Whitney Houston has had a GIGANTIC amount of MONSTROUSLY LARGE hits. That one off the Bodyguard where she looks like she’s defecating in a forest for the key-change in the video. That one where she had a blonde perm. It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay.

Of course, there’s that one where she said that she believed that children were our future and that, should we teach them well, we could probably let them lead the way.

Well, it seems Whitney has been getting financial advice from a 6-year-old as her squillions of dollars have all but vanished from her purse, leaving her hilariously begging people for money. Crack eh? Easy punchline, but more pertinently, a Whitney Houston ruiner.

When Whitters is not getting thrown out of gigs by Prince, she seems to have been ingesting so much crack that she’s managed to make herself poor.

Properly poor. Poorer than Toni Braxton’s three-hundred-or-so bankruptcy claims.

Radar Online report that a source close to the singer has lost her fortune. They revealed, presumably for money which they ultimately won’t give to the struggling Houston:

“Whitney’s fortune is gone.”

“Music industry heavy hitters are supporting her and her label is fronting her cash against her next album, but no one knows when that will be released.”

It’s like Brewster’s Millions isn’t it? Seriously. If you need to spend $300m in 30 days, simply lend it all to Whitney Houston and it’ll be gone in half-an-hour.

The source added:

“She might be homeless if not for people saving her. She is broke as a joke. She called someone to ask for $100.”

Gah. Imagine. Ponytailed music execs all circling round Whitney with subs to lend, brandishing their members at her while the greatest love of all turns into a potential puke-kkake fest.

You have to hand it to Whitney Houston – she’s really great at being a mental famous person. While you have to acknowledge the power of her lungs, we all know damn well that she’s remembered for (alleged) crack cocaine use, throwing tantrums and being in a lousy relationship with Bobby Brown.

Oh, and that bit in the ‘I Will Always Love You‘ video where it looks like she’s taking a dump in the snow as the key-change kicks in.

So which one is she doing now? Well, it involves an aeroplane and a clear will to die.

The last time we heard anything from Whitney, she was being thrown out of a Prince concert by Prince himself after taking a little drink.

This week, she was nearly getting chucked off a plane. Why? Well the reasons are huge. Flying is the most jarring of modes of transport. The constant fear of dropping out of the sky. The irritating children that cry for entire flights. The dreadful food. The lack of leg room. Those bloody flight attendants with their fixed grins and orange legs.

However, Whitters wasn’t angered by any of those things. She was angry at her seat belt.

A source close to the star told E! News:

“She was not drunk or on drugs, she is in the middle of filming a movie and flew across country to attend a charity event and return to filming. She was exhausted.”

WHOA! Who mentioned drink or drugs? The source has done an excellent job of making us assume that Whitney was filled to the eyeballs with booze and narcotics. It’s so obvious! The source said she wasn’t, which makes us all go ‘Uh-huh… right’.

Delta Airlines are now looking further into the situation because they’re hoping that they can meet Whitney or get an autograph or something. Alas, they “cannot comment on passenger or itinerary information.”

To us, it is obvious that she didn’t want to wear her seatbelt because she’s tired of living. She just wants to die in a plane crash like many celebrities before.

It’s not right, but it’s okay.

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On Sunday, we witnessed what came to be the last programme documenting the audition process of the underrated, revolutionary post-feminist Space Opera series “The X Factor 2011″.

Hear that over there? That’s Ewan Mcgregor singing Your Song in a melancholic manner with an umbrella. See that over in the other direction? That’s your inescapable loneliness.

But put all that heroin and selection of complimentary bath salts to the side for one moment! Those headaches are probably nothing to worry about after all. Let’s just kick back, and remember all the classic moments of the past few weeks instead. Remember when a woman told Tulisa how it was all HER opinion, and then on top of that, that other thing happened as well? Sometimes the path to creating amazing music is hard. Just ask Brian Wilson or David Sneddon. Or both! They’re probably sitting together on the same park bench somewhere, trying to feed Hula Hoop packets to pissed off swans.

Ah, Memory Lane.

Sunday night’s show promised us such splendours like the prospect of Gary Barlow teaming navy with maroon, and Louis Walsh literally retracting the gift of the human voice to one unlucky, nondescript contestant, cruelly telling them that ‘singing is not for you.’

Then along came our beloved Dermot O’Leary, with all his layers of self-loathing and wool. Dermot, with his choreographed face, standing outside the Millennium Dome with thousands of blissful, cheering people waving merrily, despite the devastating financial collapse that the building once suffered, like the insensitive prick that he is.

In one of the more experimental features of the show, we were introduced to a special segment where some people actually tried their hand at auditioning for the X Factor. These people came in the vaguely upsetting shapes of Neil and Sue Perkins Margaret.

Neil and Margaret are the sorts of people who are lonely and not conventionally attractive. You have may have once seen something about it on Panorama. The reason this is really really funny is because it means Neil and Sue are less likely to procreate, due to not successfully accommodating Charles Darwin’s theories of natural selection and as such are subsequently void as a contribution to the species. Just really, really funny.

Neil and Margaret met on the internet and are middle aged, which ITV1 respect so much that they have dubbed their interview with an insincere midi clip of The Carpenters’ Close to You in the background, presumably to help articulate the immense success rate of social networking in the early 2010s/true love.

Also: KELLY ROWLAND LOVES THE CARPENTERS.

