And that’s why we should all be greeting the retrial of Phil Spector over the alleged murder of Lana Clarkson like the celebration it is. For the next few months we get to go over all of Phil Spector’s greatest hits – the funny hair, the driver who he apparently confessed the murder to, the endless scientific discussions about bullet trajectory, the funny hair. The funny hair. And that all starts right now.

Well, OK, not right now. The second crack at the Phil Spector murder trial was set to begin yesterday, but it couldn’t because a juror fell over in the car park and broke his foot, forcing a postponement. Remember that if Phil Spector is found guilty of murder he’ll be given life in jail. So probably about a fortnight at this rate.

Ever since the Phil Spector murder trial collapsed in on itself last year, we’ve felt like a part of us was missing. You know, the scary part with the terrible hair, the voice that sounds like an ancient version of Sylvester The Cat having a stroke and the unsettling tendency to point guns at women.

We’ve been engulfed in a wave of uncertainty ever since. Did Phil Spector shoot Lana Clarkson in the face because she wouldn’t sleep with him? Did Lana Clarkson kill herself because she was depressed? Could Phil Spector’s haircuts physically get any gayer? Do we really have to go through everything again?

Apparently we do. It’s been just over a year since the Phil Spector murder trial ended with a deadlocked jury, and the time inbetween has been spent regrouping for the retrial. Both the prosecution and the defence have hunkered down, reflected on their respective weaknesses and assessed where to go in for the kill next time around.

And since yesterday was the first day of the Phil Spector murder trial redux, we were eager to see what had changed. Had Phil Spector’s choice to pick a more streamlined defence been a wise one? Has he finally worked out a decent response for that time he said that all women were ‘fucking cunts’ who deserved to be shot in the head? Would his decision to grow a new haircut that makes him look like Liam Gallagher in a rainstorm win him support, or yet more mockery?

The truth is, we just don’t know – apart from the last one, obviously (the answer is ‘yet more mockery’) – because on the way into the court to start the first day of the new Phil Spector murder trial, one of the jurors tripped over and broke his foot. The Press Association reports:

Music producer Phil Spector’s murder retrial was held up on its first day after a juror fell in the court car park and broke his foot. Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler said he spoke to the juror, who wanted to get medical attention and return on Monday.

It’s frustrating, we know, but both sides of this case now have a perfect opportunity to take this weekend to really intensify their courtroom tactics. The prosecution will no doubt be redoubling its efforts to claim that women don’t just shoot themselves in the face in the doorway of a sexually-aggressive midget’s house without taking their handbags off first.

And as for Phil Spector’s defence? Well, it won’t exactly hurt to make his hair a little bit more lesbiany again. It’s what the people want.

If this is the case we’d like to make a two-part apology. 1) We’re sorry you’re an idiot and 2) you’ve obviously wasted your time, because not even anyone involved in the Britney Spears hit and run trial had any emotional investment in the Britney Spears hit and run trial.

Yesterday, after the jurors took twice as long as the length of the trial itself to decide that they didn’t know if Britney Spears was guilty of hit and run or not, the judge officially called a mistrial. What’s more, nobody can be bothered to go through a retrial, so Britney Spears is in the clear. Don’t get us wrong – everyone wanted a retrial, but they had more urgent things to do, like repeatedly bashing their head on a desk and weeping.

If the OJ Simpson murder trial was the trial of the century, then that must make the Britney Spears hit and run trial the trial of possibly some of yesterday. Dealing with the heinous crime of slowly dinging another car and walking away, the Britney Spears hit and run trial literally monopolised the attention of a handful of people with nothing better to do.

There were thrills – like when Britney Spears’ father told the court that Britney didn’t need a California driver’s license because she didn’t live in California. There were spills – like when the prosecution told Britney’s dad that she did too live in California and that Britney’s dad was a big fat poostick (we’re paraphrasing).

And, most importantly, there were ills – like when the jury couldn’t work out if Britney Spears was guilty or not even though they’d spent three entire days arguing over something of such little importance that, at worst, Britney Spears would have had to pay a fine equivalent to what she earns in about 10 minutes.

Because of this chronic inability to reach a unanimous decision, the judge has decided to call a mistrial on the whole shebang – a move that was met with a great big shrug. E! Online reports:

City prosecutors have announced that they will not retry the pop star in the wake of her mistrial. “I talked to the foreman, and while I was troubled by the jurors’ outside impressions, I won’t ask the court to retry the case,” Deputy City Attorney Michael Amerian told the court. The case has been formally dismissed.

