Like all skiving media berks, we’ve been watching the Leveson inquiry all afternoon while simultaneously wondering whether it was ‘inquiry’ or ‘enquiry’ because we can never remember.

What’s this inquiry? Well, it’s about phone hacking and actual celebrity Steve Coogan was the star of this afternoon’s session.

In the session, he revealed some of the tactics used by news rooms to get stories on him, which of course, shocked us to our core until we remembered that we in turn, steal the stories of the tabloids and republish them here with crass jokes crowbarred in.

Anyway, we watched the footage from the inquiry and felt very illicit indeed. See, watching celebrities talk nakedly about their private lives is the broadsheet equivalent of seeing leaked nude photographs.

It’s the same titillation gland that gets tickled.

So what did Coogan say, for the benefit of those who can’t arse around all afternoon watching grainy webstreams of government doo-dah? Well, he told the inquiry that reporters have been through his rubbish bins while looking for “lurid” details of his private life.

And of course, the Alan Partridge creator had to dredge up the story that ran about him concerning Owen Wilson. Remember that? The papers pointed at Coogan and said that Wilson tried to commit suicide because of Coogan.

Coogan noted about the whole mucky business that some people entered a “Faustian pact” with the press but he had never sought fame and was actually a private person. He noted that the press themselves were akin to the “mafia”, as there’s no emotion in these actions as it’s all “just business”.

Naturally, you wind the papers up and there’ll be a comeback. Hugh Grant, inside the hearing, accused the Mail on Sunday of hacking his phone, so they retaliated by accusing the actor of “mendacious smears”. We strongly suspect that there’ll be mention of Divine Brown in the Mail at some point this week.

He stated:

“The reason other – for want of a better word ‘celebrities’ – don’t want to, is that they say they don’t have the stomach for it and fear what will happen.”

Lord Justice Leveson notes this line of thinking by saying witnesses might be put off raising their head above the parapet and criticising the way reporters behave, because it’s likely they’ll be attacked in print once they leave the witness box.

So why hasn’t Coogan done anything about it yet? Well, looking at the toothless PCC (Press Complaint Commission), he said:

“The main reason I didn’t do anything is because on balance, what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts, if you complain you push the story forward and keep it up there in the newspapers.”

Wait. This is a bit serious isn’t it? BALLBAGS. SPUNK-O-WIG-POM. That better?

The British tabloids, and the Daily Mail in particular got to indulge in one of their favourite, and least pleasant, pastimes last week- the vilification of women.

The Mail seems to think that what its largely female readership want is to see attractive young women demonised. Sadly they are probably onto something.

Sometimes you know that what they really want to do is just feature pictures of smiling girls with ‘whores’ crudely drawn over them in crayon.

This time they decided to pick on someone who is just starting to turn her life around after what anyone would consider deeply unpleasant circumstances.

In 2007 a twenty-year old American student went to jail in Italy where she would remain for four years for the murder of a 21 year old woman. A motiveless murder with no solid forensic evidence incriminating her. Well, Knox’s motives that the prosecution had suggested in the trial were ‘satanic ritual orgy’, ‘cult sacrifice’, ‘sex game gone wrong’, and a ‘marijuana-fuelled rage’.

Presumably using the plots from bad movies is a legitimate Italian legal technique.

The jailed woman was of course Amanda Knox, and the murdered woman was Meredith Kercher. Now we weren’t in the room when Miss Kercher had her life cut horrifically short. Like any crime in which we weren’t weren’t directly involved, we only have court decisions to go on. We therefore can only conclude that Miss Knox is innocent as she has not been proven guilty. The presumption of innocence goes back centuries and is demonstrably the fairest and most successful criminal law system used by mankind thus far.

Given this assumption, you might be forgiven for thinking that Amanda Knox therefore deserves some sympathy. The British tabloids didn’t seem to think so. Tuesday’s Daily Mail front page headline was

WEEPING FOXY IS FREED TO MAKE A FORTUNE

This is on the day she has found out she is free. Imagine what the headline would have been if she was laughing?

It seems that regardless of what Miss Knox may be innocent of, she is guilty of being attractive and American. Writers are therefore free to project whatever femme fatale fantasies on to her that they choose. Little has changed since the days of King Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson. In fact so determined were The Mail to demonise her that Thursday’s article on page 7 repeated the accusation

Knox ready to cash in

Was the headline of an article that made no reference beyond pure implication of Miss Knox being  ’ready to cash in’.

There was also a mini-article headlined

Judge: Amanda may know the ‘real truth’

It’s worth printing Judge Claudio Pratillo Hellman’s statement in full because it’s the weirdest legal argument since.. well since ‘marijuana-fuelled rage’.

The truth was created in the trial. But the real truth could be different. They (Knox and Raffaele Sollecito) could be responsible, but the proof isn’t there. So, maybe they know but as far as the jury go, they didn’t.

Thanks for that.

It wasn’t just The Mail of course, but the general concensus was that any relief Amanda Knox showed for being free (as opposed to the rampant reporting of it) was some kind of direct insult of Meredith Kercher’s family. The insult though is that the tabloids decided that the real story isn’t actually the pursuit of the ‘real truth’.

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Suited or Booted?

