Phoning it in

When she first burst onto the scene in 1999, most people expected Britney Spears to be a one-hit wonder, no matter how great that hit happened to be. But some canny choices on the part of her record label showed that they believed in the pigtailed former Mouseketeer. The hits kept coming, and within a year she'd already lined up her sophomore release, which opened with yet another killer lead single. Its glib title, Oops... I Did It Again, told us everything we needed to know about her approach to her career - indifferent good fortune trumping any kind of musical ambition.

Once again, the Swedish hit factory managed to churn out an album of thumping, insistent and painfully catchy tracks, only marred by the inclusion of a couple of dopey ballads and some spoken-word interludes that could trigger a hyperglycaemic attack. By this point, a number of other would-be pop tarts had emerged, with Christina Aguilera leading the competition with her powerful over-souled vocals. In contrast, Britney's distinctive 'gulp and gargle' vocal style had become a caricature of itself, often making her sound like Professor Frink.

In the years that followed, Britney decided to jettison melody in favour of the overt sexuality of her dirrty rival. Despite this seismic shift in style, the fans stayed with her, regularly sending her back to the top of the charts, irrespective of the quality of the songs involved.

Her new album Femme Fatale was launched this week to a reasonable level of acclaim. Critics suggested that Britney was back on top, and had turned out the best album of her career to date. And on the surface, it's hard to disagree. We've already had a couple of strong singles, and there are three or four other viable contenders on the album - including will.i.am's predictably over-tweaked 'Big Fat Bass', which features a vocodered rap from the Wall-E of R&B himself.

Although her albums and tours have continued to shift units like the 99p hotcake store, Britney herself has seemed less and less involved. With a dream team of producers at her disposal, and a bunch of technical tricks to disguise her thin and characterless voice, her musical contribution amounts to little more than a cameo on her own records.

So it's funny to hear Louisiana's favourite export telling Capital FM that she'd like to team up with Lady Gaga, Adele and Rihanna: "I feel like we need to come together and do a song that speaks for itself and shows how much power we do have. I feel like the genre of women today musically is just astounding. We can show how our voices can come together.” I don't know what's more disturbing, her misuse of the word 'genre', or the fact that she thinks her voice can blend with anything that isn't written in binary code.

As part of the publicity campaign for Femme Fatale, Britney made an indirect appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel show last week, as Johnny Knoxville introduced a deleted sketch from Jackass 3D. In the 'Poo Cocktail Supreme' clip, Britney was shut in a chemical toilet and fired into the air on a giant bungee. Except that she wasn't really - the effluence-soaked woman that emerged from the cubicle was slimmer and wearing a different coloured top. Not that anyone was particularly surprised; if she's not even prepared to sing live, why should we expect her to be up for flying through the air in a plastic box full of shit?

Making things even more problematic for her latest comeback attempt, is the fact that sources 'close to Britney' (meaning 'passing acquaintances keen to sell a story') have been telling the press about her state-of-mind. One close friend told the Mirror “She was basically like a puppet who would be told do this, do that, and then be asked to sit down again. It was sad. From what I saw, she does nothing more than lend her name and celebrity to the production." If Britney does act "like a dead-eyed robot", as this source suggests, at least that's consistent with her vocals. Rather than 'Femme Fatale', maybe 'Living Doll' would have been a better title.

Don't hold it against her

Well, Britney's third or fourth (I've lost count) comeback is now in full swing, and the new album is just five short weeks away. Although it seems like just yesterday that a sultry schoolgirl was inflaming the lust of pedophiles and misogynists, it's actually 12 years since the former Mousketeer implanted herself in the public consciousness.

A lot has changed since then, not least in the pop landscape, where Britney was once seen as the pretender to Madonna's fiercely defended throne. But that was all pre-Gaga, and now there's a new bitch on the block for Britney to fight off.

Initially, it looked as though reclaiming her title was going to be as easy as taking chicken nuggets from a baby (her own baby, in fact). New single 'Hold It Against Me' netted an astonishing 411, 000 downloads in its first week, making it the fastest selling digital single for a female artist. However, she didn't count on a certain Lady, whose own comeback single managed to score one million sales in the same amount of time.

