He won't be back

If you're looking forward to another instalment in the Terminator saga, if only to wash away the acrid stench of Terminator:Salvation, don't hold your breath. Former Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger has only gone and shot himself in the steel-capped motorcycle boot, with the recent revelation that he sired a bastard with the housekeeper. After a career of playing silent killers who shoot first and ask questions later, it's a shame he couldn't muster a quick "are you on the pill?" while he was taking aim.

Estranged wife Maria Shriver has been grimacing silently through her public embarrassment, at least I think that's why she looks like that, and Arnie's PR team are desperately trying to salvage some kind of post-political return to Hollywood. While they're at it, they might want to pitch Mel Gibson as the new spokesman for eHarmony.

The gossip mill is in full swing, with speculation rife that there'll be more saplings form the Austrian oak emerging in the coming weeks. Jane Seymour famously added her two-penneth, telling reporters “From what I gather, I think there will be lots of information coming people’s way. I heard about two more [out-of-wedlock kids] somebody else knows about. I even met someone who knows him well.” She now claims to have been misquoted, but if Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman is right, Arnie's mantlepiece is likely to be groaning under a bunch of extra cards on June 19. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that one of the kids will look like Danny DeVito. Forget about the time-travelling cyborg, I want a Twins reboot.

Once the biggest star in the world, in terms of box office and neck width, Arnold is now just another philandering fuck-up, headed for a divorce that's likely to see Shriver jingling all the way to the bank. She may now resemble an astronaut who accidentally spent three days in the training centrifuge, but was once quite the beauty. So commentators are befuddled as to why Arnold felt the need to stick his Junior into Consuela from Family Guy.

One theory currently doing the rounds is that Arnold had affairs with unattractive women because he had a complex about his own appearance. Anthony Pellicano, the shamed private detective who was arrested in 2006 on high-profile wiretapping and racketeering charges, claims that “He sees himself as the dominant, beautiful one. The physical is most important to him and he does not want to be upstaged or lose the spotlight in company of a strikingly beautiful women." It's an interesting concept, if not particularly robust. After all, the whole point about Schwarzenegger's affairs is that he kept them out of the spotlight for so long, so it wouldn't have mattered if they looked like Beth Ditto staging a dirty protest.

In any relationship, there's always a power struggle where looks are concerned. One half of the pairing is almost always more attractive than the other. You're either punching above your weight or settling for less. Channel 4 managed to create a whole TV show around the concept - Your Face Or Mine. Making you long for the effortless chemistry of Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood, the show's mismatched hosts Jimmy Carr and June Sarpong pitted couples against each other, in order to determine who was the more attractive.

As excruciating as it was to watch (and listen to, thanks to Sarpong's raspy, Zelda-off-Terrahawks voice), it did provide an interesting insight into the psychology of attraction. In particular, it was fascinating to see loved-up people trying to navigate the tricky admission that they thought they were more aesthetically desirable than their partners. Throw a few well placed exes into the mix, and you've got Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for the E4 generation.

The media's horror at Schwarzenegger's supposedly low standards simply reflects its one-dimensional perception of attractiveness. Beauty's supposed to be in the eye of the beholder, not the telephoto lens of the paparazzi. If we all had the same taste, most of us would be spending the rest of our lives alone. When Mrs Merton famously asked Debbie McGee what first attracted her to "multimillionaire Paul Daniels", I wish the magician's assistant had said "I like short, bald tories, and he's hung like an agitated racehorse."

Arnie's career may be in tatters, but he can at least take pride in the fact that he's taught us a valuable lesson that beauty is a subjective construct. He knows, better than anyone, that looks don't really matter - it's what's inside the maid that counts.

Comedy reaches Boyling point

In between making the classic Blazing Saddles and the slightly less auspicious Dracula: Dead And Loving It, Mel Brooks once defined his art by saying "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die." In his mind, comedy is all the bad things that happen to other people.

So it's a shame that comedy fan Sharon Smith didn't brush up on some of Mel Brooks before going to see Frankie Boyle in concert at Reading's Hexagon theatre. It's also unfortunate that she thought front row tickets might be a good idea for a comedian known for tearing strips off his audience.

Sharon's experiences have been thoroughly documented in the nation's press, since she wrote a lengthy blog post to describe her upset over what happened when Frankie started joking about Down's syndrome children. You see, Sharon's daughter Tanzie has Down's syndrome, so she and her husband Keiron found themselves squirming uncomfortably as Frankie made his characteristically controversial comments.

To make matters worse, Frankie saw the couple talking through his set and put them on the spot, leading Sharon to take the comedian to task for his insensitive comments. According to Sharon's blog, Frankie derided the unhappy couple saying "This is my last tour. I don't give a fuck what people think."