Folded

• R.I.P. Steve Jobs – There’s nothing wrong with being snarky but let’s remember this sort of thing.
• US Network Drama – Or rather, why it’s rubbish.
• Movie Posters - If they told the truth, this is probably what they’d say.
• When Bad Films Happen To Good Actors – There’s not a lot of arguing with Shortlist’s exhaustive list.
• Kismot Killer Curry – A curry that hospitalises the people who eat it? Where do we sign up?

Creased

• Celebrity Reporters Are Like Political Correspondents – Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Oh… wait a minute.
• Movie Stars Are Vampires?! – No, they’re not. Especially not John Travolta. He’s an alien. D’uh.
• If Walls Could Talk – If you’ve got a Smeg fridge, an Aga and a middle class superiority complex then this show is for you. Although hearing Lucy Worsley say ‘wrought’ and ‘proliferation’ is worth the license fee alone.
• Steampunk – Ruined by Wild Wild West & the impending release of The Three Musketeers, you can buy these Star Wars interpretations. If you want. No pressure.
• The Human Centipede II – It’s a video nasty! No, it’s not.

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Tabloid editorial philosophy dictates that when a story is too good to be true, then not only is it probably not, but it almost certainly won’t matter whether or not it is true.

Every so often a news story seems to tick so many of a newspaper’s boxes, but despite the exciting claims made in the headline, you find precious little information in the article itself that backs them up. Normally headlines are written after the story, but not always.

As long as the newspaper isn’t libelling any specific group or individual, then there’s nothing to lose except their credibility. Fortunately this isn’t a massive priority for tabloid newspapers [or us, in fairness, Ed.].

On the front page of The Daily Mail on 26^th August, one such article appeared.

As you all know, The Mail keeps its circulation by maintaining a daily narrative that every aspect of the world that its readers know and love is under threat from dark forces.

PAINKILLERS ‘SABOTAGED’

screamed the headline.

Animal Rights protesters suspected of tampering with Nurofen

Claimed the sub-headline.

So what we have here is a story about thousands of packets of Nurofen Plus, which has a  significant share of the UK analgesic market, being filled with Seroquel XL anti-psychotic drugs by animal rights activists. In case any of you are too young to remember, animal rights activists were one of the popular tabloid baddies before Al Qaeda made terrorism less cool and everyone else took their ball home.

As with other anti-psychotics, the side -effects of Seroquel can include anything from depression (not funny) to a painful and long-lasting erection (a little bit funny).

This is a pretty dramatic attack we’re sure you agree. However, if you read on, the claim that it was animal rights motivated is repeated but the claim is not attributed to anyone. The paper just carried it because it was a health scare, a terrorist attack and probably carried out by hippies.

Last Monday, exactly one month afterwards, a little article appeared on their website (but wasn’t important enough to make it into the main paper the same day) detailing how a 30 year old man was in court charged with tampering with five packets of Nurofen. And all mentions of animal rights have disappeared.

Of course none of this came as much of a surprise to Dr Aomesh Bhatt, the Medical Director for Nurofen Plus who was quoted by a different news source on the same day as the original Daily Mail story appeared:

Nurofen Plus has a firm policy of not testing on animals. We don’t know where the Daily Mail got their story.

We do- from the nightmares of their readers.

Other highlights from last week included…

The flexible morality of The Sun and The Mirror. Remember when the tabloids all expressed disgust at paparazzi photographers trying to sell pictures of a dying Diana? What about pictures on the front page of Michael Jackson’s corpse looking decidedly less busy than it was in the Thriller video? Well that’s completely different. At least The Mail managed to wait until page five.

The Sun missing the REAL Rihanna exclusive. Tuesday’s Sun featured shots of a scantily clad Rihanna dancing about in a farmer’s field near Bangor, Northern Ireland. The leering article (sample quote: “she even whipped out her Bangors”) ended with

the farmer must have thought that all his harvests had come at once.

In the next day’s papers, it turned out that the farmer wasn’t quite so pervy after all. 61 year old Alan Graham became the Daily Mail’s hero when he found the shared ground between protestant principled prudery and ‘farm fanny film’ fearing feminism.

Far from Alan wanting to take Rihanna to the shed for a good milking, he had actually taken offence at the scenes and asked Rihanna to stop shooting.

*sigh*

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Over the summer we had riots and phone hacking. Everything’s gone quiet now and we’re left with the old bogeymen.

The Mail sees global warming as some kind of conspiracy that involves the BBC, the lib dems, Richard Dawkins and someone at a council who wants to rebrand Christmas as Winterval.

In fact on Monday they managed to combine a climate change story with another of their favourite topics when they discovered that wind turbines were immigrants (‘Two thirds of the UK’s wind turbines are foreign-owned’).

It’s this obsession that has inspired them to make one of the biggest stories of the week actually be about a book with a factual error in it. This isn’t normally news, but this time the book was an atlas and the error was an exaggeration of the effect of global warming on the coastline of Greenland. Therefore making it all into a sinister plot to force people to recycle their glass for the twisted sexual pleasure of Guardian-readers.

On Wednesday they managed to compare the liberal democrats to flat-earthers accusing them of “clinging to long-disproved theories in unshakeable denial of realities staring them in the face”. On the same page there was an essay about the vast exaggeration of global warming.

The Sun gets our thumbs up for hysterical headline of the week. Ken Clarke is the kind of Conservative of whom the right wing press is very wary. For all his faults (and believe us, he has them) he’s a libertarian and a pragmatist. Pragmatism requires compromise.