But all was not lost, since Britney had another ace up her sleeveless halter-top: the video. Even as the Bellamy Brothers were preparing to launch a pointless lawsuit, claiming ownership of the world's lamest pick-up line, Britney was getting ready to share an eagerly awaited new film clip that would show her back on top.

Having endured more relentless teasing than a gay kid in Catholic school, we were finally presented with the finished article. And it all seemed a bit, well, meh.

On the plus side, Britney's looking good again, although she's squeezed into a busty top that seems to defy all known laws of physics (particularly concerning gravity and displacement theory. She stomps around the stage in a pair of unforgiving microshorts, and shows off a kind of wedding dress that most gypsy brides would consider a bit 'showy'.

There's a lot going on in the video - dancers in underwear, walls of monitors, paint splashed all over the place, an incongruous reference to the opening scenes of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Britney kicking her own ass, and even a flaming meteor. But none of it really hangs together - there's no coherent theme or narrative, except maybe the dark side of fame. Perhaps Britney knew that it was going to debut before an episode of Jersey Shore, and didn't want to tax the viewers with anything too cerebral.

But the most disappointing element of the video is the jarring product placement that seems to encroach on every scene, enhancing the sense of disjointedness. It's almost as though our attention span has been reduced to such microscopic levels that we need an ad break every eight seconds, because a four-minute promo would be just too much content to take in.

We see Britney spritz her Radiance perfume, brush on her Make Up Forever eye-shadow (does Britney do her own make-up on video shoots now?) and surf Plenty-Of-Fish, as well as suffering countless crash zooms into the Sony logo on her fancy new touchscreen laptop. It's all a bit wearying, and a far cry from the glimpse of wit we saw in the Womanizer video, which featured a close-up of a diary entry on her Nokia touchscreen that read 'Product Placement Meeting'.

Pop music is supposed to be commercial, and Britney certainly knows how to sell herself. But when the primary motive seems to be selling other people's stuff, the songs themselves become a secondary consideration. Suddenly, 'Me Against The Music' takes on a disappointing new meaning.

Oops, Disney did it again

Being a child star is a tough business. All that pressure and adulation from an early age, temptation at every corner, and parents who are more interested in your earning potential than homework and bedtime.

The latest casualty of the celebrity conveyor belt is Demi Lovato, star of 'Camp Rock', Disney's outdoorsy alternative to its 'High School Musical' franchise. Like many other Disney alumni, Demi's real-life exploits don't quite correlate with her house-of-mouse persona.

As far as the public were concerned, the raciest thing she'd ever done was perform close harmonies with the Jonas brothers. So everyone's Mouse ears pricked up when it was revealed six weeks ago that Demi had checked herself into rehab for 'emotional and physical' issues.

Given the nebulous explanation offered to the press, it's hardly surprising that speculation was rife about what could have triggered the breakdown. It didn't take too long to find a paper trail that looked an awful lot like a rolled up banknote, or the photos of Demi on her way to Miley Cyrus' birthday accidentally revealing some self-harm scars on her inner arm.

All of Demi's close friends rushed to the nearest paying journalists to reveal the gory details of her bad break-up with Joe Jonas (too much alliteration in that sentence). They described her as a tortured mess; a claim that was soon backed up when it emerged that Demi had punched one of her tour dancers and given her a black eye.

But the final straw was the one rumoured to spend most of its time up her nostril, as a Texan college student called Brian Payne told Life & Style magazine that Demi had coke-snorting skills that would put Lindsay Lohan to shame. He said "I just remember her doing it [cocaine] as if she had been doing it for a long time. It didn't seem like something new to her."

With her career in tatters while she's barely old enough to buy the alcohol she's so fond of "chugging straight from the bottle", and a rumoured sex tape on the horizon, it's clear that Demi needs all the help she can get.

But forget about therapists, psychologists and trained counsellors. Disney has decided that the best person to guide their ever-growing stable of pubescent cash cows is ex-Mousketeer Britney Spears. They figure that because she had a meltdown so epic that it affected oceanic currents, she's best placed to advise future starlets on how to avoid the pitfalls of fame.