Margaret, without any shadow of hope, did terribly in her audition, despite having a man to hold her at night. AND she’s ugly. God, that’s kind of funny too – in a way. Neil, of Being in Love With Margaret fame, came up next and by all the forces of the stars, the galaxies, and Mystic Meg’s Microsoft Word documents, Neil can’t sing either. Blimey, we guess that whole Sonny and Cher thing was just a massive anomaly. Neil looked like he was going to cry. Neil also looked like he was drawn with charcoal and then brought to life by the BBC Visual Effects company.

Margaret and Neil go home, allowing us to return to Liverpool. Or Gary Barlowverpool, as you may be more familiar with it being called these days. In fact, there was something rather mystical in the air throughout the whole show – because in Liverpool, Dermot O Leary by no manner of coincidence, bumps into one of the three featured singers in the programme and conducts a very long descriptive interview with him, which is bloody good luck if you ask us.

The lad in question was Bradley Johnson – a check-shirted maverick of contemporary performing arts who used to hang out with scallies. Like how Margaret and Neil were happy to have found each other after years of pervasive emptiness and scabies – Bradley was expelled for being a dillweed at school, so is naturally more deserving of: THE SINCERE VERSION OF THE INSINCERE MIDI CLIP.

Oddly enough, the judge’s small talk with Bradley conveniently circulates around asking Bradley if he just so happens to have been expelled from three schools and is subsequentlyfeelingunsureofhisfuturecareerpath recently. WHAT THE WHAT? HE HAS AND IS? Harry fucking Potter, isn’t it insane that the one time the judges happen to ask that particular line of questioning, it happens to be utterly factually accurate to an auditionee’s life? If this pre-audition chit chat always took place in the same manner though, surely Matt Cardle would have never won the X Factor, as he’d have been ushered off the stage sobbing into a hemp rag.  But for Bradley, the future is considerably more encouraging as he bravely gets over behaving appallingly at school and gallantly gets on stage and sings an Ed Sheeran track, all by himself. It’s colon-wrenchingly more amazing than the word ‘amazing’. Barack Obama even reportedly tried to give his Nobel Peace Prize back after a mate of his +1′d Bradley’s performance from YouTube.

Some more people bothered to audition, like we even need to listen to anything poorly masquerading as ‘music’ post Bradley’s introduction of the acoustic guitar genre, but nonetheless, The X Factor insists on giving EVERYONE a chance. Yawn. Bring on Joe Cox, who wants to achieve his dreams or something. Such a bloody killjoy. Upon auditioning, Joe Cox discovers that he won’t be getting the chance to be gay during his time on The X Factor -even if he wanted to be, as the judges man-handled him into admitting that he ‘likes ladies’. “Do you like the ladies Joe? DO YOU? WE BET A HANDSOME SINGLE MAN LIKE YOURSELF LIKES THE LADIES!” Sorry Joe. On the bright side – a bit of ambiguous sexuality didn’t do a certain mastermind of white soul Will Young any harm! (before he got blackmailed by The Sun, obviously.)

MEANWHILE – KELLY ROWLAND CONTINUES TO BE AMAZING.

Next up to perform, was OF COURSE  Terry Winstanley. You remember Terry. Terry being the unstoppable force that generated such wonder over the years on Dawn French’s chocolate orange adverts. Terry is old too. This series of X Factor has had a momentous amount of  messed up middle aged men on it this year, which probably is something to do with the ‘NEXT GENERATION’ thing they keep harping on about, or because otherwise they might invent Diana Vickers again.

Maybe Tulisa just sapped up all the youth in the world, and that’s why everyone on this series looks like they were painted by Fearne Cotton. Beautiful, amazing, Tulisa. God, she’s so fledgling and current. Unlike Terry who enjoys simpler pleasures, such as melodically assembling a Micheal Bolton cover version with ‘gusto’. Nice one, Terry. We bet his wife is alive, and everything. Not only do we like Terry, but we we really like what Terry did with his X Factor sticker. Right in the centre of the shirt. A simple but effective twist on the X Factor Audition Sticker, considering Cher Lloyd used to just fuse hers to her kegal muscles, and shove dice in her mouth.

A woman with a croissant on her head sang a song and was rewarded for inexplicable reasons – but more importantly than that, a man called Deep Dhillon turned up. Deep Dhillon – a name that genuinely has appeared on a birth certificate in the medium of a coherent woman’s handwriting at some point. This is the whole ‘Johnny Robinson’ debacle all over again. (Seriously, imagine being called ‘Johnny Robinson’. See, you can’t even try.) Deep Dhillon is not even a joke name. We know there’s a dildo joke starkly available, but quite frankly it just doesn’t seem worth it. Seriously, not even for us. Is there anything really that funny about an untalented primordial bloke called ‘Deep’? It’s just a bit upsetting, really.

TAKE THAT INTERLUDE.

Next up was That Comedy Old Woman With The Empty Lungs (Which is not just something we just tried to 40d, honestly) Alright, for the sake of giving some of the more superannuated members of society a vague swipe at respect, we will call her by her actual name – which is Ceri Rees, which we bothered to find out for you. If you’ve accidentally watched 8 years of X Factor before, you will know that Ceri is a regular auditionee who ultimately disappoints herself and us again and again, because sadomasochism is just too damn sexy to give up.

Unfortunately for everyone, Ceri can’t sing. Not as in, she cannot sing a Whitney Houston song the way Whitney Houston used to sing a Whitney Houston song 40 years ago – She cannot sing. She cannot sing to the extent that she literally cannot sustain speech. There is absolutely no phonatory process of any sort for Ceri to even attempt to pursue. The woman is simply tired and old, like if Neil Buchannan were to create a Big Art Attack in the Sahara Desert. (This reference would probably be funny if Neil Buchannan wasn’t regrettably racist – if you believe the internet rumours.) Yet despite this – ITV1 happily give her the same amount of air time that they also give to men who brutally beat their wives and/or the friends of Peter Andre.

