they leak eggs, ready to make more abominations.

One of the band members who isn’t Fergie or will.i.am… possibly the one that looks like the Jitsu He-Man figure, said:

“We’re going to take a little vacation and focus on our personal things.”

will.i.am threatened the world via dead-eyed Ellen DeGeneres:

“[BEP] always have two cycles of records and then we take a break.”

“When we take breaks you know, we work on side projects and get our personal stuff in order to then come back and make beautiful music”

BEAUTIFUL MUSIC? BEAUTIFUL?

Bands and gimmicks – who’d have thought that some artists use them as a fall back when we realise that the music they release is gash? Fake London type Pete Doherty has a hilarious heroin routine which sees him in constant bother with the local law enforcement. Elsewhere, X-Factor winner Leona Lewis continues in her quest to make a tin of paint seem more exciting than her personality.

So one band we can never work is American chumps The Black Eyed Peas. Fronted by a man whose mother has a terrible understanding of grammar, will.i.am and joined by Fergie, a woman who isn’t shy of urinating herself on-stage for either her own sick pleasure, or fans of golden showers. Grammar and whizzing your pants. Some gimmick!

Anogther trick used by the band is to employ the thinking that using choruses from other people’s songs and releasing them for thick people to buy. However, one of their songs will never be played again. You see, ‘My Humps’ has gotten into all-sorts of complicated legal mishaps.

The song itself is something Hugh Hefner would give a personal seal of approval on. It sounds like some sort of appreciation of women with small breasts. How refreshing to hear that The Black Eyed Peas won’t discriminate people depending on the size of their mammaries.

However, if some of the hecklerspray writers got their moobs out and rubbed them in the face of Will.I.Am, we doubt he’d be inking raps that sing our praises. Feel free to view the video monstrosity for yourself, featuring all sorts of over the top brand placement for stuff you’ll never be able to afford:

At the time of its release, My Humps sold bucket loads, but not all of the work on the track can be accredited to the band.

Due to the tedious nature of sampling, certain parts of My Humps had been borrowed from a track from some unknown DJ going under the catchy title of DJ Orrin Lynn Tolliver.

Released under the name Sexual Harassment with collaborator James McCant, there is a striking resemblance to what The Black Eyed Peas vomited out:

Squabbles broke out over the use of the sample and a judge subsequently ruled in favour of DJ Orrin Lynn Tolliver, rewarding him with $1.2 million in damages and profits – but not Sexual Harassment. Confused? Let us badly explain.

This is where you’d probably expect us to go on a rant where we’d call Will.I.Am and his band a load of sample lifting bandits. However, the original song was recorded by DJ Tolliver with James McCant. McCant was the person who seemingly licensed out the track to The Black Eyed Peas without telling his mate, DJ Tolliver. He got upset that he was never asked and then ironically made more money that if he’d given permission. The moral of the story? Basically, if your mate sells out without your knowledge, you can pretty much cash in at some point.

Does will.i.am know about this fierce legal battle? Probably not, not judging by this quote anyway:

“It wasn’t lyrical miracles. It got to the point where we didn’t want to play it no more. But the beat was rocking.”

Aww, a “lyrical miracle.” It sounds like something that would appear in a gangster rappers first “wurdz” book when they learn to read and write at the age of 14.

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If the Black Eyed Peas brand of dreadful music wasn’t bad enough, they’re going to infect your games console by making a game for you to get furious with, leaving you kicking your controllers out of the window and throttling yourself with the plug flex.

That’s right! will.i.am, Fergie and the other two who don’t seem to do much will be prancing around in a game… but what will it be like?

Well, rumour has it that it’ll be one of those dreary things where you dance and singalonga to the monstrous hits they’ve made. However, if the developers are reading this, they should hear our ideas first because they’re miles better and guaranteed to make they game sell roughly a million less copies.

