In life, Michael Jackson always had a touch of the Willy Wonkas about him – reclusive, eccentric, fond of kids.

But in death? Well, in death the comparison’s gone berserk. Not only was the audience for yesterday’s Michael Jackson memorial service doled out via a lucky ticket-style lottery system, but Michael Jackson himself made sure he was front and centre throughout the show in his great big shiny coffin. How nobody started a mass singalong of I’ve Got A Golden Casket is beyond us.

But what a show the Michael Jackson memorial service was. Try and top that, Gary Glitter.

OK, good, that’s it. Michael Jackson has died, his memorial service is over and his family has held a private service for him. That’s it. It’s all over. Unless you count the inevitable child custody battle, the inevitable legal squabble over his estate, the toxicology results and the potentially upsetting news it’ll bring and the fact that none of this is clearly even partially over, in which case you’ll realise that this is just the tip of a grotesque, oddly-faced, squeaky-voiced iceberg.

Because of this, yesterday’s Michael Jackson memorial service in LA’s Staples Centre wasn’t the full stop that everyone had hoped it’d be, rather a slapdash comma separating Michael Jackson’s death from the morbid news about all his alleged drug addictions, tell-all interviews with his staff and rush-released sensationalist biographies called things like Michael Jackson: He Had A Disturbing Face And You Wouldn’t Exactly Trust Him Around Your Kids, Would You?

But, as send offs go, you have to admit that the memorial service was a doozy. Anyone who was anyone was there – Mariah Carey, Usher, Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, that creepy little smug kid from Britain’s Got Talent, Michael Jackson himself, encased inside a coffin so gaudy that it probably gave Donald Trump an erection – and, as Reuters reports, Michael Jackson’s own children:

Jermaine and Marlon lamented the loss of their brother, but it was Michael Jackson’s daughter, Paris, who left the crowd — and the world — with the most moving words of the ceremony. “Ever since I was born,” she began, sobbing and barely mustering the strength to speak, “Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine. And I just want to say I love him so much.”

It was an undeniably tender moment, and thankfully one not disrupted by Paris’ little brother Prince Michael II adding “Well, maybe not the ABSOLUTE best father. He did dangle me off a balcony that time, remember? That was kind of effed up. Remember? That time he actually dangled me off an effing balcony. What was that all about?”

However, as spectacular and moving as Michael Jackson’s memorial service was, it might not be too long before it’s outdone. We heard that when Tito goes, his memorial service will feature tributes by Bradley Walsh, two members of Kajagoogoo, that homeless bloke who plays the washboard outside the Wolverhampton branch of Carphone Warehouse and a tin of dogfood. Eat that, Michael Jackson.

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OK, not people. Just Usher. When Usher saw the photos of Chris Brown larking around on a jetski in Miami recently, he decided that Chris wasn’t showing an appropriate level of remorse and gave him a jolly good tongue-lashing. Now, though, Usher has decided to apologise for his outburst.

But more fool Usher – in actual fact Chris Brown was using the jetski to scout for mermaids he could punch in the face. Usher was right first time! The shame!

You know, this Chris Brown/ Rihanna thing was so close to being over. Everyone had done their bit to condemn Chris Brown for allegedly beating up Rihanna – Roseanne, the woman who’s suspiciously good friends with Oprah, the literate half of the internet, Ne-Yo – and the only names missing from the list were Usher, Zammo from Grange Hill and the “I want to do a poo at Paul’s house” kid from the air freshener advert. Once they’d all registered their condemnation, we’d have enough to throw Chris Brown in jail forever and move on with our lives.

And we were so close, too. Earlier this week, you may have seen photos of Chris Brown messing around on a jetski in Miami while apparently rekindling his relationship with Rihanna. While there’s a chance that Chris Brown was actually using the jetski to deliberately tear vast gashes into the hulls of ocean liners with his teeth, it’s more likely that he was just innocently having some fun. And this wouldn’t do for Usher at all, who was filmed saying the following about Chris Brown:

“I’m a little disappointed in this photo. After the other photo? C’mon, Chris. Have a little bit of remorse, man. The man’s on jet skis? Like, just relaxing in Miami?”