And then of course – after receiving mockery from braying New Look shoppers/musical experts in the audience, ITV1 play the Jaws theme tune over the top of her, because the fact that she reacts unreasonably can only be explained by dubbing her with the soundtrack of a film about an impetuous, crazed beast.

And that’s it.

Congratulations – you made it to Boot Camp, alongside this stupid bitch.

See you next week to see if the contestants can handle the grueling task of singing alongside only a piano, or will they succumb to the temptations of  beat-boxing to Simply Red instead? Only time will tell.

Oh, and we didn’t watch Xtra Factor. Why, did you?

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Former husband 0f Courtney Cox and alleged actor David Arquette was thrown out of a Prince concert recently for committing the heinous crime of taking photos of ‘The Artist’ in his true, lizard form.

The singer has a notorious ‘no photography’ rule at his shows designed to protect him from the damage his reputation could take if the wider public was to see him in his true form.

However, Arquette managed to get his silly self into an altercation with security at the singer’s ‘Welcome 2 America’ shows at the Los Angeles Forum when a young boy flouted the singer’s no photography rule. The real pain of Arquette’s story is that this ‘altercation’ came straight after Prince had told the crowd they were allowed to take pictures.

Unfortunately, the snapping of Arquette’s phone set off security’s ‘Automatic Camera Detector’ and they were all over him like a cheap suit within seconds.

Prince still sells out arenas despite no-one truly knowing what he looks like. The mysterious singer is said to be able to hold his human form just long enough to take publicity shots but apparently hitting his stride during ‘Kiss’ renders it almost impossible not to revert back to the form which is natural to him.

Ignoring this obvious fact, David articulately said:

“Prince was like, ‘Alright, I’m about to play my hits, so get out your phones’. I didn’t take anymore pictures but the kid next to me was taking pictures and I still had my phone in my hand.

That’s not all though, folks!

“Security came to take this kid away and they said, ‘You gotta get rid of all those pictures on your phone.’ I said, ‘Prince just said we could take the pictures.’ And so I got kicked out of the Prince show.”

Unfortunately for Mr Arquette the usual response of ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ was greeting with bemused humming and frantic googling before they booted him anyway for having married that annoying tit from that awful sitcom. He was forced, like everyone else who has ever attended a Prince gig, to sign a non-disclosure agreement to ensure that the reptile-faced singer will never be discovered by the American government who would take him away and experiment on him.

Prince was said to be mortified by the news that yet another washed-up celebrity had been removed from his show. In 2006, Dustin Diamond (Screech from Saved by the Bell) was forcibly removed from a Prince show for attempting to ‘tea bag’ the singer from a great height and in 2008 Alfonso Ribeiro tried to revive his popularity as Carlton Banks by doing his famous dance on stage. He was beaten to within an inch of his life by security.

It was brutal.

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You may well think that Prince is some kind of mental freakshow who lives inside a sock made of gold, eating tinfoil all day while stroking his waxy skin… but he’s nothing compared to the complete train wreck that is Whitney Houston.

That’s right. If you consider that Prince has to live with his weird self every stinking day, you’d imagine he’d have an astonishingly high level of tolerance for people who might be considered to be a little bit… uh… eccentric.

However, so nutso is Whitney that even Prince can’t stand her. Prince is so peeved with Houston that he’s banned her from his shows, taking away all her ticket privileges thanks to too many demands and her weird, weird behaviour.

Apparently, Whitney dragged her sorry ass to several Prince concerts in the last couple of weeks. While there, sources say that our Whitters appeared to be “intoxicated” at each show.

It is worth pointing out, for legal reasons, no-one at these shows saw Whitney throwing drinks down her famous throat like they were going out of fashion, nor indeed, did anyone see her using drugs. Like crack.

However, this does imply that she doesn’t need booze or narcotics to be spectacularly batshit.

One thing we can speculate on (thanks to TMZ chattering about it with some authority) is that Whitney was pleading Prince’s staff to let her get up on the stage to presumably sing or prance around like a soon-to-be euthanised horse. However, the pint sized soulster didn’t want her on his stage because he “didn’t want her to embarrass herself.”

There’s a video of Houston at Prince’s show below where, at times, she looks a bit dead behind the eyes… but that might be something to do with the fact that she’s currently receiving treatment in an out-patient rehab program for her drink and drug problems.

Well done you.

Poor ol’ Bobby Brown. Here we have a man who has had a reasonably successful career, hoovered up endless amounts of narcotics, babbled like a complete simpleton and lived the life of a particularly debauched king… however, he didn’t get the ironic kudos now enjoyed by Charlie Sheen.

And while Bobby Brown transfixes his cold, lifeless eyes on the papers, he will eventually gain clarity enough to focus on a picture that appears to show his daughter – the one he had with Whitney Houston – snorting cocaine.

Of course, Bobby and Whitney weren’t exactly squeaky clean, but as a parent, this kind of thing must be rather upsetting, presuming that he’s able to generate tears that is.

Whitney and Bobby’s daughter – Bobbi Kristina – has flatly denied using cocaine. The photos appeared earlier in the week and it certainly looked like she was hovering over a flat surface with lines of powder on it. That might have just been dried plaster that had fallen off her wall and she was merely inspecting it. It might be that. It’s probably that. Yes.