BEP have teamed up with Ubisoft, whose created the popular Just Dance software. They’re now going to make The Black Eyed Peas Experience on Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 and ZX Spectrum 48k

Ubisoft head Yves Guillemot says:

“The Black Eyed Peas are a worldwide phenomenon and Ubisoft is the worldwide leader in dance games – together we are going to make The Black Eyed Peas Experience a game that fans around the world will love”.

Fergie adds:

“It’s a perfect fit for us. The Black Eyed Peas are bringing the party to the people”

That’s all well and good, but wouldn’t it be better if a game was created on Fergie’s bladder called ‘Correct Yoself Before You We Yoself’ where players are encouraged to warble hysterically while soiling themselves? The grace in which you deal with public urination will get you points, with bonuses being offered for little accidental poos that you do.

Or perhaps there could be a Streets Of Rage style game where the four Peas roam the streets with pipes and knives… however, the object is to get your arse handed to you as comprehensively as possible. That would be easy enough with the one with the stupid name who is going blind.

Maybe, finally, there could be a game created by Ubisoft that is an original idea that has no awful celebrity tie-in? How about that?

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Since Christina Aguilera flubbed the American National anthem at the Super Bowl, starred in the impressively eventless Burlesque and got arrested for being more drunk than Oliver Reed’s liver, she’s not been too much fun.

In fact, she’s been something of a bore. Instead of properly going off the rails, she’s turned into a little walking book of calm, sounding for all the world like a quack that appears on Geraldo or something.

And so, despite the fact we’ve all seen her boobs in Those ‘Leaked’ Naked Photos, Xtina decided to be incredibly serious and overwrought about the fact her tatas nearly fell out of her dress, repeatedly, while appearing on the show, The Voice. 

That’s right, Aguilera came *that close* to bearing all on US television after a near wardrobe malfunction. This all happened while she was promoting her new TV show The Voice, which looks pretty awful.

During the performance, her dress strap repeatedly fell down, leaving our warbling warbler to continually forcibly yank the thing up in an attempt to stop viewers getting their eyes poked out.

Christina, instead of playing it all off with a shrug and a laugh, said:

“Hey, if you want a career doing this, you have to roll with the punches”

Right, here comes the funnies, yeah?

“You know, you’re going to have your highs and lows, but you keep going. And every single time you take that stage that’s another opportunity for you to prove to not only the world, but to yourself, that you are stronger and [can] get up there a better person.”

Oh piss off.

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Oh America. You’re a silly continent sized country. Someone can drink one bottle of spirits on a night out and suddenly, they’ve got a problem. Not surprising that there’s this attitude when the most popular beer is things like Bud Light, which to a European, is akin to water, seeing as Budweiser itself is about as intoxicating as sucking a warm ice cube.

And of course, with Christina Aguilera seemingly getting completely shit-faced for the first time ever (in the public eye at least), the whole country is gathering ’round her to see if she’d like a hug and a lift to rehab.

Naturally, The People Close To The Singer, such as her ex-husband Jordan ‘Do The’ Bratman, and now wringing their hands, furrowing their brows and sighing with faux-reluctance that alcohol has always been something of an issue with poor ol’ troubled Aguilera.

And so it transpires that Christina Aguilera has always had a ‘problem’ with demon drink, and will crushing inevitability, people are coming out to fret about the whole thing. And all because she got arrested, but not charged with ‘having a fun night out after drinking a couple of bottles of wine’.

Of course, her boyfriend Matt Rutler is a tit. He got hammered and then jumped in his car to drive home. When will celebrities learn that the only people who get off the hook with drink driving are vicars and priests?

Ex-husband Jordan Bratman, naturally, hasn’t ever wanted to talk about Xtina’s drinking problems before, because he was in the limelight while married to her. Now no-one really gives two hoots about him, he’s sidled up to Aguilera’s drunkenly slumped torso with his hands open saying “Hi. My name is Jordan Bratman. You may remember me as Christina’s husband from a while back. Now, what you see here is a drunk singer… I tried telling her, but she wouldn’t listen…”

That’s right! Bratman has kept a stoic silence until now. Now being the time when there might be a custody battle or some money to fleece from a divorce settlement.