Brilliant. One condemnation registered from Usher. That just left Zammo and Poochild and then we could all go home. But – no, wait – Usher has decided to retract his statement, so we’re back at square one again. MTV reports:

“The comments made during a recent recording session amongst friends were taken out of context and blown out of proportion. I apologize on behalf of myself and my friends if anyone was offended. The intentions were not to pass judgment and we meant no harm. I respect and wish the best for all parties involved.”

We genuinely haven’t got a clue why Usher has decided to apologise for his statement about Chris Brown like this. Presumably it’s for one of the following reasons:

1 - Usher has realised that it’s impossible to look remorseful on a jetski, because he tried it once and the nearest he could get was a brief expression of constipated glee.

2 - Usher has realised that his comments could have made any future meetings with Chris Brown awkward, like if Usher accidentally walks into the branch McDonalds that Chris Brown was forced to start working in after everyone stopped buying his albums.

3 - Chris Brown paid Usher a little visit that helped to change his mind, if you know what we’re saying.

We’re saying that Chris Brown beat Usher up. On reflection this probably didn’t happen.

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And now He’s started messing about with Usher, too. Alright, not Usher specifically – Usher’s wife Tameka Foster. All Tameka wanted was to go to Brazil for some cheap, possibly unregulated plastic surgery, and it all ended up going so horribly that Usher had to get a neurosurgeon in to fix her.

But the good news is that Tameka Foster is now in a stable condition. Next time, God, pick on a dancer your own size. Like, say, that bellend from Jamiroquai.

Although increasingly popular, plastic surgery still has inherent dangers. After all, Kanye West’s mother died after a cosmetic procedure, plastic surgery seems to be the reason that Shane Richie now permanently looks like a startled drag queen and now it’s got to Usher’s wife Tameka Foster, too.

Right before he was due to perform at the Grammys on Sunday, Usher was urgently called away to Brazil because Tameka Foster – a woman who has already forced Usher to marry her several times and then couldn’t think of anything more imaginative to name Usher’s baby than Usher – had been through a plastic surgery procedure so botched that a neurosurgeon had to be shipped over urgently to deal with the aftermath.

The good news is, though, Tameka Foster’s condition has stabled enough for Usher’s representatives to put out the following statement:

“(Foster is) in stable condition after suffering complications from routine surgery in Brazil. Her husband, Usher, is with her at the hospital. No further details will be released, and the family requests privacy at this difficult time.”

No details? OK, fine. It’s not like we can’t work it out anyway. Routine surgery? Brazil? Neurosurgeons? It’s simple – Tameka Foster was having her vagina shaved and strapped to her spine. That or she was having one of those big carnival peacock plumes implanted into her head. Or a favela boy surgically attached to her brain. Definitely one of those things. Or something else. We’re not experts.

Anyway, it’s good to hear that Tameka Foster is on the mend. It’s just a shame that it had to happen when it did. What with Chris Brown’s arrest, it left a wide open gap for Usher to become the best dancer at the Grammys. But, thanks to Tameka Foster, that didn’t happen. It’s bad news for Usher, but worse news for anyone who saw Thom Yorke walk off with the title on Sunday after flapping about like a deflating toddler for three minutes. Shame.

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OK, maybe not ‘women’ as such. Usher is good at getting one woman pregnant – his wife, Tameka Foster. Just nine months after the birth of their first child, it’s announced that Tameka’s only gone and got another baby on the go.

That’s impressive work, especially when you account for the fact that most couples don’t even reveal their pregnancy until the second trimester. That means Usher managed to knock his wife up less than six months after she had the first baby. That’s either incredible or a bit gruesome, depending on how hung up you are with the idea of tearing and stitches and whatnot. We are, by the way, which probably accounts for the nausea.

Either that or Usher has somehow got us pregnant simply by us writing about it. We wouldn’t put it past him.

