Alright, maybe that's an overstatement – Velvet Revolver never having even existed in the first place is clearly better than that – but Scott Weiland being all whiny in public will do for now.

Scott Weiland has put out an angry, confusing statement about his dismissal from Velvet Revolver where, at one point, he tips Johann Sebastian Bach to become his replacement. Which would work – dig up the 250-year-dead Bach, pump him full of heroin, slap a ridiculous Nazi hat onto his mouldy corpse head and he'd be the spitting image of Scott Weiland. Alright, he actually meant Sebastian Bach from Skid Row. But that's less funny so we'll ignore it.

Like many people, we never really saw the point of Velvet Revolver. We never wondered what some of Guns N' Roses would sound like if a skinny heroin addict sang their songs instead of a tubby ginger bloke with dreadlocks, and we certainly didn't want to hear them perform any Pink Floyd cover versions.

But, now that the current incarnation of Velvet Revolver is splitting up, we've finally discovered what the band means to us. Moderate hilarity, that's what. Everything Velvet Revolver did was brilliant. If Coldplay got banned from Japan, for example, or Chris Martin crashed his car on drugs or Gwyneth Paltrow burnt his clothes, it wouldn't be especially funny. But that's only because Chris Martin doesn't dress up as a heroin-blasted Nazi onstage. That makes everything funny.

Funnier still was yesterday's news that Velvet Revolver was sacking Scott Weiland for being weird. Admittedly the news that Scott Weiland was going to reform Stone Temple Pilots in his new-found free time was less funny – the world generally needs a Stone Temple Pilots reunion like it needs to be kicked down a lift shaft by a nun – but Scott's done his best to make up for it.

Why? Because he's responded to his sacking with the most deranged, froth-mouthed statement you're ever likely to hear. Here it is, in full. Thank us later:

After reading the comment by Duff, Matt, Dave and the illustrious "GUITAR HERO," Saul Hudson, a.k.a Slash, I find it humorous that the so called four "founding members" of Velvet Revolver, better known to themselves as "the Project" before I officially named the band, would decide to move on without me after I had already claimed the group dead in the water on March 20 in Glasgow. In response to Slash's comment regarding my commitment, I have to say it is a blatant and tired excuse to cover up the truth. The truth of the matter is that the band had not gotten along on multiple levels for some time. On a musical level, there were moments of joy, inspiration, fun… at times, but let's not forget the multiple trips to rehab every member of the band had taken (with the exception of one member, no need to mention his name). Personally speaking, I choose to look forward to the future and performing with a group of friends I have known my entire life, people who have always had my back. This also speaks to my commitment to my music and my fellow band mates in STP and to the fans who I feel would much rather watch a group of musicians who enjoy being together as opposed to a handful of discontents who at one time used to call themselves a gang.

p.s. don't be fooled by veiled trickery

p.p.s good hunting lads, I think Sebastian Bach would be a fantastic choice.

Oh, paranoid heroin-addled conspiracy theorists, where would we be without you? But still, now that both Velvet Revolver and Scott Weiland have got their sides of the story across, perhaps this means they'll be able to get on with their lives in peace again.

Pah, where's the fun in that? Hey Slash, are you going to sit there and let Scott Weiland insult you like that? You're not going to react? That's rubbish – call him a bastard. Call him an arse-helmet. Call him anything you like, just do it in public. You can't allow something as beautiful as this awkward squabble to die, can you?

Read more:

Velvet Revolver parts ways with singer; Scott Weiland responds - EW 

And now they'll get to find out, because Velvet Revolver have sacked singer Scott Weiland being he's such a monumental douchebag all the time. We're paraphrasing slightly.

In fact, Scott Weiland has been dismissed from Velvet Revolver because of his "increasing erratic" behaviour. Given that Scott Weiland is basically a whiny bipolar heroin addict with a Nazi hat who's been arrested for buying crack cocaine, beating up women and driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol, it's hard to imagine what Weiland could have done to up his level of erracticness. What? He's reformed Stone Temple Pilots? Ohhhhhh.