Bobbi Kristina has actually spoken about the snaps on her Twitter page, saying that she was set up by an ex-boyfriend who wanted a quick buck.

“The pictures – a former very dear person to me did this. Set me up to make it look exactly what it looks like. God will smite them yes… But it’s really not what it looks like… People will do anything for money which is extremely sad, and I’m very hurt by this”

“Things people do these days to hurt others is a shame. All I can do now is keep my head up high, keep looking towards the lord”

The lord, it seems, has the best unspecified powder and the smoothest of surfaces in which to appear to brace oneself for a nice toot. Thanks Lord!

And, after that vaguely erudite confessional, what does her fine, upstanding father have to say on the matter?

Despite knowing absolutely nothing, Bobby Brown is absolutely certain of things.

He says:

“I don’t know anything about that…I don’t know anything. My daughter doesn’t do that”

So there you have it. This is a story about someone looking like they’re doing drugs, but they weren’t… and a story about a man who doesn’t know anything, but does.

Bobby Brown has an album coming out soon but no-one will buy it so there’s no point in us telling you what it is called and when it is released.

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Remember the first time you watched The Bodyguard? It felt like it was 37 hours long didn’t it? Still, nowhere near as long as the hideous ‘I Will Always Love YooooooOOOoOoOOOUuu’ haunted our pop charts.

As an aside, have you ever noticed that Whitney Houston looks like she’s having an alfresco dump as the key-change kicks in on the promo video for the song?

Anyway, Warner Bros are looking to remake the film about Whitney Houston being stalked by someone and then, ultimately, falling in love with one of the most boring faced humans on Earth, Kevin Costner. And sadly, it appears that they’re lining up Rihanna for the role.

Of course, putting Rihanna in a role where she’ll have to think she’s not interested in having some kinky S&M sex with someone is problematic. We’re under the assumption that Rihanna doesn’t really have any stalkers because she’s whisks them all backstage and rides them like stolen mopeds ’til they die.

And while the thought of RiRi being sullied by ballads and overwrought movie scripts, it isn’t nearly as depressing as the prospect of the other singers being associated with the film.

More likely to take on the role that Whitney Houston made so famous is Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus. God help us.

It goes without saying that, thanks to this being an updated version, it’ll no doubt include a load of needless nods to the online world.

The stalker will probably use Twitter, Facebook and Google Maps in their attempts to have a quick wank on a washing line.

Deadline.com say

‘The goal is to take a young female singer with global appeal and give her the platform that The Bodyguard did Houston’

Sigh.

Meanwhile, away from the silver screen, Rihanna is being linked to just about every single human on the planet for sexy times. Man, woman and beast – no-one is safe from RiRi’s rampaging vagina it seems.

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Imagine being Bobby Brown’s wife – not a day would pass without you hearing the theme-tune to Ghostbusters 2.

It would be magical. More than that, though, Bobby Brown is caring and tender and vocally willing to pull dried-up constipated turds out of your rectum with his fingers for you. He’s the perfect husband. You know, apart from the drugs and the arrests and the domestic violence and the failure to uphold his child support commitments and – if we’re being honest – the finger-poo stuff. But apart from that, Bobby Brown is the perfect husband.

That’s something that his manager Alicia Etheridge will soon discover, because on Friday – live on stage – Bobby Brown proposed to her and she accepted. Not that we’re pessimistic or anything, but we’re going to write a ‘Bobby Brown and Alicia Etheridge Get Divorced’ story this afternoon, because it’ll probably come in handy in about July.

Let’s get straight to it – Bobby Brown has got engaged to his manager Alicia Etheridge, proposing to her live on stage in Florida on Friday. People reports:

Etheridge joined Brown on stage, holding their 11-month-old son Cassius, he got down on one knee and presented her with a ring. The crowd roared its approval as a beaming Etheridge kissed Brown, who remained kneeling. “We shouted, we screamed,” fan Carol Pearsall told the Florida Times-Union. “We supported him.” Added her husband, Paul, “Hopefully he’ll get it right this time.”

Oh really? It might just be us, but we smell something undeniably fishy here. There are just some aspects of this story that we can’t possibly believe. For instance:

1 - People actually paid to see Bobby Brown in concert.

2 - Alicia Etheridge accepted Bobby Brown’s proposal instead of repeatedly screaming the word ‘No’ into his face and running away as quickly as she could before he beat her up or tried to pull poo out of her bum with his fingers or whatever.

3 - People actually paid to see Bobby Brown in concert.

But you know what? If this is true, we’re thrilled for Bobby Brown and Alicia Etheridge. May the six weeks they spend together before the marriage dissolves in a flurry of crack addiction and squalor and violence and flat-out destitution be the happiest six weeks of their lives.

That said, there’s no reason why Bobby Brown can’t stay married forever this time. Alicia Etheridge just has to remember what he likes in a woman and she’ll be fine. For example, she should remember to fill her bathroom with drug paraphernalia and dildos, to attack imaginary demons with her fists at every opportunity and – most importantly – to always perform the big note at the end of I Will Always Love You in the style of a buffalo walking barefoot over Lego. Get that fixed and Bobby Brown will be the happiest man on the planet. Briefly.

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To be an internet sensation these days, you need one thing – a monobrow that looks like an upturned bikini wax strip.

It worked for Susan Boyle. All she had was a monobrow, a haircut that looked like it was made out of animal pubes and a voice that was relatively pleasant compared to the ghastly atrocity that was her face. That is why people like her, isn’t it? Because they can’t get over the fact that funny-looking people can sing almost as well as normal-looking people? Right?

