We knew this day would come, but we never really managed to prepare for it. It’s the day that – God, this is hard – Britney Spears gained self-awareness.

What makes us so sure of this? How about the fact that, despite rumours to the contrary, Britney Spears has refused to perform at this year’s MTV VMAs? Apparently she fears it’ll be a hopelessly incompetent retread of last year’s hopelessly incompetent MTV VMA performance, recently voted the biggest single atrocity to ever happen to mankind by us in a vote in our head just now.

You know what this means, don’t you? Without Britney Spears around, the MTV VMAs is going to be – gulp – professional. Urgh. Seriously, one of the Jonas Brothers had better be planning to soil himself onstage and then slip around in the mess like a baby deer on an ice rink, because right now that’s all we’ve got left to cling to.

Has anyone else noticed a quiet turning around of Britney Spears’ public image lately? It seems like she’s winning people over again. Maybe that’s because people feel sorry for her, or maybe it’s because she’s not leathering the shit out of their cars with an umbrella any more, but lately public support for Britney Spears has grown so much that she even gets praised for going out without looking a mess.

And this public rehabilitation seems to have made Britney Spears cleverer as well. Case in point – Britney Spears isn’t going to perform at the MTV VMAs any more.

You’ll remember what happened last time Britney Spears did the MTV VMAs, of course. The stumbling, the miming, the hair extensions, the drawn-on abs, the listless crotch-grabbing. It was brilliant. Not for Britney Spears, obviously – it sent her spiralling into a psychological hellpit that she’s never fully recovered from – but it was fun to watch, and isn’t that what’s most important?

There were rumours that Britney Spears wanted a redo of the performance at this year’s MTV VMAs next month, but sadly they’ve turned out to be a big fat bag of lies. Yahoo reports:

“Contrary to media reports, Britney was never slated to perform on this year’s VMAs,” Larry Rudolph, Spears’ manager at Jive Records, said in a statement. “She’s in the middle of recording her next album, which is going amazingly well, and her focus remains on the studio.”

Is it just us, or does Britney Spears not seem like Britney Spears if she’s behaving normally? We’re worried. The old Britney would have jumped at the chance to perform at the MTV VMAs, then forgotten to prepare for it, then started to cry halfway through her performance, then tried to lick the tears out of her own eyes in the mistaken belief that they were made of gin, fallen into the orchestra pit and started to hump a tuba. That’s the Britney we all know and love.

What next? Is Britney Spears going to display enough parental competency to be allowed to look after her children again? Good lord, we hope not. Urgh.

Last year’s MTV VMAs marked the precise moment when Britney Spears’ life went from ‘amusingly wonky’ to ‘toe-curling and nightmarish’.

People still talk about Britney’s VMA performance of Gimme More with the glazed tremble of a war survivor. The bikini, the drawn-on stomach, the stumbling, the dire miming – as well as effectively ending Britney Spears’ career for good it also caused up to 300 unwitting viewers to completely lose their eyesight.

Clearly, then, Britney Spears would be stupid to ever return to the MTV VMAs. Worse than stupid, in fact – Britney Spears would be showing such a profound lack of self-awareness that she should be encased in ice and sent around schools as a warning to future generations of the negative effects of celebrity.

So what might Britney Spears do at this year’s MTV VMAs? That’s right. Oh, don’t look so surprised.

Over the last couple of years, Britney Spears’ life has descended into a kind of thick featureless bad news goo – like a traffic pile-up so vast you can’t even see the individual car wrecks any more, just a mottled ocean of twisted metal that stretches off to the horizon in all directions.

Despite this, though, a few moments still stick out as being particularly rubbish. There was the time that Britney Spears shaved all her hair off, for example – that was the horrible harbinger for everything to come. Then there was the time Britney went to a mental hospital and was diagnosed as Gravely Disabled, the closest Britney’s come so far to hitting rock bottom.

And then there was Britney Spears’ performance at the MTV VMAs last year.

It’s almost been a year since Britney Spears decided to open the MTV VMAs with a spectacular comeback performance of her then new song Gimme More. There were rumours that the routine was going to be a career-high showstopper designed to silence the critics, featuring magic and fireworks and explosions. That’s not what we got, though.

What we got was Britney Spears in rancid hair extensions, wearing the least flattering bikini in creation and abs airbrushed onto her stomach. Britney stumbled around cluelessly for three minutes, looking like she barely knew her own name, let alone the words to her song, and then ran offstage in tears knowing that she’d become a monumental global joke.

It was awful. So needless to say she might be doing it all over again in a couple of months. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Troubled pop star Britney Spears will have another chance to storm the MTV stage, after receiving a nomination for this year’s Video Music Awards. The star has been nominated by network bosses in the category of Best Female Video for her hit single “Piece of Me,” competing alongside a list of music’s top female rockers.

OK, so it’s just a nomination for now, but MTV bosses must want her to sing – a performance by Britney Spears would get them more publicity than anything else on Earth. And, you know what, it might not be such a bad idea. Here’s why:

1) Britney Spears has just done that tour video for Madonna. If that doesn’t set up a redo of their lesbian VMA kiss from five years ago, nothing will.

2) Britney can wear clothes properly now. That’s a start.

3) Now that she’s firmly under the care of her family, Britney Spears can concentrate fully on the performance without distraction.

4) Britney’s lost her kids forever. See above.

5) This is the most important one. No matter what Britney Spears does during her MTV VMA performance this year, it can never ever ever be as bad as last year. She can go round shitting into nuns’ eyes if she likes. No, no she can’t. She should.