silly old daniel

The Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup.

2012-01-24T22:18:00.012Z

I'll tell you what it is, folks. I'm bloody bored. I'm having a fabulous time owning the streets of Le Mans with my fellow assistants, but when we're all in our respective homes on my own it isn't half boring sometimes. I did the dishes earlier and got so excited I prematurely ejaculated halfway through. I'm off on Mondays now and, rather than doing my washing yesterday as I had planned, I thought to myself "ooooh I'll save it for later when I'm really bored- go mad". Jesus.

So anyway- what do I do, as a blogger, when I'm bored? I write. That's what I do. If you're a fan of my writing, people, it may interest you to hear that tomorrow (Wednesday) a thing I wrote is meant to be going up on So So Gay. It's basically an account of my year abroad but with a gay slant. Straight people can also enjoy it, although frankly how straight people can enjoy anything knowing that they aren't gay is beyond me. I salute you straight people, you bunch of boring bastards (nar man, straight people are alright. Well some are. Here is a list of straight people who, as far as I am concerned, are alright by me):

1. Sarah Jessica Parker

2. Professor Stephen Hawking

3. Carole

4. Nicola Roberts

5. Michelle Obama

6. That girl student I've got a bit of a crush on

The list is endless.

Thankfully for me, and other people who pass their days writing about celebrities rather than going out and living their lives, there's stuff going on left, right and centre within the world of the rich and/or famous and here is just some of that compressed, chewed up, swallowed, regurgitated and spat out again in one of them Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup...

1. Nicki Minaj's new video could stand to be a bit more popular AND SHE HERSELF COULD STAND TO BE A BIT MORE PUNCTUAL.

Surely by this stage in the game I shouldn't have to tell you how I feel about Nicki Minaj, although just in case you're new to the blog or perhaps you've been stricken down with an incurable case of AMNESIA (!!!!!!!!!!) I'll fill you in. SHE IS THE BEST.

Therefore, when she revealed on Twitter last week that we could expect the video for her latest buzz single Stupid Hoe as early as Thursday I, and her legions of fans, got very excited. We shouldn't have built her hopes up, though. Nicki Minaj is known for not sticking to her promises in terms of putting shit out on time, and this was no exception:

If nothing else, I admire very much Nicki Minaj's tactic of blaming "cockheads" for the things in her career that don't go to plan. In fact, it was a "cockhead" that made me two hours late for work today. Had I realised this was a legitimate excuse I would have just explained this to my teacher and saved myself a lot of awkwardness. Silly me, eh?

Thankfully, this weekend I was, you know, somewhere, AND I SAW THAT THE VIDEO HAS BEEN RELEASED. Immediately I had to devour it, and as usual Nicki showed off some strange looks in the video, arguably stranger than we've ever seen from her before. Let's just examine a few of them:

In the first part of the video, Nicki proves to us exactly what hanging around Madonna for all this time has taught her. What a flexible young woman. "Boy you got my left leg bendin' away..."

It's not just massive flexibility that Nicki Minaj has got going for her though, folks, and she's determined to prove it. At this point Nicki proves how easily she can get that last bit of Nutella out of the corner of the jar. Or, indeed, what a good rimming she could give you. Two things which you probably don't want to mix up.

Conversely, Nicki has gone from über-helpful jar/bum-crack licker to being not very useful at all because she's in a bloody prison. It's not all bad, the prison is made of gold, and she is wearing rather a lot of leopard print, but still. It's no life that, is it? No it's not.

Thankfully, Nicki makes up for this earlier uselessness by putting on four watches at once, just in case you're curious what time it is in various time zones all at once and don't fancy doing some simple addition. Nicki Minaj has truly thought of everything. Seriously, though. Four watches. Really?

NOW it was surely obvious to Nicki Minaj before she got onto this giant chair that it was too tall for her. It's all well and good standing up on top of it thinking you're all that, but you won't be laughing when you have to do get down, will you Onika? No you won't. Thankfully you have a comically oversized derriere should you fall off.

And this is a picture of Nicki Minaj with some giant fake eyes and pink hair. Excellent.

The video immediately made the rounds and quickly became Nicki's second most watched video on YouTube after just a few days (following her biggest solo hit to date, Super Bass). Unfortunately for Nicki it hasn't made quite the splash she was hoping for, despite the video being a visual feast; with over 150,000 people opting to "dislike" the video on YouTube:

DEARIE ME. The question is: what do you think? Watch the video for yourself here:

The song itself is, of course, utter bollocks. And as for her punctuality:

Presumably that'll be those "cockheads" again. MUST. TRY. HARDER.

2. Madonna reminds us, once again, that she is not one to be fucked with.

Given that she is unarguably the most frightening woman in the world, you'd think most people would have realised by now that Madonna is one pop icon not to be messed with. Having said that, fellow icon Elton John is not exactly "most people" is he?

Both singers were nominated for the same award at the Golden Globes last week, in the category of Best Original Song. Elton had recorded a duet with Lady GaGa called Hello, Hello for Disney's Gnomeo and Juliet, while Madonna sang the song Masterpiece in her own directorial debut W.E. (don't worry I have no idea how either song goes either).

On the red carpet, Elton was his usual coy self declaring that Madonna had "no fucking chance" of winning the award, and that it would surely go to himself or fellow nominee Mary J Blige (who had also recorded a song nobody had heard of for the film The Help.) Madonna herself turned on her best game face and said "may the best man win" when quizzed herself before the ceremony.

As I'm sure you know by this stage, Madonna was the eventual winner of the award, prompting the best reaction face ever:

Ouch.

Meanwhile Elton's husband (or "husband" if you're a Daily Mail reader) David Furnish was less gracious in defeat, labelling Madonna "desperate", "embarrassing" and "narcissistic", also writing "Best original song?? Fuck off!!!" on his Facebook page. He's since massively backtracked, presumably after a giant telling off from a manager-type, and apologised to Madonna calling her a "great artist".

Madonna herself claimed to be oblivious to the comments (she doesn't go online allegedly, lest we forget), but then she is a very busy woman preparing for her Superbowl half-time performance which will feature guest appearances from Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. on their collaborative effort and grammatical abortion Gimme All Your Luvin'.

Let's just hope she doesn't do a Janet Jackson and let one of her tits fall out.

3. Denise Welch is causing quite a stir on the old telly-box.

I rarely mention it so it's easy to forget, but I actually live in France these days, and therefore most of my celebrity news these days comes from the one-sided and not altogether reliable source of Twitter. Therefore, this particular story is pieced together from various things I've read online, having seen none of it myself. If any of it is inaccurate, feel free to pool together to pay for me to get Channel 5 in my flat. That would be lovely. If not, shut your bouche, yeah?

So it seems that Celebrity Big Brother is back for a second go-around on its new home at Channel 5 and it seems to all be going rather well for them, it seems everyone is talking about the show and unsurprisingly Denise Welch seems to be the one name to set tongues going (steady on). Denise is never hesitant to mention on Loose Women that she suffers from what she calls "compulsive flashing disorder" (in fact apart from fiddling with her ear-piece, reminiscing about her golden days on Coronation Street and coughing every time a guest opens their mouth to speak, talking about flashing her tits seems to be all Denise does on the show).

No one was surprised, therefore, when during Frankie Cocozza's 19th birthday celebrations (incidentally, if I find out any of you voted for Frankie "Rockstar Oh Actually No I'm On Channel 5 And Once Shared A House With Sami Brookes" Cocozza I will come back to England and beat you with a shoe) she was seen galavanting with him in a jacuzzi, eventually flashing her bare breasts to the entire British nation to the horror of everyone in the house.

What's ruffled feathers most of all was earlier this week when Denise was drunkenly dancing with a fellow housemate and tried to jokingly pull down her pyjama bottoms, exposing her arse. Said housemate then fled to the Diary Room to tell Big Brother she felt exposed and abused in the house, calling herself "reserved" and "classy". This argument would, of course, be a lot more credible had said housemate not already flashed a lot more in Playboy magazine but for a lot more money.

The whole thing has raised a rather interesting debate: if you take your clothes off for a living and actively allow yourself to be wanked over by lads' mags readers, do you still have the right to complain when one of the Loose Women panelists tries to show your knickers off on reality TV. THE STUFF QUESTION TIME DEBATES ARE MADE OF, I'M SURE YOU AGREE.

I'm going to bed now, it's 1.30am here and I'd like to actually do something with my day tomorrow.

Who knows, maybe I'll do the laundry.

WILD.

Laters!

The Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup.

2012-01-05T12:09:00.011Z

After what can only be described as an extended period of sitting in the house and doing nothing towards the end of 2011, them famous people have finally recognised the plight of a celebrity blogger and decided to start being interesting again. Brilliant stuff. Because of this, and also because I'm currently in the staff room at work having had both of my lessons for ths morning cancelled meaning I got up at 6.20 this morning BEFORE THE SUN completely needlessly, you can sit back and enjoy the second Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup of 2012...

1. Dancing On Ice is back again. Christ.

For many, myself included, January is not an easy time of the year. Christmas is over, it's back to work in the cold with nothing to look forward to but Valentine's Day in just one month's time (ha!) and Spring, which isn't for bloody ages yet. Thankfully ITV have the solution for the January blues, the bloody awful Dancing On Ice which is remarkably back for a SEVENTH series this weekend.

Following in the footsteps (or, indeed, ice skate tracks YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE) as last year's contestants are the usual suspects including A-list names like Sam and Mark and Jennifer Ellison. Also participating will be Heidi Range, in one desperate attempt to prove that there's still some life in the old Sugababes franchise yet (although just to be sure Amelle Barbarrah is currently recording her own solo material).

It seems the series has already been plagued by drama before it's even begun, though (mercy!), as singer Chesney Hawkes took a tumble on the ice and will no longer be able to compete. Thankfully the producers have turned it from "Disaster Time" into "Chico Time" (you can see where this is going) by inviting the Greek former stripper to take his place.

Chico back on the telly. This is not going to end well, is it?

2. News to bring a (single) tear to the eye.

Days ago I broke the sad news that fun-loving singer Sinéad O'Connor, who was initially meant to be the first artist to record B*Witched's hit C'est La Vie before realising that such a gloomy song would tarnish her cheery image, had decided to end her marriage after sixteen days of wedded bliss following a hunt for cannabis which ended up in her being bombarded with crack cocaine on her wedding night.

If you're anything like myself the news will have hit hard. At first I just felt numb, though eventually I went through the usual stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining. I have since taken to wearing a black armband at all times to remind myself of Sinéad's plight and, truly, the death of true love. If Sinéad O'Connor can't make it work with a man she met on Twitter what hope do the rest of us have?

Despair no more, though, folks as just yesterday Sinéad herself posted this message of joy and magic on her official Twitter page:

That's right, folks. Grieve no more; Sinéad O'Connor is back with her husband after a night of shagging. Or, as she put it, "my husband is a big hairy caveman and he came to claim me with his club". Genuine quote, people. However, despite them having reverted back to seemingly married bliss, the couple have decided not to live together for the time being and instead are going to try being "boyfriend and girlfriend". Just like the Year 7 couple, except with a trip around the shady area of Las Vegas culminating in fistfuls of crack cocaine.

Disney are reportedly in talks to turn the whole thing into a feature film, starring Amy Adams as the crack dealer.

3. Lee Ryan has nothing planned for the next few weeks on account of his GREED.

The latest series of Celebrity Big Brother is starting tonight, which is all very exciting. "Hasn't it just been 5 minutes since the last series of Big Brother..?" you may ask yourself, and the answer is, indeed, yes but after their Amy Childs fly-on-the-wall show It's All About Amy turned out to be as dull as watching paint dry (but without the sense of satisfaction when it all reaches a shocking climlax and it dawns on you, with glee, that the paint is finally dry) Channel 5 realised that Celebrity Big Brother was unfortunately the only thing it has in its arsenal, so it seems they will be churning out series like no one's business. Keeps Sam France off the streets for a few weeks, if nothing else, eh?

Rumoured contestants include MENTAL-ILLNESS-IS-A-SERIOUS-BUSINESS comedienne Ruby Wax (interesting), I-shagged-my-husband's-brother-and-I-liked-it-the-taste-of-Imogen-Thomas's-chapstick Z-lister Natasha Giggs (tedious) and coughs-loudly-while-celebrities-answer-questions-while-fiddling-with-her-ear-piece Loose Woman Denise Welch (literally amazing). I swear if Denise Welch is genuinely in the house I am abandoning my year abroad, coming back to the UK and never stepping away from the live feed for the duration of her time in the house.

One man you won't be seeing in the Big Brother house tonight is Lee Ryan, despite initial rumours suggesting he'd be making an appearance. It seems the singer, who once spit-roasted a girl with Duncan James pausing only to high-five her half-way through (now THAT's Blue...), got a bit too big for his boots and ended up demanding more money. Rather than catering to his demands, however, Channel 5 instead gave him his marching orders. That's right, folks. Even Channel 5 don't want him. Bad times for Lee Ryan. At least he has his glittering music career to fall back on. Oh...wait...

Let's be honest, Lee Ryan would have been cringey viewing but he'd still have been a good housemate, so if Channel 5 are willing to let him go just like that they must be pretty certain they're onto a winner. Having said that, reports are also suggesting his last minute replacement is Romeo Dunn, so I may well have spoken too soon...

While we're on the subject of Celebrity Big Brother, I dunno if I've mentioned but I bloody well live in bloody France these days, so won't be watching Big Brother. If anyone is watching the launch tonight and fancies writing a summary of the housemates in DARE I SAY IT some class of "guest-post" then give me a comment below or a tweet or something. Just think, the chance to have your views on a Channel 5 reality show read by tens of twenties of people. Chance of a lifetime.

That's your lot!
I'm being quite serious about someone writing a cheeky Big Brother summary if anyone fancies it. IF NOT I'LL JUST EMBARRASSINGLY PRETEND I NEVER SAID ANYTHING.
xx

The Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup.

2012-01-04T00:30:00.012Z

Well, folks. It's 2012. 2011 is officially over. Still to come are my "top singles of 2011" lists, which I'm sure you're so far off the edge of your seat in anticipation over that you're actually squatting over the floor, but before that I am going to do a Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup. I'm sorry that I haven't been blogging much as of late and when I do blog it's mostly to go "LOOK AT ME ON MY YEAR ABROAD AREN'T I JUST THE BEST" but frankly I am the best so I'm sure you understand my reasoning behind that, don't you? Of course you do.

2011 was a mad year. Beyoncé got pregnant, Prince William liked it and put a ring on it and Nadine Coyle told me she liked my hair. Lady GaGa dressed up as me for an awards ceremony, Frankie Cocozza broke a "golden rule" and Cheryl Cole got kicked in the tits. Cher Lloyd told off the "haters", Nicola Roberts surprised us all with a stonker of a debut and Rihanna somehow found the time to collaborate with Jay-Z and Calvin Harris on her latest offering.

Nicki Minaj finally got acknowledged in the charts by releasing a bonus track as a single, Amy Winehouse died and Madonna revealed to the world that she really does not like hydrangeas. Britney shagged her boyfriend in a music video, Kerry Katona shocked us all by not being a total twat on Celebrity Big Brother and Justin Bieber ACTUALLY HAD SEXUAL INTERCOURSE WITH ANOTHER HUMAN.

How can 2012 compare to all that? Let's see...

1. The divorce bells are a-ringing.

Despite just weeks earlier insisting that he'd be with her until the end, this week the devastating news broke that Russell Brand has filed for divorce from his cream-shooting-breasted wife Katy Perry after just 14 months of marriage.

At the minute we know nothing about the divorce, other than that Russell is the one who filled all the forms in citing "irreconcilable differences" as the reason for the split. There you go. There's all of the concrete facts we know. Unfortunately that does not sell newspapers, does it? No it does not. CHOO CHOO-- THE SPECULATION TRAIN IS PULLING INTO THE STATION:

ALL ABOARD!!!

According to various "sources", who are in all honesty probably works of utter fiction, there are a number of contributing factors to the breakdown of Russell and Katy's marriage. For one thing Katy Perry was allegedly (translated: in the heads of journalists and nowhere in reality) unwilling to give Russell a baby even though he was reportedly (translated: pulled out of a lazy journalist's arse because it was very nearly the end of the year so who the fuck cares) keen to start a family.

Meanwhile another "source" claims that Katy's partying was getting too much for ex-alcoholic Russell Brand who it seems is apparently (translated: what you are about to read is most likely a lie) ready to settle down and have a family.

If you ask me, they probably just got married too quickly and without having spent too much time together since Katy was on tour and Russell is permanently shooting one film or another in his attempt to be taken seriously as an "actor" or whatever he's doing these days. I imagine they met at the VMAs, had a few months of uninterrupted blissful sex and then naively got married thinking it would always be like that, only to discover it's all a bit more complicated than you realise when you throw in two families living on the other side of the globe from one another.

Of course, now it is me who is completely speculating and pulling theories out of my anus, making me just as bad as the lazy "journalists" I've been slagging off in previous paragraphs.

It's ever so sad though, isn't it?

And if you thought the news about Russell and Katy was sad, then wait till you hear about the saddest celebrity marriage breakup of our times. Just when you thought it was safe to believe in love again, after just sixteen short days of marriage nit-hater and single-tear-crier Sinéad O'Connor has split up with her fourth husband (you know, the man she found in a horny search on Twitter and ended up marrying).

After being together just four short months, the couple got married in a Las Vegas ceremony, although according to Sinead herself the marriage was doomed from the offset as she left him during their wedding night on a desperate hunt for some marijuana. Somehow the two ended up in a rough end of town where she ended up being handed a seemingly large stash of crack cocaine. Not the traditional wedding gift, I'm sure you'll agree.

Throw in the fact that her new husband, who Sinéad met online after a desperate search for a shag (straight people don't know what they're missing with Grindr I'm telling you now), was a drugs counsellor and it seems it was all downhill from there just three hours after initially saying "I do".

Fifth time's a charm, eh, Sinéad? It seems that, as she famously sang, Nothing Compares 2 U. Apart from U. And U. And U. Oh and maybe U.

2. Alesha Dixon is given a load of money to judge others.

It seems that after seemingly downing a bottle of wine on national TV while Alan Carr looked on astonished, the British nation are back in love with Strictly Come Dancing judge Alesha Dixon. And why shouldn't they be? She is lively, exciteable, beautiful and a very good dancer (and singer) (oh and MC, let us not forget).