The more passionate people are about a news story, the more newspapers they’ll buy, so dressing up compromise as defeat is always good policy to make the masses see red. Remember IRA terrorism in Britain? In order for that conflict to be resolved, pragmatism was required. Do you think the tabloids saw the big picture or do you think they just tried to stoke the anger of their readers every time anything was given to Sinn Fein? Incidentally we always liked the way they were referred to as ‘the troubles’. There was something stiff upper lipped about it. We’d like to see more patronising understating of serious issues. Palestine and Israel can be rebranded ‘the tiff’. The Arab Spring would be ‘the hissy fits’.

Anyway back to Ken.

Ken has been trying to get prison reforms pushed through the House of Commons. We won’t bore you with the details, but the aim is to reduce the prison population which has more than doubled in the last 20 years.

Tuesday’s Sun helpfully condensed the reforms down to the wonderful headline ‘Ken: Free All The Monsters’ like an order from an insane scientist.

And to think there are those that think that the press stifle debate just as much as they encourage it.

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On Sunday, we witnessed what came to be the last programme documenting the audition process of the underrated, revolutionary post-feminist Space Opera series “The X Factor 2011″.

Hear that over there? That’s Ewan Mcgregor singing Your Song in a melancholic manner with an umbrella. See that over in the other direction? That’s your inescapable loneliness.

But put all that heroin and selection of complimentary bath salts to the side for one moment! Those headaches are probably nothing to worry about after all. Let’s just kick back, and remember all the classic moments of the past few weeks instead. Remember when a woman told Tulisa how it was all HER opinion, and then on top of that, that other thing happened as well? Sometimes the path to creating amazing music is hard. Just ask Brian Wilson or David Sneddon. Or both! They’re probably sitting together on the same park bench somewhere, trying to feed Hula Hoop packets to pissed off swans.

Ah, Memory Lane.

Sunday night’s show promised us such splendours like the prospect of Gary Barlow teaming navy with maroon, and Louis Walsh literally retracting the gift of the human voice to one unlucky, nondescript contestant, cruelly telling them that ‘singing is not for you.’

Then along came our beloved Dermot O’Leary, with all his layers of self-loathing and wool. Dermot, with his choreographed face, standing outside the Millennium Dome with thousands of blissful, cheering people waving merrily, despite the devastating financial collapse that the building once suffered, like the insensitive prick that he is.

In one of the more experimental features of the show, we were introduced to a special segment where some people actually tried their hand at auditioning for the X Factor. These people came in the vaguely upsetting shapes of Neil and Sue Perkins Margaret.

Neil and Margaret are the sorts of people who are lonely and not conventionally attractive. You have may have once seen something about it on Panorama. The reason this is really really funny is because it means Neil and Sue are less likely to procreate, due to not successfully accommodating Charles Darwin’s theories of natural selection and as such are subsequently void as a contribution to the species. Just really, really funny.

Neil and Margaret met on the internet and are middle aged, which ITV1 respect so much that they have dubbed their interview with an insincere midi clip of The Carpenters’ Close to You in the background, presumably to help articulate the immense success rate of social networking in the early 2010s/true love.

Also: KELLY ROWLAND LOVES THE CARPENTERS.

Margaret, without any shadow of hope, did terribly in her audition, despite having a man to hold her at night. AND she’s ugly. God, that’s kind of funny too – in a way. Neil, of Being in Love With Margaret fame, came up next and by all the forces of the stars, the galaxies, and Mystic Meg’s Microsoft Word documents, Neil can’t sing either. Blimey, we guess that whole Sonny and Cher thing was just a massive anomaly. Neil looked like he was going to cry. Neil also looked like he was drawn with charcoal and then brought to life by the BBC Visual Effects company.

Margaret and Neil go home, allowing us to return to Liverpool. Or Gary Barlowverpool, as you may be more familiar with it being called these days. In fact, there was something rather mystical in the air throughout the whole show – because in Liverpool, Dermot O Leary by no manner of coincidence, bumps into one of the three featured singers in the programme and conducts a very long descriptive interview with him, which is bloody good luck if you ask us.

The lad in question was Bradley Johnson – a check-shirted maverick of contemporary performing arts who used to hang out with scallies. Like how Margaret and Neil were happy to have found each other after years of pervasive emptiness and scabies – Bradley was expelled for being a dillweed at school, so is naturally more deserving of: THE SINCERE VERSION OF THE INSINCERE MIDI CLIP.

Oddly enough, the judge’s small talk with Bradley conveniently circulates around asking Bradley if he just so happens to have been expelled from three schools and is subsequentlyfeelingunsureofhisfuturecareerpath recently. WHAT THE WHAT? HE HAS AND IS? Harry fucking Potter, isn’t it insane that the one time the judges happen to ask that particular line of questioning, it happens to be utterly factually accurate to an auditionee’s life? If this pre-audition chit chat always took place in the same manner though, surely Matt Cardle would have never won the X Factor, as he’d have been ushered off the stage sobbing into a hemp rag.  But for Bradley, the future is considerably more encouraging as he bravely gets over behaving appallingly at school and gallantly gets on stage and sings an Ed Sheeran track, all by himself. It’s colon-wrenchingly more amazing than the word ‘amazing’. Barack Obama even reportedly tried to give his Nobel Peace Prize back after a mate of his +1′d Bradley’s performance from YouTube.