Bloody Usher. He can never do something well once, can he? He always has to go back and do it again and again until everyone gets a bit sick of it.

Musically Usher’s always repeating himself – first by making a song called Confessions and then by making a song called Confessions Pt II - and if you were to count all the times that Usher got married to his wife, you’d end up dizzy and terrified by the fact that someone can actually be that pointless.

And now he’s decided to adapt this trait for another aspect of his life, too – babies. Usher’s wife only had Usher’s baby about ten minutes ago, and yet he’s already decided that the time has come to get another slimy bun in the pulsating, fluid-filled oven as quickly as possible. People reports:

Usher is going to be a father for the second time, PEOPLE has learned. The R&B star and his wife Tameka Foster are expecting their second child together, a source close to the singer confirms. Recently, Foster was spotted wearing a belly-disguising outfit during Usher’s Sept. 4 NFL kick-off concert in New York. The dress was “very deceiving,” the source says. “You couldn’t tell she was pregnant when she was sitting down.”

What’s best about all this isn’t that Usher’s obviously so terrifyingly potent that he probably can’t even masturbate into a tissue without it springing up, doing a little dance and following him around calling him ‘papa’ afterwards – it’s that this news has come just a couple of days after Usher announced his ladies-only tour.

You can imagine that Tameka Foster’s thrilled with that, can’t you? She’s sat at home feeling all bloated and elephanty and unloved and he’s off singing sexy songs to crowds of hormone-spazzed women, every single one of whom will be desperately trying to catch his attention. Forget a third baby, Usher’s going to be lucky if Tameka Foster lets him go anywhere near her with his little chap at all after pulling a stunt like that.

That probably isn’t the intro tape to Usher’s new ladies-only tour, but it should be. You see, Usher’s so fed up of having his sexual R&B flow disrupted at concerts by the occasional sight of a stubbly chin or an Adam’s apple that he’s banned all men from his upcoming club tour. From now on, only Usher’s rock hard testosterone can penetrate the moist, supple sea of oestrogen that is his audience.

And you know what, we actually think it’s a brilliant idea. That’s why we’ve decided to make this article a ladies-only article. Only women are allowed to read on, because only women will be able to form a true connection with our uniquely sensual musings.

Seriously though, no blokes. We’ll freak out if blokes read this. Urgh.

Men tend to cope with the tedium of being married in different ways. For example, we hear that David Duchovny likes to wank a lot. A lot. And Christie Brinkley’s ex-husband Peter Cook, he liked to… well, OK, he liked to wank as well. They’re men. They like wanking. They all do. They don’t have different ways of coping, we just made that bit up. They all just wank a lot. Wank wank wankity wank wank.

But not Usher. Wanking’s not for Usher. But that doesn’t mean he’s not a little sick of looking at the same woman every day. True’s he only married Tameka Foster recently, but Usher wants – no, Usher needs – to prove that he’s still sexy to everyone else.

That’s why Usher has done the most mid-life crisisy thing any man can possibly do aside from growing a ponytail and pretending to like Dizzee Rascal – he’s arranged special tour that only ladies are allowed to watch.

That’s right – only ladies will be granted access into Usher’s lascivious inner circle. And definitely only women, OK? None of those sodding pre-ops are sneaking in this time. Usher doesn’t want to invite any pretty girls back to his dressing room only to realise they’re actually got big hairy cocks. People reports:

“This album … was definitely the type of one that was more intimate,” the entertainer says of his most recent recording, Here I Stand. “So what better way to get up close and personal than to make it all women? The ladies like to see that masculine build,” he told the AP. “They question if I still got it.”

You know what else the ladies like, Usher? Cake. You want to smother your masculine build in cake if you really want to please the ladies. Also, we hear that ladies like it when men don’t leave their bloody socks in the middle of the floor for them to pick up. Or ignore them when they’re talking to you about their day. Or pretty much just take them for granted in general. So, you know, don’t do any of that either please Usher. Mmm, sexy.