Yet despite the most recent series of Strictly Come Dancing being a massive success in the ratings (I dunno why it seems like a right heap of shite to me, but then I live in a bedsit without a telly), it was revealed this week that Alesha will not be returning to judge the next series later this year. It was then confirmed that she'd been swayed by Simon Cowell to sit alongside returning judge Amanda Holden and fresh face David Walliams on the next series of Britain's Got Talent, the show which started the careers of Susan Boyle, Diversity and no one else worth mentioning.

In what can only be described as a piece of gossip to make you exclaim "you go girl", Alesha is rumoured to be getting £300,000 to be on Britain's Got Talent which, when you consider the fact a trained monkey is qualified enough to sit on that panel and push a button when they've seen enough, is a massive amount of money.

I do think Alesha will be an amazing guest, but if there's one thing her time with Alan Carr has taught us it's that Alesha Dixon should be permanently pissed so that she will run her mouth off and rip the whole thing to shreds. I can imagine her now, stumbling onto the stage half-way through the finals, slurring "you'reaaaallllll shiiit" to the performers before leading the audience in a sing-a-long version of The Boy Does Nothing. Amazing stuff.

If you really want a laugh, let's have a look at Alesha Dixon's new single, which deals with the ever-controverisial subject of feeling a bit fat after Christmas so ganning to WeightWatchers and then chucking all your old clothes out because they made you feel fat and frumpy, presumably only to repeat the whole process next January when you're once again swollen and round after one two many turkey sandwiches and After Eights on Boxing Day:

What a heap of shite.

3. Is it all over before it began for Harry Styles and Cougar Flack?

So ever since Harry Styles off of One Direction was revealed to be cosying up to Caroline Flack off of The Xtra Factor, the media and, of course, social networking sites have reacted the way you might expect they would.

Some have claimed Harry is a "true lad" for managing to bag himself an older woman. Most have questioned what would provoke a woman in her early 30s to go out with someone who can't even legally order them a drink yet (the answer, of course, is that he's probably like one of them Duracell bunnies in bed, or at least that's how it goes in my head). Others, like my mam, are just happy to hear that Harry goes for older women (although she still hasn't totally forgiven him for that "pussy" remark to Matt Cardle at last year's X Factor final).

Needless to say poor old Caroline has been the subject of quite a lot of abuse from the online community, with some bloody mental teenage girls going as far as to send her death threats. Ridiculous, really.

However, those teenage girls (and, you know, my mam) can breathe a sigh a relief as it's looking as if the couple have decided to call it a day shortly before One Direction's tour of the UK starts, which is a shame as I was rather hoping that would be a dysfunctional relationship that would end up spiralling out of control. I was hoping there'd be a long engagement with everyone chipping in their opinions, with the eventual wedding ceremony being disrupted by my mam bursting in, hundreds of teenage girls in her wake, to perform an impromptu rendition of It Could Have Been Me.

Time will tell, folks. Time will tell.

Right. I've blogged.

Laters!

Yeah I'm still in France...

2011-12-05T19:21:00.000Z

Let's have a moment of honesty. Hands up who thought I'd still be in France by 5th December? Did anyone genuinely think I'd have stuck it out as long as I have? In all truthfulness, I really did think I'd have packed it all in by now. Particularly after spending a week in my beloved Newcastle- gossiping in Nando's with my sister and rolling around the city dressed as a less-than-convincing Amy Winehouse with my best friends- I wasn't entirely convinced I'd be able to bring myself to get back on the hundred trains necessary to get me back to France, but I did it and I have surprised even myself with how well I'm coping this time around.

While admittedly it's been only a month since I last blogged about my experiences abroad, it does feel (thankfully) that quite a lot has gone on. The last time we spoke, let's face it, I wasn't having the best time of it here in L'Hexagone. María and myself were living in what came to be known as "the dungeon" in the rural town of La Ferté Bernard, where I was spending every day in McDonald's to get online. No disrespect to La Ferté Bernard, it is a beautiful town and the people there are so pleasant it's practically criminal, but it was not for me.

I'm pleased to report that since then I've moved into my own studio apartment. which is conveniently placed less than a minute from the train station which means that I can roll right out of bed and onto the train. This is less than brilliant news for the students I teach at 8am who are faced with a perfect mix of Edward Scissorhands and a disheveled Marge Simpson leading them in a discussion in a foreign language. The stuff nightmares are made of.

Speaking of which, in my last "year abroad" blog post I had been taking classes for just a couple of weeks. I'm now fully in the swing of things and can say with some confidence that I am one of the worst educators in the history of the world. Each time I step into that classroom I start channeling Cameron Diaz in Bad Teacher. Since becoming a language assistant I have so far told one of my students that I was "worried to go flat-hunting on Saturday morning because I know I'll be hungover" and announced to another student that he had to stop playing with a pair of scissors because "sharp items in my classroom are not a good idea when Britney Spears is in Newcastle and I am in La Ferté Bernard".

"Do you want to collect our sheets in?" a bright-eyed student asked me one Friday morning as the bell sounded.

"Whatever," I replied, hurtling out of the door faster than any of my students.

My students range from the wonderfully enthusiastic to the kids who couldn't be loss hostile if they were to greet me by grabbing me by my hair and smashing my face against the chalkboard. At one point last week, when met with the problem of a student who shook his head at me as I tried to explain something or other in English and then proceeded to put his head on the desk, I did flip my lid and ended up hollering "I CAN PROMISE YOU NO ONE WANTS THE LESSON TO END MORE THAN ME BUT I CAN'T GO ANYWHERE SO IF I'M GOING TO STAY HERE AND TEACH YOU HAVE TO STAY HERE AND LISTEN" in garbled French like a crazy person.

I do feel somewhat like I'm making progress with my French, though I have surrendered to the fact I will never have a decent French accent and will always dress people in a different language with the same Geordie accent I speak English in. One thing I've learned is that my French is a lot better if I just let it flow rather than trying to rehearse speeches in the supermarket or the post office. I'm very slowly getting to know some French people (I even went on a date with a French boy-- which was worth alone leaving Hebburn for), and actually finding myself suitably able to express myself which is decent.

Living in Le Mans has been a re-assuring experience for myself on a personal level, as well. This being my first time away from home it's a comfort to know that I'm not the world's most useless person and that I can look after myself to a suitable degree (let's just ignore the fact I've been to McDonald's three times this week in as many days), and I do feel much more confident in myself which is brilliant as well.

I apologise for not blogging as much about my year abroad, or indeed anything else, but finally being in the same city as all the other mint people I've met here means I'd much rather be out living my life here while I can rather than sitting around writing about it. I'm sure you understand.

I'll leave you with some photos of assorted shenanigans that have happened since I last updated:

María's housewarming. She lives above a gaybar with rainbows painted on the side so everyone wore a different colour of the rainbow. I dressed demurely for the occasion.

Harriet striking a pose she very rarely does. Also in the picture are Dave, Laura and Emily. And some homo.

At Liz's for Thanksgiving. She is not in the picture, and neither is the leopard print bow tie I wore in honour of the celebration. Festive.

Me "pretending" to shag Jenni up the arse. Later that night I wandered the streets at 5.30 and ended up sharing a room with a copulating Castilian couple. Dysfunctional is the word.

Me and some of the girls. Liz looks like she's not stopping. Later that night I got off my face and felt up about 80% of the straight men in our party. I fell over on the way home and was so hungover the next day I couldn't take my sunglasses off. I also felt a large proportion of the next day trying to find the source of the vomit smell in my flat. It turned out it was coming from my vest top :(

I believe this is the only picture which exists of Nik and myself. He is sick and should be studied.

This hug was so enjoyable I demanded a photo be taken of it.

A bientôt

Remember, you are literally much better off following me on Twitter these days, I update that all the time because it's not blocked in the staff room.

Daniel

The Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup.

2011-11-22T22:30:00.020Z

I keep starting blogs about my year abroad, but weirdly for someone who spends a good 75% of my time talking at people about myself, I find it difficult to sit down and write about what's going on. Since my last Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup not a lot has changed here in Le Mans, but quite a bit has gone on in the world of celebrities so why don't I talk about all that for now and then we'll see if I have anything half as interesting to say about myself at a later date, oui? Oui...

1. Rihanna wears a naughty shoe which if we're all being honest no one could give a fuck about.

OK so to truly understand this story we're going to have to hop in the time machines in our mind to this time last year, when Rihanna appeared on The X Factor final to perform what was then her new single, which we came to know as What's My Name? a song asking someone what your name is while they're performing oral sex on you, although realistically with a mouthful of labia it's quite difficult to form the phonemes necessary to convey the word "Rihanna" which is probably why she repeats "what's my name?" so many times during the song.

So anyway, as I'm sure you remember, loads of people phoned OFCOM to say "THAT NICE MAN MATT CARDLE WAS JUST SINGING A SONG NICELY WHEN SUDDENLY THIS HARLOT APPEARED AND STARTED GYRATING, IF IT WASN'T FOR HER I'D SAY HE HAD A LONG AND FRUITFUL CAREER AHEAD OF HIM BUT SHE'S MORE OR LESS PUT THE NAIL IN HIS COFFIN NOW. AWFUL."

In the 12 months that followed, practically every time Rihanna's name was mentioned in the Daily Mail the article concluded with "the Bajan pop princess caused a stir with a saucy/racy (delete as applicable) performance alongside Christina Aguilera at last year's final". If you don't believe me you can look through their archives for yourself.

Therefore when it was revealed that Rihanna would be making a return to the X Factor stage, this time to perform her Calvin Harris-produced single We Found Love (without that dead weight Matt Cardle hanging around) people were eager to see if she'd be making a similar controversy. What would she be wearing? What would she be doing? Would she mention last year's controversy?

As it turns out it was a pretty bog-standard performance, she came out dressed like a pack of shortbread, didn't even bother to pretend she was singing live for most of the song and reminded everyone her album would be out this week. And then she disappeared. Controversy-free. Or so it seemed...

You see Rihanna had a secret message slyly written on the side of one of her shoes, the simply message "fuck off". Nice. Naturally people are now pretending this has caused a giant stir with loads of people being offended, although actually when the performance was first aired nobody even noticed and therefore no one gave a shit and therefore (yes I said therefore twice WHAT OF IT?) the whole thing is a heap of shite. And now I'm repeating it and further spreading the shite.

Let's have a round of applause for celebrity blogging, everyone...

2. One Direction are feeling especially modest about their most recent single release.

The good thing about Twitter is that it really allows fans to get closer to the artists they love and admire. More importantly, it gives the artists themselves the chance to give fans an intimate look at their lives that they might not get to see otherwise. It allows the artist to show other sides to their character. For example, for all of their tomfoolery on stage, Twitter really shows the softer, more modest side to the boys of One Direction.

Of the One Direction (or 1D as the cool kids call them) lads, Liam Payne and Niall Horan are probably the two that tweet the most (the others are probably off buying chinos in bulk) but despite the fact that their latest single Gotta Be You was brand new on iTunes this week, thankfully Liam and Niall didn't let it dominate their Twitter feeds...

And it's certainly a relief to see, on a social networking site like Twitter, that the boys of One Direction have their feet firmly on the ground and still have it lodged firmly in their heads that as a group who came third on The X Factor they're lucky to have any chart success they can get...

What's really good to know is that the boys have stayed humble regardless of the "rollercoaster ride" they've been on the past 12 months, and are grateful for any chart success they can get. In fact it's clear when reading the boys' Twitter feeds that success isn't what drives them, and chart positions aren't really important-- they're clearly humbled by the fact that even esteemed pop acts such as Robyn and Nicola Roberts' most recent singles peaked at 55 and 40 respectively, so as long as they're making people happy who cares about the charts...

Gotta Be You, if you're interested, debuted at number 3 on Sunday.

Indeed.

3. Prepare yourself for this one, folks.

If you thought that Christmas was about joy and merriment, then you can think abloodygain, OK???? Lady GaGa has arrived with her new EP A Very GaGa Holiday and she's here to remind you what Christmas is all about-- her VERY SERIOUS, self-indulgent jazz inspired vocals, of course!

Because every now and then Lady GaGa needs to remind us that even though her entire first album was based around embracing the shallow side of life and her desperation to be famous for at the very least the 15 minutes Andy Warhol promised her, she's actually also a very serious, artiste and musician. That's why she's chosen to debut this cover of festive classic White Christmas but with a twist.

To prove her skills as a songwriter, she's also decided that the festive classic that's been passed down across generations is actually not long enough for her so rather than do what, you know, EVERYONE HAS DONE SINCE THE SONG WAS FIRST PERFORMED and sing the verse again, she's actually written her own piss-poor lyrics. If you're wondering what provoked her to do that, then you're in luck because during an instrumental middle 8, GaGa addresses the listener directly. It's as if she knew that we'd all be wondering "what the fuck was she thinking?"

"So...as you can tell I'm very outgoing", she explains over a horn solo, "And a little bit shy...BUT I DECIDED that this song is just too short". She then goes on to perform a second verse where she longs for a "white snowman". I'm not entirely sure what comes next because I could feel my blood pressure soaring with rage and thought it best to turn the song off (still it could have been worse, if she'd got her hands on "The Twelve Days Of Christmas" and added some extra verses we'd end up with 14 Beautiful People Just Being Themselves As God Intended or, more likely, 13 Bumlords Bumming)

If you'd like to listen to GaGa's laborious cover of White Christmas, and frankly after that glowing review why wouldn't you, here it is:

I can't be the only person who thought of this Family Guy moment as soon as I heard her sing "whhhhhite Christmas" for the first time...?

"Why are you putting so much emphasis on the 'h'?"

As if the whole thing wasn't ridiculous and pretentious enough, let's remind ourselves of the last time Lady GaGa did a Christmas song, shall we..?

The times have truly changed.

C'est tout.

A bientôt!

The Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup.

2011-11-20T12:38:00.004Z

I'm sorry my blogging is so infrequent these days, I'm busy running around pretending to know what I'm doing in front of classes of French teenagers, making to-do lists and not doing a thing on them and MOST IMPORTANTLY waking up on Saturday mornings knowing full well I have been sick somewhere in my flat but having no idea where.

It's not just me that's been all engines go, though. Just because celebrities aren't running around (read: dossing about) on their year abroad doesn't mean they aren't up to stuff. Here is some of that stuff in an all new Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup...

1. Some kid makes a prick of himself on American X Factor.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me like the American X Factor is trudging along with no one paying the blindest bit of interest. Between that and the reportedly falling ratings for the UK series (coupled with the fact no one seems to give a fuck who wins this year), it wouldn’t be an outrageous claim that Simon Cowell may be a tad nervous for the future of the brand he’s put everything he’s got into.

Thankfully, there was (finally!) a bit of interest in the American series this week, courtesy of teenage rapper Astro (not to be confused with the dog off The Jetsons). Despite being one of the critics’ favourites, the 14-year-old had the misfortune of finding himself in the bottom two this week following a performance of Sting’s Every Breath You Take which prompted judge L.A. Reid to tell him that he has more maturity than some of the older contestants.

What L.A. Reid was not aware of was that when Astro found out that he was one of the acts in the bottom two that week that he would throw all of his toys out of the pram and essentially tell the audience they weren't worthy of listening to him perform. Initially he came out, and told the audience to a shower of boos that he didn’t feel it was "necessary" for him to “sing for survival”. And they said Cher Lloyd was an X Factor brat...

Simon went on to ask why he initially didn’t want to perform, to which Astro (real name Brian- LOL) said he didn’t want to perform for an audience of people who obviously didn’t want him there. Simon then told Astro t

o “think of his mother watching”, which is the best way to shame a 14-year-old boy into doing anything, although despite his stinking attitude he ended up being saved by three of the four judges meaning he goes on to rap another day.

Let’s remind ourselves of one of the best rap performances we’ve ever seen on a Simon Cowell show:

And one of the worst:

DEAR ME.

2. Chantelle Houghton is up the duff.

This one literally writes itself.

After a series of very public failed relationships with Preston off the Ordinary Boys and then Rav Wilding (who famously called the paparazzi to photograph a romantic picnic he'd planned for her only to start screaming at her and reducing her to tears in front of the UK's media photographers), Chantelle Houghton has finally been given a visit by the stork. And who’s the lucky man who’s spunked up in her? It’s bloody well only her bloody fiancé Alex bloody Reid isn’t it? Yes it is.

The two reality stars, who have both won Celebrity Big Brother in the past, got engaged last month after Alex proposed to her live on air, which is all well and good except he’s not technically divorced from Katie Price (the only person on earth with bigger jugs than the aforementioned Rav Wilding’s) which means that it could well be time to SOUND THE BIGAMY SIREN.

Katie and Alex split up last year among rumours that Katie was uncomfortable with Alex for wanting to be famous in his own right, as well as reports that she would ridicule him for being unable to get her pregnant and that he was fat.

The couple had been told by doctors they would not be able to conceive naturally, and Chantelle told OK! magazine that they were in fact just days away from starting IVF treatments. Chantelle claims that she had all of the hormones in her fridge ready to get started, although apparently she destroyed them by putting them too far back in the fridge and freezing them.

Amazing.

I look forward to what Katie Price will be pulling from up her sleeve next to steal their thunder.

3. Lady GaGa gets ready to marry the night. No word yet on whether it's a church service or a registry office job.

You might have seen Lady GaGa on last week’s X Factor performing her new single Marry The Night (One Direction were also there but the chances are unless you’re a teenage girl at the height of your frenzied sexual awakening you didn’t even pay them any attention). The song is a high-energy dance number about leaving your inhibitions behind and surrendering to the night time, so in a completely logical bit of staging GaGa performed the song dressed as a decapitated woman holding her own head in a confessional box.

If you missed the performance, you can watch it here:

What a daft bitch.

Anyway the other day Lady GaGa tweeted that because her fans had been so supportive of her performances of Marry The Night so far (and there were a lot of them, not surprising since Yoü and I peaked at 23 in the UK charts) that she’d be revealing a preview of her upcoming video entitled “Marry The Night: The Prelude Pathétique” (it’s gotten to the stage of pretentiousness now where even the previews of her music videos need names). She later clarified that she’d only be publishing a minute and a half of the preview. Apparently the full preview lasts 7 minutes and the video itself is her longest day to date.