According to one studio insider, "Justin [Timberlake] and Britney have been asked if they would like to come in and speak to their younger counterparts about the tribulations of being famous so young. The Disney bosses think that if they have people to look up to they might stay on the straight and narrow."

Failing that, Britney can at least give them tips on how to accessorise a shaven head or attack an SUV without damaging an umbrella. She may be stuck in rehab, but perhaps Demi has had a lucky escape. 

Au naturel?

Move over Jean D'Arc. Shift your keister Emmeline Pankhurst. There's a new symbol of female empowerment in town, and she's taking no prisoners.

In the last few years she may have seemed about as stable as a wobbly bar stool, but Britney Jean Spears is finally back in control. She's cleaned up her act and decided to do something nobody ever expected. Besides singing live, of course.

When it was first revealed that Britney was going to be advertising a new range of Candies clothing for Kohl's department stores, preliminary artwork for the campaign was released to showcase the expensive-looking photography involved. But commentators were more interested in how much Photoshop had been employed, given that Britney looked about as realistic as Heidi Montag.

However, nobody was expecting Britney herself to decide to release the un-retouched photography alongside the actual campaign images. Despite a career built on artifice and image over content, Britney is apparently concerned about "the pressure exerted on women to look perfect" and wanted to show that she's "proud of her body - imperfections and all."

It's a bold gesture, albeit one that was probably easier for Britney to make given the fact that the original images were pretty complimentary. Sure, her legs are a little chunkier, her waist a little broader, and there are some unattractive bruises on her thigh. But given the fact that she's wearing an unforgiving hot pink swimsuit and heels, she's still got plenty to be confident about.

The idea of Britney striking a blow for female empowerment is a troubling one. If we're going to willingly accept this brave new world, maybe we also need to reappraise Britney's previous misadventures. Perhaps she's been sending out positive messages all along?

When she shaved her head, it was a gesture of sisterhood for women with alopecia. Those mimed concert appearances - an exposure of the artifice of the recording industry. And when she attacked that photographer's car with an umbrella she was making a statement about the impending threat of climate change.

The other explanation is that she was sitting in Supercuts, waiting to have her weave re-glued, and decided to flick through the new Marie Claire. Incensed by Jessica Simpson's unretouched, make-up-free cover image, she vowed not to be outdone by a pretender to her throne.

Whatever her motivation, it's clear that Britney wants a fresh start. And the fact that she made this decision indicates that she's running her own career, rather than relying on an ambulance chasing 'manager'. Looks like our girl is now a woman.

Oh my God that Britney's shameless

With the new year still in its infancy, lots of people are still looking back at 2009 and making a mental audit of everything they experienced throughout the year. For instance, Lady GaGa had a great year, Michael Jackson and Jade Goody less so.

As far as Britney Spears is concerned, the jury's still out. She did manage to claw herself back from round-the-clock psychiatric supervision and popped out a couple more massive hit singles. But she also had to endure the ignominy of mass walkouts from her concerts when it emerged that she was lip-synching, rather than performing live. Although anyone genuinely shocked by the idea of Britney miming deserves to be fleeced out of a couple of hundred dollars. What next? Magazine readers shocked to find that Demi Moore pictures have been airbrushed?

Still, after an unprecedented year of intrusive press coverage, Britney is fighting back. In an unusual demonstration of self-awareness, Team Britney has created a fascinating countdown of bullshit called 'The Year in BS' that highlights all of their favourite made-up stories.

It turns out that over 13,000 stories were written about Britney in 2009, but the vast majority of them were about as believable as one of her live performances. The website claims "we ranked the ones we believe were the most ridiculous. Either because they were factually inaccurate, because they reported the patently absurd, or because we believe they are simply offensive to the sensibilities."

The list details all manner of misreported non-events, it's like a bumper annual of the News of the World showbiz pages. Knockbacks, new boyfriends, audience protests - all the most controversial and shocking stories are meticulously rehashed for Britney fans to bite their thumb at.