Some more people bothered to audition, like we even need to listen to anything poorly masquerading as ‘music’ post Bradley’s introduction of the acoustic guitar genre, but nonetheless, The X Factor insists on giving EVERYONE a chance. Yawn. Bring on Joe Cox, who wants to achieve his dreams or something. Such a bloody killjoy. Upon auditioning, Joe Cox discovers that he won’t be getting the chance to be gay during his time on The X Factor -even if he wanted to be, as the judges man-handled him into admitting that he ‘likes ladies’. “Do you like the ladies Joe? DO YOU? WE BET A HANDSOME SINGLE MAN LIKE YOURSELF LIKES THE LADIES!” Sorry Joe. On the bright side – a bit of ambiguous sexuality didn’t do a certain mastermind of white soul Will Young any harm! (before he got blackmailed by The Sun, obviously.)

MEANWHILE – KELLY ROWLAND CONTINUES TO BE AMAZING.

Next up to perform, was OF COURSE  Terry Winstanley. You remember Terry. Terry being the unstoppable force that generated such wonder over the years on Dawn French’s chocolate orange adverts. Terry is old too. This series of X Factor has had a momentous amount of  messed up middle aged men on it this year, which probably is something to do with the ‘NEXT GENERATION’ thing they keep harping on about, or because otherwise they might invent Diana Vickers again.

Maybe Tulisa just sapped up all the youth in the world, and that’s why everyone on this series looks like they were painted by Fearne Cotton. Beautiful, amazing, Tulisa. God, she’s so fledgling and current. Unlike Terry who enjoys simpler pleasures, such as melodically assembling a Micheal Bolton cover version with ‘gusto’. Nice one, Terry. We bet his wife is alive, and everything. Not only do we like Terry, but we we really like what Terry did with his X Factor sticker. Right in the centre of the shirt. A simple but effective twist on the X Factor Audition Sticker, considering Cher Lloyd used to just fuse hers to her kegal muscles, and shove dice in her mouth.

A woman with a croissant on her head sang a song and was rewarded for inexplicable reasons – but more importantly than that, a man called Deep Dhillon turned up. Deep Dhillon – a name that genuinely has appeared on a birth certificate in the medium of a coherent woman’s handwriting at some point. This is the whole ‘Johnny Robinson’ debacle all over again. (Seriously, imagine being called ‘Johnny Robinson’. See, you can’t even try.) Deep Dhillon is not even a joke name. We know there’s a dildo joke starkly available, but quite frankly it just doesn’t seem worth it. Seriously, not even for us. Is there anything really that funny about an untalented primordial bloke called ‘Deep’? It’s just a bit upsetting, really.

TAKE THAT INTERLUDE.

Next up was That Comedy Old Woman With The Empty Lungs (Which is not just something we just tried to 40d, honestly) Alright, for the sake of giving some of the more superannuated members of society a vague swipe at respect, we will call her by her actual name – which is Ceri Rees, which we bothered to find out for you. If you’ve accidentally watched 8 years of X Factor before, you will know that Ceri is a regular auditionee who ultimately disappoints herself and us again and again, because sadomasochism is just too damn sexy to give up.

Unfortunately for everyone, Ceri can’t sing. Not as in, she cannot sing a Whitney Houston song the way Whitney Houston used to sing a Whitney Houston song 40 years ago – She cannot sing. She cannot sing to the extent that she literally cannot sustain speech. There is absolutely no phonatory process of any sort for Ceri to even attempt to pursue. The woman is simply tired and old, like if Neil Buchannan were to create a Big Art Attack in the Sahara Desert. (This reference would probably be funny if Neil Buchannan wasn’t regrettably racist – if you believe the internet rumours.) Yet despite this – ITV1 happily give her the same amount of air time that they also give to men who brutally beat their wives and/or the friends of Peter Andre.

And then of course – after receiving mockery from braying New Look shoppers/musical experts in the audience, ITV1 play the Jaws theme tune over the top of her, because the fact that she reacts unreasonably can only be explained by dubbing her with the soundtrack of a film about an impetuous, crazed beast.

And that’s it.

Congratulations – you made it to Boot Camp, alongside this stupid bitch.

See you next week to see if the contestants can handle the grueling task of singing alongside only a piano, or will they succumb to the temptations of  beat-boxing to Simply Red instead? Only time will tell.

Oh, and we didn’t watch Xtra Factor. Why, did you?

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Britain’s Got Talent, the nation’s premier talent contest attracts thousands of willing participants each year. From dancing dogs to fire-eaters, gymnasts to geriatrics, the show has everything people could possibly want on a Saturday evening. That is, apart from three judges with any discernable talent.

Much has been made of BGT judge Michael McIntyre’s innate ability to point out things that are usually seen as too mundane to mention while dancing around the stage like a human spinning-top, pepped up on a cocktail of cocaine and speed. This seemed, to Simon Cowell at least, enough talent to secure him a place on the judging panel. However, it seems that he’s too nice to keep it.

What of David Hasselhoff? He’s big in Germany for his warbling singing voice, while he is best-known in this country for playing the role of the drunk, strung-out father in 80s’ TV classic Knight Rider. What will become of him and his perma-tan?

While the future of these two pantheons of talent hang in the balance, former Les Dennis cock-botherer Amanda Holden has come up with a plan to distract Simon Cowell from her obvious lack of any real showbiz credentials. This is, of course, the woman who was almost mistakenly cut down during filming of Wild At Heart, during a campaign of deforestation near the set. She needed some kind of Plan B (not the ‘soul saviour’).