Unfortunately, since much of Frankie's act seemed to be ad-libbed, it's hard to know exactly what was said. Sharon's account seems to suggest that much of Frankie's tirade was aimed more at the parents of Down's syndrome children than the kids themselves. Either way, the couple got what they paid for - edgy comedy that isn't aimed at the easily offended.

By their own admission, the Hampshire couple went in knowing what to expect: "One of the reasons that we wanted to see Frankie Boyle was that we have seen him on shows like Mock the Week and have loved his humour, how dry he is, how nasty he is, how clever he is. We wanted to see him out of the confines of a TV editing suite, to hear him say things he could not get away with on mainstream TV."

The problem is, they're happy laughing at 'nasty humour' that goes beyond what's deemed conventionally acceptable, just as long as they're not the ones in the firing line. Frankie may well have made a bunch of crass and offensive comments (no-one really knows since the show wasn't recorded) but that's his act. It's a little disingenuous to laugh along with the jokes at everyone else's expense, only to become indignant when you suddenly find yourself on the receiving end.

Comedians like Boyle and Jimmy Carr have carved a niche for themselves by tackling issues that people are uncomfortable with. It's not always pleasant, and sometimes it's downright offensive, but it provokes discussion and encourages people to think about where our societal taboos come from.

The other alternative would be a world full of Russ Abbotts and Joe Pasquales. And even Frankie Boyle would have trouble finding humour in a nightmare scenario like that.

No laughing matter

The problem with 'alternative comedy' is that, as its very name implies, it runs contrary to conventional views of acceptability. Still, that doesn't seem to stop the mainstream press from creating an outcry every time a comedian makes a joke that falls outside of approved humour boundaries.

The latest comedian to fall foul of this unwritten rule is Jimmy Carr, who is currently facing a barrage of criticism for a joke that he's been telling on his current UK tour. Towards the end of his show at the Manchester Apollo on Friday, he said "Say what you like about these servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we’re going to have a fucking good Paralympic team in 2012."

Within hours the backlash had started, with all the papers running predictably indignant stories boasting headlines such as "Fans stunned as Jimmy Carr insults our Afghan heroes" and "Fury at comic's amputee gag". Sadly, in the rush to condemn the lanky, doll-faced comedian, not one of the newspapers bothered to consider the real target of Jimmy's joke. Or, for that matter, the painful truth behind it.

The first sporting event for disabled athletes was held in 1948, when Dr Ludwig Guttman arranged a sports competition at Stoke Mandeville hospital for World War II soldiers who had suffered spinal injuries in combat. In 1952 Dutch athletes joined the competition and the modern 'Paralympic' movement was born. So, if nothing else, Jimmy is simply making a factual statement about how participation in Paralympic sport has offered injured soldiers rehabilitation and support for over sixty years.

But that's not nearly as interesting as being disgusted on someone else's behalf. So the papers are full of outraged commentators weighing in with their half-baked opinions on Jimmy's gaffe. Real-life Ross Kemp Andy McNab acknowledged that amputee servicemen do compete in the Paralympics, but stressed condescendingly that "it's not a subject for humour" as though servicemen and women would never use gallows humour as a coping mechanism.

Even more cluless are the politicians. Conservative MP Patrick Mercer takes the traditional Queen of Hearts approach, saying "This was a remarkably dim and foolish thing to joke about. It’s not funny and this man’s career should end right now." Likewise, Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth commented "Our Armed Forces put their lives on the line and deserve the utmost respect." Of course, they also deserve effective armour, but that's not something Ainsworth would want to get into. Especially since the right military hardware could have prevented many of the injuries that Carr was referencing in the first place.

This revisionist view of recent history is precisely what Carr was satirising in his act. Given that he visited injured troops at Selly Oak military hospital and Headley Court rehabilitation centre earlier this month, Jimmy is all-too-aware of the sacrifices made by our brave servicemen and women. But he presumably has a lot less time for the cynical politicians who find any opportunity to put a positive spin on the depressing parade of statistics that have been leaking out of the Middle East, since we first invaded Afghanistan in late 2001.

Jimmy has since offered a full apology, saying “I’m sorry if anyone was offended but that’s the kind of comedy I do. If a silly joke draws attention to the plight of these men then so much the better but that was not my intention." Funnily enough, I think that's exactly what he's accomplished. And if I was serving in the military, I'd be a lot happier about Jimmy's war efforts than by the threat of an imminent invasion by Katie Price to 'cheer up' the troops. Haven't they suffered enough already?