Longer than Ale-ale-bloody-jandro-ale-ale-oh-my-god-this-is-going-on-forever-andro? Longer than Tele-what-the-fuck-is-even-going-on-you-were-in-prison-five-minutes-ago-and-suddenly-youre-making-a-cyanide-laced-sandwich-in-a-diner-with-Beyoncé-phone? Really? REALLY THOUGH?

GaGa eventually revealed the preview (which is essentially a preview of a preview) this Thursday, in which is seen being dragged around what appears to be a mental institution by two nurses. GaGa herself narrates over the top with the opening line: “when I look back on my life it’s not that I don’t want to see things exactly as they happened”. She then goes on to claim that she’s filled in the “ugly” holes in her memory to make them “beautiful” again.

For once I’m with GaGa on this one. For example, I was out in Le Mans with my new aren’t-we-fantastic-we’re-on-our-year-abroad mates and ended up drinking too much and essentially feeling up every heterosexual male in the bar. When I look back on that night, I prefer to think of us all drinking brandy, playing billiards and maybe shooting a pheasant rather than them cowering in a corner rocking backwards and forwards wishing not so much they’d never come to France as much as that they’d never been born, while I invite them all back to my studio apartment to enter me. According to Lady GaGa choosing to live in this alternate universe makes me an artist. I belive her.

You can watch “Marry The Night: The Prelude Pathétique” right this second right here if you want. There is not a second’s worth of music in it which seems slightly unusual for a music video:

For the record if this isn’t the world’s worst bum-number than I think it’s going to be her best music video yet.

That's it.

A bientôt!

The Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup.

2011-11-13T23:10:00.011Z

It's been a while.

I know I shouldn't have kept you waiting.

But I'm here now.

What would you know? I've been in France for more than six weeks now and I finally have Internet in my flat. I'll fill you all in on what I've been up to soon, but first I think it's time to get back to doing what I do best (which is evidently not teaching English, being in any way hands-on when it comes to making decisions about my own life or, indeed, talking to Southern people about anything besides Newcastle).

Let's slag some famous people off for no good reason in yet another Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup...

1. Frankie Cocozza has, once and for all, proved himself to be a massive, massive twat.

So, as you know, I’ve been out of the country for some time meaning my coverage of this year’s X Factor has been rather sparse. In fact, I’ve felt rather out of the loop about the whole thing, relying solely on Twitter and the word of my nutty parents to give me the scoop on which contestants are doing well and which are disgracing themselves and, indeed, the entire nation.

Week after week, though, I was appalled to learn that the British public were voting to keep that massive bellend Frankie Cocozza in the country. You might recall when Frankie first auditioned for the competition, I took an immediate dislike to him largely because he described himself as “mental” and got his arse out for the entire nation before he’d even sung a note. Poor old Justin Bieber sings a few OK songs and becomes a figure of hate while Frankie Cocozza pulls down his miserable Calvins to show his pathetic anus off to the nation and gets a fast-track to his fifteen minutes of fame. Ridiculous.

As this year’s competition trudged along (let’s be honest, this has been the worst year since Leon Jackson won and even that had Sharon Osbourne’s very public dispute with Dannii Minogue to keep us all entertained) it seems Frankie’s “antics” (*vomits*) have become even more controversial with reports that he has been shagging girls left, right and centre. He even stirred up controversy when he announced on The Xtra Factor that he had “banged” one of the Geordie Shore lasses, which is a bit like telling people you’ve been to Majorca for your summer holidays; I’m sure you had a great time and everything but so did a thousand other people.

So anyway, in a SENSATIONAL twist, it was announced earlier this week that Frankie ahs been SENSATIONALLY kicked off the show in what can only be described as a giant SENSATION. According to an official statement from the show, Frankie had broken a “golden rule” of the show. At first I thought the “golden rule” must have involved being a giant, giant bell-end but that would also have meant an automatic elimination for Janet Devlin and, indeed, the entire judging panel so that can’t have been it.

Rumours then began to circulate that Frankie had been bragging backstage that he’d been snorting cocaine just hours after being told by rock god Louis Walsh that he is “not a rockstar” and “never will be”. Frankie then took to his Twitter to defend himself with the following tweet:

Let’s face it, that’s a bit of a pathetic statement, isn’t it? A bit like being dumped by someone and then putting “WHATEVS NEVA FANCIED U ANYWAY MATE” as your Facebook status, isn’t it?

As for using The X Factor as a start, it’s pleasing to see that Frankie will not let this affect his journey and will be keeping his eyes on the prize. LOL JK WHICH REALITY SHOW DO WE THINK FRANKIE WILL BE APPEARING ON FIRST? I’d suggest Dancing On Ice but by the sounds of things it seems like Frankie prefers grass and snow to ice.

DO YOU GET IT? BECAUSE OF ALL THE DRUGS HE IS REPORTED TO HAVE INGESTED!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

What a prick.

2. Could it be that Justin Bieber has enough testosterone whizzing around inside of him to impregnate another human being?

It’s news so shocking that we’ve even been discussing it in some of my lessons- there is a young lady out there declaring that Justin Bieber is the father of her four-month-old baby. Baby. Baby.

Justin himself is not happy, and has claimed that he has never even met Mariah Yeater, the 20-year-old woman claiming she took Justin’s virginity in a toilet and consequently became pregnant with his child. And they say romance is dead, eh?

The lass herself is hardly the most reliable of sources, though. As if the story wasn’t already murky enough, she’s already told someone else that he is the father and is currently due to face a judge after she smacked one of her ex-boyfriends around. One thing is for sure and that is that Mariah Yeater is something of a crazy bitch, but you can’t just go around saying people are the father of your baby when they aren’t, can you?

Justin himself, of course, is not best pleased, and has branded the whole debacle as “crap and lies” on his Twitter page. However, he has agreed to take a paternity test to hopefully put the whole thing to bed. It’s not yet known whether he will be using Jeremy Kyle’s services in order to set the record straight, but I can only pray that he does. The thought of Jezza shouting “PUT SOMETHING AT THE END OF IT” before going to Selena Gomez in the audience, telling her “you’re mic’ed up already, welcome to the show” is a dream I pray comes to fruition...

The sad truth if Justin turns out to be the father of the child is, of course, that even Justin Bieber is managing to get laid more than me :(

3. Madonna has a new song out and it is worth listening to, unless you’ve already made your mind up about her in which case listening to it is a waste of time.

It’s not always easy being a Madonna fan. Often, you find yourself having to defend her against people who claim she’s “too old”, “irrelevant” and “trying too hard”. Sometimes, when she’s on the top of her game making banging pop records and telling fans she hates the flowers they’ve brought for her, she makes herself easy to defend. Other times, when she’s thrusting her Crunchy-Nut-Cornflakes-fanny in your face and making up stories about dance-offs with Lady GaGa, it’s more difficult to defend her.

That’s why when it was revealed that her upcoming single Give Me All Your Love, produced by Martin Solveig, had leaked online I was apprehensive. While, of course, I was excited to hear her latest music, her last offering featured a phoned-in verse from Lil Wayne where she boasted “my sex is a killer” and told us “my love’s a revolver-volver-volver” until images of Madonna’s vulva were indeed burned on the inside of your eyelids.

Thankfully one listen to Give Me All Your Love more or less affirms that the Hard Candy era is officially over. Gone are cries of “see my bootie get down” and references to her crusty vagina. Instead she’s put out an unselfconscious and, especially by Madonna’s standards, fun song which sounds very 2011 without sounding like it’s trying too hard to be “young” or “current”.

I have a specific message for people who think Madonna is too old to be making music these days, particularly pop music which has a history of being youth-obsessed. This is a job Madonna has been in for 30 years, why should she back down just because she isn’t 22 anymore? Think about your own mother, would you be happy if someone told her she couldn’t do her job anymore just because of her age?

On a similar train of thought, I must admit that looking back Hard Candy did seem, in retrospect, to be trying a bit too hard. If my mam put out an album like Hard Candy, I wouldn’t really be supportive. However, if my mam was to release a single like Give Me All Your Love I would be very happy indeed. In fact, if any record producers are reading this, I believe my mam was put on this earth to perform a song just like Give Me All Your Love at G-A-Y on a Saturday night for a group of largely underage homosexuals off their face on half-price VK and poppers. If someone could make this happen I’d be very grateful.

I could describe it for you till the cows come home and moo through the letterbox, but really all you want is a clip, right? Right.

Good, innit?

Someone who’s less than won over by the leaked song, however, is ex-Girls Aloud singer Nicola Roberts, whose tweets would seem to imply that, like hundreds of others on Twitter, she has noticed similarities between her own song Beat Of My Drum and the new Madonna single, namely the opening line (“L-U-V Madonna”) which is strikingly similar to the chorus of Nicola’s debut single (“L-O-V-E, dance to the beat of my drum).

IN AN AMAZING TWIST, fellow Girls Aloud member Cheryl Cole tried to console Nicola...

...but it was no good...

WOWIE.

Meanwhile, Madonna’s reps have claimed that the leak is only a demo and Madonna is said to be fuming that the song has leaked. I imagine she took her frustration out in the typical Madonna fashion by chucking her youngest across the living room.

The song will be performed live for the first time at the Superbowl, which will apparently feature a collaboration between Lady Madge and Nicki Minaj which, let’s face it, will probably give me a heart attack. I’m trying not to think too much about it in case I spontaneously combust.

That’s it.

I’m back.

It feels good.

Laters!

I don't think we're in Newcastle anymore...

2011-10-18T18:31:00.006+01:00

I promised myself that I was not going to post another blog, particularly on the subject of my year abroad, until I could do so in the comfort of my own flat. Annoyingly, due to unforeseen circumstances this seems to be a dream I get further away from achieving with each passing day. And so, this fine Tuesday evening here in La Ferté Bernard's branch of McDonald's, get comfortable and I will tell thee a (possibly quite wordy and short on photos so I'd get comfortable) tale…

I have officially been living in France three weeks now and I still cannot speak French, although I have learned some new words. For example, I have learned that when you end a conversation with someone in the middle of the day you can say "bonne journée" to them. This is something I was never taught, although it is a greeting used by most of the people I have encountered in the 22 days I have been here, and I have been speaking French since I was 11 years old. Similarly, should the end of a conversation take place in the evening you can leave with a jaunty "bonne soirée". Mind-blowing stuff. You'd think someone at some point might have taught me this, wouldn't you? No one did.

I also now know the French word for mosquito ("la moustique") I appreciate that learning one new noun is not exactly a great achievement, particularly given the similarity to its English translation, but it was a necessary word to learn so that I could explain to people that I didn't have two gigantic nipples in the middle of my face, but instead I was bitten in the night a total of six times during my first week here. Embarrassingly this meant that for my first night out in Le Mans I had to experience my first taste of meeting new people in France with two mosquito bites on my cheek, but it could have been a lot worse and it was probably my own fault for not fully closing my shutters when I went to sleep. I have also learned the French word for shutters which, for those who are interested, is "les volets". Don't say I never teach you anything.

While I have not been here for a very long time, I have so far met some very pleasant people, namely María José, a girl from León in the North of Spain who lives above me and is the Spanish assistant at the same "lycée" as me. Our friendship is based largely on the fact that we have both unwittingly submitted ourselves to the same accidental hell in the form of our living arrangements. Before arriving we were told we'd be staying in our own apartments with a corner kitchenette, bathroom and our own TV which on paper sounds like a pretty luxurious life when you consider we would not be required to pay rent. This meant we were less than pleasantly surprised when we eventually saw our living quarters which initially consisted of one room containing a bed, a microwave, a desk and a fridge. I was lucky enough to have shelves in my room, a luxury María is yet to be granted. Bizarrely, however, her room is permanently neat while mine resembles the aftermath of a small-scale tornado. I have somehow managed to lose my favourite bow tie in what can only be described as the world's smallest living space. This is truly something only I could find possible.

Since moving here, I have of course learned a lot about the French way of life. For some reason British people seem to have it in their heads that the French are rude, and I am here to offer my rebuttal to that. In order to arrive here I had to take a total of four trains over the course of a ten hour journey. Two of these trains left from stations in Britain, and two left from stations in France. The first saw me arriving in London dragging two comically oversized suitcases behind me, each weighing roughly my own body mass. Unfortunately when trying to dismount the train in London I accidentally tripped and stumbled off, which provoked a bystander to "tut" at me. I'm not sure if "tutting" exists outside of the UK but it is probably one of the rudest things you could to someone who hasn't intentionally done anything wrong. If I see a teenage mother blow smoke into her baby's face in a bus shelter then I agree that "tutting" is a good idea. When I watch a youth pushing past an old woman for the last seat on the metro, "tutting" is the perfect reaction. It expresses disdain. Really though, watching a young man struggling with two cases he is clearly unable to carry is not an appropriate time to "tut". "Tutting" takes place when you fall off a train in London. I am yet to be tutted at in France.

In fact, when I arrived in France it was a completely different story. Everyone was smiling and looking on apologetically, that was if they weren't offering their assistance with my obviously heavy suitcases. By this time I was sweating profusely and kicking out quite a stink, so perhaps it could just be that my discomfort was more obvious in France than in England, but that's not all.

If you, too, are English I want you to try an experiment with me. I want you to think about your home town. I don't mean your nearest city or your any of that shite, I mean your home town. The actual town you grew up in. Now I want you to think about that town's shopping centre. I want you to imagine that town's shopping centre on a Tuesday night at about 8pm. Am I right in thinking that the spray-painted shutters have been down on the Greggs for a couple of hours now, and there's some shady-looking characters hanging around outside Booze Busters? I can imagine there are some hoodlums, or "hoodies" if you will, sitting around in tracksuits. Perhaps one of them has a frightening-looking dog. The dog might not necessarily be frightening-looking in other company, for example if the dog were sitting between to gaily playing twins it may even be cute, but around these angry-looking youths the dog looks ferocious. Are you imagining it? Good.

Now I want you to imagine walking past these "hoodies", looking one of them in the eye and saying "good evening" to them. Can you imagine the reaction? In my head it ends with being chased by the "hoodies" presumably on their bicycles, while they shout profanities and their angry dog snarls frighteningly at me. And yet, if I walk around the town centre here in La Ferté Bernard and I make eye contact with them and don't wish them a good day, it is considered impolite. Instead, if you say "bonsoir" to a stranger as you walk around the town centre here, they'll smile politely and say it back to you. Imagine that!

One downside to living in this casual atmosphere is that things take a lot longer to get done. In no way is this more true than in the case of my French bank account. On my second day here in La Ferté Bernard I went with one of my main teachers Anne-Cecile (a lovely woman with the most impressive house I have ever seen or am ever likely to see. In a Pushing Daisies-esque quirky sort of way, she collects Victorian-style doll-houses. ISN'T THAT THE MOST CHARMING THING YOU'VE EVER HEARD?) to open my French bank account. It seems this was important should I hope to collect my wages. Now perhaps you don't know me very well but I am not known for my luck with banks, as I find them frightfully intimidating. It turns out I had no need to be intimidated as the staff at the bank were very reassuring, speaking in clear French to help me as best they could understand the ins and outs of my French bank account. I left feeling pleased with myself, even slightly more independent, but most importantly I was assured my French bank card would be arriving in 8 days and then I could really start my life here properly.

If someone could have told me that three weeks later I would still be waiting for my bank card to arrive, I would have reserved my initial feelings of calmness. Instead I find myself checking my mail each day in vain, hoping to have received something from my French bank but every day I get there and the cupboard was bare meaning, as my dear mother would say, "Mother Hubbard's dog gets nought". This is frustrating for a number of reasons, but truly the worst of all is the fact that without a French bank account it is impossible to start a contract for things like Internet connection or mobile phones.

Now, folks, this is what is referred to on Twitter as a "first world problem". Poor old Daniel has to go a few days without getting online. Boo-hoo. As my friend Anna said to me, "you'll have to go retro and buy yourself a dirty French magazine" but that is the worst of it. And this is true, provided you aren't branching out on your own for the first time and living in a country where you scarcely speak the language and don't know anybody. The fact of the matter is that for my first two weeks I felt terribly homesick and lonely for quite a lot of the time, and it would have helped to have had some Internet in my "flat". I learned today the reason my bank card (and that of María) is yet to arrive is because they took our address down wrong in the bank. Idiots.

María and myself. Cheesy grins.

Thankfully, there was a glimmer of hope in the form of the hub here in La Ferté Bernard: its glorious McDonalds. Since we arrived here, María and I have become something of regulars at the local branch of McDonalds for no reason other than its free Wi-Fi facilities. It is now at the point where I know the staff in McDonald's better than most of the teachers I came here to assist in the first place because of the amount of time I spend here. While enjoying a double cheeseburger "au natur" it is good to get back into the world of online shenanigans, as things like Blogger and Facebook (otherwise known as the two non-pornographic websites I use the most) are blocked on the staffroom computers. Unfortunately this means that I am often behind on my celebrity gossip, which usually I pride myself on being bang up-to-date on. The following are events I have heard about from the celebrity world over my time in France:

1) Steve Jobs died: It is a shame Steve Jobs died because truly without him my world would be a very different place

2) Rihanna upset a farmer in Northern Ireland by getting her tits out: No offence to Rihanna who I love, but I have to side with the farmer. It's his land and if he doesn't want her on it naked that's his prerogative.

3) Frankie Sandford and Sarah Harding in rehab: Awful shame, best of luck to the both of them

4) Frankie Cocozza and Janet Devlin through another week on X Factor: What the fuck is wrong with you, Great Britain?

5) Alex Reid proposing live to Chantelle Houghton: Best of luck to them but they do themselves no favours, do they?

That is all.

Thankfully I do get the occasional break from McDonald's, during which I have visited the nearby city of Le Mans for a couple of nights out so far. The first party I went to was for Spanish students in the Le Mans area (obviously I went as María's guest). Probably one of the most foolishly arrogant things I have ever done in my life was going to this party, clearly over-estimating my abilities at the Spanish language I was clearly under the impression that a 'B' at A-Level two years ago meant that I could conduct a conversation on a variety of topics with Spanish people. Somehow I ended up telling a girl named Veronica in Spanish that my drag queen alter-ego was named Veronica Electronica (for some reason the Spanish word "reínona" is one I have never forgotten, although I can no longer remember simple vocabulary like "knife", "fork" or "spoon"), though how I managed for the rest of the night is something that I will never know. One lesson I learned that night is that my Spanish is not great.