In fact, Usher’s ladies-only tour is such a good idea that we’re not even going to question the fundamental sexism at the core of it. Because, you know, how would women like it if men started going to nightclubs that were only for gentlemen?

They wouldn’t, which is why it’s a good thing that these so-called ‘gentleman’s clubs’ don’t even exist. So there.

He had a multi multi multi million selling album, a wife (eventually, a few times), a child with his name and some hats. Things were looking rosy for the dancing pop prat.

Then he brought out a new album, ‘Here I Stand’, and – compared to his last one, ‘Confessions’, at least – it flopped something rotten. While still selling just under a million copies to date, this is considered a failure by both Usher and, more likely, his record label.

So what’s the solution when you’re known around the world, popular, good looking and – apparently – talented?

Why – sack your management and go running to your mum. Obviously. Which is exactly what Raymond has gone and done, re-employing the mother he sacked just over a year ago as a part of his throwing his toys out of the pram reaction to not selling enough records.

Aww, bless him.

Instead of doing what any self-respecting person would do on realising a failure – acknowledge it, shoulder the blame and move on having learned something – it would seem that Usher believes he couldn’t possibly be at fault for his record not selling too well. Not that we’d sniff at 1,000,000 sales for hecklerspray: The Record, it’s just it seems that that many copies doesn’t count as ‘too well’.

Regardless, instead of realising that maybe he was just something of a R&B flash in the pan – a nobody in a sea full of nobodies – some pretty big changes have been made.

Splitting from his management arrangement with Benny Medina, manager of such incredible acts as Mariah Carey and cancelling his arrangement with W&W Public Relations, Usher has gone full circle back to his dear old mama, Jonetta Patton. As the statement from his LaFace/Zomba label… stated:

“[Usher] has dissolved his management arrangement with Benny Medina and has re-engaged (his mother) Jonnetta Patton as his manager.”

Well at least it makes sense – who can talk up a person better than your own mother? And who’s better at arranging to do things for you than your own mother? Plus he’s sure to always look good on public appearances, and she’ll hopefully make sure that he doesn’t forget where he is again, thus making him look like less of a complete dick.

She’s also sure to keep him on the straight and narrow, avoiding the temptation wherever his dancing penis may take him. Though as a result of this, he may inadvertently create more lesbians – lord knows Usher is knowledgeable on their kind.

What we really hope will come from all this though is the overwhelming realisation that’s sure to hit Usher right in his big smug face. When he sees that re-hiring his mother has no effect on his floundering sales and he thinks, just for a second, that maybe he isn’t all that good. He sees for the first time in his life that people were only ever slightly entertained by him because he could dance like a twit while going “YEAH!” every second or so of a song.

But he’s sure to find comfort in his collection of hats. As long as he doesn’t go driving in them.

While we have tried to make you believe that big boss man Stuart Heritage has gone in to hibernation, it is in fact a bit of a lie. You see, after spending months wondering why he has so many odd socks, Stu has gone off to find the critters responsible and aims to unite his left Scooby Doo sock with the missing right one.

Other problems facing the world at the moment include soaring petrol costs, how to block annoying applications on Facebook and getting a decent cup of tea made.

One thing we haven’t thought too much about is why more girls decide to shun blokes for other lady folk. Well, that is everyone apart from Usher. After spending years of researching the issue and spending millions of dollars, he’s ready to present his findings in a 10,000 page dossier.

Though we’ve been able to condense it all down in to a sentence for you. Isn’t that helpful?

At first, we just thought it was crap popstar turned reality star Tila Tequila who could explain all that sexual stuff to us.

If it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t know where to insert what to where. Though after listening to the scary tattooed harlot bleat on about sex for a bit, we’ve been turned off – slightly.

Now it seems that R&B crooner Usher knows how women think when it comes to making a love decision. We’re glad he knows something else apart from singing. His geographical knowledge is terrible. Just ask the pikeys in Kent about the time he mixed up Maidstone and Manchester.

One is slightly glamorous and one is a dive. How could that error have slipped through? And as for naming children? The poor bloke found the task of naming his own son quite a challenge. Unable to come up with a ridiculous name like Flushing Bleep G , he called his son Usher. How original.

