Hilary Duff is now 21 years old – old enough to get hammered on booze, old enough to drive a tractor and, if only she wasn’t a female, old enough to vote. She’s also old enough to have sex, although she’s jiggered if she’s going to tell you if she actually does or not.

You see, Hilary Duff hasn’t admitted that she’s still a virgin. And she hasn’t admitted that she’s not. But she has claimed that she didn’t say she was. The dirty moo.

If we were Hilary Duff, we’d be playing catch-up like nobody’s business at the moment. Her old peers have long since deserted her – Lindsay Lohan to get arrested and go to rehab and end up trudging around as a sort of bored-looking domesticated would-be lesbian, and the Olsen Twins to have it off with one-balled sportsmen and own buildings where famous actors can go to die naked – and she’s been left behind a little bit.

While other turn-of-the-century childstars delight in going out without any knickers on, Hilary Duff still seems like the sort of girl who wouldn’t go out unless she was wearing 14 pairs of knickers, at least three of which must be made of impenetrable lead chainmail, and a large pair of Victorian-era bloomers.

And there’s nothing wrong with preserving your purity like that, so long as you’re still pitching yourself at a market that appreciates that kind of sentiment, like Twilight-watching tweens or staunchly religious puritans. But Hilary Duff has decided that she needs to aim squarely at the mass market with her new Best Of album, so she’s decided to sex herself up a bit.

How? Will Hilary Duff get naked in a pop video like Britney Spears? Will she release a sexually explicit book like Madonna? Will she have full sex with a man on a video like Kim Karadshian? No, not quite.

But what Hilary Duff will do is deny that she claimed she was a virgin two years ago. We know – steady yourselves, boys. According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

In a 2006 interview with Elle magazine, the former Disney star touted her squeaky-clean image, insisting she hadn’t yet had sex. But she now denies every making the claim, telling Maxim magazine: “You know what? I was quoted saying I was a virgin, but I absolutely did not say that. That’s nobody’s business but my own. Somehow it turned into a bad thing!”

Hilary Duff is right, of course – it is nobody’s business but her own. And, you know, the legions of permanently-aroused teenage Maxim readers who are all bound to wank themselves into a blistery tizzy at even the vaguest insinuation that Hilary Duff might not be a virgin. But that’s it. Just Hilary Duff and the wanking boys. And now you as well, since you just read it here, we suppose. But that’s it. It’s nobody else’s business. Probably.

So maybe we’ll never know if Hilary Duff has had sex or not. And that mystery is going to keep us absolutely rapt for at least the next ten seconds until we forget that Hilary Duff even exists again. Rapt.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

Chances are you'd either a) go and buy a thirst-quenching bottle of deliciously refreshing Pepsi right away or b) kick the television over, stamp on it and then slash your belly because you drank some Pepsi once six years ago and you don't want to be seen to be endorsing the Smashing Pumpkins in even the slightest way.

But not if you're Billy Corgan, lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins. If you're Billy Corgan and you hear a Smashing Pumpkins song advertising Pepsi, you sue your old record label and then get all stroppy and self-important and bitch about everything for the millionth time of your life.

Say what you like about the Smashing Pumpkins, but they always provoke a reaction – even if that reaction involves burning your Wii the instant someone online puts Cherub Rock on their Guitar Hero III setlist before it gets infected, or jabbing knitting needles in your ear because you can't stand the way that Billy Corgan sounds like a feeble witch when he sings.

Sadly, the reaction of former Smashing Pumpkins record label Virgin when it hears a Smashing Pumpkin song is "Hey, this would sound awesome advertising an ice-cold glass of mouthwatering cool buzzin' fast livin' ever givin' Pepsi Cola!" Which is probably the scientific opposite of what Billy Corgan wanted it to think, especially since Virgin went ahead and used the band's name, image and music for a Pepsi/Amazon promotion anyway.