I also met some very cool English-speaking people in Le Mans, which is good because sometimes I just need to speak in my broadest Geordie accent and have people understand what the fuck I'm talking about. I'm currently sitting in a fairly crowded fast-food restaurant and I'm confident that no more than 10% of the people in here will know who Cheryl Cole or Katie Price are? Can you imagine? I get to Le Mans whenever I can to see lovelies such as Jenni (who is the The Only Way Is Essex to my Geordie Shore), Harriet (who I thought was posh until she started telling me about how she loves the word "cunt") and Nik (who I spent a considerable amount of time discussing the camp value of crazy bitch films such as Sweeney Todd and Mommie Dearest, although I daresay he will not remember these conversations as by this point in the evening he was rather under the influence of white wine). It is nice knowing some people, although living far away is not great. I thank God every day that María is living here too, to perform showtunes with me in the staff room and applaud me when I say two words in correct Spanish.

Of course let's not forget that I am here primarily to help today's French youth learn English. I'm going down a lot better than I'd anticipated I would, the teachers are all super-nice and so far none of the students have openly called me a faggot. Nothing too embarrassing has happened, although the other day I did accidentally tell a group of teenagers that Nicki Minaj made me sexually aroused which, while true, is obviously not what I had intended to say to them. Embarrassing stuff. This weekend I was invited (with María) to get to know some of the teachers a bit better at a pot-luck lunch thrown by many of the languages department. We all know, of course, I don't do well eating in front of strangers in such social situations, and ended up trading my food with María in exchange for her glass of rosé wine. This, of course, meant that I ended up having slightly more to drink than everyone else and two more glasses of wine and two shots of "genièvre" later I found myself at a grown-up social event too tipsy to remember how to speak the French language. Needless to say, this being a grown-up social event (with the teachers I came to France to assist, no less) I felt it would be inappropriate to say "woopsie, it seems I've had too much to drink and forgotten how to speak French" so I simply had to keep schtum, nod along and laugh when everyone else did.

Reading over this account, it seems I've done nothing but slag the place I'm currently living in off which is actually the opposite of what I'd hoped to do because it truly is beautiful here. I have gone from someone who would sooner chew off his own feet at the ankle than walk anywhere more than five minutes away, and I've actually turned into someone who goes for walks FOR SOMETHING TO DO, such is the prettiness of this town. When I go for my shopping and have to walk through the medieval town centre I genuinely feel like Belle from the opening scenes of Beauty and the Beast, and not just because as I walk past the villagers they mutter to themselves about how peculiar I am ("a beauty but a funny one...is Beeeeelle").

This building behind me is actually an optician or some shit like that, but isn't it pretty and French?

This seems like as good a place as any to wrap up this rather disjointed account of my admittedly quite short time here, largely because there is a group of small children who are literally shrieking like seagulls in the soft play area of this McDonald's and if I don't leave soon I am going to walk over there with my tray and brutally murder them.

Don't forget if you want a more regularly updated (and chronologically accurate) account of my time here in France you're probably better off following me on Twitter here!

(Silly Old) Daniel

The Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup.

2011-09-22T13:26:00.016+01:00

For those who are keeping track, it's now just four short days until I arrive in France. This time in four days I will (hopefully) be on the train from Lille to Le Mans, with my two giant suitcases in tow, probably listening to some kind of empowering diva song to stop me from crying alone and in public. Frightening. I'm not gone yet, though, so let's dig in to another Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup...

1. All kinds of stuff is going on for that band known as Girls Aloud (unless, obviously, you're Nadine Coyle and you've stopped being invited to things).

Girls Aloud's century-long "year off" is still rolling along nicely with most of them going off and pursuing various projects in the field of performance art while Kimberley Walsh is currently flogging her own range of jewellery at Argos. OH, SHE'S LIVING THE DREAM.

Meanwhile, Cheryl Cole spent most of last week abandoning the world of mediocre pop music and being publicly elbowed in the groin by Simon Cowell and decided to take a relaxing holiday. And you know what they say- what better way to kick up your heels and unwind is there than a relaxing trip to the front line in Afghanistan??

The Geordie Princess flew out to the warzone to commemorate the fact that Britain's army have been in Afghanistan for the past ten years. And what a decade it's been, eh? The Sex And The City movie. The launch of crunchy M&Ms. The rise of Las Ketchup singing The Ketchup Song and then, of course, The Ketchup Song (Xmas Mix). Those poor soldiers have missed it all and so much more, so it's only right they should get a visit from Cheryl Cole as part of The Mirror's Pride Of Britain celebrations.

While she was there she took part in a mock gun battle, which is great because it meant we get to see Cheryl decked out in her army gear:

Lovely.

While she was there Cheryl also reportedly got her revenge on former boss Simon Cowell, when a dummy bearing his likeness was blown up by the army lads. Dearie me. She later, while on the frontline, heard a big explosion which she claims provoked "a few expletives". That's our lass.

Despite this, Cheryl had nothing but good things to say about the experience:

WISH YOU COULD HAVE BROUGHT THEM ALL HOME, EH? YOU KINKY BITCH.

When she returned to the UK she headed over to Nicola Roberts's house (as you do) with the rest of her fellow Girls Aloud singers, who posted this picture of them all on Twitter:

I wonder if the other girls even bother inviting Nadine Coyle to these things. Would you? Honestly? Trying to have a girlie night with someone incomprehensibly wailing Insatiable at the top of their lungs so you can't hear Bridget Jones's Diary...what's worse than that?

While we're on the subject of Nicola Roberts, the release of her debut album Cinderella's Eyes draws ever nearer, so to celebrate this she's premiered another song from the album, this time it's the closing track which is called Sticks + Stones and deals with the bullying she received from the British press when she first got started in Girls Aloud.

Before you listen, please heed this warning: Sticks + Stones is not a funny song:

"Funny how I was too young for so many things but you thought I'd cope with being told I'm ugly".

Bleak.

2. Madonna provides the soundtrack to the fight against homophobia.

Let's be honest, homophobia is unfortunately very much alive and well and more often than we'd like people in positions of power have less than open-minded ideas when it comes to the idea of people of the same sex making a life together, being in love or INDEED just having sexual relations with one another.

This is certainly the case with Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, whose family host a Christian counselling service which offers homosexuals the chance to turn their lives around by "praying the gay away". Wow.

When she arrived in California for some class of Republican party gathering, what she hadn't banked on was a welcome party from a group of angry homosexuals who, among other hilarious slogans, performed a flash mob routine to Madonna's controversial signature tune, Like A Prayer. Can anyone think of a better way to greet someone who offers Christian conversion therapy to LGBT people than a performance of Like A Prayer?

Well done all concerned. Keep fighting the good fight, particularly if the good fight continues to feature a Madonna number.

3. Rihanna further proves that she has singles coming out the wazoo.

This time last year Rihanna was busy promoting her single Te Amo from her Rated R album when suddenly- while the song was still in the charts- it was decided that less than a year after her last album was released she was going to be chucking a new one out and with it would be a brand new single. This single turned out to be Only Girl (In The World) which ended up giving Rihanna a much-needed solo number 1 single.

It seems she's up to her old tricks again because, despite the fact Cheers (Drink To That) has only been out about 5 minutes, and her collaboration with Nicki Minaj Fly continues to climb up the charts, that's not enough for the most ADHD woman in pop. You see, earlier this week she was asked when the follow-up to 2010's Loud would be released and this was her reply:

Since then it was announced that a collaboration between Rihanna and Calvin Harris would be coming very soon, and that is exactly what happened as it had its first play on Capital FM today. It's called We Found Love-- but is it any good? WHY DON'T YOU LISTEN TO IT FOR YOURSELF:

In other words: yes. It is very good. This will be Rihanna's sixth (SIXTH!) single release so far in 2011 (seventh if you include Man Down which ended up not being released in the UK), so between shooting music videos, featuring on tracks with Kanye West and Nicki Minaj, appearing in her film debut Battleships and performing on her Loud tour, I really don't know how Rihanna finds time to record ANOTHER album.

Her sixth album is coming this November, apparently. Rihanna is, I must stress, 23 years old.

Amazing.

If this is my last blog before I go abroad, then I will talk to you all when I get there.

Think good things for me, please.

Laters!

One year on...

2011-09-19T20:02:00.006+01:00

One word breaks a code of silence.

Silence tells me all I need to know.

One word.

Tells me everything I need to know.

One world driven into madness.

Madness driven by the depths below.

One word.

Tells me everything I need to know.

One year ago today Kelly Osbourne sat down on her Twitter page and decided to try and right a wrong. Somebody had spoken ill of her mother, Sharon. That somebody was Dannii Minogue. Kelly did the only thing that seemed appropriate at the time, and that was to inform the world of the truth: Dannii Minogue, wearer of clothes and singer of songs, was in fact Satan incarnate. She was walking around this mortal realm, judging talent shows and releasing OK records and unbeknown to everyone else in the world, she was actually the dark ruler of the underworld. She had to let everyone know. It was her duty.

A year has passed, people. The world of Twitter has seen a lot. Pregnancies have been announced. Celebrities have dissed and received disses in return. Nadine Coyle said she liked my hair. But never let Kelly's important advice be forgotten.

Never. Forget.

X Factor Roundup: Auditions (Part 5).

2011-09-18T17:27:00.011+01:00

I'll admit I've fallen a bit behind in my X Factor roundups, considering that this blog will probably be published a week after the show it's summarising first aired, and two further shows will have aired since then which is a bit confusing, but I'm a bit OCD when it comes to chronology, so let's have a look back over last Sunday's show and the freaks we're having rammed down our throats this time around...

Marcus Collins

Before Marcus speaks, or even looks at the camera, our first impression of him is in the "X Factor makeup room" spraying hairspray for 6 seconds. Already Marcus has won my heart, simply for his dedication to the application of hairspray. When he speaks, in his cute little Scouse accent (the good kind, not the kind that makes you want to attack your ear-drums with a knitting needle) it's a relief because he isn't up himself or conceited or anything like that, he's a sunny lad who clearly just wants to sing.

Things do take a plummeting turn for the worst when Marcus tells us that his clients call him "The Singing Hairdresser", which can only be described as a gigantic, stonking lie. They're hardly going to address him to his face as "Singing Hairdresser", are they? No they are not. In which case they'd have to call him that behind his back. And how would he know that? He wouldn't. THERE IS NO NEED FOR LYING ON THE X FACTOR, MARCUS.

Thankfully, Marcus gets things back on track when he starts singing, because he is fantastic. His song choice (Stevie "I Dropped My Pen Could Someone Save Me The Embarrassment And Hand It To Me" Wonder's Signed, Sealed, Delivered) could potentially be a bit boring because it's more-or-less the same thing over-and-over, but Marcus manages to bring some proper energy to it and his voice is ASTOUNDING. Well done to all concerned.

On a side note, it feels good (though a little unusual) to not be ripping a contestant to shreds on this blog for one reason or another. You know what this is, don't you? It's growth.

Have we seen the last of Marcus..? I hope not, it seems like he can do it all. He has the personality, the looks, the voice. It would not surprise me if he could also breathe fire while plate-spinning at the same time. Good show.

Jonjo Kerr

Jonjo is like The Sun's wet dream. He's a soldier. He's a devoted father. He's got a stupid fucking hat on. I don't need to tell you that as Jonjo tells us about his family, and his time in the military, Use Somebody by Kings of Fucking Leon is playing.

Jonjo explains that he is more scared going in front of the X Factor judges than he is to go to Afghanistan. This is arguably the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. One of those things involves the possibility of having all your limbs blown off, while the other involves Louis Walsh telling you that you have the "likeability factor" and that you remind him of someone else.

So out he struts onto the stage, and tells us some of his army mates have come to support him "with my wife...*pause*...my pregnant wife". THAT'S RIGHT, FOLKS. His wife is pregnant.

"I have a girlie question," says Kelly Look At Me Rowland, "How far along is your wife?" And, of course, it turns out she's ready to burst at any minute. It's a good job Simon Cowell is less involved this year, he'd have had her induced there and then to make sure the first ever X Factor birth took place on his watch. He says he hopes he doesn't mess it up.

IT TURNS OUT THAT HE BLOODY WELL DOES, THOUGH. "Oops I've got the timing wrong". Then he CONTINUES SINGING IT WRONG. The judges stop the song. And the serious music starts.

"You've gotta get your act together, this is no longer you performing in front of your mates", says Joyless Barlow. He starts again, and presumably the point is that he has pulled himself together, although anyone who knows the song well will realise that he has once again got the words wrong, singing "ever see a young girl cross the road", which is not a remarkable thing to see at all, is it? I see that all the time. He gets to the chorus and starts sounding a bit like Animal from The Muppets but the audience are shitting their pants over him so it's all-too-clear that the judges are gonna put him through.

"You moved me to tears," says Kelly Rowland, which is hardly remarkable because that woman would probably cry if she got to the bus-stop two minutes too late and had to wait five minutes for the next one. In fact she'd probably cry of happiness if she got the bus-stop on time, such is her emotional state. Ridiculous woman.

Have we seen the last of Jonjo..? Stupid name, stupid hat, OK performance < Pregnant wife, army man. NO I SUSPECT WE WILL BE SEEING A LOT MORE OF HIM. UNFORTUNATELY.

Which brings us nicely to...

Hilarious X Factor Visual of the Night

Graham Bennett putting deodorant on. It looks like his torso is frowning.

Watch the auditions yourself:

Marcus Collins - Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Jonjo Kerr - Handbags and Gladrags

Graham Bennett - She Bangs/It Wasn't Me

The Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup.

2011-09-16T00:10:00.011+01:00

I am moving to France in ten days. What a frightening thought. Don't get me wrong I am very, very excited but I do not feel at all prepared for this. I am scared my French is not good enough and I am scared that living in a foreign country is going to be harder than I am anticipating. I am scared that I am going to get walked all over by the French teenagers I'm trying to educate and I am scared that I am going to have no friends and come home miserable when it's all over.

Those are some things that I am scared of.

In the interest of keeping my mind on more pleasant things, I am going to do a Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup because it has been a while and I am sure you're all gagging for one. SO just what have those celebrities you love been up to..?

1. Madonna proves there is not enough botox in the world to freeze her sense of humour.

As of one month ago, Madonna is 53 years old. She has been alive for 53 years. This is a long time to be alive for. In this 53 years she has no doubt put up with a lot of bullshit. She's been divorced twice, her own brother stabbed her in the back by writing a tell-all book about her, and let's not forget the people around her constantly kissing her arse in the hope of getting something. A lot, a lot, of shit.

What generally happens when people reach this stage in their life is that they begin to stop caring as much what people think of them. While Madonna has never been one to consider the feelings of others, it seems this was even the case with her when earlier this month a fan appeared at the premier of her directorial debut W.E. to give her a bouquet of hydrangeas.

Madonna graciously accepted the flowers from the fan, who told her she was his "princess" (FOOL SHE IS THE FUCKING QUEEN). However, as the fan walked off, Madonna let her true feelings slide:

A lot of people have said that this video proves that Madonna is a bitch, that she is ungrateful and has no respect. But let's be honest, we've all been given presents we didn't want, haven't we? I know I have; when I was 6 years old I wanted tap lessons for my birthday. Do you want to know what my father bought me? A FOOTBALL GOAL FOR THE BACK GARDEN. WHAT IN THE NAME OF CHRIST IS A YOUNG BOY MEANT TO DO WITH THAT?? I'd have loved someone to tell that I "loathed" football to, but alas I was just 6 and did not want to appear grateful.

Let us keep in mind, folks, that Madonna did not say "I loathe hydrangeas" to the fan, she said "thank you" to him. It's not her fault that the cameras picked up on what she said afterwards, and at the end of the day if the guy was really a fan he'd know not to give Madonna hydrangeas when a simple Google search can tell you that Madonna's favourite flowers are white roses, which she demands as part of her rider. He should have got her some of them. Idiot.

Unfortunately for Madonna the video later went viral with her faux pas spreading like wildfire across the interweb. Thankfully, in recent times it seems Madonna has stopped taking herself QUITE as seriously and posted this moderately funny rebuttal video on her official YouTube channel:

Oh, Madonna. Please never change.

2. Nicki Minaj does something...cool HAHAHAHA.

I'm pleased to note that Nicki Minaj's world domination seems to be ticking along nicely. She's won her very first VMA, been praise for photoshoots she's done for magazines as prestigious as Vogue, and she has more than 5 million followers on Twitter. Now she's gone one further and sparked a new online frenzy.

Yesterday Nicki took to her aforementioned Twitter page to post this easily-imitable out-take from a shoot she did with Glamour magazine, along with the message "Got milk?":

Fans of Nicki began taking their own versions of the photo in their own fridges, leading to a brand new Internet craze known as "fridging", which follows in the footsteps of "planking" and invites people to open their refrigerator doors, climb in and take a photo. So far Snooki off Jersey Shore is one of the few stars to take part in the trend, but as it takes off who knows which A-listers will climb in their fridges in the name of Twittertainment?

Alternatively, of course, it might die on its arse. We'll see, won't we?

3. 2011's most unanticipated duet has arrived.

Having previously been a featured artist on songs for the likes of Flo Rida, Taio Cruz and Britney Spears, it seemed like it was only a matter of time before Ke$ha performed on a track for rock singer Alice Cooper.

Well the day has finally arrived as the two have unveiled a duet they recorded together entitled What Baby Wants. According to Alice Cooper himself, and why would he lie for heaven's sake, Ke$ha plays the devil on the track who tries to tempt him and ends up always getting what she wants. What a frisky minx.

He also claims that in time the world will see Ke$ha as a rockstar rather than a "disco singer", calling Ke$ha an "old friend" of his. I find it slightly hard to believe that they would move in the same circles, but then again this is a world where Britney Spears has literally noshed Fred Durst off so I suppose anything is possible, isn't it?

The song itself is not bad at all, actually. You can listen to it for yourself here:

I am keen to see what this Alice Cooper/Ke$ha duet means for the future of pop music, especially considering that Marilyn Manson has already appeared on a remix of Lady GaGa's Love Game. I wonder...

Possible Duets We Could Be Seeing At Some Point In The Near Future

Ozzy Osbourne feat. Taylor Swift - Immammammamma Let You Finish

Courtney Love feat. Justin Bieber - It Was Suicide, I'm Telling You

Those are all that I can think of right now. Feel free to add your own if you're feeling more creative than me.

That's it.

Laters!

X Factor Roundup: Auditions (Part 4).