We don’t know why Usher was talking about lesbians. Maybe he’d just watched one of those films where a couple of ladies do things too each other that get men racing for the Kleenex. Anyway, according to Now magazine, Usher believes there are so many lady lovers because:

“Men don’t want to commit. Women have started to become lovers of each other as a result of not having enough men.”

As simple as that apparently, once again it’s a sodden blokes’ fault. Nothing to do with women being utterly confusing to understand.

Doing a Rubik’s cube blindfolded is easier to work out then writing a guide on how women think. Due to one species being utter twats in the words of Usher, it’s triggered off a frenzy off women looking to get a little closer with their own sex.

We don’t know how to convert them all back, but if we’ve learnt anything from watching TV, the lady loves Milktray, and men who give them a chocolate injection. Keep a box of the chocolates handy and if you see a couple of lesbians necking on, thrust the remedy at them and they will be cured.

Though we can’t guarantee they will fall in love you then and there and take you behind the local chipshop.

Clever musicians, what ever next? 50 Cent to tell us what type of cheese the moon is made from or what about Missy Elliot will tell us where the lost city of Atlantis is?

Whether you like Usher’s music or not, it must be said that the boy can dance; predominantly he dances like a spaz, but he sure can throw some crazy moves together. And it’s perhaps these slinky footsteps that have gotten his erect penis into trouble before. His reputation for banging broads like a horny puppy is well known in celebrity land.

Horny Usher also has a perfume out that bears his name stencilled in big bold letters using what can only be described as ‘tattoo script’. It smells a bit like turps and takes his personal fortune up into the trillions – thus confirming his status as ‘richest man to be named after the job you give someone who isn’t good enough to be Best Man at your wedding’.

As for his own nuptials, Usher isn’t confident about staying faithful, which must be either music to his wife’s ears if she is looking for a cut of his diamond factory, or pretty miserable if she, like, you know, loves him and stuff.

Usher told Cosmopolitan magazine:

“I’m good at making love, but I’m not good at being in love. It’s a conscious decision every day to love the person you’re with“.

The man who would be Chris Eubank with a signet ring married then-pregnant fiancée Tameka Foster in August 2007 after abruptly calling off the ceremony just a month before.

This might not be the best omen in the world and, coupled with Usher’s utter disregard for why people get married in the first place, gives us the gall to pencil in his divorce for, say, February 2009.

If he has issue with this statement, Usher is welcome to drop by our offices in London and put us straight. Now that’s London, not Manchester when it should be Kent, just as the bling king so memorably muddled up during a recent gig in the sleepy southeast county.

Married life might not be the worst thing in the world for Usher though; he should give it a chance. It’s fun to put on more weight than Oprah and then slouch about in your own filth while your better half nags you about drain hair and the toilet seat. So Jay-Z says anyway.

That’s right, you work out which town you’re playing. The fastest way to alienate any crowd is to go onstage, mistakenly blurt out a greeting meant for another town located more than 250 miles away and get booed by the crowd because you’re obviously a dick.

Perhaps someone should have pointed this out to Usher before his performance at the Radio 1 Big Weekend festival in Maidstone, where he bounded out onstage and bellowed “Hello Manchester!” to a chorus of boos. Usher should be thankful he got away that lightly. This was Maidstone, after all – he’s lucky a pregnant 12-year-old didn’t stab him in the eye with a sawn-off bottle of Bacardi Breezer.

The Radio 1 Big Weekend in Mote Park, Maidstone has now been and gone, and it was apparently a big success – organisers are claiming that it holds the record for Europe’s largest free-ticked event that’s only free because nobody in their right minds would ever actually pay to see The Kooks or Newton Faulkner in a festival hosted in part by Jo Whiley unless they were either idiots or being forced to by a jittery man with a gun.

But ’success’ is a funny term to define. That’s something that Usher knows only too well, because he never seems to be able to do anything with an absolute degree of success. When he was in Chicago, for example, Usher proved that even current popstars have the mental and physical endurance to perform live musical theatre night after night. At least until he got a bit of a sore throat and had to go home early.