As pointless as this entire exercise has been, at least everyone can get on with their lives now – Britney Spears can continue her resurgent pop career, the court can return to doing things that are actually important and the jurors can now all go and write their obligatory trial memoirs, titles of which will include I’m An Idiot, Indecisive Twit and The First Time I Wrote This Book I Was Just Hammering My Fingers On An Upside-Down Biscuit Tin Because I Thought It Was A Typewriter.

The main point, though, is that Britney Spears gets away without a criminal record. Her character is completely unblemished – you know, apart from all those rehab stints and public meltdowns and battles with mental illness and repeated examples of her bad motherhood and bald head and everything. Apart from those, Britney’s a saint.

You were? Well relax. This is Britney Spears we’re talking about – a woman who’d have trouble boiling an egg without ending up in a mental hospital because she’d had a hysterical breakdown and attempted to dip one of her own son’s ankles into the water halfway through – so of course it hasn’t gone smoothly.

In fact, the Britney Spears hit and run trial has managed to foul itself right up, with the jury completely unable to decide if Britney is guilty or not after four separate votes. Oh, if only Britney Spears’ was charged with being the adorably kooky queen of American pop, it’d be much easier to reach a unanimous guilty verdict. In fact, she’d be so guilty that we’d probably have to sentence her to the electric chair. That sweet, sweet electric chair.

Do you own some tenterhooks? Well if you do, this Britney Spears hit and run trial probably has you on them – it’s literally the most nail-biting trial about a celebrity doing something so pathetically minor that nobody even noticed it when it happened so long ago that everyone’s forgotten that it even happened ever.

To refresh your memory, last year – when Britney Spears was still in her bald-headed weepy phase – Britney allegedly knocked into a car when she was parking her car and walked away, only for the police to discover that she didn’t even have a valid California driving license anyway. And last week it finally went to trial.

Over the course of the trial we heard all the arguments – the defence’s argument that Britney Spears didn’t need a California driving license because she didn’t live in California, and the prosecution’s argument that, yes, actually she did live in California and that she definitely did the hit and run because there were about 150 paparazzi who filmed her do it – and on Friday the trial went to jury.

It was a simple enough request – go away, think about what happened and reach a unanimous decision. It didn’t even matter one way or the other, because even if she was found guilty Britney Spears would most likely be hit with a tiny fine and everything would be forgotten about instantly leaving her to concentrate on her ongoing comeback – but it’s all turned into a bit of an embarrassing failure, because the jurors can’t make their minds up. AP reports:

Jurors left for the day after saying earlier that they were hopelessly deadlocked. A foreman said they had voted three times since Friday, and each time failed to reach an unanimous conclusion. The three votes were all 10 to 2, the foreman said. The jurors appeared glum after lunch, with many on the panel telling Superior Court Judge James A. Steele that they didn’t think an agreement could be reached.

So that’s two days of deliberation and they still can’t decide. That’s longer than it took a jury to send OJ Simpson to jail for the rest of his life. Maybe the jurors need some more persuading – can someone please go and stand outside the jury room window playing Womanizer on a loop at full volume? We get the feeling that it’d only take three spins for everyone to reach a unanimous verdict.

True, it’ll probably make all the jurors mentally ill for the rest of their lives, but a little thing like that shouldn’t stand in the way of justice.

In fact, we miss the old red-eyed, crazy British-accented Britney Spears who was allowed to stumble around everywhere followed by a pack of screaming paparazzi. And that’s why we’re clinging to the last remnant of that era as hard as we can – Britney Spears’ hit and run trial. Even though it’s plainly rubbish.

So far, the trial has lasted about 30 seconds and Britney Spears hasn’t once been anywhere near the courtroom – and now it’s down to the jury. After deliberating furiously over the trial, jurors expected to return soon with their verdict. And, given the special nature of this trial, the verdicts open to them are ‘Shut up’ and ‘Nobody even cares’.

We’re so happy that Britney Spears is number one in the charts again – it means that now, when she annoys you, you don’t feel waves of guilt because you essentially hate the mentally ill. Which is just as well, because thanks to this poxy hit and run trial of hers, it’s almost a scientific impossibility to not be annoyed by Britney Spears a little bit.

It’s hard to describe the importance of the Britney Spears hit and run trial, but we’ll have a go. Imagine the Phil Spector murder trial but, instead of murdering anyone, Phil Spector was accused of gently hitting a car with his car and then walking off. And the case lasted about a day rather than several weeks. And Phil Spector didn’t turn up in court. And nobody cared. That’s roughly the sort of level of importance that the Britney Spears hit and run trial currently occupies.