Classy.

All the while, the rest of America stands patiently awaiting Christina’s inevitable talkshow appearance where she promises to get back on track and do a stint in rehab (America’s equivalent of the confession booth) and everyone can cheer and clap and underline the notion of betterment which many American citizens blindly sign up to without ever considering that it might all be one massive, overflowing crock of pig swill.

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Christina Aguilera hasn’t been having a fun time of late. For a kick off, she’s been in the film Burlesque, which was not exactly well received (it’ll be a future classic, like Showgirls, but for now, we’re all too busy sneering).

Then, there was the whole ‘Oops! Someone hacked me and leaked those grotty looking naked pictures to everyone!’ thing. What? You missed that. Click here then, you gigantic filth trouser.

Things seemed to have climaxed with her forgetting some of the words to the American national anthem at the Superbowl shortly after a divorce. That’d be surely it? Not a chance. Apparently, she’s a borderline alcoholic… and she’s been arrested for it too.

Now, people who get arrested for being drunk usually smell of urine and can be found perched atop park benches fast asleep, or muttering slurred swear words on a bus somewhere. However, this is Christina Aguilera – she’s surely got a bit more class than that right?

Obviously that means could be found smelling or urine after drinking very expensive wine or Kristal.

Anyway, Xtina has been arrested on a misdemeanour charge in the wee-small hours while her boyfriend Matthew Rutler got cuffed for driving under the influence of alcohol.

Sources reckon that Aguilera was “extremely intoxicated” and “unable to take care of herself”.

That sounds like hecklerspray when we’ve had a few and we probably judge ourselves far more harshly than the people of America are currently tutting-up at the ‘Genie In A Bottle’ singer right now. And remember kids, America is amazingly judgemental about booze. It just shows you the levels of our own self-loathing.

Christina, apparently, wouldn’t have been arrested if her fella hadn’t been trying to drive around like a mad thing. However, sources claim that Aguilera’s friends and family have been trying to get her into a rehab for weeks.

Let us be honest here – it’s the most interesting thing Aguilera has done since ‘Ain’t No Other Man’. Good work. Resist rehab for a bit and go mental in public first.

We need you.

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The Super Bowl is one of the most baffling and brilliant events in the calendar. Three hour long national anthems, jets flying overhead, pomp and more pomp, fireworks, halftime shows and roughly 7300 commercial breaks all herald the final of one of the slowest sports on Earth.

Effectively, American Football is crown-green bowling as played by robots and extras from The Salute Of The Jugger.

It was, of course, just the tonic we all needed. A game many of us don’t understand, yet, filled with enough pizazz to distract us from all the horrible things going on in the world (although, that said, the constant referring to war veterans, fighter jets, patriots and talk of exploding rockets in the Star Spangled Banner didn’t help). Last night saw the whole world united and speaking with one voice. It was a beautiful moment that brought many close to tears. As one, the world stood together and said in a single voice… “Fuck. The Black Eyed Peas are awful aren’t they?”

If you didn’t know, then you probably don’t care that the Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl last night. This is a good thing, mainly for two reasons. The first is that they’re owned by their fans as opposed to some wealthy oil baron or balding magnate with a head like a dinosaur egg. They’re a proper ‘people’s team’. And, much more importantly than all that, is that the Green Bay Packers have a much nicer typeface than the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The kit of American Football is incredibly important to the sport. Firstly, the helmets are really cool and secondly, to give the whole spectacle a grisly edge, players are required to wear tights so that you can clearly see the outline of their withered genitalia, presumably battered by rough manhandling during the sport itself and constant whippings from high-jinx with wet towels in the dressing room.

American football, like the country that invented it, is a spectacular and weird sport.