Angered that people other than teenagers who think they have more problems in their lives than they actually do might be hearing their alternative rock whiny pap, Billy Corgan sued Virgin for breach of contract in the name of the Smashing Pumpkins. And now, as Reuters reports, Corgan has decided to make a statement about why Virgin is a tub or arses and he is a bald-headed Goliath hell-bent on sticking it to the man:

Corgan told Billboard.com that… the Pepsi/Amazon.com promotion "crosses the Rubicon. You're going to see more of this playing fast and loose with the rules, hoping they don't get caught. At face value, it's not a huge deal. But in terms of precedent, it is, because there will be much more of this coming." The problem is that according to the contract the Pumpkins renegotiated with Virgin in the late '90s, both parties are partners on the catalog. "We've made offers to buy it all," he said. "Look, you have no interest. Let us just buy it. But they won't put a number on it. They've atrophied the catalog down so low that they probably hope we'll crawl back and ask for cash."

Ah, so that's the reason – the Smashing Pumpkins sold out to Virgin a decade ago and don't like it because Virgin's doing stuff that it seems to be perfectly entitled to do. That's got to sting.

But, on the other hand, in the ever-changing music industry, perhaps Billy Corgan is right to want to set a precedent in case more labels want to start making up for falling profits by unethically licensing songs to adverts without the artists' permission. We'd certainly be OK if Billy Corgan won his lawsuit, but only because we'd be certain that no bloody Smashing Pumpkins music would ambush our ears in the middle of Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway.

Plus, if Billy loses the lawsuit, at least he gave it a shot. And at least no adverts will want to use any of his solo stuff. Not unless companies want their product to be associated with people being mildly irritated and a bit nauseous.

Read more:

Smashing Pumpkins lawsuit latest step in feud – Reuters 

Turns out it's because Rhydian is a Christian. And a virgin. But not a gay one. Speaking to The Mirror today, 24-year-old Rhydian Roberts has confirmed the obvious and admitted that he's a virgin who won't have sex with anyone before marriage. But he definitely isn't gay, something proved by the way Rhydian regularly sees girls and thinks "Grr, I'd do her," before thinking a little more quietly "just as soon as I've formed a legally-binding tie with her in front of all my friends and family in a prohibitively expensive ceremony, and then promised to God that I'll never split up with her, ever." 

As our X Factor betting odds have pointed out almost from day one, Rhydian Roberts is going to win X Factor whether you like it or not. That's a little bit odd, because we thought X Factor was a show about finding a hot new popstar to make all the girls scream, not a show called Britain's Got The Next Obvious Presenter Of Harry Secombe's Highway.

But it isn't just Rhydian's powerhouse voice and startling preoccupation with Andrew Lloyd Webber that has got him noticed – it's also the way he acts. Without exception, you get the feeling that everyone who appeared on X Factor this year would wank off a dog if it meant them getting their own reality TV show on UKTV Micro Resistance Welding, but Rhydian's weird mixture of self-belief and jittery awkwardness have set him apart from the rest of the crowd. And now we know why.

Because he's a virgin.

We know, it's weird to think that a rugby-loving Welshman who wears sparkly suits and counts Phantom Of The Opera as his favourite ever song has never had sex, but that appears to be the case. Denying rumours that he's gay, Rhydian Roberts told The Mirror:

"That is not saying that I can't have fun with a lady. I love the company of women. I have been offered sex, like most men. But if you believe in something you can't compromise. But I am only human and you can fall short. At the moment, my priority is singing. I am not a closet Christian. If someone asks me about it, I will talk about it. I do pray on Saturdays but then I pray every day. But what will be will be, it's God's will and that is a great mental attitude to have."

Rhydian then confided:

"Once I am married, though, that's it – I'll be nuts-deep in rank sluts until the day I die. Booya!"

OK, he didn't say that. But there's a possibility that he was thinking it. We can tell.

Anyway, rather than harming his X Factor chances, we'd imagine that Rhydian's virgin confession has only helped to increase the likelihood of winning. The Great British public loves an outsider, you know – in recent years X Factor and Pop Idol has made stars out of stammerers, homosexuals, obese women, goat herders and ratty Scots with terrible hair who can't stop crying – and by proclaiming himself to be a Christian virgin, Rhydian has admitted being the biggest outsider of all.

So maybe Rhydian does deserve to win X Factor after all. At least that way we'll be better positioned to watch when he invariably slides off the rails in a whirlpool of girls and drugs and booze by Easter.

Read more:

X Factor Rhydian's a virgin – Mirror