Keep your friends close and your enemies closer: it's a decent way of looking at things. But not so decent when your enemy is a paparazzo, who deals entirely on getting pictures of you in compromising positions, exchanging your dignity for cold, hard cash.

Damn - someone should have told Britney Spears this before she started her relationship with British photo-jockey Adnan Ghalib. See, keeping one's enemies closer does work in many situations, but when your enemy's sole purpose in life is to get as close to you as they legally can, you should probably opt for 'running away quite fast and keeping your enemy at a few arms' length'.

Alas, our poor, maybe quite mental Britney wasn't warned, and now she's supposedly trying to stop another wonderful celebrity sex tape from being released to the baying public. If only people would help to look after the girl.

Just when things were getting back on track for the young pop-tart, something has to come along and send things royally tits-up. She of 'Toxic' and latterly 'mental' fame had seen the shattered pieces of her life being slowly put back together. First with some trepidation, but soon enough there was something resembling normality entering the Spears household - she had recently regained overnight access to her kids and was on her way (and probably still is on her way to) building a new home for said kids. Figuratively building, that is, not literally. She's not also become a builder, unfortunately.

And then, blammo, out of nowhere, it happens - allegations of a sex tape start flying around. Allegations that put Britney in a position - or possibly numerous positions - on some tape, having some sex, with the scu… paparazzo man. Of all the people she'd decide to record herself shagging, why choose a journalistic parasite that is a member of the British paparazzi? hecklerspray knows full well that the girl has had some problems, but come on - she can't be that stupid can she?

Really?!

For now, at least, it would appear that the sex tape allegations are remaining exactly that - rumour, speculation and non-fact. Not that we'd begrudge watching Miss Spears engaging in the act, hair or no hair (on her head you sick freaks), but it's hard to feel anything but a weary sympathy for the girl. She really has been put through the ringer over the last couple of years. We all need to take a step back from the poor thing, let her recuperate and then really stick the boot back in.

Torture can be used for entertainment, it would seem.

At least Britney can rest easy in the fact that, if the tape does turn out to be real, she has carte blanche to run over Ghalib's feet as much as she wants. In a way. She'd definitely get our blessing for that courageous act, and it would certainly do a great deal to get her back to the realms of normality she so clearly craves, as well as potentially taking out one of those useless, cretinous, morons.

It's always the bloody same with women - they look at you, talk to you and move in certain ways, and before you know it you're under their spell. In a figurative way, of course. And actually, come to think of it, we can't remember the last time a girl even looked at us, never mind talked to or moved in certain ways at us. We digress…

But Madonna isn't happy with just getting a man under her proverbial spell, oh no - she is literally controlling the mind of Alex Rodriguez, the man she is allegedly getting it on with. Well, according to Rodriguez's estranged wife, Cynthia, that's what Madge is doing. Wait - what?

Yes, the jealous spouting of a woman scorned has taken another turn for the 'huh?' as Cynthia Rodriguez revealed, through an anonymous friend, that she believed Madonna has been using kabbalah, the mystical side of Judaism, to warp her husband's mind. Oh that's right - blame the Jews again, it's not like they don't already get the flack for everything else in the world, ever.

Cynthia may have a point though - the rumours have been flying about that Madge and Alex have become closer than just close friends , as well as that her marriage to Guy Ritchie is on the road to destruction , and not just because she's woken up to what a no-talent arseclown Ritchie actually is. At least Alex can hit balls really hard, or something. He's probably a more convincing cockney too.

None of it is definite, there's a lot of aimless speculation - the kind we really like - and there are some audacious claims flying around. It's a fine recipe for disaster already, prime for the tabloid vultures (hello!) to come in and pick the carcass dry. Then the rogue element is introduced and all hell breaks loose - this is another moment that needs to be fully taken in, so sit back and read it one more time: Madonna, as in 'Papa Don't Preach', 'Material Girl' and some other, newer, shitter songs, is being accused of controlling the mind of a man she is supposedly having it off with.

There are times when you just don't need words; all you need is to react to whatever is going on.

The 'friend' of Cynthia told the press that this is what the estranged wife thought, through the miraculous powers of language:

"I feel like Madonna is using mind control over him, I don't recognize the man he's become. He was a
sweet, beautiful, loving husband and father. Today he's very cold and
calculating."

Well, consider hecklerspray convinced - that sounds like grade 'A', bona-fide Jewish mind control of the highest order. Just the kind of ridiculous crap Madonna would be likely to partake in, like having a gap-tooth or a ridiculous camel toe on show, even though she's about 86-years-old. It's a pretty open and shut case, to be honest.

There is always a chance that this is just a jealous rant by a heartbroken woman, and something that seems likely given her fragile state of mind. After all - who doesn't want to blame the Jews every now and then?

But if this is a pile of truth nuggets, we just hope Madge can further brainwash Alex Rodriguez into thinking (or should that be 'knowing'?) that A-Rod is the single most ridiculous name ever given to anyone, anywhere, ever, and it makes him sound like a massive prick. In more ways than one.

There are times in life when things look bad, when you don't see the point in much and when, well, you just downright hate things.

Then something happens that picks you up, makes you happy again and fills you with a beaming smile that somehow manages to envelop your entire body, filling your whole physical presence with joy from head to toe.

Take, for example, when a UFO sighting was reported somewhere in Wales, and this police radio conversation was conducted:

Control: "Alpha Zulu 20, this object in the sky, did anyone have a look at it?"

