An MTV VMAs show without Britney Spears isn’t an MTV VMAs show – it’s just an excuse for Chris Brown to wobble around like his knickers are filled up with puffer fish. So imagine how thrilled we are to learn that Britney Spears will not only be appearing at this Sunday’s MTV VMAs, but actually opening them!

It’s wonderful news, and the perfect chance for Britney Spears to erase the painful memory of her stumbling around and failing to mime to her own song at last year’s show. Now she gets to replace that with a new memory of her having a giant panic attack onstage and ending up lying in the fetal position, rocking backwards and forwards, yanking fistfuls of hair out of her scalp and screaming abuse at a monster that only she can see.

We’re guessing.

Say what you like about Britney Spears but she isn’t a quitter. Nope. She definitely isn’t a quitter. Britney Spears never quits. Not even when it’s blindingly obvious to everyone that quitting would probably be the most dignified and medically sensible thing she could do. No way, that’s not Britney Spears.

Case in point – Britney’s embarrassingly lacklustre performance at last year’s MTV VMAs. The hair was bad, the dancing was sloppy, the abdominal muscles were crayoned on and – although the feeling of sad desperation was actually quite convincing – the whole thing was so bad that people were calling it Britney’s lowest moment of all time.

But Britney’s not a quitter. Contrary to a statement by her own manager last week, Britney Spears has just announced that she’s going to take to the stage once more and dramatically open the 2008 MTV VMAs on Sunday. Reuters reports:

“MTV has long played an important role in my career,” Spears said in a statement. “How can I not be there to kick off their 25th VMAs? I’m excited to open the entire show, to say hi to my fans and to be nominated.”

Now, you might think that Britney Spears has lost her mind for opening the MTV VMAs – after all, she hasn’t performed in public at all since last year and she’ll be under more scrutiny than ever before on Sunday – but you have nothing to worry about.

Last year’s trainwreck? That was the old Britney Spears. On Sunday you’ll see the brand new Britney Spears, a woman who’s spent the last year being kept in a mental asylum and constantly getting reminded that she’s a dangeously unfit parent. See? Nothing to worry about.

We don’t know what Britney Spears has planned for the MTV VMAs on Sunday – details are being kept tightly under wraps at the moment – but we honestly hope it goes well for her. Our advice to Britney Spears is that if she wants to make people love her again, she should remind them of why they loved her by doing something genuinely popular that she’s already done before.

That’s right, we want Britney Spears to take her knickers off and divorce Kevin Federline again. It’ll go down a storm, trust us.

There are many, many better ways. Surely. Hooking up with that mad-haired berk isn’t going to help her claw back the piles and piles of sanity the girl seems to have lost over the last couple of years.

Let’s be totally honest – it’s going to damage her more than she already is, and that’s before she’s even spoken to the man who dresses like a particularly stupid pirate.

But hecklerspray didn’t get in fast enough with our warnings, leaving poor old crazy Britney Spears free to appear alongside Russell Brand in some MTV promotional adverts for the upcoming Video Music Awards.

It still isn’t confirmed if Britters herself will be in attendance at the awards as she hasn’t got permission off her dad yet, but hopefully the blow to her psyche that surely occurred when she met the TV and radio ‘funny’ man will have been too much, forcing her to stay at home on the night. The other option doesn’t even bear thinking about, frankly.

For now, the only thing we can say with so-called ‘facts’ backing us up is that there have been a few promotional skits released and… well… they’re quite good, really.

Brand is still an irritating prannock, but he does at least have the good sense to make a joke of the fact that no one in the US knows who he is – and believe us, oh American readers out there, you don’t want to know who Russell Brand is – whereas Britney is actually quite charming, seemingly happy to poke fun at herself.

Does this mean we’re allowed to make fun of her again? Or is it still too serious an issue, that she’s gone mental and her life has fallen to pieces and all that gumph? No? Still not cool? Okay – just checking.

Did we mention there’s an elephant in the videos? Yes – in an all-too-subtle move on the part of the ad creators, they’ve decided to quite literally tackle the issue of the elephant in the room. And it’s actually borderline clever, the crafty little buggers – obviously it’s still blatant enough for the MTV’s core demographic to get the joke (it’s referring to Britney’s performance at last year’s VMAs, you fools!), but at the same time it’s pretty brave on their part.

We should stop writing with hangovers, it makes us too nice.

Russell Brand is an arsehole, Britney Spears went mental let’s all point and laugh… ahh, that feels better.

Anyway, a couple of the ads are below for your viewing pleasure. They’re bound to raise at least a smile, and it’s good to see Britney looking less like a skank-harpy of death (twice in a month). She leaves that honour to Brand.

Zing!

Kid Rock is addicted to trouble, and it doesn't matter if it's the sort of trouble that involves physical violence or the sort of trouble that involves making dreadful redneck heavy metal that sounds like it should exclusively soundtrack cross-eyed, chipped-tooth monster truck rallies. But sometimes Kid Rock's penchant for trouble gets him into, um, trouble – like when Kid Rock decided to use the live, globally-televised MTV VMA awards this year to start a fight with Tommy Lee. However, despite everyone in the world seeing Kid Rock and Tommy Lee slapping each other like babies during the awards, police have announced that Kid Rock won't be charged for the brawl, mainly because they need all their MTV VMA manpower to try and pin a charge of Miming With Intent To Appal on Britney Spears.

Eventful occasion, this year's MTV VMA awards. Really MTV should be proud of itself, because it managed to fill this year's awards with Britney Spears being terrible and Shia LaBeouf blabbing the new Indiana Jones movie title and Kanye West shrieking like a nitwit and still end up with a rubbish show. But at least it went down swinging, much like Kid Rock and Tommy Lee, who decided to spend much of their screen time swinging their arms at each other like a couple of yokels trying to swim up a waterfall.

Why Kid Rock and Tommy Lee fought is beyond us. Tommy Lee did try to tell us, but his account was like listening the the violent thoughts of a teenage council estate single mother screaming at her children so we'll just assume it was about Pamela Anderson instead. After the fight it was Kid Rock who was cited for misdemeanour battery by police – a charge which carries a sentence of up to six months in jail – but now Las Vegas police have decided that nobody is actually going to get charged with anything as People reports:

Kid Rock will not be charged in the fight with Tommy Lee at the MTV Video Music Awards, Las Vegas authorities said Monday. "The Clark County District Attorney's Office will not pursue a battery charge," Chief Deputy District Attorney Ron Bloxham tells Extra. "It should be noted that Tommy Lee has requested that there be no prosecution relating to the incident and there were no injuries to either person."

So all's well that ends well, even though we're putting Tommy Lee's kindness down to a desire to team up with Kid Rock and bundle Pamela Anderson's new husband Rick Salomon together, because Pamela's ex-husbands need to stick together. Also, don't worry if you missed the initial Kid Rock/ Tommy Lee fight at the MTV VMAs, because it's starting to look like Kid Rock wants to hold dramatic reconstructions of the scrap at every Waffle House in the land at the moment.

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Kid Rock Won't Face Charges In VMA Fight – People