The problem is, there's no effort to set the story straight on any of the issues. Britney's dedicated fans are expected to believe the official version of events, without having an actual story to buy into. It's basically just 75 'no comments' one after the other.

Given that 2008 was a year when Britney's sanest moments included shaving her head, having a stand-off with the police, attacking a car with an umbrella and enjoying the company of Paris Hilton, it's no wonder that people were willing to believe pretty much anything about her.

Shine like a star

What a coincidence! Within hours of my last post, about the Daily Mail attacking ageing celebrities, they ran another story that turned the subject on its head. This time though, they commissioned an ageing celebrity to attack other people - namely the 'sub-lebrities' who she feels are muscling in on her carefully composed limelight.

Demonstrating a talent for writing matched only by her acting skills, Joan Collins has thrown up a wonderfully condescending piece about her glory days - which you'd be forgiven for thinking would be around 1350 AD.

You see, Joan remembers when the word 'star' meant a gloriously untouchable luminary of stage and screen, rather than a dimly-remembered newsreader negotiating her dentures around a marsupial's testes.

These 'nonentities', as Joan so kindly refers to them, haven't put in the hard work to attain their celebrity. They're 'nobodies' and 'wannabes', "devoid of talent, beauty or charm". Which is a little rich coming from someone who sustained her own jet-setting lifestyle by allowing Leonard Rossiter to throw his Cinzano down her front, like a contestant in the world's least appealing wet T-shirt competition.

Come to think of it, the word 'wannabe' deserves a little more interrogation. I've always assumed it refers to a performer aspiring to be something they're not, which must be completely alien to a woman whose career only really took off when 20th Century Fox signed her in 1954 as their answer to MGM's Elizabeth Taylor. Or when she signed up for the woeful Flintstones sequel playing the role originated by Ms Taylor.

Missing the irony in her ugly rant, Joan continues: "Their instant fame had absolutely nothing to do with dedication to a craft, talent or even hard work. Instead, it was: 'Look at me, I'm famous' - and that's all they wanted."

Fame through association turns Joan's stomach. Unless, of course, it's her father Joseph publishing his own autobiography "A Touch of Collins" in 1986. Or her daughter, Tara Newley, and her ill-fated attempts at TV presenting and pop music. And the fact that Joan's most successful output in the 1970s was a pair of tacky sex romps, based on books by her sister, is neither here nor there.

Equally troubling to St Joan is the fact that these so-called (copyright Daily Mail) celebrities sustain their fame through reality TV shows aimed at the lowest common denominator. You know, shows like 'Joan Does Glamour', where the scathing septuagenarian bullied poorly-dressed proles for not wearing vintage Halston and a mink stole.

Scoring highly on Joan's sub-lebrity scale is Britney Spears, who was tacky enough to endure a psychological meltdown in the glare of the flashbulbs. Sympathetically describing Britney's various cries for help as "bizarre and outrageous antics", Joan blames the young singer for causing "paparazzi chaos whenever she ventured out of her house". Never once does it occur to Joan that the problem here lies, not with the celebrities themselves, but with the avaricious press that go to increasingly intrusive lengths to wallow in every aspect of these people's lives.

Bring back the good old days, says Joan. When homosexuals like Rock Hudson had the decency to hide themselves away. And when one of the most famous people in the world was Jackie Kennedy Onassis, a woman whose only notable talent was snagging a couple of powerful husbands.

Joan's got it wrong. The world of celebrity has always attracted fame-hungry, grasping, talentless whores. And people who live in glass houses need to clean their mirrors occasionally.

Is this microphone on?

Ever since they first met on the set of Disney's Mickey Mouse Club, Britney and Justin have been in and out of each other's lives. By the late nineties, they were spending so much time at the top of the charts that they could have claimed squatters' rights and stayed there indefinitely. They also made an appealingly perky couple, and often talked about their infatuation for one another.

However, their inevitable break-up drove a huge wedge between the onetime Mouseketeers, with Britney hitting the burritos and Justin reinventing himself as everyone's favourite wonderbread R&B star. But after all this time apart they've both been in the news this week, thanks to their inimitable vocal stylings; one for the sounds they make, the other for the sounds they don't.