The same can’t be said of the woeful trophy though. The Super Bowl prize is hilariously awful. The design of the trophy is woefully poor, as was the cheap looking Camaro that is offered to the MVP (or Man of the Match) of the final. All that endeavour for a cruddy, boxy looking car, a terrible looking trophy and a special ring that Super Bowl winners receive.

And the sport itself is incredibly ugly for the most part. It seems that, in a squad of around 60,000 people, only four or five people actually get to have a go with the ball. The rest of the team is employed to simply run at the opposition as fast as they can in an attempt to make the outside of their bodies enter the innards of the other. It’s like watching a sex-scene in a world where romance has been replaced with android bears.

Of course, this will be news to Americans who don’t even watch the sport. They tune in for the Super Bowl to simply eat as many nachos as possible, dribble at the commercials and wait for the halftime show.

Last night’s halftime show was desperately poor. The Black Eyed Peas took to the stage dressed like Tron: The Musical, faced with what seemed like a brainwashed cult, all dressed in white and fawning with reverence. Later, these mindless minions could be seen dancing with cardboard boxes on their heads.

Thanks to the Black Eyed Peas not being very good at writing songs, they decided to nix the notion of doing a setlist of tunes in favour of a Stars On 45/Black Lace/Jive Bunny medley. Which just happened to feature Usher for absolutely no reason.

Tipped-up goth flavoured Pot Noodle, Slash, appeared to wank notes all over the place too, to become the biggest slag music has ever produced. Seriously. Pop stars may favour the guest rap, but Slash is always lurking in the shadows, waiting to play as many pointless notes as possible. When Slash dies, he’ll probably do a widdly solo over the sound of his own life support machine. Still, at least he didn’t look like Cyndi Lauper like anthem singer Christina Aguilera did.

Back to the game and a continued obsession and confusion with all things American from this side of the pond, the Super Bowl continued to be played in shards, with the game never wanting to ebb and flow, save for the occasional interception and frankly bizarre moment when the game got a war veteran to stand in the end zone and wave at everyone for a minute or two.

And so, a mindtrick worth of statistics, impenetrable jargon and more numbers than the dreams of an autistic bingo caller, the Super Bowl rolled in-and-out of town with maximum fanfare and players with the most amusing names in sport (we’re looking at you Zombo, Willie Colon and Markuise Pouncey), only to be forgotten almost immediately by everyone outside of America…

…’til next year.

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Americans are funny aren’t they? They’re just mad about their stupid national anthem. Apparently, Americans sing it 78 times a day, just so they can feel more American! You would have thought that, by virtue of the fact that they’re American, they wouldn’t need to remind themselves so frequently.

And one of the most notable national anthems is the one crooned by famous people before the Superbowl, where everyone in the US swells with pride and everyone else sniggers at them behind their backs.

This year, Christina Aguilera has been chosen to sing The Star Spangled Banner and given the task of trying her best to not laugh while singing “And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there” while America does its best to get involved in every single war on Earth.

So yeah. The Superbowl, as most Americans will know, will be in Texas on February 6th and millions of people around the world will tune in just to see if 2011will be the year they finally understand what the fuss about American Football is all about. Just like last year. And the year before that. And so on.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Aguilera has been involved with a Superbowl. She of course performed during the much coveted halftime show during the 2000 Superbowl in Atlanta.

Aguilera says of the opportunity:

“I have been performing the Anthem since I was seven years old and I must say the Super Bowl is a dream come true”

“I am really excited to be part of such an iconic event.”

Hands up if you read that as ‘ironic event’. Just us? Oh well.

Aguilera now joins a pantheon of stars who have performed the national anthem before, including Diana Ross, Neil Diamond, Mariah Carey, Billy Joel and Beyonce. We can only hope Christina nails it like Rosanne did at some event or other in 1990, as opposed to carting out the histrionics and making the whole tedious thing last for what seems like an age.

The halftime show will, of course, feature the Status Quo of pop – The Black Eyed Peas.

