Only joking. That’s got nothing to do with the outcome of OJ Simpson’s trial at all. Well, technically it probably has got a bit to do with it, but let’s not get into that. In actual fact, the whole OJ Simpson trial revolves around a secret tape of the whole shebang, recorded by an auctioneer.

Sadly, though, as the court found out yesterday, the tape is just vague enough not to mean anything at all. Oh OJ Simpson, why couldn’t you have stormed into the hotel and said, clearly and within earshot of the microphone “What-ho, I’m OJ Simpson and these gun-wielding chaps here – boys, say hello, there’s no excuse for rudeness – are here to take these items which don’t even belong to me. Pip pip!” or whatever the opposite of that is that proves you’re innocent? You’d have saved us all a lot of time either way, you selfish git.

The OJ Simpson trial has been sort of interesting so far, but only because of all the berserk old men who keep pretending to have heart attacks on the stand and the way that somebody’s going to cry racist whatever the verdict. Other than that, things have felt a little staid.

Why’s that? Because there was one piece of evidence that the lawyers had been holding back on. One impossibly vital piece of evidence – the secretly-recorded tape of the alleged armed robbery.

It’s been a frustrating wait, because everyone has known about the existence of the tape ever since a clip of OJ Simpson bellowing “You think you can steal my shit?” leaked out onto the internet. And yesterday the jury at the OJ Simpson trial got to hear the tape.

Well, some of the tape, at least. The man who recorded the incident – auctioneer Thomas Riccio – seems to basically make weird little secret recordings of everything he ever does on the offchance he’ll be able to sell bits of it to TMZ. And the clips played yesterday were of an encounter with OJ Simpson prior to the alleged robbery and of the police officers who were combing the hotel room after the incident but didn’t find Riccio’s recordings.

First, OJ Simpson’s tape. What the prosecution would have really loved is a long discussion about guns and how none of the sports memorabilia he was seeking actually belonged to him. What they actually got was this, according to the LA Times:

“I’m gonna show up with a bunch of the boys and take the [stuff] back,” said the man prosecutors contend is Simpson… Prosecutors played the jury a second recording, made in Simpson’s Palms room after he returned from the pool, in which Simpson said, “I gotta be at my intimidating best.”

Now, although your vision of OJ Simpson’s intimidating best will vary depending on if you thought the book If I Did It was a work of fact or fiction – hint: one’s got knives in it and the other one hasn’t – to be fair, the tape recording doesn’t actually prove anything. But nor does the recording of the police officers, either, other than that they sound quite a lot like glory-hunting bellends:

“This is great. John said uh, yeah — he is like California can’t get him. . . . Now we’ll be like . . . got him.”

Maybe this will change in days to come, when the meatier chunks of Riccio’s recordings will be played for the jury. Or maybe they’ll just play all of Riccio’s secret recordings from beginning to end, starting with a recording of his kindergarten teacher on the toilet and ending with a recording of the jury listening to a recording of the jury listening to a recording of the jury listening to a recording of the jury that Riccio recorded when the jury were listening to a recording of another recording Riccio had recorded in secret earlier.

Great, we’ve broken our brains. Thanks a lot, OJ Simpson.

So when we heard that there was a three-way Shakira sex tape knocking about, our cries of "there is a God!" could be heard from miles around. After all, if a Shakira sex tape is the holy grail of sex tapes, then a three-way Shakira sex tape is the holy grail, um, being done by two blokes on a boat.

But the excitement was misplaced – the Shakira sex tape has been unmasked as a cruel April Fool's prank by a DJ in Argentina. A cruel, stupid prank by an idiot DJ in rubbish Argentina. Stupid imaginary God.

April Fool's day is crap. Everyone knows that. Oh look, flying penguins! Oh look, a miracle cream for fat people! Oh look, Richard Branson's moving to Mars! Hah, not really! They're all hilarious April Fool's day pranks! Well, OK, not 'hilarious' so much as 'tedious and crap'.

But a Shakira sex tape? Surely that couldn't be an April Fool's day prank, could it? After all, it checks out. Everyone from Lindsay Lohan to Kristin Davis to some woman we've never heard of from The Hills have all apparently done sex tapes or nude photoshoots lately, so why not Shakira? Also Shakira looks quite dirty and – most importantly of all – we want a Shakira sex tape to exist. And if you can keep aeroplanes in the sky with collective willpower, then surely you can make a Colombian popstar film herself getting rogered too, right?

Which is perhaps why everyone fell for the idea of a Shakira sex tape so badly. The rumour apparently originated when Argentine DJ Javier Ceriani told his listeners that a Shakira sex tape filmed on a yacht and featuring appearances by two different men had been stolen and was about to be leaked onto the internet.

What makes it more interesting is that the two men were Shakira's then-boyfriend Antonio de la Rua and Shakira's La Tortura duet partner Alejandro Sanz. The story had it all; outdoors sex, kinky three-way sex, scandal, thievery and – again, most importantly – video footage of Shakira getting dicked by two blokes at once.

But before the world had even had time to pull down its trousers and find the nearest box of tissues, Shakira and Sanz have denied that her sex tape even exists at all. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

In a joint statement, the singers' representatives say, "This is a false rumor. This is totally absurd any way you look at it. There is no possibility that such a video exists. It is a baseless and malicious rumor."

So it looks as if we'll have to try and learn to live without a Shakira sex tape in our lives. It's hard, but we'll get over it – let's not forget that in times of trouble there's always the fake Meg White sex tape to fall back on.

We're screwed.

Read more:

Shakira and Sanz Deny Sex Tape Prank – SFC

Hey, cat owners! Tired of your pet basically ignoring you and dragging half-dead frogs into your house all the time? Well, why not cover them in sticky tape as a sort of freakish revenge ploy!

That seems to be the gist of this clip, anyway – it looks as if you can really bugger up a cat's ability to walk by strapping a load of sticky tape across its fur. We think – not being able to speak Japanese, we have no idea whether this is a specially-trained tape cat or whether you can make all cats walk around like wankers if you bung a strip of masking tape on their backs. You can always try it on your cat to find out, you know. And video it. And send us the Youtube link. 

And, no, this definitely isn't cruel to cats. Well, it might be a bit cruel. But it's funny. And isn't that more important?