After an epic meltdown worthy of the closing moments of Terminator 2, Britney's big comeback caused a bit of a stink on the X-Factor last year. Not only did she seem oblivious to the fact that she was appearing on a talent show, her perfomance involved little more than stamping around a stage in a pair of hotpants, and jabbing her finger at Brian Friedman's dance troupe. Now it seems that her live appearances are getting her into hot water all over again.

She's just landed in Australia on her world tour, but not everyone's happy about it. The Australian government is worried that Britney's fans are being duped into paying over the odds to see a singer who's microphone isn't even switched on.

Virginia Judge, the aptly named Minister for Fair Trading for New South Wales, wants to ensure that people know what they're letting themselves in for when they pay up to $1,300 per ticket. Although Judge has the public's best intentions at heart, it's safe to assume that few people will be buying Britney tickets in the hope of hearing a kick-ass vocal. It's a bit like going to McDonalds with a taste for lobster bisque.

But Justin's voice has also been hitting the headlines this week, for very different reasons. In his quest for silver screen superstardom, Justin has signed up for his biggest movie role yet. Although it's one that may take some of his fans by surprise.

Following hot on the heels of the Scooby Doo franchise, a big screen movie about ursine picnic basket-stealer Yogi Bear has been greenlit, with JT signing on to provide the voice of permanently perturbed sidekick Boo Boo.

Although Justin showed off his comedic chops in Mike Myers' recent flop The Love Guru, it's hard to tell whether he's likely to be successful as an anthropomorphic bear cub.

Still, I can't help but wonder whether the producers missed a trick when it came to casting. Since Boo Boo's outfit consists solely of a little blue bowtie, they might have tried out a different R&B singer in the role. After all, CGI is pretty expensive, and Chris Brown could have at least provided his own wardrobe. 

Living the dream?

"What happened to the dreams of a girl president
She's dancing in the video next to 50 Cent
They travel in packs of two or three
With their itsy bitsy doggies and their teeny-weeny tees..."
Stupid Girl, by P!nk

Call it the Paris Effect. Apparently, tired of seeing pictures of Britney, Lindsay, Paris et al falling out of limousines and their dresses, the public is turning its back on the 'stupid girls' who clog up the pages of celebrity magazines. Instead, we're facing a new dawn of good, old-fashioned etiquette.

According to an article by Reuters journalist Michelle Nichols, the combination of public bad behaviour and a tough economy are encouraging women to improve their morals and manners, in the process giving them a better chance in their chosen careers.

The proof of this dramatic shift in conduct is summed up in a new lifestyle book called "How to be a Hepburn in a Hilton World." Written by 24-year old Jordan Christy from Nashville, Tennessee, the book has rather archaic-sounding chapters like 'Keep Your Chin Up and Your Skirt Down', 'Dress to Impress' and 'Let Him Come Calling'. Christy maintains that "there are a lot of people out there who want to see a return to our feminine values" and so she's waging a war on those with an absence of morals, class and functioning underwear.

Given the popularity of shows such as VH1's "Charm School" and Britain's "Ladette to Lady," this latest development shouldn't really come as any surprise. Although I suspect that audiences choose to watch these shows because they relish the element of culture clash, rather than because they secretly dream of walking with half a bookcase balancing on their heads.

So what does this mean in an era of tit-tape and Brazilian waxes? The world of celebrity is full of young women who think finishing school is where you go to learn how to end a massage. And there are still millions who devour their every misdeed and misadventure.

We may aspire to their wealth and lifestyle, but deep down we have the self-respect to conduct ourselves with a little more deportment. We see their nude photos, sex videos and nightclub rampages, and feel a little better about ourselves. The self-respect that Christy is concerned with, is actually hardwired into most ordinary people. People who'd actually know if one of their breasts was hanging out the side of their dress in a crowded room. Rather than wishing we were them, I think deep down, we're rather glad that we're not.

Who can't handle the truth?