It didn’t even have to go to trial. Britney Spears allegedly knocked into a car over a year ago, and a plea deal was set out so that she’d take the rap but avoid any real form of punishment. But Britney Spears turned that down because she didn’t want a criminal record, so everything got forced into an actual criminal trial that could actually result in Britney serving a jail sentence.

The trial mainly revolves around Britney’s lack of a valid California driver’s license at the time of the crash. But Britney Spears’ lawyer J Michael Flanagan claims that she didn’t need a California driver’s license because she’s from Louisiana, not California. AP reports:

Flanagan tried to establish that Los Angeles is a temporary home for Britney Spears and that she will likely leave once she has custody of her young sons. Flanagan gave jurors three examples of her ties to Louisiana: she is registered to vote there; she takes a homestead exemption on her property taxes there and until late last year, she had a Louisiana driver’s license.

That’s all well and good, bar the facts that Britney Spears isn’t registered to vote in Louisiana and just about every piece of legal documentation she’s ever had anything to do with over the last few years – including divorce records that were signed right before the alleged hit and run – says that she lives in California.

The jury is due to give its verdict soon, but Britney Spears doesn’t have to worry, because even if she’s found guilty she’s unlikely to go to jail. She would get a criminal record though. Just like the one she’s got already, except this new one wouldn’t repeat the word ‘womanizer’ 42 times in the space of three minutes.

Criminal record. Because, you see, Womanizer is criminal, and it’s a record, so, you know… oh, forget it.

By now you’ve probably realised that OJ Simpson has been found guilty on all 12 charges of armed robbery and kidnapping, and that he could face anything up to life in jail for it. However, OJ Simpson now plans to appeal the decision from jail, where he’s being kept away from other prisoners to protect his own safety.

But still, OJ Simpson won’t find himself at a loss for anything to do now that he’s been found guilty on all charges. He can finally write that book he’s always wanted to, for example – the hypothetical If I Didn’t Do It, Here’s How It Didn’t Happen; a breathtaking account of how OJ Simpson was actually doing a spot of Sudoku and thinking about kittens when he was supposed to be holding some men up in a hotel room.

So that’s that, then. The jury in the OJ Simpson has found OJ guilty of all 12 charges. Who knew angry white folk could be so mean? Thanks to the jury’s verdict, OJ Simpson could be looking at life in jail when sentencing rolls around in December.

It’s an epic fall from grace for the man who, just last year, was living the high life only achieved by the select few who dare to write books on how they’d like to stab their already-murdered ex-wife to death if they had the chance. And now he might just spend the rest of his life behind bars.

The lesson from this is clear – if you ever want to burst into a hotel room with a gang of armed men to steal hundreds of sports memorabilia items, try to make sure that nobody’s secretly taping it at the same time. Because ultimately, as the jury pointed out, that’s what did OJ Simpson in. Sportingnews reports:

Jurors who convicted O.J. Simpson of armed robbery and kidnapping said Sunday they did not trust witness testimony in the case, and instead relied on audio and video recordings and other documented evidence to convict him. Jury foreman Paul Connelly said it was perhaps a waste for prosecutors to have given plea deals to several Simpson co-defendants in exchange for their testimony, since the jury did not rely on it.

What? You mean the court could have simply played the audio tape to the jury and they would have reached the same verdict? And we still had to wade through weeks and weeks of watching flabby old hasbeen wiseguys stumble around on the verge of heart attacks? That hardly seems like the most efficient way to go about business, does it?

Anyway, OJ Simpson is said to be ‘melancholy’ at the verdict, and he’s planning to appeal based on several factors including the racial mix of the jury and that some jurors may have believed this conviction was payback for his double murder acquittal five years ago.

That won’t happen for a while, though – appeals can’t be processed until sentencing, which won’t happen until December – so until then, OJ Simpson will have to remain in jail. That won’t be especially fun for OJ, because he’s apparently being kept away from other prisoners for his own safety.

Not because they want to kill him or anything, you understand, but because all the other prisoners are such big fans of OJ Simpson’s hidden camera prank DVD Juiced that they’d be constantly pestering him for an autograph at all hours of the day.

In fact, that’s what saddens us most about this conviction – it means OJ Simpson won’t be able to make any more volumes of Juiced. He could try it in prison, we guess, but having each prank end with the furious victim anally brutalising OJ Simpson in the municipal showers as a horrifically violent revenge act would probably get quite old quite fast.

The closing arguments were a nice reflection on the trial that had just passed – in that they weren’t really as exciting as they could have been and everyone present looked as if they’d rather be anywhere else on Earth. But that’s not what matters. What matters is that soon a jury will finally – finally – make the OJ Simpson trial slightly exciting.