According to reports, the swollen-bellied arbiter of taste and ability is planning to sweeten the deal with talent show supremo Simon Cowell by making him her baby’s Godfather. Presumably the offer of her first-born didn’t appeal to Cowell as much as the opportunity to mould a completely fresh child in his demonic, self-appreciating image.

The spawn is set to be unleashed early next year, around the time of the first Britain’s Got Talent auditions, and Holden doesn’t want to miss out. She even seems willing to give over some control of her family life to a man with one of the most evil minds in the world. Cowell is said to be thinking of using the child as a round in Red or Black, his quite preposterous new challenge show in which members of the public have a chance to win their dignity back in front of millions, before having the opportunity snatched away, only to be spat on by Ant McPartlin.

Speaking to some Red-Top purveyor of molly-coddled twattery, the woman, so often mistaken for a sapling, stated:

“Simon is the ultimate godfather. I’m going to make Simon godfather so I don’t get the sack from Britain’s Got Talent.”

That’s a nice thought, isn’t it? In order to advance your career, you’d sign your child over to Syco.

“I’ve been told my seat is safe but the dates may clash. But we’ll work something out. I’ve been told by all the right people I’m safe.”

“All the right people” have let out massive pantomime ‘Awwww’ in near-perfect unison. The notion that Amanda may be so predisposed jettisoning a child from her reproductive organs that she might miss out on the opportunity to judge a ‘street dance’ troupe while sitting next to a recovering alcoholic and a child-like comedian, awestruck by the wonder and glory of everything he sees, fills them with sorrow. It’s a real tragedy.

Still, priorities, eh?

Many of the UK’s “press outlets” have been reporting the reunion of Cheryl “Beat up a woman in a toilet” Cole and Ashley “shot a work experience kid with an air gun” Cole today. This is, to the tabloids, a moment on par with the a renunion of Big Ears from Noddy & the ‘Queen of Hearts’. To readers of The Sun, that’s pretty much what this is.

Of course, hecklerspray would be remiss in its duty as the last bastion of celebrity “commentators” if we didn’t scream our glassy-eyed opinion straight down the smoking barrel of the internet straight into the faces of people who either adore the couple on a level that is painful and embarrassing or hate them in equal measure. You might be wondering what our collective opinion of the couple is; wonder on readers. Wonder on.

With newspaper reports suggesting that Cheryl will walk down the aisle with Ashley once again, speculation has surfaced as to what their intentions are.

With Cheryl’s embarrassing, potentially career harming and fundamentally random removal from the X Factor USA judging panel has seen her profile slip slightly and as for Cashley (sorry… Ashley), the last time he made it into a glossy magazine it was when rumours abounded the last time they were supposed to be getting back together.

Subsequently, more rumours about the couple have surfaced revealing that they want to start a family within the next two years as well as an interview with Mister Cole claiming that people should judge him as a footballer and not on the spurious stories about his private life. That is the sign of a man who would love people to care enough about him to read the spurious reports about his private life.

According to the Sun, the couple, who reportedly spent the whole weekend together, have told friends of their plans to be pregnant between now and 2013. However, it appears as though Cheryl and Ashley are the only ones who are excited about their new(ish) life together after Cheryl’s mum and Girls Aloud band mates, Nicole Roberts and Kimberly Walsh, expressed their reservations.

A source, invented by the tabloids to shift more of their terrible rags, revealed:

“Cheryl’s bloody-minded and has made her decision. Her pals have told her, but she’s been stubborn. She just wants to be happy again.”

Here at hecklerspray, we can’t wait to hear that Cheryl’s pregnant- there’s nothing we like more than picking on a pregnant woman- but perhaps Ashley will suggest they use a surrogate mother that he ‘prepared earlier’?

Liam Gallagher, a man who facially resembles a cross between a Dickensian henchman and a brain damaged howler monkey, is well known for holding certain controversial views on the world around him. He’s the kind of gent that, if he were punch a GPS satellite out of the sky for ‘looking at him funny’, most people wouldn’t be 100% surprised.

Now, the former front brother of Oasis has decided to launch into a fashion crusade in an effort to clean up the image of some of music’s biggest stars. The bowl-cut-toting funster’s love of the finer fashions have often seen comparisons drawn between him and some of the most flamboyant characters in modern celebrity and fashion.

Who can forget that parka that he wore at Glastonbury 1996, T in the Park 1998, V Festival 2005, Knebworth well, actually… pretty much every live show that Oasis have done**. Still, it had a nice furry hood and was very practical in the winter, according to his mummykins.

Seemingly hoping to reignite some sort of North-South music rivalry with one of the biggest indie bands of the last two years, Gallagher has slated the style of ‘folk’ band Mumford and Sons.

“They look like f****** Amish people…”

Gallagher, who has clearly never seen an Amish person, was speaking in an interview with The Sun newspaper. Of course, the Oasis moaner is never short of a ridiculous pejorative and went on to say:

“You know, them ones with the big sides that don’t use electricity? Growing their own food and putting barns up…I need music to be a bit more sexy and played by people who look a bit f****** dangerous.”

We’re no experts but there are many hazards which are inherent in both farming and construction. Have you ever been to a building site? It’s full of signs telling you how dangerous things are. What about growing food? I doubt anyone who has ever had their hand passed through a wheat thresher would try to tell you that farming is a safe occupation.