But get ready to pretend that you’re much deeper than you actually are again, Susan Boyle fans, because there’s a new kid in town. It’s Lin Yu-chun from Taiwan, and he can sing I Will Always Love You almost as well as Whitney Houston. Plus he’s also got a terrible haircut and a lousy dress sense, so you can patronise the crap out of him too! Hooray!

We don’t know much about Lin Yu-chun, but we know that he’s in for a hell of a ride. The new Susan Boyle, they’re calling him, because he can sing quite well despite being a bit odd to look at. And also because he appeared on a talent show and has since become a YouTube sensation, but mainly because he’s quite weird to look at.

Here’s the official story so far: Lin Yu-chun turned up on a Taiwanese talent show called One Million Star and – once everyone had laughed at his stupid hair, awful bow tie, chubby frame and sole eyebrow that’s the exact width of his face, he proceeded to sing a version of I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston in the style of a fairly accomplished karaoke performer. Look, here’s the video:

Wonderful, wasn’t it? We don’t know who this Hugh chap is, but he must be extraordinarily flattered by the fact that Lin Yu-chun performed a song about how he will always love him on the television. What’s that? He was singing ‘I will always love you?’ Could have fooled us.

Anyway, thanks to this video, Lin Yu-chun looks set for a Susan Boyle-style jet ride to the big league. Oh, the things he’ll experience – becoming a global punchline for the way he looks, having a nervous breakdown because of it, trying to make himself look smarter as a result, being verbally abused by people who say that fame has changed him as a result of that, checking into a recuperation clinic as a result of that, losing the final of One Million Star to a bunch of dancers, releasing a best-selling album and then living the rest of his life in a precarious state of emotionally fragility surrounded by meaningless objects of material wealth.

Yep, that Lin Yu-chun’s in for a ride alright.

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The American Music Awards – like the Grammys, but more likely to make you lose total faith in humanity – always surprise.

And last night they surprised. The two biggest winners at last night’s AMAs were Taylor Swift (who wasn’t there) and Michael Jackson (who hasn’t released an album of new material since 2001) (and was nominated for a Greatest Hits album that’s over six years old) (and who is quite conclusively dead).

That wasn’t the surprise, though. No, the big surprise was that Black Eyed Peas won the prize for Best Pop Group. Honestly, what’s wrong with these people? Don’t they have ears?

Oh good. It’s the American Music Awards. You know what this means, don’t you? It means that awards season is here. Soon we’ll be up to our necks in 150 different types of award shows, all doling out meaningless baubles to films that nobody watched, music that nobody paid for and TV shows that people only put on because they’re afraid of silence. Joy.

And if the American Music Awards are any indication, the theme of this year’s award season is going to be Let’s Give Loads Of Stuff To Michael Jackson. Last night at the AMAs, Michael Jackson won Best Soul Artist, Best Pop Male, Best Pop Album and Best Soul Album, even though he didn’t release anything within the allotted time period for nominations. Or within any of the last eight allotted time periods for nominations, in fact. People reports:

“It’s not just about the winnings, the awards,” his brother Jermaine said in an acceptance speech. “It’s mainly the message. The message Michael had will live on forever. He saw good in everyone. … Start with love and let’s love each other.” Sister Janet Jackson got a standing ovation when she opened the show with a choreographed-heavy medley of her hits.

Jermaine Jackson is right – the continued love for Michael Jackson isn’t about winning the awards. It’s about being nominated for the awards, because that way Jermaine Jackson gets to spend his evenings somewhere warm where there’s free food. It’s going to be a cold winter, and he’ll need to stock up before people start forgetting about his brother.

It’s no surprise that Michael Jackson won so many American Music Awards – he was nominated for several of them, after all – but we’re praying that this doesn’t start a trend. Sure, a handful of AMAs are one thing, but nobody wants the Oscars to follow suit and award Moonwalker the Best Picture trophy, do they? Nobody wants the Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe to go to Michael Jackson for his role in The Wiz, do they? Nobody wants Michael Jackson to win a retroactive British Comedy Award for that time he hilariously dangled his baby from a balcony, do they? What? They do? Weird.

But just because Michael Jackson won so many prizes, it doesn’t mean that the American Music Awards only honour washed-up shells of their former selves out of nothing more than a mixture of guilt and nostalgia, even though the acts are thoroughly undeserving of them, does it? Just take a look at who won the AMA Artist Of The Year award last night.

It was Whitney Houston. OK, you may have a point.

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Last night Ricky Loney was eliminated from X Factor. Hopefully you didn’t form a close attachment to him. Oh, of course you didn’t – he was arse-awful.

But aside from that gigantic inevitability, what else happened on X Factor this weekend? Well, Whitney Houston was the guest mentor, so the theme was obviously Diva Night. We heard it was going to be Ludicrous Former Crack-Addict Hasbeens Who Need Weird-Haired Frank Butcher Lookalike Sidekicks To Keep Them Upright, but that was found to be slightly too niche.

Anyway, how did the X Factor contestants do this weekend? Time for that recap you’ve all been waiting for…

Lucie Jones – Everybody has their own definition of the word ‘diva’. Take Lucie Jones, for example. Based on Saturday’s X Factor performance of How Will I Know, she thinks a diva is someone who drops to the floor inside a perspex testicle and then clomps around like an obnoxiously self-confident four-year-old at a Butlins junior talent show. Still, we don’t think that anybody should actually vote for Lucie. You see, if she continues to fill her routines with as many violently sassy hair-flicks as she did on Saturday’s X Factor, it’ll only be a matter of time before her head pops off and she gets rushed to hospital. It’d be a wasted vote.