So now we wait. How long will the jury take to decide OJ Simpson’s fate? What will the fate be? How many badly-written OJ Simpson: My Part In His Downfall books will the jurors release between them? Can’t they just hurry up and make a decision? Seriously, we’re losing all sensation in our feet.

In all of history, mean-looking white people have never made a decision as important as this one. And not the decision about whether OJ Simpson burst in on a hotel room with a gang of armed men as part of an armed robbery, or merely burst in on a hotel room with a gang of men who were armed against his knowledge to recover some of his own belongings in a legal yet somewhat heavyhanded transaction.

No, the important decision that the OJ Simpson jury has to reach is this – can they all reach a unanimous verdict as quickly as possible. They really should, you know, because everyone’s bored and autumn’s drawing in and the days are getting shorter and we’ve all got better things to do than watch what’s essentially a version of the plot of the Disney movie Wild Hogs that culminates in an alleged armed robbery.

Honestly, if the OJ Simpson trial has convinced of anything, it’s that we’re never going to pick a bunch of middle-aged men to be our goons in any of our future hotel room raids. First they all stab you in the back and then their litany of cardiac problems mean they’re basically too doddery and confused to actually be of any use to anyone anyway.

But hey, all this is in the hands of the jury now and, as BBC News reports, they’ve been sent away with the same of dreary cack they’ve been listening to for weeks ringing in their ears:

Prosecutor Chris Owens urged the jury to convict Mr Simpson, denouncing him for “arrogance” for thinking he could commit a crime “against the dignity and the peace of the state of Nevada”. “The kind of arrogance… that would make them think they could come in and get away with this kind of crime and that nobody would report it and they thought they could spin it that, ‘It’s all OK; It was my stuff’,” he said.

So we just have to wait and see what happens. But, actually, you know what? We’re probably going to be held in contempt of court for this, but we’d really like it if OJ Simpson was found innocent, please. That’s because we want him to keep releasing several more installments of his hilarious hidden camera pranks show Juiced.

That way, if he really is innocent, he’ll get to keep entertaining the public the way he always wanted to. And if he’s really guilty he’ll get to live the rest of his life knowing that he’s been reduced to churning out piss-weak, zero-budget DVDs that make a mockery of all his prior achievements and that nobody will ever genuinely enjoy. That’s probably worse than prison, to be honest.

It’s doubtful though, because the entire OJ Simpson trial has been a bit of a snore. It shouldn’t have been – a man almost had a heart attack once and yesterday everyone heard how a man apparently threatened to go on the rampage with a gun – but it was. Not even OJ Simpson could be bothered to testify at the OJ Simpson trial, for crying out loud.

To be fair, though, we hear that’s because he’s saving his thoughts up for another book; the forthcoming If I Did It (Which I Might Or Might Not Have Done) Here’s How It Either Happened Or Would’ve Happened Depending On If I Did It Or Not.

We get the feeling that OJ Simpson might be suffering from Difficult Second Criminal Trial Syndrome at the moment. His debut was such a belter – the biggest trial of the century, some say, and for a double murder, too – that the follow-up was always going to be an anti-climax.

That’s not to say that OJ Simpson put the effort in. If he’s found guilty of the charges laid against him, OJ Simpson will spend the rest of his life in jail, and you have to admit that bursting in on a hotel room with a gang of gun-wielding thugs and holding people against their will is a pretty good charge.

But the closing arguments in the OJ Simpson trial are taking place today, which means that the whole trial has more or less vanished in a cloud of featureless smoke. Sure, it tried to be interesting at points – a bloke nearly had a heart attack, for instance, and another bloke claimed that his heart attack made his brain go all loopy – but that hardly counts.

And even yesterday witnesses were still trying for a last shot at something memorable – as the LA Times reports, OJ Simpson’s friend Tom Scotto decided to tell the court about the time when a couple of OJ’s henchmen turned prosecution witnesses decided to shake him down for $50,000 “or else”:

Michael McClinton and Walter Alexander, Scotto testified Wednesday, twice ushered him away from his pre-wedding party and into the backyard. McClinton, Scotto said, told him, “You know me, Tom, but you don’t know me that well.” Their faces were inches apart. “I’m a street [expletive] and I’ll shoot everybody up.”

We don’t know about you, but we’d love to hear what that deleted expletive was. None of them really fit as a suffix to the word ’street’, apart from possibly ‘fart,’ ‘whore’ or ‘tampon’. If you know what it was, do tell us.

Anyway, will Scotto’s testimony affect the jury, who are set to start their deliberations later today? Who knows. Some are predicting that the whole OJ Simpson trial will end in a hung jury, which we’re praying doesn’t happen because it means we’ll have to go through this whole dreary palaver all over again.