Oh, hang on. He doesn’t mean dangerous in the sense of hazards to health. He means the Beady Eye sense of ‘dangerous’. C’mon. You know the one. The people that love Oasis and Kasabian and throw their arms around as though they’re plants desperately trying to drag themselves up towards the sun by swaying back and forth. The sun in this case being the one that Liam seems to believe shines out of his rectum.

Still not with us on the danger thing? He means idiots in parkas and Adidas gazelles that have haircuts that look as though they’re an experiment designed to prove the effects of gravitational pull and are liable to glass anyone who looks at them for too long for being a ‘f**king ponce’. Yeah- those guys. Liam’s guys.

**hecklerspray would like to point out that we couldn’t care less if Oasis ever actually played these festivals on these dates.

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That popular bogeyman, the BBC, has had to suffer the slings and arrows of British newspaper writers again over the last few weeks. It’s been very quiet since Christmas in tabloid-news terms. That doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been plenty of events that have been shaping the world- simply that there hasn’t been adequate stories to keep tabloid readers interested.

Nothing sells better than incensing people and given them that warm fuzzy glow that comes from feeling indignant. The Eastenders Cot Death Story Controversy should not be confused with The Eastenders Cot Death Story.

The latter revolved around one of its central characters losing her baby to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and then stealing anther character’s baby. The former asks some terrifying questions about the BBC about whether they hate all ‘right-thinking’ people.

They were accused, disturbingly, of making fictional programmes about dramatic subjects. We know what you’re thinking- why can’t they just stick to programmes of desperate people dancing badly to keep the proletariat happy? Well apparently that’s not enough for the liberal media sickos at the BBC. They insist on having programmes full of things that have just been made up! Even worse some of the things that have been made up are things that have happened to people in the real world.

Even the Daily Mail, normally first to point the finger of filth at the nation’s broadcaster, realised that this wasn’t decent enough grounds to vilify the Beeb. They reported it, but their heart wasn’t especially in it. We say heart. We mean pacemaker powered by the broken dreams of illegal immigrants.

This was The Sun’s story really, but luckily there’s a plethora of busy-bodies, pressure groups and attention-seekers always on hand with quotes for friendly journalists.

The Mirror, without the slightest trace of irony, had a quote from mumsnet accusing the episode of being

“a cynical ploy to make headlines by creating controversy”.

The Mirror also carried a quote from someone who lost a child who was concerned the (entirely fictional) story would reinforce the (entirely fictitious) stereotype that bereaved mothers “go mad and steal babies”.

“I had so hoped the EastEnders storyline might have paved our way to campaign more loudly than ever, but I am disappointed” said Anne Diamond in The Sun whilst using the controversy to pave the way for her to campaign more loudly than ever.

The Sun justified attacking the BBC further with the front-page headlines ‘Sam Quits Enders Over Cot Death’. The idea being that even Eastenders actress Samantha Womack was outraged by the soap plotline, the article featured plenty of information from ‘a source’.

A source of bullshit, evidently, judging by the page 3 of next day’s Mirror- ‘Womack told a pal “it’s ridiculous to claim I quit because of the storyline”.’

So it’s a source versus a pal with no-one actually speaking to the actor who had filmed the scenes that she was so disgusted by. Oh well, this isn’t just a conversation between newspapers is it? Presumably their readerships were outraged too?

A quick look at the comments on the newpapers’ websites would suggest otherwise. They were seemingly as perplexed as everyone else about what the fuss was about, and a week later everyone had forgotten it even happened.

The following Monday, the Daily Mail suggested that even prostitution was off limits. Do they think we’ve never actually watched a British soap-opera before? They didn’t actually suggest it themselves the article just started with the hilariously half-hearted ‘Eastenders will invite fresh accusations of sensationalism’. The accusations didn’t follow, and the controversy stayed dead.

The true lesson to be learned by the BBC from all this, is that not every criticism is going to turn into a licence-fee worrying disaster just because publications with naked self-interest hand out pitchforks and flaming torches to the public. Sometimes the public are smarter than editors give them credit for.

And what about those who felt genuinely upset by the soap? Well, maybe people with empty lives who find it easier to write a letter than operate a remote-control don’t deserve to have their voices heard.

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It’s been quiet for the tabloids this week. Things have gotten so bad, they’ve been forced into covering politics! Admittedly their coverage of the Labour leadership has been more like the video for Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, but with Liam and Noel Gallagher cast as the cold war leaders.

There was such a severe dearth of decent celeb-stories for them to cover that The Sun reported the revelation that Kate Moss was taking Folic Acid, popular amongst hopeful and pregnant mothers, by having a page long banner calmly announcing “KATE’S ON ACID”.

The Daily Mail accused Madonna of being undignified and not acting her age because of some saucy Dolce & Gabanna pics, although when Helen Mirren is pictured scantily clad, it’s a triumph for the representation of older women everywhere. The Mirror decided to dedicate a front page to Coleen Nolan almost having her arm ripped off (known in some circles as not having her arm ripped off) when handling a pony, the content of which amounted to a more sober ‘ex-pop star breaks finger’ scoop.

Fortunately there’s still one story with mileage and that was the ‘evil dead-eyed Eastern European succubus definitely didn’t have sex with David Beckham’ controversy.

There has been unanimous disapproval for the woman even Jesus would invariably refer to as “that lying whore, Irma Nici”. She’s been the object of the type of demonisation that multi-national news companies normally reserve for working-class women in Sheffield who forget to update Social Services of a change in their circumstances.