Olly Murs – The worst thing about Olly Murs, after his hair and his needlessly large mouth and his stupid face and everything he’s ever done in his entire life, is that he’s almost a good performer. On Saturday’s X Factor Olly sang Fool In Love, and 90% of it was decent. It was in tune, nicely choreographed and – crucially – quite short. But the last 10% just made us want to reach inside our TV and slap his massive clueless face. For instance, does Olly really need to shout “HAH!” and “NOW LISTEN!” between every line he sings? No. Does he really have to be so smug that he’s constantly seems on the verge of dissolving? No? Does he really have to look like a dangerously uninhibited Bradley from EastEnders? Well, yes, probably. And that’s why we’ll never be able to love him.

Miss Frank – You may have noticed that we wanted Miss Frank to win X Factor this year. Well that probably won’t happen any more, and it’s all Miss Frank’s fault. If they’d chosen to sing an old Tina Turner song like Olly did, then they’d have sailed through to the next round. But they didn’t. They sang All The Man That I Need. By Whitney Houston. Whitney Houston, for God’s sake. And they sang most of it solo. And there wasn’t even any rapping. It was just a great big empty nothing. By Whitney Houston. Ugh. It’s a shame – if we know who Miss Frank are more than Miss Frank do, then that can’t be a good sign. Disappointing.

Rachel Adedeji - When we saw Rachel Adedeji start her X Factor performance of If I Were A Boy by lying on her back, we were initially worried that her giant asymmetrical haircut had thrown her back out or something. But no, it was all just a false alarm – in fact, there’s a good chance that Rachel was only doing it to make the song more memorable. It was a nice try, because God knows the song itself was such a fat sack of nothing that we barely even noticed when it finished. If only those four haggard stripper girls were around to save Rachel’s arse every week, then she’d be just fine.

Joe McElderry – Here’s what we learnt about Joe McElderry on Saturday’s X Factor: 1) His childhood was an elongated nightmare that alternated between obesity and transvestitism. 2) If he over-emoted any more during his version of Where Do Broken Hearts Go then he would have actually had to do a shit in his trousers. 3) If Britain ever remade High School Musical, then Joe would definitely be a shoo-in for the role of fourth male lead. 4) We’re not really sure that a show like X Factor should be won by someone who clearly idolises H From Steps to such a worrying extent.

Danyl Johnson – So on Saturday’s X Factor, Danyl Johnson performed I Didn’t Know My Own Strength; a song from Whitney Houston’s new album that nobody has ever heard. How did Danyl manage to cope with such a risky strategy? The same way that he copes with everything – by atonally howling the lyrics at the top of his voice. It was awful, but all the X Factor judges were duty-bound to praise it, because a) the song’s executive producer Clive Davis was sitting right next to them and b) nobody wanted to accidentally call Danyl a raging homo again. For the record, though, it was terrible.

Lloyd Daniels – Lloyd didn’t so much perform Bleeding Love on Saturday’s X Factor as cluelessly mumble the lyrics to Bleeding Love while someone held down the Dido preset button on a 1980s Bontempi keyboard. And it was genuinely horrible, possibly the most embarrassing X Factor performance since the days of The Unconventionals. Nobody liked it. The audience didn’t like it. The X Factor judges didn’t like it. Not even Whitney Houston liked it, and she’s spent most of the last decade off her face on crack. Not that Lloyd was ever in danger of being eliminated, though, because Cheryl Cole cried at the end of it and Lloyd gave her a hug. And that’s the sort of shit that you idiots apparently fall for. We hate you sometimes, idiots.

John & Edward – OK John & Edward, we may have got you wrong. We thought you were just a couple of annoying Irish morons, but we were mistaken. In actual fact you are MINDBLOWINGLY AWESOME. On Saturday’s X Factor John & Edward performed Oops… I Did It Again. All of Oops… I Did It Again. Even the spoken-word interlude. While wearing red leather suits. On a technical level there might have been some timing and pitch issues, but on a spiritual level John & Edward were THE BEST THING WE HAVE EVER SEEN. Watching John & Edward was like watching a UNICORN HUMP A RAINBOW. John & Edward were JESUSLIKE. John & Edward MUST WIN X FACTOR. THEY MUST. WIN. X FACTOR.

Rikki Loney - Whoever decided to make Rikki Loney – weedy little pointless hat-wearing Rikki Loney – sing Respect on Saturday’s X Factor deserves a medal. Because it’s finally what got Rikki slung out of X Factor forever. It was a dreary, muted version of Respect that was as flat and uneventful as we imagine most of Rikki’s life has been up until this point, and not even paying four tubby backing singing to desperately dry-hump their microphone stands could detract from how monstrous it all was. The end.

Jamie Archer – Up to and during his performance of Thank You on Saturday’s X Factor, we were worried that Jamie Archer was going to let us down. True, he did refer to himself as ‘Mr Cool Guy’ in the pre-song VT. And he did say that the song would show the public who he really was – which, based on his performance, means that he’s really a bland, whiny turd. But he didn’t even shout “Come on!” at the audience once during the song. Were we wrong about Jamie Archer? Was he less of a staggering cock than we’d been giving him credit for? No. Because as soon as he finished singing, Jamie Archer high-fived Simon Cowell. Cockitude restored. As you were, people.