2011-09-11T00:02:00.020+01:00

It might surprise you to hear that, despite my tough mannerisms and rebellious nature, I have never been in prison. But what I have heard is that when men get out of prison, having been deprived of sexual relations with ladies for a long time, they tend to want to shag any female who crosses their path. Raunchy.

It works in other situations as well, obviously. Ex-anorexics are known to eat McDonalds morning, noon and night while into the early stages of recovery. Women who've spent nine months carrying a baby around inside of their wombs before pushing it out of their vaginas are usually keen to get a glass of wine down themselves after 40 weeks of abstaining. The top and bottom of it is, when you've been deprived of something for an extended period of time, it feels good to indulge in it and take in as much of it as you can.

This seems to be the only way to explain the behaviour of a certain Miss Kelly Rowland who, after a lifetime of playing second fiddle to Beyoncé, seemed to have made every moment of last night's X Factor revolve around herself. Before the auditions had even started Gary Barlow had invited Tulisa, Louis and Kelly to watch him perform as part of Take That in Manchester. Rather than just saying "yeah good job, mate" like a normal person when she saw him the next day, Kelly decided to get down on her knees and bow like a dickhead before Gary's feet, which seemed to make him nothing short of uncomfortable. Poor old Louis Walsh barely got to speak two words on last night's show. Bless.

Despite Kelly's best efforts, though, the show wasn't entirely about her, so let's get our heads around some of the contestants we met during last night's hoot-and-a-half edition of The X Factor...

Kendro

I don't know about you, but compared with last year's contestants (Tesco Mary, Wagner and Chloe Maffia to name just a few), this year the auditions seem to be lacking a little thing known as "glamour". As if in answer to my prayers, last night's show opened with Kendro declaring they were going to win the X Factor. We were then treated to a short blast of Duck Sauce's Barbara Streisand as the two boys danced together, ITV's more subtle way of saying:

SOMEONE SOUND THE HOMOSEXUAL ALARM!!!!!

There's then a delightful scene of Alejandro and Kendel (oh my goodness...) in the X Factor makeup room applying powder, preening their magenta hair and exclaiming "let's go, sister" to one another. I can't be sure but by this stage in the programme I was almost 80% certain that these two might well be homosexuals.

They took to the stage together to perform their version of Lady GaGa's Born This Way (what else?) in a rendition which took a song intended to be an anthem for empowerment and instead turned it into an excuse for behaving like a prick on the telly. Before they started singing (which ironically was the only monotonous thing about them), they decided to apply some lip-gloss. Naturally.

Gary Barlow, of course, being the most BLOODY MISERABLE MAN IN THE WORLD said he didn't like it and refused to put them through but naturally Louis and Tulisa (both of whom, by this stage in the competition, have clearly stopped caring) said yes. Their fate was therefore left in the hands of Kelly Rowland. For the first of several times during the show, Kelly had taken command of someone else's auditions. From here on out she was (literally) the commander.

"I...I just don't know", she starts. Bloody hell, Kelly, this is not one of Hamlet's soliloquies, you're only deciding whether two perma-tanned bummers get through to boot camp. It really doesn't require that much deliberation. Any normal person would go "Oh go on then", and move on.

In the end, it's decided that Kendro are through to the next stage of the competition. As undoubtedly the most "out" act that's ever been involved in X Factor, I think it'll be interesting to see how the gay community react should Kendro get through to the live finals. Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about them. I can hardly sit on my high-horse and accuse other people of playing up to their homosexuality when that's all I did for the first 18 years of my life, and I must admit they did seem like a lot of fun. Having said that, if I saw them in a club they'd probably get the stink-eye. I SUPPOSE BOOT CAMP WILL BE THE DETERMINER, WON'T IT?

Have we seen the last of Kendro..? Honestly I don't think we have. I know their vocals are at best a 5/10, but this is the first group who've had any real spotlight on the show since OH MY GOODNESS AREN'T WE SERIOUS act The Keys a few weeks ago, and it's more than likely Simon has some ideas he never got to use on Diva Fever last year that he could pass onto this year's "groups" mentor.

Sami Brookes

"I just wanna sing," Sami tells us in her introductory interview, "And to be honest I'm too thick to do anything else". If you're anything like me then you instinctively hate Sami simply because of that ridiculous contraption she's decided to wear on her head. It turned out that despite an unfortunate choice in headwear, Sami was quite a charismatic woman. although she does warn us before she takes to the stage that she talks too much when she's nervous and will probably talk more than she singing. Unfortunately it turns out that (unsurprisingly) Gary Barlow is less than impressed with her chatty nature BECAUSE HE HATES JOY AND LAUGHTER.

"Shall we move this along since Christmas is coming," he says to Sami, clearly having had enough of her bubbly nature. It's a good job Christmas isn't literally coming, because I envisage Gary being visited by three ghosts during the night if it were, the miserable old git. A LUMP OF COAL NO DOUBT CONSTITUTES A PRESENT IN THE BARLOW HOUSEHOLD. No wonder Robbie got kicked out of Take That, what with him not being in a perpetual state of frown.

Aye so anyway, Sami decides to sing her version of Whitney Houston's One Moment In Time and wisely, unlike Whitney, she decides to refrain from smoking any crack for the duration of the performance. It turns out this was a wise decision because the audience love it and, I must admit, so do I. The hat is very much forgiven because Sami Brookes is clearly going to do very well in this competition, and she deserves to. She has stage presence, she has charisma and she has the voice. It's a bit shouty but it's tuneful. Kelly clearly agrees because she decides, near the end, to LEAP OUT OF HER BLOODY SEAT.

Oh God, it's happened. Kelly Rowland has once again stolen a contestant's thunder. "SIT DOWN!" I screamed at the TV when this happened. Kelly ignored me and instead started WAVING HER ARMS AROUND INSTEAD. It does seem like Kelly has an excuse though, telling the crowd: "I can't sit down right now because I am still so excited". A bit too much information for my liking, my head is filled with images of an over-lubricated Kelly Rowland sliding off her chair at the sound of Sami's voice.

Sami does seem genuinely overwhelmed by it all, comparing herself unfavourably to Beyoncé (wahey!) and Rihanna, saying she doesn't feel like she has "the look" to which Kelly gives the unforgettable quote "You know what you size is? You Size Sexy". I don't believe Sami actually mentioned her size, Kelly, she was probably referring to the fact she's willing to go on the telly in a ridiculous leoapard-print hat but well done for patronising a fat lass in front of the entire nation.

In the end Sami excitedly leaves the stage having received a "yes" from all four judges, telling Dermot she's "all sweaty" and that her "pants are falling down and everything". Lass after my own heart, don't change a thing. Except, obviously, that godawful hat.

Have we seen the last of Sami..? Sami to bloody win I say!!!!!

Twisted/Chrissie Pitt

At this point in the episode we're shown a montage of the girlgroups who've had less than successful auditions (including one where one girl says Kelly Rowland must know what she's talking about because "she's best friends with Beyoncé"--- amazing) but it all seems to pick up when these four lasses from Newcastle pile out of a pink Mini Cooper and introduce themselves as Twisted.

The group seems to be led by one girl named Chrissie, who we're told got through to the latter stages of Boot Camp last year but this year decided to come back with her "three best friends". According to Chrissie there's no one she'd rather be doing this with than the rest of the group, but even the most naïve person would be able to smell a bit of a rat with this set-up.

When they assemble themselves on the stage we see Chrissie is stood further forward than the other three girls, who so far are the only people in the episode to have spoken less than Louis Walsh who has apparently been rendered speechless. The group then start an (ill-advised, I'd say) acapella doo-wop version of Adele's Someone Like You where only Chrissie sings anything other than "doo doo doo" in the background. The judges seem uncomfortable with the whole thing and it's obvious to anyone with eyes in their head what's going to happen here.

"When you started singing," says YOU GUESSED IT Kelly Rowland, "I started wondering 'why did you bring them [the other girls] along?'"

Ouch.

After explaining her story from last year she looks at the other girls and says half-heartedly "this feels right" in a manner that screams "I WISH I'D LEFT YOU THREE IN THE CAR WITH THE WINDOW OPEN A CRACK".

Meanwhile Gary Barlow says the group appears to be "a solo singer with three very mediocre backing singers" which seems a bit rich coming from him when you consider this video:

Inevitably, of course, it's four nos, the girls are devastated and one of them says it's the most humiliating experience of her life. She wants to think herself lucky, I once tripped on a step running to be sick in The Bank Bar and threw up on myself. A stranger had to give me his shirt so I could go home.

Of course, the story doesn't end there and IT'S KELLY BLOODY ROWLAND TO THE RESCUE.

Running backstage, Kelly decides to channel Tyra Banks and give Chrissie a pep-talk about how she shouldn't let those less talented girls hold her back from achieving her dreams (I presume it's a similar speech to the one she overheard Daddy Knowles give to Beyoncé shortly before the release of Dangerously In Love).

Surprise surprise, Chrissie decides to abandon her "three best friends" who she couldn't imagine being in the competition without and comes back to audition as a solo act singing Cee-Lo Green's hit from last year Forget You. If ever there was an inappropriate time to sing that song, this was it. It's moments like this that I really do think just when it seems The X Factor can't get any more surreally shameless than it already is, it somehow manages to.

Chrissie gets four yeses and, I presume, three blocks on Facebook. Dear me.

Have we seen the last of Chrissie..? I think she'll get to judges' houses. She's alright.

Lascel Woods

Cher Lloyd has a lot to answer for, since her audition last year it seems that everyone with weird eyebrows in the whole of the UK have come out in full-force to audition for The X Factor, including Lascel Woods who tells us he is a 2o-year-old from Brighton.

It takes Lascel 15 seconds to tear into his sob story. His childhood "wasn't easy", he explains because he was put in foster care thanks to his mother who suffers from what he describes as " something called bi-polar". We're 23 seconds into his audition and already I know far more about his family history than I'd ever like to. I'm all for delving a bit into the contestants' back stories so we can learn a bit more about what made them the people they are today, but I personally can't think of anything more horrifying than being so uninteresting that 20 seconds into telling people about my life I've already explained that my mother was unfit to take care of me because she was mentally ill.

I said, talking about Chrissie, that the X Factor never shocks to delight me with its shamelessness but to be honest I think this was too much even for me. By the time he'd taken to the stage I had no desire to hear Lascel sing-- how could anyone exploit their own mother like that? If further down the line Lascel had used his experience to prove to young people with mentally ill parents that it doesn't have to define who you are, then I'd applaud him- that would be proper role model behaviour. Instead he's used his mother's illness to ensure that he gets a spot on the telly with the sad music and the emotional backstory. I'm sorry to be so blunt about it, but Lascel Woods makes me sick.

"The relationship you have with your mother is so beautiful", sobs GUESS WHO...

Have we seen the last of Lascel..? No we haven't, which is a shame. Sami Brookes might have all kinds in her family history, but she chose not to reveal it at her audition because she knows there's more to her than that. As for Lascel- if he wants to exploit his mentally ill mother to get on the telly then that's his prerogative, but it's my prerogative to say that he is an opportunist, shameless creep. With stupid eyebrows.

And finally...

Hilarious X Factor Visual Of The Night

(source)

Sami Brookes tells the judges she can't dance because she has "a funny arm". AMAZING.

Watch the auditions yourself:

Kendro - Born This Way

Sami Brookes - One Moment In Time

Twisted - Someone Like You

Lascel Woods - Use Somebody

How do you solve a problem like Katona?

2011-09-05T03:33:00.000+01:00

I tried to resist, I promise you I did, but Kerry Katona has well and truly won me over on the latest series of Celebrity Big Brother. I never thought I'd say this, but she's reminded me why we as a nation first warmed to Kerry in the first place during her time in the Big Brother house. Admittedly she’s not exactly a razor-sharp wit, but Kerry does have a certain charisma and charm around her, largely down to her straight-to-the-point manner and the fact she is unashamedly- in fact, almost boastfully- flawed.

While admittedly we may never have never slurred on the sofa with Phil and Fearne or unknowingly snorted cocaine in full view of journalists from News Of The World, but I feel like we can all relate to poor old Kerry a little bit. Whether it’s going out with the wrong person, having one too many drinks in company we’ve been trying desperately to impress, or taking a job we feel is beneath us just to make ends meet- we all have mistakes in our past, it’s just unfortunate for Kerry that all of hers have been in full view of the media.

One lingering thought has remained in my mind throughout several of Kerry’s important moments in the house: when this series is over I would like to see some more of Kerry Katona on my television. The only issue with that is how. I have no desire for Kerry to make another fly-on-the-wall documentary, the fact of the matter is that while Kerry’s past mistakes may be so mammothly debauched they’d make your hair curl, her current life is simply too boring to make an entertaining fly-on-the-wall show. I watched her most recent “documentary” on ITV2, the unfortunate highlight came when in the middle of her holiday her manager made her piss into a coffee mug to prove she wasn’t on cocaine.

In place of all that I’ve racked my brain and came up with a few concepts for some new shows to give Kerry her hundredth second chance in. If you're reading this BBC Three, Channel Five or even E4 (I'm feeling optimistic) then feel free to nick my ideas provided I can host whatever ridiculous project you have coming up next. Deal? Excellent.

Kerry Katona: What Happens On Tour...

We all know Kerry’s a family girl now (“AH LUVMEE KIDS UP TURRSTARS ANNMOON AN BACK”), but if we’re honest it’s her fun-loving side that we’re most drawn to. The first idea I had for Kerry was a tour of some of the UK’s top night-spots where she could have a few naughty drinks and generally have some drunken fun to entertain us.

The problem with this, of course, is the fact that Kerry Katona is not exactly known for doing things by halves and something that started out as a light-hearted show intending Kerry to make a bit of a tit of herself, perhaps falling over in some branch of Tiger Tiger before grabbing a kebab and hailing herself a taxi, could quickly turn into a rather bleak view inside of Kerry Katona’s re-decline into addiction, culminating in an intervention and a scene with Kerry screaming “YOU DID THISSTER MEH, YOU BASTARDS” as she is carted off to rehab.

It was Vanessa who then suggested on Twitter that perhaps the idea of Kerry doing a cross-country tour is a good one, but in a shock twist she could be visiting a string of the UK’s most celebrated libraries. “But still drunk, obvs”, adds Vanessa.

Genius.

Dear Kerry...

It’s fair to say that Kerry Katona has crammed a lot into her thirty years on the planet, being kicked in the tits almost every way imaginable, which makes her a perfect candidate for dishing out advice on how not to live your life.

The premise would be simple, Kerry would sit in a big armchair reading out problems sent in by viewers and attempting to solve them. Depending on the channel, this show would probably need a panel of celebrities to chip in as well. It seems like the sort of thing Sarah Milican would inevitably end up showing up on, and obviously a show headed by Kerry Katona wouldn’t be complete without an appearance from either Jeff Brazier or Alex Reid. I imagine Coleen Nolan would be knocking down the studio door at the promise of patronising a non-famous person with her worldly wisdom as well.

As time went on, more complex problems could be taken into the studio in a Jeremy Kyle-esque setup where Kerry talks to both parties independently before eventually giving her invaluable advice.

Foxy Bingo are probably already falling over themselves to sponsor it.

Are You Smarter Than Kerry Katona?

A bit like that programme Are You Smarter Than A 10 Year Old? except this programme will have a target demographic which won't consist exclusively of paedophiles. Each week people will be asked a series of general knowledge questions in a bid to prove that they are not as thick as Kerry Katona.

However, to make things more difficult, and in order to make things more fair for Kerry, the contestants must get steadily more pissed as the quiz goes on. For every correct answer the contestant must take a shot of tequila in order for them to truly get themselves in the Katona state of mind.

Furthermore, as the prize money increases further down the line and the contestant becomes more disorientated, "the Katona experience" heightens even further, with the noise of four kids being played into a contestant's ear while important figures from their past re-emerge to try and take away their prize money.

I'm not sure of all the rules quite yet, but I imagine if a contestant is sick from the drink they automatically have to hand half of their prize money over to Kerry, who will probably end up buying a Lamborghini with it and then needing to declare herself bankrupt again. You know, as she does.

Kerry Katona: I Can Do That

Undeniably my favourite of the Kerry Katona potential comeback shows, in this series Kerry is given a weekly challenge culminating in a live performance of some sort. Some weeks the challenges can be skill-based, learning to play the recorder for example. Other weeks she can master some class of physical activity, like horse-back riding or fencing which she would then have to perform live on air.

However, as the series becomes more popular the stakes would inevitably be raised and the live challenges would undoubtedly become more difficult. Simple performance-based activities would be done away with in favour of hearing Kerry carry out a 15 minute debate in Portugese or navigate her way through a maze blind-folded.

The series finale would have to be explosive, and I've got just the solution. First of all, Kerry could carry out heart surgery on someone in order to win a holiday for a family-of-four (imagine the distaste as the inevitable "well, she botched it, so sorry Johnson family it looks like you're going back to Milton Keynes empty-handed" was announced live on air). Finally, Kerry could wrestle a live bear. Live. Imagine the publicity. Imagine the opening video "I'm Kerry Katona, I've fought off worse than a bear".

Amazing.

Kerry Katona: Buried Alive

Let's face it, there's nothing this woman wouldn't do for publicity so burying her alive and filming her try and get out would be excellent viewing.

I'm going to have to wrap this blog up here, I'm afraid. ITV2 are on the phone.

X Factor Roundup: Auditions (Part 3).

2011-09-04T23:50:00.001+01:00

My goodness, can you believe we're already three weeks into the competition? By now we've really got to know the judges a lot better, haven't we? Louis is his usual insane self, Tulisa is somewhat more vulnerable than actually expected but can still hold her own, Kelly is the unexpected star of the show while Gary Barlow seems to have only one facial expression and tone of voice. If you didn't speak English and had to base your interpretation of Gary's verdicts on tone alone you wouldn't know whether he was saying "that performance was so good I actually started knocking one out mid-way through" or "get off my stage before I start throwing shit at you, you vermin". Meanwhile Dermot seems to have decided that if he can't have the American X Factor job then he is going to be as dull as possible in the UK series. Brilliant stuff.

So that's the judges, but what of the contestants we met in the most recent episode..?

David Wilder

"David Wilder's the name", David says by way of introduction. He's not finished though, as he makes the unfortunate decision of adding "Music's the game" to the end of his sentence. Ouch. Poor old David has already made the pivotal mistake of telling us what his "game" is and consequently making himself look like a massive bell-end in front of the entire nation. Now he's said that it doesn't matter how good David's performance is, he is still so hopelessly uncool he will make this look like this by comparison.