The gist of the story is that the media are so outraged on our behalf that this woman has claimed to sleep with David Beckham as a short-cut to fame, that they have given her extensive front-page coverage thus ensuring her total anonymity. Luckily the papers act in the confidence that they occupy a moral high ground since they would never give money to someone selling a story about sleeping with a celebrity.

Things took a new twist with claims that she could identify distinguishing features on his willy but according to The Sun, the Beckhams have a secret weapon. Whenever our nation is under attack by foreigners, it is only a matter of time until someone invokes the name of our favourite balaclava-clad super-soldiers, and so it was that they reported that the Beckhams had “engaged former SAS soldiers to help destroy Nici’s claims”. Yes, that’s right, our elite fighting force have got involved. They’re going to storm the embassy where the claims are holding the truth hostage and calmly shoot the evil lies in their heads. Their stupid metaphysical evil lying heads.

On Wednesday The Sun, who by this point had relegated all other global events to a footnote on page 12, reported that the Beckhams would donate any money gained from the court case to a charity. An entirely made-up source referred to as a “pal” of the couple stated “any cash retrieved from this liar will help sick kids”. So essentially, if Nici does win the case she will have been responsible for the deaths of children. Where will her web of evil end? Find out next week, when we bring more entries from the diary of our hardworking tabloid journalists, the fearless truth-seekers.

This article was edited, and all spelling mistakes destroyed, by former SAS soldiers.

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In a bold move to try and make people remember who he is, Blake Fielder-Civil has claimed Amy Winehouse died in his arms.

The problems here are twofold: one – it’s only nearly died, thus removing most of the impact, and two – who the hell is Blake Fielder-Civil?

Answers on a postcard please.

Even faced with this wall of evidence pointing to the fact that no one cares or knows who this plum is, The Sun still went and chatted to Amy Winehouse‘s ex-husband where he revealed the astonishing facts of a regular junkie party for the former couple.

Though, to be fair, it’s not so astonishing when you factor in that he’s a massive druggy, she’s a massive druggy (or at least was) and the combination of druggy plus druggy usually equals nearly dying.

Romanticise the notion, use fruity language of love, be so utterly frank about how scared you were and net a few grand from The Sun (as well as your ex-wife) in the process if you so choose. Thing is, you’re still just a couple of junkies ODing in a grotty room.

He described the situation thusly to the paper:

“She started having a fit on the bed. She slid down on to the floor before I could stop her. She started quivering again and it suddenly grew into what seemed like a full-blown epileptic fit. I was panicking. I didn’t know how to help her. I was out of it on drugs as well – and was sobbing and crying out: ‘Amy!’”

Blake Fielder-Civil – the caring man’s smackfiend – went on:

“I knelt over her as she kept fitting. But then suddenly she just passed out and stopped breathing.”

Fortunately (depending on how you feel about Winehouse), Blake was just about capable to put Amy in the recovery position, make sure she didn’t swallow her tongue and some other stuff that stopped her from dying – all while high. What a hero to us all.

Ladies and gentlemen, our new superhero: Smackman.

Not content with being a caring addict-cum-Smackman, Blaaaaaaaake went on to try and turn Amy off the horse following the incident:

“She had everything going for her. But she ended up behaving badly just to shock. After a while that just becomes a bore. I’d warned her to stop.”

Yep, that’s exactly how we’d describe heroin: boring. His speech was such a rousing success that she had to run off to the Caribbean for a year to get clean. Well done all!

Though maybe Amy Winehouse could have warned him to stop wearing such shit hats to return the favour.

You might not like Sharon Osbourne – specifically her stupid haircut, weird face and ridiculous Skeletor voice.

And that’s fine. But even Sharon Osbourne has her limits. Cross them and she’ll sue your flipping bum off. That’s what Sharon Osbourne did to The Sun after it claimed she was working Ozzy Osbourne ‘to destruction’ to keep her rich, and she’s won a substantial payout from it.

So whatever you do, don’t say that Sharon Osbourne is trying to kill her husband with work. But feel free to laugh at her funny Skeletor voice. That’s probably OK. If it isn’t, we’re screwed.

We genuinely can’t understand why, but Sharon Osbourne seems to be everywhere at the moment. One minute she’s being rumoured to appear on Strictly Come Dancing, the next she’s getting all Lady Macbeth about Dannii Minogue.

We’re not sure why this is happening, and we’re not certain we approve of it, but at least now that Sharon Osbourne has won a crapstand of money by suing a newspaper for libel, hopefully she can disappear again for a while.

The trouble all started when The Sun printed an article in 2007 claiming that Sharon Osbourne was forcing Ozzy Osbourne to perform a gruelling string of concerts just because she wanted some new jewels or shoes or another dehumanising round of cosmetic surgery or something. And this is Ozzy Osbourne we’re talking about, remember – a man who looks like he has trouble remember what trousers are for – so obviously forcing him to sing Crazy Train night after night would be impossibly cruel, right? BBC News reports:

The article, published in October 2007, claimed that Mrs Osbourne was “driving her frail husband Ozzy Osbourne to destruction” and was working him “so hard she will kill him”. It alleged that she was forcing the Black Sabbath star to perform in a series of live shows in order to fund her exorbitant spending. The article continued: “Sharon will keep Ozzy on the road until, like Tommy Cooper, he dies on stage”.