Famous for his temperamental nature, affinity for starlets and a fondness for Colombia's leading export, legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans wrote a spectacular tell-all memoir called 'The Kid Stays In The Picture'. The introduction sets up his warts-n-all approach to autobiography, explaining that "There are three sides to every story. Your version, my version and the truth."

So it's interesting to see that Dan Abrams, a TV host, legal commentator and web entrepreneur is setting up a new website called www.GossipCop.com based on the same fundamental approach. The purpose of the site is to separate fact and fiction on celebrity-related stories, in the hope that it will shut down some of the erroneous non-stories that proliferate over the internet's garden fence.

The idea is that gossip-hungry celeb watchers can use the site as a fact-checker, the next time they see a story they want to know more about. So if you want to know the truth about Britney's role in a Holocaust drama or George Clooney's psychic connection to his dead pot-bellied pig, GossipCop will set you straight. There's even a handy little thermometer to help you assess the where the story sits on the rumour-to-real scale.

Unfortunately, this seemingly noble venture is just another tool enabling celebrities and their PR-mies to manipulate the meaning of the word 'truth'. We live in a world of CelebDaq, where coverage means value. If truth was what really mattered, there'd be no exclusive interviews, stories based on 'insider' leaks, or features that start with "...is rumoured to be..."

As this story points out, we don't actually care whether a story is true or not. We learn as much about celebrities from the false stories as we do from the official coverage. GossipCop may well prove to be a hit, but only because it aggregates lots of celebrity stories in one place. But for a site that represents itself as authoritative, it's weird that truth is a depicted as a sliding scale. Call me old fashioned but I always though that words like 'fact' and 'truth' were absolutes.

Bitter Queen vs King of Pop

Despite their reputation for flakiness, celebrities are usually a reliable bunch. For instance, Britney will always be a trashy, inarticulate mess, Jordan will always find something excruciatingly private to discuss with a paying publication, and Rupert Everett will always say something shockingly ill-advised whenever he has a new product to plug. Unfortunately though, Rupert seems to work less than Victoria Beckham's smile muscles, and so we don't hear from him nearly enough.

Thankfully, with new Channel 4 show The Scandalous Adventures Of Lord Byron to promote, Rupert's crawled out from under a plastic surgeon to speak bluntly about anything that takes his fancy. This time around it's Michael Jackson and the very notion of celebrity that bear the brunt.

Having already labelled Jackson a freak, Rupert added that "He looked like a character from Shrek. He was a black to white minstrel." Pointedly ignoring the medical issues affecting Jackson's skin-colour, Everett's rapidly derailing train of thought elaborated on the racial issue, commenting that "He personified the pain and anxiety of a black man in a slave country." If anyone can claim to be an expert on the complexities of race relations in 21st Century USA, it's bound to be an ex-rent boy whose last role of note was that of a comical headmistress.

But according to Rupert, Jackson's death heralds a bigger event - the end of celebrity culture as we know it. Comparing the extremes of modern celebrity to the last days of Versailles, he wonders how much more bullshit we can take about celebrities. Well, I don't know about him, but I can handle plenty more. Which should be good news, since at least it means there'll still be an audience the next time he wants to talk publicly about his time as a junkie, or perhaps slate service men and woman for always "whining about the dangers of being killed."

Then again, it shouldn't really come as a surprise that he spends so much time talking out of his arse, since he's had so much plastic surgery that it's practically next to his mouth anyway.

Pots and kettles

Who doesn't love Kelly Osbourne? Actually that's a rhetorical question, you don't need to answer. Despite looking like a Pizza Express doughball in a bad wig, and having no discernible skills or talent, she loves to lay into anyone else vying for attention in the public eye. As opinionated as she is ill-informed, she's always game for a knuckle-gnawingly awful soundbite about someone more famous.

In fact, type 'Kelly Osbourne attacks' into Google and over 200,000 results come back. Paris Hilton,Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Amy Winehouse and the Spice Girls have all felt the sharp end of Kelly's overworked tongue. Although, technically, Amy was defriended rather than attacked. Big difference apparently.