Stacey Solomon – Now, OK, based on talent Stacey Solomon should probably win X Factor. But we’re worried about her. We think we’re detecting the genesis of Leona Syndrome with her. You know Leona Syndrome. It’s where a singer is so consistently faultless week after week that the public starts to tire of them, putting their chances of winning in jeopardy. Stacey’s X Factor performance of At Last on Saturday was perfect, just as her X Factor performance of The Scientist the week before was perfect. This is the sort of thing that could get old fast. So thank God she’s such a gibbering chav, eh? That’ll save her.

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Whitney Houston got where she is today by following one rule – take so many drugs that you end up looking like wheezy cadaver.

Wait, no, that’s not right. What we meant to say was that Whitney Houston got popular by following one rule – give the people what they want. And this worked, because in the 1990s people wanted bad films and identical-sounding songs bellowed by idiots. And Whitney Houston still follows this rule.

Because Whitney Houston is still giving the people what they want – anecdotes about the time Bobby Brown went mental, spat on her and started drawing evil eyes everywhere. Splendid.

Thanks to the success of her new album Deliberately Familiar-Sounding Songs Performed In A Slightly Disappointing Way – or whatever – Whitney Houston is back on top. Well, alright, not completely back on top – when she sings live Whitney Houston still tends to sound like a octogenarian tramp having an asthma attack inside a metal dustbin – but it’s enough for now.

Because over the last few years Whitney Houston has faced a number of seemingly insurmountable personal problems. She was addicted to crack. She had to sell everything she owned. She was married to an idiot. She made a reality TV show primarily focused on the dehydrated faecal impactions wedged inside her rectum. Osama bin Laden wanted to hump her quite badly. You could pick any single one of those things and it’d be enough to wreck your life. But not good old Whitney Houston.

You see, Whitney has managed to drag herself out of the mire. She’s been gifted a second chance, a clean sheet upon which she can rewrite her life. Looking back on the bad old times would be preposterously ill-advised – sure, it might help Whitney sell a few more records, but the effect on her personal well-being could be devastating.

So, long story short, Whitney Houston has decided to look back on the bad old times. With Oprah Winfrey. On television. In forensic details. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Whitney Houston’s bad old times sounded hilarious! Especially the part where Bobby Brown became overwhelmed by a terrifying drug-induced paranoia and started painting evil eyes all over the house. Reuters reports:

Houston said that during the couple’s narcotics-filled days, Brown would break glass objects in their home, and at one point he began painting eyes in their bedroom. “Evil eyes that were looking at every point in the room… I’m looking at it and going, ‘Lord, what’s really going on here?’ Because I was getting scared.” … Houston recalled a time when Brown spat on her when he had been drinking.

And Whitney Houston gave all of that up to return to music? That woman is crazy, plain and simple. It’s Bobby Brown who we feel most sorry for – there he is, tired after a hard day of breaking glass, obsessively painting thousands of disturbing eyeballs across every available surface and spitting at things, and all he wants from his wife is a nice cooked dinner and a backrub when he’s finished. But is she there to do all that for him? No, because she’s too busy telling the entire world what an unsettling crackpot he is. For shame, Whitney Houston. For shame.

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With her new album I Look To You, Whitney Houston has a lot to prove. OK, actually that’s a lie – she doesn’t.

Whitney Houston only needs to prove three things. That she can sing, that she’s beaten drugs, and that she doesn’t need loved ones to remove hard-to-reach faecal clods from her rectum with their fingers.

Yesterday Whitney Houston marked her comeback with a TV performance. And it was a total success, provided that your definition of success involves a woman breathlessly speaking the lyrics of her songs like an asthmatic being chased up a hill by an angry dog.

Whitney Houston has had a rough few years, hasn’t she? She became so addicted to crack that she reportedly spent her entire life either trying to punch imaginary demons off her shoulder or locking herself away in her bathroom, which also apparently doubled up as a sort of dildo repository. But that’s not all.

In addition to her addiction, Whitney Houston also became the target of a schoolgirl crush from Osama bin Laden and – thanks to the reality TV show Being Bobby Brown – became primarily famous for being the woman who needed her husband to ease out dried-up poo-clumps from inside her bottom.

Now normally that would be enough – we don’t know about you, but if were known as the world’s leading constipated, terrorist-wooing crack addict then we’d be able to retire happy – but not for Whitney Houston. Whitney’s starred in enough horribly generic movies to know that no story is complete without a triumphant comeback at the end. So that’s what she’s done.

Whitney’s comeback album I Look To You has been several years in the making, and it was finally released on Monday. Now, admittedly there hasn’t been much of a marketing push behind it – almost as if the record label is slightly embarrassed by it – but that doesn’t matter. As soon as Whitney Houston unleashes that voice – that famous, soaring, pitch-perfect voice – in public, then everyone will fall in line behind her.

Whitney Houston knows this, which is why she gave a special performance yesterday on Good Morning America. And, by christ, it was special. Here’s a video…

Whitney Houston is right – she is every woman. Or, at the very least, she’s every exhausted-looking drug-obliterated tone-deaf amateur karaoke night woman with the lung capacity of a pneumonia-stricken field mouse. But that still sort of counts.

As you’d expect, Whitney Houston’s Good Morning America performance has drawn criticism from every quarter, taking her to task for letting the backing singers do most of the work, for speak-singing the ballads like an out-of-shape Isaac Hayes impersonator and for failing to sing large chunks of other songs entirely.

But you know what? Even a terrible, breathless, erratic, out-of-tune Whitney Houston is better than no Whitney Houston at all. Because at least now she’s got an album out she won’t feel the need to rush-release yet another cobbled-together greatest hits album for Christmas. At least this will be easier to ignore.