Whatever happens, though, we’re hoping that something exciting comes along before the trial finishes. Even if one of the jurors just gets their bum out. Jurors, if you’re reading, one of you get your bum out.

And what was the most regrettable thing that Britney Spears did during her barmy lost weekend? No, not proving herself to be an untrustworthy mother or consistently becoming more and more of a global embarrassment with every single passing second – we’re talking about the time that Britney Spears sort of gently drove into a car in a car park. It was, quite frankly, outrageous.

We know this because people still aren’t shutting up about it – Britney’s lawyer is still trying to appeal against a criminal trial for the hit and run scheduled for next month. Experts have responded to the move by Michael Flanagan with shock. Slowly punching yourself in the face again and again while murmuring “Make it stop” does still count as shock, right?

As we will never tire of telling you, Britney Spears is back. Back back back. Britney Spears is back with awards, Britney Spears is back with a new album and Britney Spears is back with an exploitative book about Britney Spears written by her mother. That’s literally as back as you can get.

But it’s a tentative comeback. Over the last few months, Britney Spears and her family have worked as hard as they can with only one goal in mind – to get straight Britney back on the treadmill that almost destroyed her a few months ago. And, given all her recent psychiatric episodes, the smallest bump could demolish Britney’s painstakingly-constructed house of cards.

A bump like, ooh, a reminder of a crime she committed in her darkest days, for example? Say, the minor hit and run incident that Britney Spears got into over a year ago?

Some of you may remember that in the middle of all the fuss made about Britney Spears and the shaved head and the custody battles and the accusations of child abuse and the vomiting and the collapsing and the vaginas, Britney Spears knocked into the side of a car in a car park and walked away from the scene. Well, that’s what people are still banging on about.

There’s a chance that Britney Spears might have to face a criminal trial for the hit and run next month, but not if her attorney Michael Flanagan has anything to do with it. That’s because Michael Flanagan is claiming that Britney Spears isn’t back at all. In fact, he says she’s as mental as ever! E! Online reports:

He filed documents today in Los Angeles County Superior Court requesting a stay in the proceedings because she is remains under the control of a conservatorship. “The Probate Court has found that [Spears] lacks the capacity to retain counsel,” Flanagan writes, “as a result, [Spears] is currently unable to participate meaningfully in this matter.”

What? Surely not. Is Michael Flanagan really suggesting that robotically saying the word ‘womanizer’ 41 times in the space of three minutes doesn’t automatically give you the capacity to retain counsel any more? Gosh. Everything we thought we knew about the legal system is wrong.

Anyway, you can see why everyone is so anxious about getting this trial halted – if she’s forced to attend, the pressure could set her recovery back unbelievably. And nobody wants that – after all, crushing up Britney’s anti-psychotic medication and hiding it in her food is just so bloody time-consuming, isn’t it.

Just a few days after one witness in the OJ Simpson trial called a halt to proceedings because he was too busy clutching his chest and gasping for air, another witness has decided to blame everything on his dodgy heart, too. OJ Simpson’s co-defendant Charles Ehrlich says that he can’t really remember the Las Vegas hotel room raid in much detail because he’s had a couple of heart attacks and they’ve made him all forgetful.

Whoever came up with this heart attack idea is a genius, because now we don’t know what the hell’s going on at all. Except for one thing – if OJ Simpson really wants to be found innocent, he should be sure to slowly cough his own heart up and out into his hands if he ever has to testify. It’s probably the only way.

Back when he was arrested for it, the notion that OJ Simpson gathered together a gang of armed thugs to raid a hotel room, hold everyone hostage and steal a number of sports memorabilia items seemed completely absurd. If it happened the way police were making out, OJ Simpson was always going to be caught and punished for it.

But now that we’re some way into the actual trial, OJ Simpson is looking more and more like a mastermind. Why? Because it looks like he chose a gang of middle-aged men with a series of health complaints to raid a couple of old men with even more health complaints. And, as a result, nobody can remember anything.

For instance, Bruce Fromong’s heart attack scare destroyed the momentum of his testimony on the first day of the OJ Simpson trial and, as such, nobody can really remember what he was banging on about. And now Charles Ehrlich, the man who spent most of Monday saying that OJ Simpson knew about the guns involved in the alleged crime, is trying to pull a similar trick. AP reports:

Ehrlich said he had posed questions to middleman Thomas Riccio about the planned meeting at a room in the Palace Station Hotel Casino. But when Galanter asked what the questions were, Ehrlich protested…”That was a year ago.” Since then, he said, he had two heart attacks and conceded some things have become “foggy” in his memory.