This week, Kelly's turned her beady eye on flavour-of-the-month Lady GaGa. Although she grudgingly admitted liking GaGa's music, she condemned the eccentric popstrel as being a butterface. But the hypocrisy doesn't stop there. Kelly also said "I just wish she'd keep her mouth shut. She talks way too much and has too much attitude."

Still, this casual venom should hardly come as a surprise, given Kelly's unique heritage. After all, this is a girl who fondly recalls the times when her mother Sharon would get her and Jack to shit in a box, then send it to any journalists that had annoyed her. With that in mind, I'd love to see the criteria for Celebrity Mother of the Year, which Sharon won in 2006. Maybe Kerry Katona was busy that year?

Death takes a holiday, visits Hollywood

After the double whammy of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, suspicious celeb-watchers, convinced of the rule of three, have been scrutinising the news media for details of who would complete the terminal tryptich. Conveniently disregarding the death of long-time Johnny Carson cohort Ed McMahon and shouty infomercial legend Billy Mays, the harbingers of doom have grown increasingly random in the search for celebritragedy.

As a result, we were treated to the shocking news that stuttering movie mumbler Jeff 'one note' Goldblum had fallen off a cliff whilst filming in New Zealand. Suspicious movie fans' skepticism was presumably piqued by the very idea that Goldblum was working, given the fact that almost a decade has elapsed since anyone has seen him in anything. Nonetheless, it only took a couple of hours for the lanky ex-BrundleFly's supposed demise to be ranked in Google Trends' top five most popular search terms.

A day later and it was Britney Spears' turn to do battle with the Grim Reaper's online counterpart, as pranksters spread bogus information after hacking into her Twitpic account. Why no-one bothered to question how Britney was able to tweet from beyond the grave I'll never know. Still, with the world already in mourning mode, I guess it didn't seem too much of a stretch to add Louisiana's favourite pop tart to the 'in memoriam' guest list.

The whole phenomenon of prematurely announced celebrity mortal-coil-shuffling is nothing new, even Mark Twain once famously had to write a letter stating "the report of my death was an exaggeration". The difference is, tweets and blogs give the anonymous masses the power to make up whatever story they like and transmit it across the world in a nano-second. And information overload means its almost impossible to seperate the factual wheat from the fictional chaff.

The blind leading the bride

You've got to hand it to Rupert Murdoch's media empire, it's never bothered to let facts or consistency get in the way of a good story.

As the US continues to obsess about Proposition 8 and the debate over definitions of marriage, Murdoch's flagship news channel Fox News continues to portray the threat that gays in committed relationships pose to 'traditional' heterosexual marriage.

In typically 'fair and balanced' style, leading blowhard Bill O'Reilly has been particularly vocal about the danger of same-sex unions. He's right to be concerned since, as he quite rightly states, gay marriage could lead to marriage with goats, ducks and dolphins. He's also worried that the longer the issue is debated, the more likely it is that other social issues will follow, meaning that limited gun possession, legalised class-A drugs and unrestricted abortion will be next on the list.

So it's probably good news that Fox doesn't seem to hold up any mirrors to itself, otherwise there might be a few raised eyebrows about what's happening elsewhere in the Fox portfolio. For example, it was announced this week that the Fox Network is developing an arranged marriage reality show, where brides-to-be don’t meet their husbands until they exchange vows. And of course it will all happen in front of the cameras. The show's called “I Married a Stranger” and each episode will cover the preparations for a woman's blind wedding, after their friends and family select a spouse for her. The first time the 'happy' couple meet is the moment they say "I do".

Whenever gay unions are on the agenda, the argument trotted out is that its opponents aren't homophobic, they're just concerned about the sanctity of marriage. So one has to wonder about what a show that encourages women to marry strangers does for the sanctity of marriage. No-one seemed too concerned about marriage as an institution to be defended when Britney Spears married for 55 hours or Drew Barrymore managed to last five whole weeks.

Marriage is an institution. Which means it's strong enough to weather societal changes, from women's suffrage to civil rights. Henry VIII invented a new religion in order to evolve marriage, so I really don't see why this is such a controversial issue. If anything, we should be more worried about yet another shitty reality show. Wasn't The Bachelorette punishment enough?