He goes on to tell us that he's 42 years old and wants to win The X Factor and be a musical superstar as a way of getting "gorgeous girls" and "fast cars". This would be a lot more convincing if David didn't literally look like he had been pieced together from discarded parts of stars of the glam-rock era. It's then that we see David is carrying a guitar around with him, which everyone knows is a complete waste of time because musical instruments are forbidden at the auditions. The guitar is merely a prop. He might as well just be wearing a sandwich board with "very serious musician" written on it. He might as well literally get the camera crew to film him deep-in-thought while sipping a bottle of Budweiser outside a bar called "The Last Chance Saloon", such is the lack of subtlety in his insistence on carrying that bloody guitar around with him.

Predictably David then sings Life On Mars? (proper Bowie fan, me, adding the question mark and everything) in David Bowie's exact voice, and it's at this moment it becomes obvious that David is probably a Bowie impersonator by trade, and that his Christian name is most likely not even David. My money is on Boris being his real name.

As many of the acts have this year, David decides not to limit his performance by staying on the stage (truly that X they have to stand on has been truly neglected this series, hasn't it) and decides to go for a wander while he performs for the judges. First he strides over to them, singing all the way, and gets right up "in their grill". Doesn't Tulisa look comfortable..?

I think she looked more comfortable when that cretin was calling her a scumbag, to be honest. It's then that David cranks it up a notch, running all the way to the top of the audience and back again, remarkably singing all the way. Quite impressive actually, especially given that he manages to stay sounding exactly like David Bowie the whole time, even when he's running back to the stage.

What's even more remarkable is that Louis, Tulisa and Kelly all tell David they're very impressed with his performance and that he's through to the next round. Gary Barlow slates the whole thing then puts him through anyway. Madness.

Have we seen the last of David..? It leaked this week that Louis is mentoring the over-25s. We all know he's partial to an "alternative" act (this is the man who has so far mentored The MacDonald Brothers, Jedward, Wagner and The Unconventionals), so it's quite likely we could see David Wilder take it all the way to the live finals, particularly as the calibre amongst the over-25s hasn't exactly been very high, has it? This year's Storm Lee. Possibly less cringey, although depending on how Louis mentors him it could be he ends up being even more cringey than Storm Lee. Watch this space, I suppose.

Luke Lucas

We arrive at a part of the show where we're given a montage of the 16-year olds who've triumphed in the auditions so far this series (obviously they knew I was watching), which features Luke as its finale. When Gary Barlow first hears Luke Lucas's name he says "well done" to his parents for giving him a good "stage name". Had I been on that panel I'd have demanded that Luke's parents be immediately brought onstage before forcibly bending them over so that each member of the audience at The O2 that day could smack their ridiculous arses with a paddle as punishment for giving their kid such a ludicrous name, but each to their own, Gary.

Unlike previous teenage contestants, Luke wisely decides not to strut around like he's already shagged half the audience but he also manages to have an air of confidence so as not to give the impression this is the first time he's ever been outdoors before. He does seem slightly nervous and maybe even a bit shy, but he goes on to explain that he is "in love" with Tulisa, which probably explains that. Tulisa, of course, is relieved to hear that, it must be a welcome change from hearing she's a scumbag who can't sing like every other contestant this year seems intent on telling her.

It's when Luke starts to sing that things really get interesting (what an odd thing to say, you'd think that would be the point of a singing competition) as he has a gigantic voice that comes from nowhere. It isn't 100% in tune and I imagine more than two songs' worth of it would be seriously grating, but when you compare Luke's unassuming appearance to some of the conceited dickheads who've strutted onto the stage in their peacock outfits only to open their mouths and have a seal's mating call cry out it's a welcome change and, in my opinion, the biggest shock of the series so far.

Luke's audition is definitely one of my favourites so far, he's got a great voice, a likeable and- best of all- he doesn't come with an attitude that stinks like a bag of pigs' heads in the sun. I look forward to seeing him progress as the competition goes on.

Have we seen the last of Luke..? He is a great talent and hearing his enormous singing voice was my biggest surprise of the series so far but considering he'll be competing with the likes of Frankie Cocozza, Craig Colton and that lad with the afro from earlier tonight in the "boys" category he could unfortunately slip through the net. A shame, really. Then again he's only 16, Joe McElderry and Alexandra Burke both won their respective series having been on the show before so there's still hope really, isn't there?

Michael Lewis

Avid viewers of The X Factor will immediately recognise Michael Lewis as the dickhead from last year who was obsessed with Michael Jackson, sang a horrendous version of Rock With You before delivering the immortal line to the audience "there's so much negativity in this room it's unreal". It's a shame that he will probably be remembered for this line more than anything else, as his finest hour clearly came in this Sky special with Derek Acorah where together they tried to contact Michael Jackson from beyond the grave:

Amazing.

This year Michael is back with a new look, a new attitude and a new mantra about how it's important to be yourself rather than trying to imitate others. The other thing that's "all new", of course, is the panel who he hopes will be more impressed with his efforts than Cheryl Cole and Simon Cowell were.

He's clearly taking it much more seriously this year. Or so it seems. This theory is slightly disproved when all is said and done and the music starts, revealing Michael's song choice. Bravely he's decided to keep away from the Michael Jackson songs this year, which would have been a good idea had he not chosen to perform Geri Haliwell's oft-overlooked classic Look At Me instead, complete with grunts and pelvic thrusts to boot.

Rather embarrassingly, Michael mistakes the audience's mocking for applause and declares "There's so much positivity in this room it's unreal", almost as if to assert to himself that he has done a total 180 and this will be the moment he can put his past humiliation behind him and finally get on the road to instant stardom as he's clearly always dreamed of.

It doesn't quite work out like he'd hoped though. He gets a unanimous "no" from the judges and then, bizarrely, refuses to leave the stage and has a lie down. "I belong on the stage, what part of that don't you understand?" he asks matter-of-factly.

Oh. Dear. Me.

Will we see Michael again..? I imagine he'll be back next year and the year after that and the year after that. It's only a matter of time he becomes a novelty act on The Xtra Factor, and then he ends up being interviewed for a brief part of This Morning about reality TV flops and then ends up being one of those stars like Lauren Harries who get bookings purely to be laughed at. That fat lass with no teeth from series 4 ended up with her own weight loss programme, Christ knows what Michael Lewis could end up doing with the right PR behind him, he'll probably be running the country this time in five years.

Jade Richards

Make no mistake about it, Jade Richards was just OK. Her audition was the one we'd been waiting for, as we've been teased with the clip of Louis Walsh choking up as he says "I'm so glad we came here". I felt a bit robbed by the time it was over, I was hoping for a performance to end all performances, that would make the first time we saw Susan Boyle open her trap to sing I Dreamed A Dream sound like a pig farting, but unfortunately this was not what we got.

Instead we had a lass with a hundred holes in her face singing YOU GUESSED IT Someone Like You by Adele. By the end of her performance, though, Kelly Rowland was in bits telling her she'd had a dream someone would sing an amazing version of that song and that she was it. I personally had little emotion towards Jade, to me she's someone who did an OK job of a song that's been done to death, exploited her relationship with her grandmother and then slagged her home town of Fife off, calling it a "dive" and somewhere she'd rather not be living which seems a bit unnecessary to me.

The singing itself wasn't bad but I just don't understand why there's been such a build-up around Jade. I like that thing in her hair, though. Good choice.

Have we seen the last of Jade..? Definitely not. Since the video of her audition was uploaded onto YouTube 24 hours ago it's already clocked up 300,000 hits and Jade has already been named favourite to win the show by bookmakers. It's going to take stronger stuff than that audition to win me over, though, I can tell you.

AND FINALLY.

This week's show was not as funny as the past two weeks have been, unfortunately, meaning Hilarious X Factor Visual Of The Night will instead, for one week only, have to be replaced by...

Mildly Funny X Factor Visual Of The Night

Jade Richards' gran almost breaking Dermot O'Leary's hand by the looks of things.

GET IN THERE DERMOT!

Watch the auditions yourself:

David Wilder - Life On Mars?

Luke Lucas - Who's Loving You?

Michael Lewis - Look At Me

Jade Richards - Someone Like You

The VMAs 2011: A Drunken Summary In Tweets.

2011-08-31T19:17:00.027+01:00

On Sunday night I went out to Newcastle with Carla. It had been a while, and we had a lot of catching up to do. Carla told me that she had to be up at 5am the following day, so we agreed not to make it a particularly late one. Thankfully, it was the night the VMAs were screening online so I was secretly relieved that I would be home by the time that they started and I could watch them comfortably in my own bed.

However, the reality did not quite match my expectations. What we had not counted on was the fact it was Bank Holiday Weekend and that our quiet Sunday drink would take place along hoards of partying folks. Eventually we realised that, unable to beat them, we would have to join them and ended up having far more to drink than intended. I ended up getting home 5 minutes before the VMAs were due to begin, having had an excellent time swinging Carla around the dance-floor, being, frankly, pretty drunk indeed.

Was I going to let the fact I was somewhat intoxicated stop me from live-tweeting the biggest event in my celebrity calendar...?

Welcome, one and all, to the official "Silly Old Daniel Drunken VMA Summary In Tweets" 2011.

TWEET 1:

Having worn her notorious meat-dress, Lady GaGa clearly realised she was going to have to really raise the stakes (or, indeed, the steaks!) for this year's ceremony, and she certainly did not disappoint. Instead she made herself one of the main talking points of the evening, appearing as male alter-ego Jo Calderone to perform her latest single Yoü and I after giving a speech about how "he" is sick of Lady GaGa.

"Jo, I am theatre," 'Jo' tells us Lady GaGa once said to him in a monologue that goes on JUST A LITTLE too long, "And this is just rehearsal".

He also presented the "Michael Jackson Vanguard Video Award" to Britney Spears, telling the audience that "he" used to have posters of Britney on his ceiling which he would touch himself over. Did Britney look impressed with Jo giving her opening speech..?

Alrighty then.

Whatever your opinion on Jo Calderone (some people found it self-indulgent and embarrassing, personally I thought it was an inspired idea), it must be noted that between her quiff and her dark brown eyes, her brash attitude and the fact she's a bloke with a woman's voice, it couldn't be more obvious that Lady GaGa wants to be me. Sort it out, woman.

TWEET 2:

Justin Bieber won his second ever VMA at the ceremony, this time in the "Best Male Video" for his song U Smile, beating competition from Eminem and Kanye West, not bad for a lad who's not legally allowed anything stronger than Tizer for his celebratory drink. Unfortunately, Justin did himself no favours in making himself look like less of a douche, first of all opening his speech with "I'd like to say thank you not only to God but to Jesus" (You can practically hear Selena Gomez making her excuse she can't see him anymore at this point, can't you?) but also by heading up to the stage looking like he got dressed in the dark...

Dearie me.

TWEET 3:

At this point in the show Joe Jonas arrived on the stage to announce Chris Brown was up next performing. For some reason, though, he ended up bigging Chris Brown up so much that if his speech had ended "Ladies and gentlemen, up next it's Jesus Christ", before the Messiah came out and french-kissed Jo Calderone it would still have been a let-down.

The entertainment industry's willingness to forgive Chris Brown so much not only for his horrible attack on Rihanna but for his stinking attitude and boastful homophobia on Twitter has always baffled me (for example, me and Catherine once saw Katy Perry in Powerhouse and she was dancing her arse off to Yeah 3x, it was a really sad moment and I prayed her supposed BFF Rihanna would never find out about it), but the crowd's reaction to Chris Brown's performance was just unnecessary.

His performance itself was predictably conceited and smug, with Chris dressing up in all white and being flung around the stage on wires like Peter Pan with roid-rage, and the worst thing of all was that his miming was so bad that Britney Spears was in the audience thinking that even she could do a better job than him.

Unfortunately it seems like he's not going anywhere, but as it's been a while since I mentioned Chris on this blog I'd just like to re-iterate my feeling that I wish he would fuck off and live the rest of his days under a stone somewhere.

TWEET 4:

Since Britney Spears was launched in the go-go 1990s (named the "decade of dreams" by the philosopher Emma Marie Stephenson), her most iconic appearances have always revolved around MTV. Whether you were watching her answer your questions on TRL, delving behind the scenes of her videos on Making The Video or seeing Ashton Kutcher making her look like even more of an idiot than you already thought she was on Punk'd it's fair to say that MTV and Britney Spears have always fed off one another like the filthy parasites they both are.

Undoubtedly, though, Britney has always sparkled at the VMAs most of all. Some of her most iconic moments, from carrying a snake onstage during I'm A Slave 4 U to kissing Madonna after a performance of Like A Virgin, the VMAs have always been a big deal for Britney Spears. So when the advert aired for this year's show, the rumour-mill went into overdrive over how the show would be honouring BritBrit's achievements...

Some claimed Britney would be performing a medley of her hits at the ceremony, while another popular rumour claimed that some of the biggest stars of today would be singing their own versions of Britney's songs (Nicki Minaj and Ke$ha were rumoured to be covering Gimme More, which truly would have been the greatest thing that happened not just at the VMAs but in the history of the world).

Instead some dancers did a very-impressive-but-about-far-too-short tribute dance which consisted of clips of about 10 of Britney's songs each lasting about 15 seconds. The whole thing was very "blink and you'll miss it", which is a shame because it seems like Britney deserved a bit more than that.

There's a lot of Britney fans on both Twitter and Tumblr right now claiming that MTV completely used Britney as a way of getting people to watch their award show, and this is where I have to step in and disagree. Nobody else got their own tribute in the show, no one else got their entire careers celebrated and no one else got an award for their contributions to music. It was up to Britney to big up the moment. If Britney is not up to making a memorable speech, or even appearing in her own tribute performance, then that is her problem.

Another criticism people have of the ceremony is that by having Lady GaGa present the award, and Beyoncé perform immediately after, that Britney was eclipsed by it all. Once again, I have to disagree. If the shoe was on the other foot, and it was Britney presenting an award to GaGa, would GaGa have let anyone take the moment away from her? No she would not. It was up to no one but Britney to make sure that she was the star in her own moment, and the sad truth is that she is just not up to it anymore. I know I seem to do nothing but slag Britney Spears off on this blog these days, but that's only because as one of her biggest fans, I have never felt so disappointed by her as I have been during this Femme Fatale era.

She looked pretty though. I'll give her that.

TWEET 5:

Beyoncé became the most talked about person at this year's VMAs, as she took the opportunity to more or less announce that she was pregnant. First of all she took to the stage to perform Love On Top from her album 4. To be honest, I don't have that album, so I don't know the song, and I was quite drunk and tired by this stage in the proceedings, so I wasn't really paying attention at this stage. She was also wearing a glittery pink jacket which made her look like a 50-something bingo caller circa 1996.

However, it was what happened after the performance that got people talking, as Beyoncé unbuttoned her jacket to reveal that she has the slightest hint of baby bump, which she then proceeded to rub and have a little chuckle as the crowd went wild around her.

This, of course, means one of two things:

1. Beyoncé is pregnant.

2. Beyoncé had a Nando's an hour before taking to the stage, and is proudly showing the crowd that she is unashamed of the bloated state it has left her in.

The camera then cut to this beautiful image of Jay-Z and Kanye West celebrating:

This, too, means one of two things:

1. Kanye West is proud of his good friend Jay-Z for having fertile sperm and knocking up his wife, Beyoncé.

2. Kanye West is proud of his good friend Jay-Z for taking his wife, Beyoncé to Nando's, and would like to go there himself.

Whether it's a baby or a trip to Nando's, a big congratulations to Beyoncé.

TWEET 6:

Katy Perry looked an absolute mess at the ceremony, particularly after a costume change she made before accepting her award for "Video Of The Year" for Firework. I'm all for expressing yourself through innovative fashion choices, and normally I think Katy dresses like a real star, but there is no excuse for this heap of shite:

Between the faded pink hair, the clunky shoes and what appears to be a large wedge of cheese on her head, the whole thing is just wrong wrong wrong. She looks like she's in her early 50s, rather than one of the biggest names in popular music right at this moment. Unfortunate.

And so, 4.30am rolled around. My drunkenness was very nearly over, and I could feel the clutches of a hangover beginning to kick in. The ceremony was over, and I was read to give my feelings on the event as a whole. How did I feel, having stayed up two and a half hours to watch Katy Perry put a block of cheese on her head and Chris Brown bounce around to distract the audience from the fact he's a violent thug..?

TWEET 7:

Quite.

(Photo of Britney and Jo Calderone nicked from Shut Up That's Awesome.)

X Factor Roundup: Auditions (Part 2).

2011-08-27T21:12:00.021+01:00

Well, after last week's X Factor bombarded us with a string of bell-ends each more horrific than the last, I must admit I had low expectations for this week's show. After we got to see the "feisty" side to Tulisa last week, and saw Gary establish himself as the new "judge to impress", it seems that this week producers were more intent on shoving Kelly Rowland down our throats. Poor old Louis, eh? It's not all about the judges, though, so let's re-visit this week's new "talent"...

Johnny Robinson

Immediately, as soon as he starts introducing himself, it's obvious that Johnny is going to be a much needed antidote to the self-obsessed, cocky and arrogant pricks who dominated the show last week. As he tells us mournfully that he isn't in a relationship and lives alone in a small bedsit (before correcting himself and calling it a "small flat", audibly praying it doesn't sound "too scummy") before telling us how exciting it is to perform on the same stage as Kylie Minogue's "Aprhodisiac" tour, it's clear that Johnny has no names tattooed on his arse, nor will he later give his autograph to a gang of children, telling them it will be worth loads on eBay once he is dead famous.

This may be a touch hypocritical of me to say, but Johnny Robinson is literally what would happen if camp came to life and became human, despite his unassuming choice of clothing. He's the sort of sweet-natured person you desperately hope won't open their mouth only for the sound of a walrus grunting to come out as the Lady GaGa backing track behind him continues on relentlessly, and when he reveals that he'll be tackling the Etta James song At Last it seems all may be lost.

Once again, though, Susan Boyle has taught us nothing and instead he delivers a tuneful although somewhat effeminate (but then it was hardly going to be Barry White's voice that thundered out from his petit vocal chords, was it?) and the judges are clearly shocked by it.