Whew! Thank God for multiple heart attacks, huh? Actually, because of all these shenanigans we’ve decided that we don’t actually care whether OJ Simpson is found innocent or guilty of this crime any more, because the trial has already taught us more than we thought we’d ever learn about crime. Heart attacks make you forgetful.

It’s true – we’re going to take down the local Natwest on Friday and we need to form a gang first. Barry Pacemaker, Don The Frail, Emphysemic Terry, Bobby Fourscars, Angioplasty Maud, break out of the nursing home and be at ours by 7:30. We’re cooking some special pre-job bacon-wrapped cheesesteaks! Delicious!

According to one of OJ Simpson’s goons in court yesterday, OJ must have known that some of his henchmen were carrying guns because he shouted “Put the guns away,” at them during the raid. Unless he didn’t, which is what another witness is saying.

Incidentally, Charles Ehrlich – the man who claims that OJ Simpson knew about the guns – is an old friend of his. Or at least he was until he pleaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for a testimony against Simpson, anyway. Now the pair have probably fallen out. And you know what happens to you if you fall out with OJ Simpson, don’t you.

You get one less Christmas card a year, that’s what. Why, what did you think we meant?

We have to admit, for a case that could send a man to jail for the rest of his life, the OJ Simpson armed robbery trial isn’t exactly exciting, is it?

It should be exciting – believe the prosecutors and you’ll know that last year OJ Simpson smashed into a hotel room with a small armed of tooled-up thugs and held everyone hostage briefly. That’s exciting, right? Sure it is. Then why isn’t the trial itself exciting?

This is how dull the OJ Simpson trial is – the other day a man nearly had a heart attack and barely anyone even bothered to pay attention. Not even the secret tape – the cornerstone of the entire prosecution – managed to get much response from anyone other than “Huh? What’s he saying? He wants them to give him his sheep? Why, that hardly makes any sense at all.”

Well, you asked for it. Now the OJ Simpson trial is going to get crazy exciting? You know why? Guns. Guns are exciting, aren’t they? Especially when a man can definitely prove that OJ Simpson knew that some of the goons he’d employed to accompany him of his hotel room raid were armed. You’re going down, Simpson!

Charles Ehrlich was the man who OJ Simpson sent into the hotel room to pose as a buyer before the raid, and he’s got proof that OJ Simpson knew about the guns. The LA Times reports:

“Put the gun away,” Charles B. Ehrlich quoted Simpson as saying to one of their associates during the Sept. 13, 2007, confrontation. Shortly after the incident, Ehrlich said Simpson muttered to himself: “Why did I tell those guys to come along?”

Now, it doesn’t matter that Thomas Riccio, the auctioneer who set up the encounter who was in the room during the raid and made the secret recordings of it, didn’t hear OJ Simpson say this. And it also doesn’t matter that Ehrlich might only be making these claims about OJ Simpson because he was given a lighter sentence for his role in the incident if he promised to testify against him.

Because saying that you think you heard OJ Simpson say something out of earshot of everyone else is definitely proof of OJ Simpson’s guilt. Definitely. Isn’t it?

Not really? Bugger. The trial continues, then. More’s the pity.

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.

Bruce Fromong became the headline attraction of the OJ Simpson trial on Monday, when it looked as if his heart was literally going to explode in his chest during his testimony. But yesterday Bruce Fromong got to do exactly what he came to do – testify against OJ Simpson by contradicting himself as many times as humanly possible.

According to Bruce Fromong, he wasn’t scared when OJ Simpson burst into his hotel room, but he did fear for his life. Also, although he wasn’t trying to profit from his OJ Simpson memorabilia, he did want to make big money from it. Keep this up and Bruce Fromong’s going to end up as the world’s favourite feeble-hearted flip-flopping uncle.

The pressure on everyone involved in the OJ Simpson armed robbery and kidnapping trial must be huge because, literally, the job they do will determine whether or not a man will spend the rest of his life in jail. And that pressure seems to be most evident in Bruce Fromong, one of the key witnesses to the alleged crime.

On Monday, things got to Bruce Fromong so badly that he had to interrupt his testimony to stagger around clutching his chest like Indiana Jones at the end of Temple Of Doom. But yesterday, with his internal organs tickety-boo again, Fromong managed to pull himself together for long enough to tell the court exactly what happened in that Las Vegas hotel room.

Not that we needed telling, of course – ever since OJ Simpson was arrested last year we’ve known that he burst into Fromong’s hotel room with a group of men during a sports memorabilia deal and shouted “You think you can steal my shit?” about a billion times. The important questions are whether any of OJ Simpson’s goons had guns and whether that shit was OJ Simpson’s shit or something he’d already pooped out and legitimately handed to someone else.