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Hey kids, remember Whitney Houston? Of course you do. Bobby Brown. Gigantic crack addiction. Come on, you remember.

Oh, don’t be like that. You know who Whitney Houston is. Come on. Bobby Brown. Domestic abuse. You remember. Whitney Houston. Hallucinating imaginary demons. Gruesome reliance on sex aids. No teeth. No? Oh, come on. It’s Whitney Houston! Looks like Otzi The Iceman. Makes people pull constipated turds out of her arse with their bare fingers. Oh, so now you know who Whitney Houston is.

Anyway, Whitney Houston is apparently a singer too, and she’s got a new album out soon. Weird.

It’s been 11 years since Whitney Houston last released a hit record, 1998′s My Love Is Your Love. And just look at all the crap that’s happened in the meantime. Wars, environmental disaster, terrorist atrocities, financial collapse. Would any of these have happened if Whitney Houston hadn’t gone on her extended sabbatical? No, no of course they wouldn’t – the universal themes of love as demonstrated in such Whitney Houston classics as The Greatest Love Of All, I’m Every Woman and My Name Is Not Susan would have single-handedly put a stop to all that funny business.

We mean it. At the very least, Whitney Houston’s continued success would have meant that Osama bin Laden would have been too busy rubbing his crotch up and down the TV screen every time one of her videos came on MTV to plan and execute 9/11. And we can say that with some degree of certainty.

So the world needs Whitney Houston more than ever, if only because a new album of hers would give the endless parade of X Factor contestants something other than I Will Always Love You and I Have Nothing to warble during their interminable auditions. So the good news is this – Whitney Houston is back!

No, really, Whitney Houston is back. She’s ditched her hilariously stereotypical addiction to crack, all the teeth that she lost during her addiction period have presumably grown back and she’s divorced that man whose main role appeared to involve yanking wads of poo out of her bum with his fingers and then discussing it on television – and she’s ready to release a brand new album. Rolling Stone reports:

After a six-year absence from the studio, Whitney Houston will return with a new album on September 1st, 2009. While there’s no word on the track list for Whitney’s September record, Davis had mentioned she was stepping into the studio with R. Kelly to record a song titled “I Look to You” and spoke about a Diane Warren-penned ballad called “I Didn’t Know My Own Strength.”

Now don’t get too excited – Whitney Houston’s comeback album had already been promised for last Christmas, and it didn’t appear then, so it won’t be too much of a surprise if it ends up getting postponed again. In many ways we hope it does, since in our opinion the world of painfully bland hairdresser R&B-lite has always been crying out for a Chinese Democracy.

But let’s look on the bright side here. Congratulations, Whitney. We’re right behind you. That’s mostly because if we get in front of you you might see us, have a crack flashback, mistake us for an imaginary demon and attack us with your shoe. We really can’t stress how eager we are for that not to happen.

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A guest blog by Josh from Interestment…

Wow, what a crazy time everyone had at London Fancy Dress Week.

The Geldof sisters were there with Ray Winstone’s oiky little girl. She was with Keith Allen’s offspring, who was probably staring from the corner of his eye at Daisy Lowe’s bosoms, which have been having quite an airing lately, if i-D magazine has anything to do with it.

Of course, Alexa Chung – the only non-celebrity child – was the glue keeping everyone together, with her pipe-cleaner legs and voice like a loudspeaker. What a trendy bunch. And, yet, so difficult to like. It could, of course, sound like a case of sour grapes, but it’s not at all. As this small list of extremely excellent celebrity offspring who we absolutely adore proves…

1. Jeff Bridges, son of Lloyd

Faced with the choice of hoiking himself around A-list hangouts, demanding drinks for free, and blogging about his every waking emotion, or actually doing something, and Jeff chose the latter. It was an intelligent choice. He became a better actor than his dad, and can count Tron, Jagged Edge and the most student-friendly film of all time The Big Lebowski as his legacy. He edges arch magazine editor Peaches Geldof out of the running.

2. Whitney Houston, daughter of Cissy

Yes, she has turned into a strange drug-addled maniac, but before that, this girl was a shining example to all of us. Her mother had sung backing vocals for legends like Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin, but her biggest hit came in 1963, when she squeezed Whitney Houston out of her vagina. The child went on to become even better at singing than God himself, and was mind-bogglingly excellent, until she married Bobby Brown and started playing invisible pianos and telling everyone to get stuffed. Or something like that. She keeps singer/songwriter/chat show thing/flasher Lily Allen on the subs bench.

3. Liv Tyler, daughter of Steven

As the result of sexual intercourse between a Playboy Playmate and a genuine rock star, Liv Tyler is like a better version of Daisy Lowe. She has notched up an impressive film career, when, really, she could probably have just taken her clothes off and stared brainlessly down a camera lens, whilst a sniffing photographer explained in monotonous detail how doing things in black and white makes things look classier. Good for her.

4. Michael Douglas, son of Kirk

For some reason, Michael Douglas doesn’t seem to be as popular as he should be. This might be because some people still see him as the spoilt little brat produced of Kirk Douglas’s mighty thespian loins. Yet, he’s brilliant. Anyone who has seen Wall Street, Romancing The Stone or the one about drugs where he’s the president, already knows that this man has perhaps even surpassed his famous father. Bonus points also for removing Catherine Zeta Jones from the dating circuit. He bulldozes Jaime Winstone out of the running.

This was a guest blog by the masterful Josh Burt from the equally masterful Interestment.co.uk. Go there for a good time.

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