However, between his high-pitched tones and his preened eyebrows, the conversation in our house inevitably turned onto how many times Johnny is likely to have performed this song in full drag. For those wondering, here is a video of Johnny's female alter-ego, Sarah Lee, tackling I'm Not Scared by Pet Shop Boys:

Alrighty, then.

Have we seen the last of Johnny?: As the only X Factor contestant of 2011 so far who I don't want to smack in the face, I sincerely hope we have not. However, he said in his opening sequence he "wants to be taken seriously as a singer", while producers will likely have other ideas for him. I predict if he gets through to the live finals he'll be more than unhappy with his song choices which will likely include a Mika number and an ill-advised cover of Scissor Sisters' I Don't Feel Like Dancing. We shall see.

Derry Mensah

First things first, Derry is very handsome. What a handsome young man he is. Peculiarly, it seems he is a bit obsessed with new judge Kelly Rowland, and when we first meet Derry he's part of a montage of male contestants who are all in the mood for a bit of Kelly loving. This confuses me on a number of levels because:

1. Why would anyone want to have sex with a woman?

2. The notion of anyone having any feeling other than indifference towards Kelly Rowland is completely alien to me.

"Kelly Rowland is my ultimate woman", says Derry. Really though? Every woman on the planet and Kelly Rowland is his ULTIMATE woman??

"Kelly Rowland...I don't need to say much. Just...Kelly Rowland", he explains, trying to enlighten viewers as to exactly why he likes Kelly so much. Probably just as well he doesn't feel the need to say much, really, there's not really a lot to say about her in the first place is there? If we're being totally honest everything worth knowing about Kelly Rowland can probably be squeezed onto a Post-It note. In fact, just to prove a point:

Excellent stuff.

Derry goes on to sing Usher's Can You Help Me? which he directs towards Kelly, who he professes his love to after the song. It's a very good rendition, and at one point he ends up singing on his knees. It's excellent viewing, and after the song Kelly shocks everyone by inviting him to come down and give her a kiss.

Some might wonder why Kelly would let a contestant do that, but what people seem to forget is that this is the first time in 15 years someone has directed a comment to Kelly other than "So tell me, what's Beyoncé really like?", I wouldn't be surprised if the two end up engaged.

Poor old Tulisa, Kelly gets confessions of love from the performers while she just gets called a scumbag. Ouch.

Have we seen the last of Derry?: Handsome and talented, as long as he keeps kissing Kelly's arse the way he has been, I'd imagine Derry should be safe for quite some time.

Craig Colton

Out next is Scouse lovely Craig Colton, who lives at home with his parents who are in the audience at the auditions. However, he hadn't told them he was going to be performing as he wanted to surprise them. As you can see, his father is just BURSTING with pride when he sees his son step onto the stage:

Craig, like Johnny before him, has the confidence and the banter to get the crowd going without crossing over into arrogance or smugness, which again makes a change from the self-obsessed twats who indundated last week's shows, which is odd because Craig sings better than all of them when he starts performing Adele's Hiding My Heart Away.

Only real criticism of Craig is that his performance is a bit of an Adele impression, he's even copied several of her mannerisms including singing out of the corner of his mouth and doing slight head-flips. It was still decent enough, but I wouldn't be surprised if a video of Craig performing the same song while dressed as Adele emerged in the near future.

I must admit, though, I do have high hopes for Craig who seems like a normal lad from Liverpool who works in (where else?) a biscuit factory! Of course he's following in a long line of biscuit-loving X Factor contestants from years gone by...

X FACTOR BISCUIT LOVERS

Diana Viscount

Rachel Adedejaffa-cake

Wagner Wheel

Joe Malted MilkElderry

Well. That wasn't very funny at all was it?

No it was not.

Have we seen the last of Craig?: Friendly, approachable, young and with a big voice, it'd be nice to think we'll see Craig again but whether or not he hold his own against the other under-25s boys like Derry and Frankie will be another matter.

Misha Bryan

Thankfully the sob stories were kept to a minimum on tonight's show, although one did still manage to slip through the net when we met Misha Bryan and she decided to delve deep into her family history and tell us all about her negligent mother and how she's performing there today just to make her aunt, who raised her when her mother proved unable to.

Really it's a shame she felt the need to lay her family history in front of the nation because she's got a unique look, good charisma and a great voice she doesn't need to resort to sob stories. Plus when we get to meet her family they look like a real fun bunch which, frankly, they should have played up to more. If you'd like to know my favourite member of Misha's family then I can tell you it's undoubtedly this glittery beret-wearing old woman...

...although having said that I must say I have a lot of respect for her cousin Nicki Minaj who decided to stay in the background and let Misha have her moment...

Once her sob story is done and dusted, Misha hits the stage with all guns blaring, with a performance of Aretha Franklin's Respect, which is a brilliant performance and manages to take the song to an all new height when Misha says "ree-ree-remix" and then continues TO RAP IN THE MIDDLE OF IT. I almost fell off my chair at this point, she'd managed to make a top notch song even better. Unfortunately she then beckons the ladies in the audience to get on their feet, which embarrassingly Kelly Rowland takes as her cue to try and get in on that, though unfortunately she ends up looking like a right tit:

SIT CHO ASS DOWN KELLY ROWLAND. We know you've been in Beyoncé's shadow since you were 11 years old but that doesn't mean you can steal the limelight from this girl. That's not how it works, woman!

I do have one criticism of Misha, besides her sob story that is. I always maintain that if you're going to try and do an Aretha Franklin number it always helps if you're wearing her outfit from Barack Obama's inauguration, don't you think?:

Outstanding.

Have we seen the last of Misha?: As long as she's going to keep doing songs to get Kelly Rowland up on her feet, then I think Misha could be in this competition for the long haul. I just hope if she is that we don't have to hear any more about her bloody sob story.

AND FINALLY...

Hilarious X Factor Visual Of The Night

Amazing facial expression from Kelly Rowland.

This is what The X Factor is all about.

Watch the auditions yourself:

Johnny Robinson - At Last

Derry Mensah - Can You Help Me

Craig Colton - Hiding My Heart Away

Misha Bryan - Respect

WAIT!! I just thought of another X Factor biscuit lover!

Aiden Grimshortbread

Excellent.

The Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup.

2011-08-26T00:00:00.000+01:00

"HOLD ON A MINUTE DANIEL", you may be thinking, "I've barely recovered from yesterday's so-funny-I-gave-myself-a-hernia Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup and already you're chucking another one at us! What the eff is going on, mate?"

Well I'll tell you what the eff is going on. I've been away, you see, visiting my future home La Ferté Bernard out in the French country. It is a beautiful little town, I can not wait to walk around it singing the opening number of Beauty and the Beast while the townspeople whisper at each other about how I don't fit in. So anyway, while I was away a lot of stuff happened that I'm only just catching up on, so you'll have to forgive me for dishing out blogs like no one's business. Are you ready for a brand spanking new celebrity roundup, featuring news you've more than likely already heard? Brilliant stuff.

1. What will the Katie Price "conveyor belt of delusion" churn out next?

You've got to hand it to Katie Price, the woman does not give up. Each time she produces a heap of shite no one is interested in, she refuses to let it get her down. Her single might have flopped and her latest book might already be going for half-price on Amazon, but she just keeps her head up high and moves onto her next project.

However, I don't think anyone was prepared for what she had hiding up her sleeve (that's her actual sleeve, folks, not her wizard's sleeve-like vajayjay) to unleash on the world next. It seems that Katie has decided to start her own magazine. Will it cover interesting news stories, interviews with fellow celebrities or humorous columnists? No it will not.

Ignoring the fact the public could not care less about her opinions or beliefs, Katie has decided to start Katie magazine- a magazine all about herself. "And who is its first cover star?" I hear you cry. Well why not take a look for yourself..?

That's right, folks. Realising Elle and Glamour weren't exactly braying her door down (hell, even Amy Childs has done a shoot for Vogue) Katie decided to take matters into her own hands and create her own magazine to be on the cover of. Sweet Jesus, this woman's shamelessness knows no bounds, does it?

Of course you're now intrigued as to what can be expected inside the magazine itself. Well, one feature inside will reveal exactly what each of Katie's tattoos ACTUALLY MEAN. Riveting stuff. Meanwhile, later in the magazine you can read Katie giving her verdict on a variety of stars' styles. I'm not being funny, but Katie Price showed up to the launch of her iPod covers wearing this outfit...

...so she's hardly in a position to judge, is she? I think we all know the expression, "people who cram their oversized tits into a silver lycra jumpsuit with a tiara of iPods on their heads shouldn't throw stones", don't we? I'd be more inclined to buy a fitness DVD endorsed by Beth Ditto than listen to what Katie Price had to say about fashion-- whatever next..?

2. Britney Spears wants to educate others.

So the chances are you've read the recent Popjustice interview with Britney Spears where, as usual, she gives absolutely nothing about herself away because she is essentially a robot programmed to say things like "I love the music I help create" and "we all make mistakes, it's how you deal with them that make you who you are" and to avoid saying things like "the voices in my head are getting louder LEAVE ME ALONE JUST LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE OK WHAT THE FUCK HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS TORTURE WHAT DO YOU MEAN I HAVE TO GO ON STAGE IN FIVE MINUTES?? WHEN WILL THE SHOUTING STOP???" In case you haven't read it, here is a link to it.

While she does manage to dance around questions about what she believes have been mistakes in her career and admits that she never goes clubbing apart from to the one she has in her house (a lovely idea, but what she probably means is that she put the new Jennifer Lopez CD on the last time she did the hoovering), she also confesses that if she were not a singer she'd have loved to have taught kids.

I think the only thing more insane than Katie Price dishing out fashion advice is Britney Jean helping form the minds of today's youth. Just to illustrate my point here are several genuine quotes from Britney Spears, would-be educator on a variety of subjects.

Geography
"I've never really wanted to go to Japan. Simply because I don't like eating fish. And I know that's very popular out there in Africa".

"I go to a lot of overseas places. Like Canada".

Biology

"I did not have implants, I just had a growth spurt".

Sociology

"I am for the death penalty. Who commits terrible acts must get a fitting punishment. That way he learns the lesson for the next time.”

Would you let this woman teach your children??

3. Some dickhead does something minging on Celebrity Big Brother.

Undoubtedly the least famous contestant on this year's Celebrity Big Brother, from the offset it was obvious that "model" Bobby Sabel would need more than what Mean Girls' Janis Ian would call his "technically good physique" to stop him slipping by unnoticed.

Unfortunately for poor Bobby, as the days flew by it became apparent that he was a gigantic bore and eventually got put up for eviction by Kerry Katona as he was the housemate who she believed had come out of his shell the least. Clearly Bobby realised he was going to have to pull out all the stops if he wanted to stay in the house, and has started a verbal attack on several of his housemates calling Amy Childs a "user" and blaming the fact Kerry Katona can't land a man on the fact she is "gross". All behind their backs, of course. What a top dude.

It's paparazzo Darryn Lyons for whom Bobby has the most venom, though. He started off calling Darryn a "fat fuck" in the Diary Room before mocking his pink hair and ab implants (mind you, those fake abs are absolutely ridiculous, aren't they?) He then went on to say that Darryn was a "prick" (which, yeah, I'll admit he is). However, he then took things a bit too far and started being a bit gross.

The housemates have been set a task this week to become characters from The Wizard Of Oz with Darryn taking on the role of the Tin Man and Bobby being forced to dress up as Dorothy. As part of the task, at various points in the day the "Tin Man" must freeze on the spot, only allowed to move when "Dorothy" pours "oil" (actually lemonade in a tin can) into his mouth to free his joints.

Rather disgustingly, Bobby was so full of fury at Darryn (seemingly for no actual reason other than that he is a tosser, which I'll admit is fair enough because Darryn Lyons is a giant tosser) that he took the oil can into the sauna with him and deliberately collected his sweat into the tin can only to later pour his sweat into Darryn's mouth. Is that disgusting or what?

Bobby later went on to confess to Darryn that he'd essentially sweated directly into his mouth, and Darryn took it surprisingly well. Either Darryn has a secret fetish for having a layer of sweat in his drink, or he is far more patient and far less of a prick than I'd initially thought. I was almost on the verge of liking Darryn, in fact, but then I remembered he has THIS underneath his shirt...

...and came crashing down to Earth again.

Ridiculous.

I'm off to Rumpoli's for my dinner now. YOM.

Enjoy your weekend!

Laters.

The Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup.

2011-08-25T18:55:00.016+01:00

You know the drill by now, it's time for a brand new Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup. Apologies if this is your first time on the blog in which case you won't know the drill. Not your fault. Read on, it's hardly a complicated process...

1. Darryn Lyons reveals a shocking secret on Big Brother.

So Celebrity Big Brother is chogging along nicely on Channel 5 and it isn't the train-wreck everyone was praying it would be. If anything, I'm rather enjoying it. Brian Dowling has proved a very charismatic presenter, Amy Childs is just a triumph of a housemate and Jedward have proved that occasionally they do stop being pricks, although it is a rare occasion.

One thing Big Brother is perfect at doing is showing people up at their most tosspot-like moments. From George Galloway crawling around the floor and pretending to drink milk from Rula Lenska's liver-spotted, old hand to Donny Tourette stomping around the place like the class A prick that he is, if there's a side of you that is a bell end then be prepared for it to be exposed to the nation.

This year it was the turn of paparazzo reporter Darryn Lyons to be shown up as a royal wanker. Now let's not be unkind, but Darryn Lyons is no slim Jim. He's a bit on the portly side, shall we say? We shall. Also, while we're on the subject WHO ATE ALL THE PIES WHO ATE ALL THE PIES IT WAS DARRYN IT WAS DARRYN HE ATE ALL THE PIES.

*clears throat*

Yes, sorry about that. So anyway, during an exchange in the Big Brother gym earlier this week Darryn braved taking his top off and his washboard abs did not go unnoticed by the rest of his housemates, who were keen to find out exactly how Darryn acquired such an impressive physique (what they didn't say was "OH, FATBOY, WHAT'S WITH THE ABS?" which is probably just as well because that would be dead unkind).

What followed was an awkward exchange wherein Darryn confessed that he'd had a fake six pack implanted into his system, leaving him with this ridiculous display:

On an unrelated note, here are a few quotes from Darryn's own website Mr. Paparazzi:

"We speak for everyone when we say...yuck!" - after Wayne Rooney revealed his hair transplant.

"She had a full blown trout pout for a while" - discussing Girls Aloud singer Sarah Harding

"She does look a bit duck-like" - talking about Katie Price after her alleged collagen implants.

NOW. I'm not saying that I write this blog and only say nice things, but to take the piss out of celebrities when you have what looks like six cinder blocks stitched under your skin is hardly the way to go on, is it? Once again, here is a picture of Darryn Lyon's "realistic" abs...

...and here is a picture of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...

Brilliant.

2. Amanda Holden has some excellent news.

For obvious reasons, it hasn't exactly been a good year for Amanda Holden which is a shame because I am a big fan of hers and the way she has held her head high and soldiered on through it all is truly admirable.

Anyway, she has some very good news indeed because she has only gotten and got herself pregnant. Big congratulations to Amanda for:

1) Getting pregnant and preparing herself to give the gift of life to a new baby

2) Having sex more frequently than me, although there are homeless nuns who are no doubt getting it more than me, so this is hardly worth congratulations.

While this is brilliant news for Amanda and her family, who are no doubt over the moon, there is a sticky wicket in that Amanda is currently starring in London's West End, playing Princess Fiona in Shrek The Musical. She can hardly carry on that role when she's gestating a baby can she? NO SHE CAN NOT, she needs to sit at home with her feet up (although it's getting her legs in the air that got her into that state in the first place WAHEY).

Thankfully for Amanda, when she goes on maternity leave they've already found a perfect replacement for her. Someone energetic, lively, charismatic and ABOVE ALL so interesting that if you look directly at her you have a stroke. It's Kimberley Walsh.

GET ME TO THE THEATRE, NOW.

3. Mutya Buena has won her court case but they basically might as well have patted her on the head and gone "it's alright, Mutya, it's alright, who's a good girl, who's a good girl..?"

Yeah OK so the legend goes that a while ago three young girls got together to make a girl-group with a difference. This group was called Sugababes and consisted of Keisha Buchanan, Siobhan Donaghy (hipsters will try and tell you her solo stuff is "amazing" and it simply is not) and Mutya Buena.

Now you might not have realised this but over the years the line-up of the band has not always been consistent. Way back in the day Siobhan quit over rumours she was being bullied by Keisha and was replaced by Heidi Range (so-called because her age could RANGE from anywhere between 19-45).

Then Mutya decided she didn't have enough time to be a mother AND a popstar and decided to quit the band so she had more time to slob around the Celebrity Big Brother house (which she also quit because she is just a big quitter) and get gigantic bum implants. She was then replaced by Amelle Berrabah, who ended up forcing Keisha out of the band to be replaced by Jade Ewen. It's all very complicated, isn't it?

Unfortunately for some of the band's older fans, by the time the fourth line-up had been announced they felt that the group had strayed too far from their original ideals and all that. Just to give you an idea of this, here is a screen-grab from the group's debut video Overload:

Nice bit of demure angora from Siobhan "arty" Donaghy, there. Now let's have a look at the group's first video with their current line-up, About A Girl:

Hmmm, you can see their point a bit, can't you?

Anyway, ex-Sugababe Mutya Buena decided that the group shouldn't be allowed to call itself "Sugababes" anymore since none of its original members remained in the band, and in her eyes the name belonged to herself, Keisha and oh-so-arty Siobhan. I saw Siobhan Donaghy in Rent Remixed. She was OK.

Mutya decided to do something about this injustice and took the three current 'babes to court over it all, insisting if they want to continue as a band they'll have to change their name. She did quite well in the end, did our Mutya, and is now the owner of the name "Sugababes". Unfortunately for her, it's only in certain circumstances and the circumstances themselves aren't the best, I can tell you.

Rather embarrassingly, Mutya can only actually use the name Sugababes for "paper, cardboard and goods made from these materials - namely stationery, paper gift wrap and paper gift-wrapping ribbons". So basically, Mutya is free to bring out her own range of Sugababes hole-punchers while the current line-up continue to perform under their name. Brilliant stuff.

I must admit I have very little sympathy for Mutya. If she was really that bothered about Sugababes then she shouldn't really have quit in the first place, should she? She was not sacked from the group, she was not forced out by a record company or an angry band-mate, she left of her own accord. If you left your job as "office supervisor" and didn't like the ear-rings your replacement wore you wouldn't take her to court and insist she no longer be referred to as "office supervisor" would you? NO YOU BLOODY WOULD NOT.