Did Bruch Fromong clear those points up? Not really. AP reports:

He acknowledged that he said previously, “I felt my life was being threatened.” But moments later, under inquiry by Stewart’s lawyer Robert Lucherini, Fromong said, “I was not scared.” He insisted the memorabilia Simpson sought was not stolen but said he didn’t know where some of it came from.

Well thanks a bundle Bruce. Really helpful. Almost as helpful as when you said you didn’t want to profit from the merchandise despite saying that you did before putting the merchandise on eBay with the description ‘The same ones stolen by O.J. in Las Vegas’.

So, where has Bruce Fromong’s testimony put the OJ Simpson trial? Exactly where it was before. Let’s hope that some of the witnesses called have at least some clue about what’s going on, otherwise we’re not going to get anywhere at all.

Unless they all have crazy old health scares like Bruce Fromong did. Boy, that was fun. We miss that.

What’s that? They have? In fact, one of the first witnesses in the entire OJ Simpson armed robbery and kidnapping trial clutched his chest in the middle of his testimony thinking he was going to have a heart attack because that’s how scary even the thought of OJ Simpson is to him? Oh, right, sorry.

However, this seems like a massive misstep on the part of the prosecutors. Deploying the witness with the weakest heart at the start of the OJ Simpson trial? The jury’s bound to forget about that when it comes to deliberation time. Either the prosecutors have blown their big chance to convict OJ Simpson or there’s another star witness who’ll come on at the end, spontaneously combust, pop his eyeballs out and poo fire. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Yesterday was the day so many of us had been waiting for. No, not because Britney Spears announced her new poptastic album, but because the long-awaited OJ Simpson armed robbery and kidnapping trial finally got underway in Las Vegas.

It’s been a long hard road to get here – OJ Simpson’s alleged henchmen had to be persuaded to testify against him and the court had to assemble the most mean-spirited Caucasian jury in history before anything exciting could happen – but yesterday things got going with a bang.

OK, not really a bang. To be honest it was more of a minuscule cardiovascular rupture, and it wasn’t even that. But whatever it was, it was all thanks to witness Bruce Fromong.

Bruce Fromong is, of course, the sports memorabilia collector who OJ Simpson allegedly raided with a gang of gun-toting heavies while wailing “You think you can steal my shit?” like the overzealous curator of the world’s biggest Crap Museum.

His testimony would have been one of the most compelling of the trial, since he was the man who OJ Simpson apparently robbed and who owns an audio recording of the raid that seems to back his story up. But no, Bruce Fromong had to go and make it all even more dramatic by almost having a heart attack in front of everyone during his testimony. The New York Daily News reports:

Fromong called for medical help while under a barrage of
questions from Simpson’s attorney. His testimony was suddenly
halted as emergency medical technicians rushed to the courtroom to
bring Fromong’s blood pressure under control. “He has 50% heart capacity,” said Fromong’s lawyer Louis Schneider. “While he was on the stand, he started to feel heated.”

Now, there are three ways to look at this. Firstly, it could all be true. Bruce Fromong could have an especially weak heart and the intensity of a court environment coupled with the fact that he could effectively jail OJ Simpson for life got to him. We don’t believe a word of this.

Secondly, Bruce Fromong could have faked a heart attack to either prevent him from answering some tricky questions from the defence or exaggerate the level of fear that he feels in the presence of OJ Simpson. Again, we don’t believe this either, despite the tactic’s obvious success rate.

And that leaves option three – that OJ Simpson is a Magneto-like supervillian who can destroy the bodies of his enemies with the vindictive power of his mind alone. This, we’d argue, is absolutely the cause of Fromong’s heart attack scare and OJ Simpson should instantly go to a specially-built electro-magnetic detention centre four miles under the North Pole where he’ll never be able to harm anyone ever again.

The trial continues today. Unless OJ Simpson manages to implode everyones’ ribcages with his brain-rays and make his escape on the back of a jet rocket, of course. Could happen.

They’re all white. Every single one of them. Now don’t get us wrong, it almost wasn’t an entirely white jury. It’s just that one prospective black juror was quite religious and therefore capable of forgiveness so she had to go. We’re not making this up, you know.

So, here’s how OJ Simpson stands before his trial properly starts on Monday. He’s being tried for the first time since he was acquitted of two murders he’s widely believed to have committed, for a crime with several witnesses that he was actually recorded participating in, and the only thing stopping him from spending the rest of his life in jail is a group of 12 white people who’ve been specifically chosen for their lack of forgiveness.