The non-singing element of Velvet Revolver can't half pick their singers. As Guns N' Roses they decided to be the backing band for a podgy ginger bloke who can't stop fiddling about with his already-dead album even when he's offered some fizzy drinks in return for a release date. And then, after he disappeared up his bottom, they chose Scott Weiland.

Scott Weiland, for christ's sake, lead singer with Stone Temple Pilots. Lord alone knows why Velvet Revolver picked Scott Weiland as their singer, but we imagine that they figured that a recovering heroin addict with well-known mental issues, a history of domestic violence and a CV that includes a stint in one of the 10 worst bands of all time must have just complimented their widdly-woo wankfests quite well.

But as much as every band wants a skinny drug addict dressed as a German war criminal singing whiny poor-me lyrics over their music, Scott Weiland was perhaps Velvet Revolver's biggest drawback. After all, Velvet Revolver was banned from Japan because of Weiland's drug history, plus it's difficult to concentrate on your job when you're crashing your car on drugs and watching your wife burn all of your clothes.

So the other members of Velvet Revolver have done the decent thing and given Scott Weiland the boot. Reuters reports:

Four founding members of the rock band Velvet Revolver said on Tuesday they were splitting with the group's troubled singer, Scott Weiland, citing his "increasingly erratic" behavior. The announcement came in a terse statement from the group's management company as Weiland, 40, and his recently reunited original band, Stone Temple Pilots, were set next week to announce plans for a highly anticipated summer tour. "This band is all about its fans and its music, and Scott Weiland isn't 100% committed to either," Slash was quoted as saying. "Among other things, his increasingly erratic on-stage behavior and personal problems have forced us to move on."

If you're worried about what the future holds for Scott Weiland and Velvet Revolver, then don't be. Unless he winds up in jail or rehab for his car crash, Scott Weiland will get to travel the world with Stone Temple Pilots once again, delighting the three or four remaining fools who actually still listen to their records, while Velvet Revolver will be on the look out for a suitable replacement vocalist.

But that shouldn't take too long, because there's one candidate head and shoulder above the others. Bipolar? Terrible at driving? Dreadful wardrobe? Useless personal life? Yep, we're sure that Britney Spears will be inducted into the band before the week is out.

Read more:

Velvet Revolver splits with rocker Scott Weiland - Reuters 

Though he denies the charges, it's been reported that Scott Weiland – a man whose love of drugs has seen him imprisoned in the past – has been arrested after he crashed his car in Los Angeles, refused to give a blood or urine sample and then acted all impaired. Luckily nobody was hurt in the November 21 crash. Well, we say luckily, but you'd have to be a gigantic fan of badly-dated American stadium widdly-woo rawk not to be slightly bummed out that a shard of windscreen didn't fly off and damage Scott Weiland's vocal chords, at least temporarily.

We've never been banned from Japan, but if we were, the first thing we'd probably do is go out and crash our car on loads of drugs. That's what Scott Weiland from Velvet Revolver did, you see, and he's totally our favourite tiresome, scrawny, Nazi uniform-wearing, drug-addicted hard rock ninny in, like, the whole freaking world.

According to reports, Scott Weiland has been arrested for driving under the influence of drugs after a November 21 car crash in Los Angeles. Apparently the California Highway Patrol investigating the crash noticed that Scott Weiland was acting impaired, so they attempted to take blood and urine samples from him, but he refused.

Scott Weiland also managed to fail a sobriety test, although this will be far easier for Weiland's lawyers to contest – especially if the test involved singing a song in a way that didn't involve sounding like a drunk middle-aged Dad at a special 1980s Gillette TV commercial jingle-themed karaoke party.

News of Scott Weiland's arrest must come as galling news for the rest of Velvet Revolver, who all left Guns N' Roses because they were fed up with being the backing band for a chubby leg-chewer who spends decades fine-tuning albums that nobody will ever hear. And now they're stuck in a band with a singer who dresses like the world's least menacing Nazi and can't even drive a car without buggering it up and getting arrested any more. We're guessing that Axl Rose has never seemed to well-adjusted in comparison.

