Well at least he's honest

If you've got a few thousand dollars just sitting around, you might want to use it to make a donation to New York City's Summit School for children with learning difficulties. OK, so you're not convinced. Well, how about if your donation also happened to secure you a hot, sweaty session with Hugh Jackman and his meaty man-chest?

Remember that episode of Friends where Joey argued with Phoebe that there was no such thing as a truly selfless act? Hugh's obviously on Joey's side, since he's offering up his own body in order to incentivise generous giving.

According to charitybuzz.com, the winner of the charity auction will get the chance to "train side-by-side for one hour with Hugh and his fitness guru Don Scott of Jim Karas Personal Training" in a private Manhattan gym. Since Hugh was recently named as People Magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive", this is clearly loosening the wallets of New York's finest.

Bidding's already at $14,500, and is expected to reach $25,000 before the auction closes. It probably helps that Hugh has even offered to whip off his sweat-drenched T-shirt to enhance the mood, commenting "Sure [I'll work out shirtless]! No problem. You know me, I'm a whore. I think I was shirtless for the whole time in my first movie in Australia and I think I only made about $4,000."

Clearly the world's oldest profession is something that Jackman is perfectly comfortable with, since his description of the experience can easily be misinterpreted as being about something other than squats and crunches: "If someone comes in and says, ‘I want to try it exactly how you train. I want to just go as hard as we can,' we'll go there. But if you want to come and have a light sweat, want to have a bit of fun, maybe an autograph or two, you can do that as well."

Although it's interesting to see a celebrity offering themselves up so freely in support of something they believe in, it's not entirely unique. Only last week Dutch porn star Bobbi Eden announced on Twitter that she would "give a BJ to all my followers" if Netherlands won the World Cup at the weekend.

She even drafted in several of her friends to help take up the slack, since her offer would have meant servicing over 23,000 loyal followers. Thankfully Holland's failure on Sunday clearly spared her a nasty case of lockjaw and several weeks in a neckbrace.

Still, if Hugh's willing to 'go as hard as he can' and build up a sweat with an enamoured fan, it would be churlish to deny him the opportunity. On an entirely unrelated note, can anyone lend me $20,000?

What shall we do with the Vuvuzela...

The World Cup is now in full swing. It seems as though every ad campaign in existence has found a way of involving Terry Venables (curious to see how Tampax and Toilet Duck work him into their concepts) and watercoolers around the country are besieged with people lamenting England's outdated adherence to the 4-4-2 arrangement.

Our boys may be playing with all the enthusiasm of a care home resident prodding his pudding with a plastic teaspoon, but strangely, the biggest source of anxiety so far is the African equivalent of the football rattle.

The vuvuzela (or lepatata if you speak Tswana) is an elongated plastic blowing horn which emits an annoying buzzing noise, and is a standard accessory at most South African football matches. I'm sure the occasional short burst wouldn't be too bad, but 90 minutes of incessant buzzing is sufficient to make you worry that you're either developing a new strain of tinitus or about to be attacked by a swarm of hornets.

In fact, the only sound more annoying that the constant humming of 40,000 vuvuzelas is the mindless droning of the commentators, who manage to make Megan Fox sound lucid and informed.

The BBC has been inundated with complaints about the annoying plastic horns, prompting sound engineers to investigate whether it's possible to deliver an alternative sound feed of the matches with the honking and buzzing muted out. Presumably, suggesting that viewers locate the volume switch on their remotes would be too simple a solution?

Anyway, the Telegraph reported that help may finally be at hand from a most unusual source. Neil van Schalkwyk, who first cottoned on to the idea of mass producing vuvuzelas for football matches, is now attempting to atone for his sins by manufacturing earplugs to drown out the incessant humming.

This 'hearing protection' is called "vuvuzela unplugged" and enables fans to block out the noise and protect themselves from permanent hearing damage. Even better, the industrious ex-plastics factory worker now plans to export the vuvuzelas and ear-plugs once the World Cup is over.

Suddenly, all those conspiracy theories about companies like Symantec and McAfee creating viruses to keep their PC security systems in demand don't seem quite so preposterous. I'm sure it won't be too long before Sir James Dyson starts manufacturing 3kg bags of household filth.

When the shirt hits the fan

There's always been a tang of homoeroticism to the celebration of football successes. The crying, cartwheels and somersaults are one thing, but when players lie down on top of each other, or race around the pitch with their colleagues legs wrapped around their waist, it can set tongues wagging.

When questioned, players are keen to stress that it's simply the excitement of the moment, and the kisses don't mean a thing. This then sends a signal to the fans that they can emulate their heroes' behaviour. That's why the view from the stands is often much like the view from your average mardi gras float.

With the World Cup now just days away, the merchandising machine is in full swing, with every competing country rolling out all manner of branded tat to ensure that the fans at home can feel like they're part of the experience.

This year's award for most innovative product comes from the Netherlands, where the fans are being encouraged to go the whole hog when it comes to celebrating the big moments. With the players' faces printed upside down on the inside, these bright orange shirts enable Dutch footy fans to really get caught up in the moment.

Although it's a great idea, it's worth exercising a little caution. After all, the fans don't always have the same sculpted abs and perky pecs as the players they're following.

She'll fight for this love

Given that 2010 is a World Cup year, we shouldn't really be surprised that the papers are full of action packed stories of our most celebrated footballers. It's just a little depressing to discover that none of the stories are actually about football.

If the papers are to be believed, most premiership players prefer to warm up for the big game by spitroasting a glamour model, rather than jogging around the pitch. It doesn't help that John Terry has gone from England Captain to a one-size-fits-all punchline for any joke about marital disharmony, in a matter of weeks.

According to American sports sociologist, Jeff Benedict, "Almost across the board, professional athletes have a warped perception of women because of what they are exposed to: women approaching them, offering to have sex with them, sending them their underwear in the mail." I guess sometimes the temptation is just too great.

Look at Ashley Cole (if you have to). He's already managed to elevate his wife to the status of 'national treasure' by cheating on her once. With the revelation that he may be playing away from home yet again, Cheryl is likely to be made a Dame of the British Order before the year is out.

This time around, he's been taking pictures of his little striker and sending it to a 'glamour model' called Sonia Wild. The only thing more unlikely than Sonia's conveniently saucy surname, is Ashley's preposterous explanation of how his extremities ended up on someone else's phone.

Apparently, Ashley took the pictures just for fun on an unregistered pay-as-you-go phone, then gave it to a friend to use up the remaining credit. He just forgot to mention that the phone's memory was full of low-resolution amateur porn. Like you do.

This inconsiderate pal discovered the gallery of images, and decided to send them on to a topless model from Hull. Turned on by the fact that she was getting pictures from a 'soccer star', she reciprocated: "I sent back video footage on my phone of myself naked and doing sexy things. At the time it was a laugh and a bit of a thrill for me." Almost as much of a thrill as going to the press with an SD card full of celebrity wang.

Whether you choose to believe Ashley's imaginative explanation is of little or no consequence. It's Mrs Cole that the foolhardy footballer really has to answer to.

Cheryl has forgiven Ashley before, and successfully leveraged her broken heart into a career-making accessory. But hell hath no fury like a woman scorned second time around.

She may be little more than a Girls' World mannequin who talks like Paul Gascoigne, but Cheryl packs a mean punch - as bathroom attendant Sophie Amogbokpa can confirm. Suddenly, that ankle injury is the least of Ashley's worries...