As ever, they’ll invade the pitch as the American Tossball players have a break which seems to last an hour while fans run onto the pitch. Naturally, with the Black Eyed Peas playing, that halftime break could feel a helluva lot longer. Lets just hope they don’t sing “let’s get retarded” because, y’know, that’s a really horrible thing to say in a song.

They’ve got to live up to drab performances from the likes of U2, Bruce Springsteen and The Who.

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The Superbowl is one of the most peculiar spectacles on Earth. For a start, the whole world reports on it despite not even having the vaguest idea what is going on. Of course, the basic elements of American Football are incredibly easy to dissect. Get ball – score touchdown – wear helmet.

However, elsewhere, it’s utterly mystifying. Man shouts a series of numbers like he’s gone mad watching Lost, then, swings it under his gusset like bull’s bollocks, before handing it to someone who launches it toward a man who gets jumped on, leaving the commentators to say 96th, 3rd and down or something. Then they repeat the process and go to an ad-break.

The Superbowl of course, has the longest half-time break ever (it lasts for approximately 42 hours) and has bands on while the fans run on the pitch. For a bit. And this year, the entertainment will be in the shape of The Black Eyed Peas.

Of course, The Black Eyed Peas are a strange spectacle in their own right. When they’re staring at you with wide eyes, wondering why on Earth you’d be offended by a song called ‘Let’s Get Retarded’, Fergie is urinating inside her own trousers on-stage, making her the almost palatable version of GG Allin.

And we never thought we’d compare those two. Ever.

Anyway, there’s been some gigantically famous acts on during the Superbowl half-time show in the past. You may have seen Bruce Springsteen, The Who, Paul McCartney and Prince playing. Yeah. And now The Black Eyed Peas. Whoever goes to the Cowboys Stadium on February 6th will no doubt feel shortchanged.

It’s like being ordering steak and getting a drawing of cow in return.

We still don’t understand the fascination with American football, but of course, that in turn will make us curious and tune in for the thing as usual and report on that all-important Who Will Do The Big Expensive Commercial Break Thingy This Year?

So yeah. GO SPORTS! TOUCHDOWN AND 8th! NICKEL AND DIME! HUP! HUP!

Sorry. We learned all we knew and promptly forgot it from John Madden’s games on the Megadrive.

*ahem*

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Nobody watches the Super Bowl for sport, so nobody knows if the Cardigans or the Teapots won yesterday.

But they do watch the Super Bowl for one thing – boobies. Across the world yesterday, hundreds of millions of people tuned into to the Super Bowl to see who’d accidentally flop a knocker out during the halftime show. Sadly, all we got was Bruce Springsteen.

Bruce Springsteen yesterday performed a Super Bowl halftime set that was as flat and lifeless as any in recent memory, and he’s received lukewarm reviews for it at best. Plus, let’s be honest, his tits are terrible.

Aside from the actual football – which couldn’t be more dreary if it took place between two different gangs of nearly-dead emphysemic pensioners – people tend to watch the Super Bowl for either the ads or the halftime show. And usually one of those will have something going for it.

Not this year, though. As far as the Superbowl commercials went, we were spared Kevin Federline and adorably violent homophobia and instead got two things that made us instinctively dry-heave – the first was Bob Dylan doing a duet with Will.i.am in an advert for Pepsi, and the second was that 3D promo for Jay Leno‘s new show where he drove around, tried to poke us in the eye with his chin and pulled a horrifyingly smug face all at the same time. Never say Jay Leno can’t multitask.

As for the music, the Super Bowl halftime show continued its dull tradition of violently eschewing sexiness and showmanship in favour of ground-out craftmanship. Bruce Springsteen was the performer last night, and in his 12-minute slot he avoided recent controversies like the Janet Jackson nipple-slip or the Prince devil penis so that he could concentrate on belting out some of his biggest hits.