However, Scott Weiland's publicist Kristine Ashton-Magnuson denies that he'd even gone near any drugs in the first place, not even the good drugs that stop headaches, cure Glaucoma or kill tapeworm:

"Scott was not driving under the influence of a drug, legal or illegal. He voluntarily took a breathalyzer test which the defense believes registers well within the legal limit."

Not that Scott Weiland should necessarily worry too much about his DUI arrest – after all, when Nicole Richie loaded up on drugs and drove into speeding motorway traffic she only got to spend about 82 minutes in jail for it. So, you know, those shiv-wielding inmates had better move faster than they've ever done before. That's all we're saying.

Read more:

Velvet Revolving Door — Weiland Arrested Again – TMZ 

Or, to be more specific, one rubbishy old-man hard rock group – Velvet Revolver. According to a posting on the Velvet Revolver website, the band have had to cancel their imminent tour of Japan because immigration officials wouldn't let them have visas. Apparently the ruling may have to do with the drug-heavy background of some of Velvet Revolver, although chances are that the band's ban might be in some way be involved with the Japanese government's new legislation outlawing whiny skinny idiots who dress up as scruffy Nazis for a living. And awful 1980s widdly-woo rock music. And top hats. So, in that respect, it's been a perfect storm for Velvet Revolver. 

In the coming years, Japan's falling birthrate will ensure that it will become a country entirely comprised of dribbling old people. And, even then, we suspect that the Japanese still won't be old enough to enjoy Velvet Revolver's music.

Oh, you know who Velvet Revolver are – they're the band that's taken the worst parts of Guns 'N Roses' sound, the worst parts of Stone Temple Pilots' sound and mixed them together until something inexplicably worse than both appeared. You know, the band who were so bad during Live 8 that even Jonathan Ross took the piss, even though they were sharing a line-up with The Stereophonics. The Stereophonics!

With the exception of the time that Scott Weiland’s wife set fire to all his clothes, we haven't paid much attention to Velvet Revolver in the past, partly because the only people who like them are the fat kids from school who live with their nans, wear Megadeath T-shirts on non-uniform days and have managed to develop both BO and a bumfluff moustache one full year before anyone else.

But this time is different, because this time an entire country has banned Velvet Revolver. And that country, if you haven't worked it out, is Japan. Velvet Revolver were due to go on a four-day tour of Japan starting next week to promote their current album Libertad, but Japanese officials have decided to deny the lot of them visas, prompting this explanation on the Velvet Revolver website:

The increasingly tough Japanese immigration officials are taking exception with the backgrounds of various band members, which have included arrests. The band is appealing the decision of the officials — which is ironic given that Libertad is Spanish for "liberty" and "freedom" — but this process will unfortunately take months to sort out. "We want to apologize to our fans in Japan that we won't be able to perform our scheduled concerts," Velvet Revolver said in a group statement. "We don't understand why the authorities won't give us visas when they granted them for us in 2005 for what was a successful tour and a great experience. We love Japan and look forward to our return there." 

Yeah, how ironic – even though their album means 'freedom', Velvet Revolver totally aren't, like, free at all, man. And it's a shame, too – if only the Japanese immigration officers spoke Spanish, they'd realise that Velvet Revolver were actually free all along and they'd have no choice but to allow the band to breeze right through customs, even though one of them went to jail for a year over heroin possession charges. It's a shame because, had this act of unflappable logic worked, Rose West was planning to record an album called I'm Free Too! that would have forced prison guards to see their mistake and let her out through the front door as well.

But all joking aside, if Velvet Revolver use the free time they've gained from the ban to tour Britain, we're going to see it as a direct act of aggression from the Japanese, and appropriate retaliatory measures will be taken. And just to prove how serious we are, we've dispatched Kate Nash to take up a holding pattern at the Japan Airlines check-in counter at Heathrow until this crisis blows over.