Yeah, we’re sure he’ll be fine.

Since he was acquitted of a double murder in 1995, OJ Simpson hasn’t exactly gone out of his way to endear himself to the public – apart from the time he tried to stab Ruby Wax in the chest with a banana, obviously. He’s not a total monster.

Anyway, since his last trial OJ Simpson has tried to keep a low-profile, only popping up occasionally to get banned from a steakhouse or write hypothetical murder books in the worst taste possible. But then OJ Simpson just had to go and get himself arrested on suspicion of armed robbery, didn’t he?

You know what happened by now – right up to the inflection in OJ Simpson’s voice during the last “You think you can steal my shit?” – and that’s the reason for all the jury-selecting that’s gone on in Las Vegas this week ahead of OJ Simpson’s trial.

OJ’s already up against it, thanks to the recording of his alleged armed robbery and the fact that all his hired goons have already pleaded guilty and will testify against him in court. But OJ Simpson likes a challenge, so let’s also make sure that the jury he faces are completely white and sort of mean-seeming just for the hell of it. AP reports:

An all-white jury will judge O.J. Simpson and a co-defendant on kidnapping and robbery charges after defense lawyers lost a contentious courtroom battle to include two African-American women on the panel… Both of the women who were removed had strong religious views, and the prosecutor said he thought one of them would be inclined to “forgive” Simpson while the other said she was hesitant to send anyone to prison.

Of course, back in 1995 OJ Simpson faced a jury that was chiefly black and he was acquitted, so now the fear is that – since the scientific opposite of black is white, and the scientific opposite of innocent is guilty – all the white people are going to find OJ Simpson guilty.

They probably won’t even be making notes on the testimonies, either – the only thing they jot down will be the word ‘guilty’ scrawled several times in a row and crude cartoons of OJ Simpson literally burning in hell while a lot of white people laugh and dance.

Alternatively, the jurors have been picked based on their open-mindedness and neutrality, two things which have never really been race-specific, and the notion that OJ Simpson will be found innocent or guilty depending on how many black faces happen to be present in the jury is completely offensive to just about everyone.

Oh who are we kidding? It’s the first one, isn’t it. Thought so.

Anyone? Just us? OK, well then we’re the wrong ones. In actual fact, the jury for OJ Simpson’s armed robbery and kidnap trial has almost been completely picked. What does that mean? Well, most importantly it means that the scene is set for us to plunge headlong into the nitty-gritty of the OJ Simpson trial itself next week.

Secondly it ostensibly means that there are a handful of people in Las Vegas who say they don’t care about OJ Simpson murder acquittal in 1995. But what it actually means is that there’s a handful of people who’ve either hidden their furious bitter hatred of OJ Simpson well enough to pass the jury selection process or are currently busy phoning publishers and scribbling down the first draft of their new book How I Banged OJ Simpson Up. Fun!

The best way to think of OJ Simpson trials, we’ve found, is to think of them as Rocky movies. Honestly – it fits. The first one was a sensation that captured the public’s imagination and took loads of money even though it didn’t have a traditional feel-good ending, and the second one is Rocky 2 – a bit more spurious and clumsily put-together, but more likely to give the public the ending they crave.

Or perhaps it won’t. This week has seen the jury selection process for the OJ Simpson trial take place, and the judge has gone to extreme lengths to ensure that no jurors picked have any lingering resentment over OJ’s acquittal a decade ago.

How successful they’ve been remains to be seen, but at least they’ve done it quickly. Yesterday, during the third day of jury selection, the judge declared the process to be almost over, which was especially thrilling because they’d managed to catch some real lunatics in the process. AP reports:

One man’s angry outburst against Simpson led to a defense motion to dismiss the entire jury pool because everyone had heard it. The man, who had been waiting for three days to have his say, blurted out a comment that stunned the courtroom. “I feel the case down in Los Angeles — if someone got away with that, you would keep yourself clean and you wouldn’t come back and commit another crime,” he said.

Luckily for OJ Simpson, though, this man and others who shared similar opinions were weeded out of the prospective jury pool, leaving only those with no real interest or memory of OJ Simpson’s murder trial in the running to decide his fate. So basically it’s going to be a jury comprised of elderly Alzheimer’s sufferers and some toddlers.

And that’s probably a good thing because, considering that OJ Simpson faces life imprisonment if he’s found guilty of a crime that he was allegedly actually taped doing, he might just need all the help he can get.

But back to the whole Rocky analogy again. Let’s hope the formula sticks, because that way the OJ Simpson trial after next will include a hamfisted Cold War allegory and Paulie getting a robot for his birthday. And isn’t that what everyone wants to see?