Then there was his wedding to Tameka Foster. How did Usher celebrate the happiest day of his life? By cancelling it at the last minute, that’s how. And let’s not forget the birth of his first child, which Usher decided to mark by naming the baby Usher – a move of such soul-destroying egotism that we wouldn’t be surprised if Usher was actually a little bit disappointed that his wife hadn’t just given birth to a full-length gore-covered mirror.

So with this in mind, nobody should have really expected Usher’s set at Radio 1’s Big Weekend to go perfectly. Which is good, because it didn’t. Aside constant references to songs that weren’t written a week ago as ‘old classics’ as if he was referring to early Georgian antique bureaus when in reality they were mainly a bunch of identical R&B songs, Usher made the teensy mistake of forgetting where he was actually playing, as BBC News reports:

R&B star Usher left Kent festival goers unimpressed after shouting out “hello Manchester” to the packed crowd. The singer was opening Radio 1’s Big Weekend festival in Maidstone, Kent, when the blunder happened, prompting some audience members to boo.

To be fair, mixing up Maidstone and Manchester is an easy mistake to make – they’re only about 250 miles apart – plus they both begin with the letter M, so in retrospect it’s just as well that Usher didn’t yell “hello Melbourne” or “hello Marzipan.” But if he’d have paid some attention, Usher would have been able to tell the difference.

You see, a night out in Maidstone usually involves being bottled by a gang of lairy blokes outside Argos, while a night out in Manchester usually involves being shot by a gang of lairy blokes outside Argos. The difference is huge.

Read more:

Usher makes gaffe at Radio 1 gig - BBC

And now the pregnancy has come to fruition, because it's been reported that Usher's wife Tameka Foster gave birth to their first baby, a little boy called Usher Raymond V, on Monday night. Luckily the birth of baby Usher seems to have taken place without any major complications, which is a relief because we were worried that it'd be carried out with the same indecision that marked Usher and Tameka's wedding. And no baby wants to spend its first few moments on earth trying to be rammed back up its mother's vagina because nobody can decide if they want it or not. Seriously, could've happened.

Usher is a modern-day renaissance man, capable of singing some thuddingly generic R&B songs one minute, acting in rubbish teen comedies the next and dancing like a man trying to run uphill in a rainstorm wearing shoes made of soap in all the gaps in between. Such is Usher's prodigious ability to sing and dance and act that it's obvious that he'd want to name any child he sired after himself. That's normal and not at all violently egotistical, as our newborn son Hecklerspray Is A Good Website will be only too happy to attest to once he's grown up and stopped suing us for wrecking his life.

So that's what Usher has done. Usher's newish wife Tameka Foster gave birth to their first son on Monday night, a 7 lbs. 9 oz. boy named Usher Raymond V. Although it's yet to be made explicit, we assume that the 'V' part of usher Raymond V is either a Roman numeral explanation of how many other Usher Raymonds there have been in Usher's family, or a terrible warning that the baby is really a planet-raping, rodent-eating lizardy alien with a sticky-out tongue and a latex human mask from the 1980s.

That's something we'll discover at a later date, because Usher and Tameka Foster have released a statement telling the world how brilliant it is to have a baby named after you:

"We are so happy and proud of our beautiful son. What a blessing!" 

It finally seems like Usher and Tameka Foster are finally getting getting themselves back on track with the birth of baby Usher. After all, their initial wedding was such a balls-up that they needed to have two more weddings afterwards just to erase the bad memories from the first one. And there's nothing like a newborn baby to remind a married couple that they can't tit around getting married all the bastard time.

Still, it's good to know that Usher, Tameka and Usher are all doing well – and we hope that Usher devotes enough time away from his forthcoming new album to give baby Usher the upbringing he deserves. After all, the tot isn't going to learn how to dance like an epileptic gecko by himself, is he.

Read more:

Usher & Tameka Welcome A Baby Boy - People