But, no, actually perhaps things will be different this year. Perhaps Paula Abdul will be able to get through a season of American Idol sanely, sensibly and without drawing attention to her worst characteristics like she usually does.

What? Paula Abdul's gone and had a 10-minute emotional breakdown in an airport? And she started talking like a poltergeist? Lordy.

Maybe we should start acting mental all the time, you know. Look at Paula Abdul – hardly a day passes without her managing to claw through the walls of logic and do something genuinely stupefying, like punch herself in the nose with a chihuahua or scream about diarrhoea into a telephone, and all the American Idol contestants are like "Woooo! Ohmigaaaaaah! Paula Abdul, you totally mean so much to me!"

And, despite spending our entire lives trying to avoid public displays of wibbling emotion, what do we get? The occasional comment from people calling us biased pricks, that's what. Where's the justice?

Anyway, a new season of American Idol is set to start, and that means Paula Abdul will have to crank up her derange-o-scope if she wants to make the public worry about her mental wellbeing nearly as much as in previous years. Remember that last year Courtney Love almost replaced Paula as an American Idol judge? Courtney pissing Love! So it's fair to say that Paula Abdul has her work cut out for her if she wants to keep up that juddering level of instability this year.

So hats off to Paula Abdul, then, for announcing the start of American Idol 2008 by apparently having a bewildering emotional breakdown in an airport where she started wailing like a poltergeist in front of everyone. A source told Radaronline:

"She had an insane nervous breakdown that lasted 10 minutes. One minute she was hyperventilating and on the verge of passing out; the next she was yelling into her cell phone in this deep, rage-filled Poltergeist voice. She kept screaming three names over and over—Michael, Sidney, and Leslie. Everyone was staring at her, but she didn't care."

Perhaps, if this report is true, there's more to this than Paula Abdul just being Paula Abdul. Perhaps it's a thinly-veiled warning to Amy Winehouse to make sure she knows who the crazy airport behaviour patch belongs to.

And, just think, this is Paula Abdul right at the beginning of American Idol. Who knows what zany, slightly disturbing antics she'll have gotten up to by the time American Idol skids to an exhausted close in the middle of the year? We know it's improper of us to ask but, Paula, you'd make us the happiest people on earth if you could tailor one of your episodes around holding a turd like a biro and writing on the walls of your house.

Read more:

Paula Abdul's Airport Flip-Out – Radar Online