Well, some of his biggest hits and a new song. A new song that sounds like it was written by a cynically-minded internet Bruce Springsteen song generator that’s on the fritz. And, because of that, the reviews of Bruce Springsteen’s Super Bowl halftime show haven’t been all that amazing. The New York Times reports:

The final discomforts were all Springsteen’s. At the end, he shouted inexplicably, “I’m going to Disneyland!” A moment earlier, a man dressed as a referee appeared on stage, threw a yellow flag and crossed his arms in front of Springsteen, the signal for delay of game. Springsteen mock fretted about the ticking clock, and Van Zandt protested, screaming, “It’s Boss time!” Except that it wasn’t, and everyone knew it.

Maybe it’s a little harsh to criticise Bruce Springsteen for his performance – a 12-minute Super Bowl halftime show didn’t really give him the chance to show off what he does best, which is a) playing concerts that go on for such incalculably long periods of time that members of the audience routinely end up developing spinal fusion, full-length beards and elderly incontinence, and b) singing songs about bumming prostitues.

But, hey, at least nobody saw any nipples – even if we do suspect that if the Super Bowl continues to book halftime acts based on their sturdy reliability, then next year we’ll be treated to a 12-minute set by an actual sack of potatos.

And, you know. At least it wasn’t Tom Petty again. That’s something to be thankful for, at least.

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The name Jackson has shifted meanings quite dramatically over the last few decades.

In the seventies you’d know the Jacksons as that annoying bunch of kids whose songs were more infectious then the Ebola virus, while the eighties and early nineties saw Michael Jackson pull away and gain success on his own.

Sadly MJ knackered things up towards the end of the nineties with “botched surgery” plaguing the Jackson name. Then at the turn of the millennium, things got worse as the tags “dodgy alleged child molester”, “rubber masked mo’ fo’” and “strange reality show contestant” were thrown around.

Whilst all the male members of the Jackson family were being beaten daily by their father to perform like dancing bears, poor Janet Jackson didn’t get a look in, with only Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, Michael and Randy involved in the Jackson 5 set-up.

Sadly, she’d have to go alone at it, using her surname like the unfamous sibling of a celebrity does. Yes she released some songs, but they weren’t “omg wow amazing,” though getting her tit out at the Super Bowl XXXVIII show in February 2004 did help.

Employed to entertain a rabble of drunken Americans whilst they waited for a poor man’s rugby game to kick off again, Janet was joined by her mate Justin Timberlake. The song itself was doing little to entertain anyone watching, but the real fun didn’t kick in until the end when Timberlake messed around with Janet’s costume. Tearing open her top, he exposed her right breast. Dubbing it as a “wardrobe malfunction,” the two were in for a right telling off. It made Bubbles the monkey cry for God’s sake!

Because Americans are scared of seeing another human naked, the CBS network was fined $550,000 and forced to show all future Super Bowl events on a delay. You know, just incase Paul McCartney whips down his trousers and makes a daisy chain out of his pubes if he was ever asked to play at halftime.

Because Janet is running out of fresh, innovative ideas, she has had to resort to past glories like these for a money spinning opportunity. Her lingerie line Pleasure Principle – named after a song that no-one really knows about from 1987 – apparently aims to make women feel feminine and sexy. At least she’s not set out to make ladies look hairy, butch and transgender. Janet said:

“People have come to me with other ideas, but lingerie is a passion for me, and just like music and acting, I can’t do it unless I put 100% into it.”

It remains to be seen if there will be a super special bra which will have a unusual pad for you to rip off in order to get that Super Bowl feeling. Failing that, we’re sure that a life size cardboard cut out of Justin Timberlake complete with strange, shocked reaction-face will be provided so you can recreate the moment in your front room.

With Janet Jackson’s bra and knickers to be set rolling out of sweatshops imminently, we hope that Michael Jackson will bring out his own brand of face scarves to cover up any individual’s face. Failing that, at least a Dummies Guide To Avoiding Kiddy Fiddling Charges. Gary Glitter would have bought a copy three years ago.