Officer: "Yes, it's the Moon. Over."

hecklerspray loves you, Wales.

Original Story (BBC)

Beloved children's entertainer or feared icon striking terror into the hearts of those clever enough to realise that clowns are created from pure, distilled evil - however you look at him the news is the same: Bozo the clown has passed on.

 Larry Harmon, credited not with the creation of the Bozo character but with the popularisation of an existing clown and in the process the creation of a legend, died of congestive heart failure on Thursday, aged 83. It is unconfirmed whether he was in full costume at the time, though we hope he was - just so the man could get one last smile from the world.

It's easy to wax lyrical about the decline of traditional entertainment in modern society, with the 'yoofs' and their obsession with 'music', 'video games' and 'gangland violence', but one thing has remained constantly popular in the culture of children's entertainment: the clown. Without Harmon and his Bozo character there likely wouldn't be such a prevalence of the silly, slappy-footed, red-nosed berks flitting around from house to house, making children squawk. And frankly, without Bozo's popularity, that behaviour would be frowned upon, if not illegal.

Larry did not come up with the Bozo the Clown character of his own accord - he purchased the rights for it and worked from there, introducing what is now taken for granted as how a clown should look, as well as helping the word 'bozo' enter common language - for example, 'Lindsay Lohan's dad acts like a bozo'. See? Without Harmon and his marketing savvy hecklerspray would have had to rely on a different descriptive term for that cash-hungry twit. You have to have respect for that.

Leading the character through 50 years of development, Harmon introduced Bozos all around America to entertain - or terrify - children through the States, as well as TV shows aired around the world. Where other entertainers fell by the wayside, got bitter, sold out or simply gave up, Harmon continued and the popularity of his Bozo character never waned. Waiting lists to hire a Bozo often stretched into the years range, even today. Go on - try and hire a genuine Bozo. We dare you. Bet you can't get one to do a party within the next few months. If you can we'll give you a prize: the respect of your peers.

The world has lost another genuine hero - a man who deserved the money he made, rather than inherited it through a chance meeting of sperm and egg or through having no discernable talent yet a bizarre ability to make idiots in papers and on semi-popular entertainment blogs write about them. Larry Harmon created an icon, lived the American Dream before it died and made a lot of kids laugh in the process. For this, hecklerspray will be carrying out one minute's worth of prat-falling in his honour.

Conversely, there may be people out there that are glad the man is dead, if only because he introduced a million nightmares into the childhoods of many. Not that we'd agree, it's just, y'know, clowns are terrifying.

It's become quite sad how strapped for ideas Hollywood has become. Not content with raiding everything from our childhoods - Transformers, Thundercats, The Smurfs - and not even leaving it alone after travesties such as Starsky and Hutch or Miami Vice, the top bods have had to look to things that haven't even left the collective consciousness of the public.

Take the Sex and the City movie, for example. Rehashing a series that had finished on TV less than five years previously seemed to hecklerspray as something of a cynical cash-in. And it worked. Did it ever work . So who can blame the struggling execs in tinseltown for turning to another much-loved TV property with a push at converting it for the big screen, even though the topsoil on its grave is still fresh?

Yes, friends, there are rumours they're re-doing Friends. But for now, even though everyone in the world seems to be harping on about it, these rumours are nothing but that. There may be hope yet.

When it comes to barely-even-dead TV shows heading to the big screen there are few occasions when it's a genuinely good idea. The Sex and the City film proved it was a lucrative idea, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a good one. It does if you're a money-hoarding twit, mind, but if you have any integrity whatsoever it's probably better to leave these projects alone. Let them die, especially when they went on for ten years and tied up every loose end imaginable over the course.

Don't re-open the wounds, don't rehash the same storylines, don't break up the established relationships and don't create new problems from lives that fans of the show have accepted as being 'on course'. Oh, and retroactively: don't give Joey a spin-off. It won't work. hecklerspray feared the worst when rumours popped up earlier this week that all of those sins were about to be committed in one glorious two-hour epic of utterly unbelievable lives, 'being there for yoooou' and Phoebe being a shit character.

But thank crikey if there haven't been two massive wedges of sense in the space of a day - first the tabloid 'zines turn down messr Lohan's approaches to sell the story of the child that may not even be his, and now it would seem that the raping of an only very recently dead TV corpse is to be left alone. For the time being, at least. Matthew Perry - or Chandler, or that one off that cancelled TV show that was quite good, for those who don't know him outside of Friends (i.e. most people, thanks to his stellar movie career) - has a publicist, Lisa Kasteler, and she said these words using her mouth:

"Nothing is happening in this regard, so the rumour is false."

She couldn't have put it better if she tried. Well, she could - she could have swore or something, as we all know swearing is fucking cool. But for 'getting straight to the point' points, she scores high.

But this leaves something of a void in the minds of the Hollywood decision-makers. Well, we should say 'more of a void than the normal vacuous space that should resemble the creative part of a human brain in the minds of the Hollywood decision-makers'. Without a tried-and-tested formula, what can they do? Come up with something new? Do a sequel? Release the same rom-com again with a different title?

hecklerspray has a suggestion, one that we're willing to give up for free, just this once. It covers the TV-remake base and has genuine potential, as well as being a worthy transition from small to big screen, not just a bloated cash-in.

Arrested Development: The Movie.

Make that and most of your sins for being rubbish bastards will be forgiven.