Anyway, long story short, it’s all bollocks. Sharon Osbourne didn’t try to kill Ozzy Osbourne. She doesn’t need to – Ozzy Osbourne is perfectly capable of almost dying by himself, as any number of amateur quad-biking enthusiasts will tell you.

And, as such, The Sun has paid Sharon Osbourne a substantial, undisclosed sum of money in libel damages. But, let’s look on the bright side, at least it’s only money – Sharon didn’t lob a cup of coffee in their faces and then try to physically rip them limb from limb in front of a gaggle of bewildered bikini models. She does that, we hear.

So ‘trying to kill Ozzy Osbourne to fund her lifestyle’ is off the list of things we can say about Sharon Osbourne. Are we still allowed to say that her daughter looks like a sullen Moomin, though? Because it would sort of suck if we weren’t.

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Whether it’s by singing about kissing girls or by slightly looking a bit like a man, Katy Perry has never shied away from controversy.

And because of this affinity for controversy, Katy Perry is currently getting the hiding of her life. A couple of days ago The Sun published a photo of Katy Perry posing with a knife accompanied by a headline similar to but not exactly ‘BURN THE WITCH FOR SHE KNOWES MAGICK!’ and now all hell has broken loose.

So, with the sound of tabloid disapproval ringing in her ears, Katy Perry has released a statement saying that she is ‘against all violence’. Problem solved. Now The Sun can get back to the real threat to the nation’s youth – all those pictures of Katy Perry wearing 1940s swimsuits. Seriously, if we start seeing girls dressed as WWII cheesecake models in the street, we’re going to form a mob and burn Katy’s house down.

You know who we feel sorry for? Forks. Over the last few weeks it’s been all knife this and knife that – what with Angelina Jolie buying a knife for her six-year-old son and Kerry Katona throwing a shitty fit about it – and yet the fork, the knife’s humble cutlery partner and perhaps the more versatile implement of the two, has been shunned. Truly, the fork is the four-pronged McCartney to the knife’s pointy Lennon.

And now it’s time for Katy Perry to damage her reputation by association to a knife. Up until now, not much has really been known about Katy Perry, apart from the fact that she once annoyed Jesus by singing a song about kissing a girl and fell onto a big cake the other day. That’s literally it.

Or that literally was it until Wednesday, when The Sun newspaper decided to publish a three-year-old photo of Katy Perry holding a knife quite close to her eye alongside a screaming piece of journalism linking her to the wave of teenage knife crime that’s sweeping the UK at the moment. Because, as we all know, teenagers are easily manipulated and love to emulate their idols.

Incidentally, that’s true – as children we were influenced by everything we saw on TV, which is why we spent six solid months of 1989 dressed as David The Gnome and once tried to kill ourselves because we couldn’t push cuckoo clocks and beachballs out of our arses like Bertha, the mid-1980s animated children’s factory unit. But this is besides the point.

Anyway, astonished that her transparently controversy-baiting photo has actually become somewhat controversial, Katy Perry has issued something of a stunned statement pointing out that death by stabbing doesn’t make her particularly happy. MTV reports:

Her US publicist told MTV News: “Katy Perry is against all violence. The photo in question was taken in 2005 and is in no way related to the current events in the UK.”

It’s just an upsetting coincidence, that’s all, that a photo of Katy Perry wielding a knife has been published during a moral panic about youth-based knife crime.

But if you think this is a storm, just wait until you see the other pictures of Katy Perry from 2005 that happen to eerily echo current news, like the photo of Katy Perry dressed as Sarah Palin skinning a moose, the photo of Katy Perry dressed as a crying stockbroker and the photo of Katy Perry denying that she condones knife crime based on a photo of Katy Perry that was taken three years before that one.

Blake Fielder-Civil, currently serving time in Pentonville prison, has allegedly offered another inmate £20,000 to beat up Pete Doherty, because he’s sure the singer is making love to his irresistibly impetigo wife, Amy Jade Winehouse Fielder-Civil.

Twenty grand Blake?! Don’t be so fucking stupid. Hecklerspray will quite happily kick his drug-addled brain out for £3.50. And this includes the taxi fare and a quick sandwich from Lidl.

The Sun reports:

“He approached ex- bouncer Richard Lyttle, on remand for murder but since released without charge.”

Richard, 39, said:

“We were sitting in my cell and he said, ‘If you get Doherty for me I’ll give you £20,000.’ He kept saying, ‘Can you arrange it?’ and telling me to get some guys to his house. He knew the address. He said, ‘Amy’s obviously sleeping with him’.”

You really think Doherty can muster a hard on, Fielder-Civil? Do you? .

Look, at the very most he may have stuck a couple of fingers up there, perhaps a few baby mice. That’s all, mate. That’s all.

In other Doherty-related news, the singer has had a plaster cast of his body on a crucifix made, due to appear on stage with him when he plays a solo gig at the Albert Hall next month.

According to Nick Reynolds, the artist responsible for this really great idea, it symbolises Doherty’s crucifixion at the hands of the media.

Very clever. Really, bravo. Clap, clap, clap. Well done!

It is really quite great because, as you probably already know, the lives of Peter Doherty and Jesus of Nazareth do have many parallels:

-Jesus’ mum was called Mary; Pete Doherty briefly attended Queen Mary University in London.

-Jesus liked to help people and cure illness; Doherty is a big fan of smoking crack.

-People worship both of them for completely unintelligible reasons.

Coincidence?