Fans are today mourning the cancellation of Ugly Betty. Well, not ‘fans’ as such, more ‘people’.

And ‘mourning’ doesn’t sound right, either. ‘Apathetically aware of’? Yes, that works better. We’ll start again. People are today apathetically aware of the cancellation of Ugly Betty. Oh, that’ll do.

Anyway, Ugly Betty – the TV show for people who liked The Devil Wears Prada but wished it was longer and more interminable – has been cancelled by ABC. It’s a real shame – where are people going to get their fix of stories about bizarre-looking people who like wearing ridiculous clothes now? What? Sex And The City 2? Oh, OK.

This is easily the most exciting time of year for TV fans. A new season of 24 has just started, which means that we’ve probably got a good two months before the ludicrous plotlines about Robert Mugabe running around the White House with a machine gun kick in. The final season of Lost is less than a week away, which means that we’re around four months away from what’s probably going to be the most frustratingly vague finale in television history, and Ugly Betty has been cancelled. The holy trinity is complete.

That’s right – after four years of doing its best to disguise the fact that America Ferrera is actually quite pretty, Ugly Betty will soon be no more. Why? MSNBC reports:

It was moved to Friday nights at the start of the 2009-2010 season, replaced in its usual primetime slot by “FlashForward.”… ABC had tried to ramp up the show’s viewership by moving it to Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. The network is promising that the series will conclude its run in a fashion that will satisfy its fans. ABC says eight episodes are left.

Well let’s hope that ABC lives up to its promise and gives Ugly Betty the finale that it deserves. And not just for Betty herself – we want all the characters to have happy endings. Like, um… that receptionist boy and… oh, who are we kidding? We’ve only seen about one episode of Ugly Betty, and we’ve spent the intervening three years trying to erase that from our minds by any means necessary. It wasn’t really very good, was it?

But still, if nothing else people will remember Ugly Betty after it disappears. True, they’ll mainly remember it as the show that Lindsay Lohan got booted out of for being awful, but that’s better than nothing, isn’t it?

So don’t be sad that Ugly Betty has gone. This should be a celebration. A celebration of all the happiness that Ugly Betty ever gave us. A celebration that ABC is probably going to fill the gap with another hokey sci-fi show that seems to star half the cast of Lost. And, more than anything else, a celebration that Glee will probably go the same way in a year or two.

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It’s starting to look as if Ugly Betty has killed Lindsay Lohan’s career for good – dear God, why her and not Victoria Beckham? Why?

Everyone knows what supposedly happened – Lindsay Lohan went to guest star in six episodes of Ugly Betty, but she was like really mean to the Ugly Betty girl and she totally smoked a lot of cigarettes and she ended up only doing four episodes because nobody liked her – but that might not be the case.

Vanessa Williams, who we’re told is also on Ugly Betty, says that Lindsay Lohan wasn’t the monster she’s been painted to be. In fact, Vanessa Williams says that Lindsay Lohan was completely professional and hard-working throughout her time on the show. And she’s worked with Victoria Beckham, so she knows a professional hard-worker when she sees one.

Ugly Betty has already killed several things in its time – like most of our braincells and our will to live – but it looks like the show has just claimed its biggest scalp yet; Lindsay Lohan’s career.

That’s Lindsay Lohan’s acting career, by the way. Yes, Lindsay Lohan is an actress. No, really, she is. She’s been in loads of stuff, like the film about the amnesiac stripper that nobody saw, the film about three generations of hateful women that nobody saw, the film about an unlucky woman that nobody saw, the film about Bobby Kennedy that nobody saw, the Robert Altman film that nobody saw and the film about John Lennon that nobody saw. Lindsay Lohan is a successful actress, seriously.

Or at least she was – Ugly Betty might have changed that. Last week we reported how Lindsay Lohan had seen her scheduled six-episode guest spot on Ugly Betty get carved down by a third thanks to rumours of her unruly behaviour, unprofessionalism, chainsmoking, giant entourages, bizarre feuds with America Ferrara and confusing habit of clipping photos of herself from magazines and putting them in a scrapbook.

Now people are saying that because Lindsay Lohan has lost the ability to open movies and now can’t even appear on Ugly Betty without falling out with everyone, she’ll never work again. After all, appearing on Ugly Betty can’t be that hard – Naomi Campbell managed it. And she’s Naomi Campbell for crying out loud – we hear that if you so much as breathe incorrectly within a 50-foot radius of her she’ll fly into rage, beat you into a coma and destroy everything you’ve ever loved with her bare fists.

So Lindsay Lohan needs a supporter, and that’s exactly what she’s got in Vanessa Williams. Vanessa Williams is also apparently a member of the Ugly Betty cast, and she says that Lindsay Lohan was nothing short of lovely all the time. Digital Spy reports:

Vanessa Williams has denied speculation that Lindsay Lohan’s role in Ugly Betty was cut due to attitude problems. “I had a few scenes with Lindsay. She was a hard worker, she showed up on time and in the scenes I had with her, she was completely prepared. In terms of me working with Lindsay, she was professional, she knew her lines and she was great with me.”

Oh no! Conflicting stories! What can this mean? Here are some theories:

1 - Vannessa Williams also dislikes America Ferrara, and is siding with Lindsay lohan to spite her.

2 - Having starred in the 2000 remake of Shaft, Vanessa Williams feels that it’s her duty to help out anyone else who’s been in dreadful movies.

3 - Vanessa Williams really, really wants to see a sequel to Herbie: Fully Loaded.

4 - Lindsay Lohan was actually hardworking and professional on the set of Ugly Betty and the reduction of her part had nothing to do with her attitude whatsoever.

Let’s just pray that it wasn’t the last one. We’d have to rebuild our entire belief system if that was the case.

hecklerspray’s been asked to guest-spot on Ugly Betty thousands of times, but we keep turning them down as none of the scripts featured us making love to the sun on the back of a saddled lion.

It’s our one requirement. You hear that Betty producers? Our ONE requirement!

Lindsay Lohan has also been asked to be on the show for a multi-episode arc. Although her part will probably be horribly written with no celestial/planetary love-making on top of tamed animals whatsoever, she took them up on it anyway. Now everyone on-set regrets offering her the part, and her six episode stint has been hacked down to four just to get her out the door a little faster.

The former and future straight Ms. Lindsay Lohan has a lot on her plate nowadays. Not only will she single handedly drag Barack Obama all the way into the presidency of something or other, but she also has to constantly remember to publicly hate her dad every chance she gets – and that’ll just take a toll.

We imagine that is exactly what happened on the set of Ugly Betty, a show that revolves around the misgivings of a rather large toad, from all we can tell. Lohan was supposed to be on set for six entire episodes, but folks say she clashed to much with the show’s star, American Ferrari. Or something.

Here’s what Page Six knows:

“IT got so ugly on the set of “Ugly Betty” between Lindsay Lohan and the popular ABC show’s star, America Ferrera, that Lohan was cut from an agreed-upon six episodes to four. One production source said, “It was a mess. Lindsay would show up every day with an entourage of people. She smoked 24/7, and after she left, they had to repaint her dressing room it was such a mess.”"

And what specifically happened on the set to merit Lohan’s rapid ejection from the building? Something about smoking all the time, making that Ferrari girl do things first, and constantly clipping pictures of herself out of tabloids. Also there were reports about Lindsay climbing onto the hanging lights and liquid pooping straight onto a fast-spinning ceiling fan.

Things like that wouldn’t really happen if Sam Ronson would just hide the stool softener. Seriously Sam – at least do it on work days.