Meanwhile, Amelle is trying to put all the ugliness behind her by posting the most mundane things you could possibly think of on Twitter:

Intrigued, I decided to contact Amelle myself on the site:

I fucking crack myself up, I can tell you.

Yeah so that's that.

Enjoy your lives because one day we will die.

X Factor Roundup: Auditions (Part 1).

2011-08-21T00:53:00.016+01:00

Well folks, The X Factor is finally back. Although they tried to keep it as quiet and low-key as possible *cruise-ship full of fireworks explodes firing the message "We Love Tulisa" over the night sky of Great Britain* you may still have heard that tonight saw the debut of THREE NEW JUDGES!

Simon and Cheryl both quit to do the American version of X Factor (a better decision for the former than it was the latter, I'm sure you'll agree), while Dannii Minogue was too busy doing...something. I dunno. Either way, it left Louis Walsh as the last judge standing alongside newcomers Kelly Rowland ("off Destiny's Child" and also "occasionally quite good solo star"), Gary Barlow ("off Take That" and also "quite impressive chest-hair have-r") and Tulisa ("off N-Dubz" and also "rather feisty ie. not willing to smile sweetly while The Daily Mail question her lifestyle and Heat magazine put a red ring around her cellulite).

It's not all about the judges, though (apparently). It's about the hunt for the UK's next superstar. Did we find it tonight? No we absolutely did not. I was literally flabbergasted at the absolute bell-ends who wandered onto the O2 stage tonight all in the name of getting a six-month recording contract and a guaranteed spot on the next series of Dancing On Ice/I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here/Popstar To Operastar. At one point I thought I might have sat on the remote and accidentally turned over from "ITV1" to the "24 Hour Parade Of Cunts" channel, but unfortunately this was not the case.

Let's remind ourselves of the "characters" we met this evening...

Frankie Cocozza

"To sum up my life", begins Frankie in his introductory video, "I'd probably use the word mental". Already I hate this person and I know literally nothing about him apart from the fact his name is Frankie and he believes his life is mental. You can already tell Frankie is one of those tedious individuals for whom "having fun" is actually a chore, and no night-out is complete without a photo of every single drink he's consumed over the evening (although thankfully a photograph of 4 empty bottles of WKD does not require a particularly wide-shot).

He states later that he's only doing The X Factor so he can "sleep with loads of girls". Christ alive, any lass who throws themselves at this twerp deserves every unpleasant sexually transmitted infection going. That's not all, though. He goes on to say that if you went on a night out with him you'd wake up "wondering what happened last night". In case this happened to you I will happily fill you in.

What Happened On Your Night Out With Fun-Time Frankie:

7.30pm Dropped off in town by Frankie's mam at 7.30pm. Make sure you give her a text if you think you're going to be out late so she knows whether or not to wait up for him.

7.45pm Arrive at your first bar. Wonder why it is so empty. Decide that it is because everyone else is pussies and you are going to stay up all night.

7.50pm First drink. WKD each. Your round.

8.20pm Frankie has officially run out of funny stories. There are now about 8 people in the bar.

8.25pm Second drink, WKD each again. Your round again while Frankie goes to the toilet because he feels a bit sick.

9.35pm You're now onto your third drink. The DJ is playing a David Guetta song. Frankie is properly drunk and dancing like a right tit. He is sweating quite a lot, and has suggested you get you a vodka each while Frankie goes and talks to the group of lasses "eyeing him up".

9.45pm You come back from the bar with a vodka and coke each. You drink yours casually, but Frankie sips his suspiciously. "Is this a double," he asks. You reply that it's a single. You ask where those girls are and it turns out Frankie mistakenly thought the girls were eyeing him up but in fact they just couldn't believe how ridiculous has dancing was.

9.55pm Frankie gets turned down by his second girl of the night. He flashes her the tattoo on his arse. Just as you finish your vodka and coke, Frankie runs to the toilet.

10pm Frankie is not yet back from the toilet.

10.05pm Frankie is back from the toilet. One of the girls who Frankie flashed his arse at earlier comes over and talks to you. She is pretty in a "not obvious" way.

10.10pm Frankie comes back from the toilets with blood-shot eyes. You ask him if he's alright. "I'm fine," he replies, "my mum's coming for us in 10 minutes". You wonder why this is if Frankie is genuinely "fine". It is only then you realise Frankie has sick on his trainers. The girl wanders off, disgusted.

10.50pm You are home. Your parents take the piss out of you for being home so early, then realise you are upset and decide to leave it.

10.55pm You see a Facebook update from someone you wish you could have been out with. "Pre-drinks over," it says, "can't wait to get our dance on".

11.10pm Cry yourself to sleep, and remind yourself you don't owe Frankie anything as he does nothing but weigh you down.

Before he's even sung a note, Frankie has flashed the judges his arse which has the names of seven different girls on. Kelly Rowland says she'd love to be the eighth name on his list. I remind you this is the woman behind Independent Woman and Survivor. Sickening.

Have we seen the last of Frankie?: Regrettably not, I imagine.

Kitty Brucknell

Because Katie Waissel was such a hit with the British public last year, X Factor producers have luckily found a clone of her to go through except even less likeable. Before she even opens her mouth to sing we're inundated with a list of things she does that make her a star. She has certain choreographers she prefers, certain producers she'd like to work with. She even has a name for her own style. The name is so cutting edge you might want to sit down if you aren't already. Are you read for this..?

Diva. Glam. Pop.

Jesus fucking Christ, what is with the contestants this year? By this stage in the programme we've only seen two and they've both got egos so big that they fill the entire O2 arena by themselves. Then Kitty decides she's going to perform The Edge of Glory acapella. It's OK. A bit shouty.

THEN SHE SITS DOWN ON THE BLOODY STAGE RIGHT WHEN THEY'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF GIVING HER THEIR FEEDBACK. "I always wanted to sit here," she says, interrupting poor Louis Walsh, "so I'm going to sit here right now". Fucking hell what a non-conformist. SITTING DOWN. ON A STAGE?? And here's me thinking Madonna was cutting edge dancing in front of burning crucifixes and shagging a black saint on an altar. Madonna doesn't know shit, she never sat down IN FRONT OF TULISA FROM N-DUBZ.

Have we seen the last of Kitty?: With zero likeability and slightly-above-zero talent, I'd like to think the producers of X Factor wouldn't be stupid enough to force her down the public's throats. Then again, you just don't know, do you?

Janet Devlin

People just aren't called Janet anymore, are they? It's a shame. So anyway the instrumental of Adele's Set Fire To The Rain starts and it's obvious we're in for some serious stuff. This next singer has had to overcome something. And she begins to tell us about her life.

"My house is quite literally in the middle of nowhere," she says. And it's obvious what her sob story is. To audition for The X Factor she has had to cross-over from another dimension which doesn't mathematically exist because there is nothing around it. SHE WANTS TO NOT USE THE WORD "LITERALLY" IF SHE'S THEN GOING TO USE A METAPHOR, DOESN'T SHE? Already I dislike her. Then on she goes to exploit her small home town in Northern Ireland where she explains, "because of where I live I do spend a lot of time in my room, reading writing and singing".

Now I'm not being funny but there were riots all over the UK last week, and some people were too scared shitless to leave their homes for fear of having their heads kicked in. Now THAT is confinement. Someone wants to have a word with this small-town girl and tell her things could be a lot worse than having to stay in. "OH BOO HOO HOO I HAVE TO DRIVE TWENTY MINUTES IF I WANT A BIG MAC AND ALL I CAN SEE FROM MY BACK WINDOW IS GREEN FIELDS". Listen here, Princess, out of my back window I can see the charred remains of Hebburn New Town Club and a Netto in the distance, nowhere is perfect.

Anyway, all that aside she sings the Ellie Goulding version of Your Song which, if you ask, me is the worst audition song in the history of the world because you can't show off your voice with it (having said that I did get through the first round of The X Factor 2008 singing the Elton John version, little-known fact about me there!), and the judges all get a bit weepy because "ooh isn't she nervous". She's that smug kind of nervous where she pretends not to know how good she is even though she's actually not as good as she thinks she is. Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about.

I'll admit she was my favourite of the auditionees on tonight's show but that's a bit like saying "of all the hoodies who beat my grandma up and shit in her handbag, you are my favourite".

Have we seen the last of Janet?: No we definitely have not, and I can't wait to research her home-town and find out it actually has its own bowling alley, cinema and Quasar Laser.

George Gerasimou

When first we meet George, we're immediately taken on a trip down memory lane to when he was a part of R&B trio Triple Trouble who went on to tell Simon Cowell to "shut up" and stormed off the stage in a rage (poet and I didn't even know it) when they were given a unanimous "no" from the previous set of judges.

We're told George is here to "clear his name" as he wants to prove to the new load of judges that he's a changed man and will no longer storm around acting like a prick. "What a nice young man," I thought, "he's accepted he's made mistakes in the past and here he is ready to move on. Admirable. I even fancy him a bit if I'm honest, even if he is a bit rough".

He then tells the judges he's singing Ne-Yo's Give Me Everything and it's at this point I realised George had no interest in clearing his name and becoming a popstar. Realistically, if you were that determined to be a popstar, you'd know that Ne-Yo is only a featured artist on Give Me Everything. That might sound a bit petty, but realistically you would know, wouldn't you? This young man just wants to get on the telly again as the lads round his way have forgotten he was ever on The X Factor and stopped offering him blow-jobs.

The music starts and, predictably, he's atrocious. He gives it his best shot and it's all a bit awkward. Clearly he was hoping the judges would tear into him straight away, he could say his piece and stride off. But they don't. These judges are fresh out the box, they aren't jaded like Simon and Dannii were, and they're prepared to shuffle awkwardly in his seat until he's finished. So George decides to take things into his own hands and wander into the audience.

It's at this point Gary Barlow can take no more and raises his hand to stop the music. George is a bit perplexed, and as the audience start to boo he warns, "don't start". This is it, the facade is falling at this point and Tulisa tells him she can tell he's still an aggressive character. Louis starts to say his piece and tells him he has "no likeability at all" (incidentally I think likeability is a word made up entirely by Louis Walsh that has now fallen casually into every day useage). I personally think this is a bit of a harsh comment, and wish Louis hadn't been quite so brutal.

HOWEVER, IT TURNS OUT THAT ONCE AGAIN I HAVE MISJUDGED GEORGE as at this point in the proceedings he starts banging on about how Tulisa is no replacement for previous judge Cheryl Cole, calling Tulisa a "scumbag from the block" and some other word we don't know because it's bleeped out and they put one of those comedy Xs over his mouth.

I don't know a lot about Tulisa but I'll tell you what I do know, and that is the fact she has not had an easy life. I know she has had a difficult life, suffering from anorexia and self-harm, growing up in a rough council estate and caring for her mother from a young age who suffers from schizophrenia. Whatever your opinions on the group N-Dubz (personally I think they're a heap of shite apart from that Playing With Fire song), you have to admire the fact that they've worked their arses off to get where they are today. They didn't mouth off on a reality show to get where they are, they have worked hard for it.

This is why I have a lot of respect for Tulisa, even more so after some low-life decides to come on the telly calling her a dog just because of her background and the fact she isn't Cheryl Cole. If that were me I couldn't have kept cool, but she managed to and that is why George was the one who ended up walking away looking like an idiot. There were a lot of pricks on tonight's X Factor but George has successfully been remembered as the biggest one of the lot. Idiot.

Have we seen the last of George?: Unless he comes on in the montage of "joke auditions" in the finale dressed as a dog or something, I presume that we have indeed seen the last of him. Here's hoping anyway.

AND FINALLY...

Hilarious X Factor Visual Of The Night

Goldie Cheung being sick into a Morrisons carrier bag.

Oh, X Factor.

YOU HAVE BEEN MISSED.

Watch the auditions yourself:

Frankie Cocozza - Valerie

George Gerasimou - Give Me Everything

Goldie Cheung - Copper Bell/Proud Mary

Janet Devlin - Your Song

Kitty Brucknell - The Edge of Glory

Trüly mental.

2011-08-17T20:20:00.020+01:00

On the 15th day of July 2011, the popstar known as Lady GaGa took to the social networking site Twitter to reveal some news to the world...

"Just days?" we all thought. "Goodness how exciting."

ONE BLOODY MONTH PASSED and she finally put the video for her latest single Yoü and I online yesterday. I'm a big fan of the song so it was all very emotional as I prepared myself to watch the video, particularly after hearing rumours about everything from GaGa dressing up as a man to her walking all the way from New York City to Nebraska in the name of true love. Not to mention the mysterious "Yuyi" message she included in her tweet, believed to be the name of her mermaid alter-ego. Surely one video couldn't contain all of this, could it?

Well, folks. The truth is that the video is a positive smorgasbord of GaGa's disguises and alter-egos in a twisting, frantic series of disjointed scenes which is not so much "blink and you'll miss something" as "you are left so bombarded with confusing imagery that you are left unable to blink". As she put the video online, GaGa treated fans to a brand new message on her Twitter in order to explain the concept of the video:

So, for those who haven't yet seen the video, Yoü and I is all about GaGa introducing us every part of her, and the various personalities who inhabit her. Let's see just how many of those we can count in her latest music video...

1. "I WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR LOVE (BUT I WON'T DO THAT) (UNLESS BY 'THAT' YOU MEAN WALKING ALONG A ROAD IN WHICH CASE I WILL DO THAT, ESPECIALLY FOR LOVE)" GAGA

"It's been a long time", she says, "But I'm back in town". Always nice to have a re-union and a catch-up. This side of GaGa is clearly an old romantic here to re-kindle an old romance. And how's she doing that? By walking along a dusty old road, of course. She has not chosen the most sensible footwear to do it in, though, which in hindsight was quite foolish as she could have got some comfortable trainers from JJB Sports and not ended up with feet like this:

She's going to need a Ped-Egg for those heels I'm telling you now.

2. "LOOKING QUITE PRETTY AND SMILING NICELY" GAGA

No matter how hard she tries not to, GaGa can look pretty sometimes. It does not last long, though...

3. JO CALDERONE (aka. "LOOK I'M A BLOKE" GAGA)

After spending the past three years of her life trying to convince us that she doesn't have a penis, "HELLO MY NAME IS LADY GAGA AND THERE IS NO PENIS ON ME" it seems she has regressed and decided to dress up as a man. Inspired. She is looking good, although someone wants to tell her that if she keeps smoking those cigarettes her lungs will turn black and she'll have to sing Poker Face through a hole in her throat on her next tour.

It seems that this pretty alter-ego and the bloke (Jo Calderone, his name is as for some reason he is one of the personas lucky enough to be given a name) are in some class of a relationship as look at them here...

Jo Calderone clearly has everything he needs right there in that cornfield, doesn't he? Cigarettes and the love of a fine woman. And loads of corn, obviously.

4. "THIS BUFF MAN IS OPERATING ON ME OR SOMETHING" GAGA

To be honest I'm not sure what is meant to be happening at this point in the video, and that is where Yoü and I starts to have more in common with Alejandro and Born This Way than her greats such as Telephone and Judas-- if a video is complicated enough that its scenes require in-depth explanation than it fails in its mission, really. No one is going to channel-hop through Smash Hits or The Box or MTV Hits and go "hmm what I really need right now is a music video I need to sit down for five minutes afterwards and think hard about", are they? No they are not.

5. "I'M BENDY AND MY HAIR IS TURQUOISE" GAGA

Because the video isn't nonsensical enough by this stage, GaGa pauses for a dance break and puts on a turquoise wig. I'm sure GaGa will tell you that this dance break has a heavy, underlying message but sometimes- to paraphrase Jerry Springer: The Opera- you just wanna fucking dance, don't you?

6. YUYI (aka. "I WANNA BE WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE I WANNA SEE WANNA SEE THEM DANCING" GAGA)

Yes at this point in the video Lady GaGa becomes a mermaid. It is a lovely visual, I will give you that, and I know it will make a lot of fans happy who've been wanting GaGa to feature herself as a mermaid in one of her videos since she shot the clip for The Edge of Glory. Personally I think by this point in the video we've seen enough character-changes and it's all a bit overwhelming, which I suppose is the point of the video but by this stage it all gets a bit hard to keep track of.

7. KATHY BETH TERRY

Wrong video. I apologise.

7. "I'M A CORPSE GAGA"

Right so this is the point in the video where GaGa is dead and wrapped in some class of a sheet or something and it's all completely irrelevant and I wish she'd just go back to being in the corn-field. In fact I wish she'd just go back to the Love Game video and sing about fame and sex instead of shoving shite like this which means nothing in our faces. Beautiful, Dirty, Rich was shallow but it meant something, you know what I mean? This is just "HIYA I'M A CORPSE NOW".

8. "BRUNETTE" GAGA

Look! She's brunette! Obviously the way her fringe covers her forehead symbolises the part of us we all refuse to reveal when we enter a relationship, forever masking our true feelings or true behaviour. Or whatever. Is this even still funny? I'm quite bored writing it if I'm honest. Just to keep you entertained here is a video of Rachel Adedeji falling over on The X Factor two years ago:

Back to GaGa.

9. "IS IT IN YET?" GAGA

So this one isn't technically a new alter-ego, she's actually still playing Yuyi but she's having sex with a man with wings tattooed on his back (how very Mila Kunis in Black Swan, I'm sure you'll agree). I'm not exactly sure how this particular sexual act is going to work as Yuyi would technically lay her eggs for this man to spunk all over in another room, what with fish having no internal genitals so Christ knows the mechanics of it all, which reminds me of this moderately funny someone once posted on my Facebook:

Perhaps Lady GaGa herself saw this video and, after already detailing the plight of homosexuals and transgendered people in her song Born This Way, decided to take the opportunity to give a voice to sexually confused mer-folk with the Yoü and I video, as it is such a taboo subject in today's world. That's probably it.

10. "WELL SOMETIMES I GO OUT BY MYSELF AND I LOOK ACROSS THE WATER" GAGA

We all know Lady GaGa was moved by Amy Winehouse's death, so it seems right she should pay tribute to her in this video, more specifically her legendary appearance on Never Mind The Buzzcocks...

Beautiful stuff.

The one thing that can be said for the Yoü and I video is that it lets us in on Lady GaGa's romantic life and shows us once and for all the person she really loves the most...

Herself.

Watch the clip for yourself here...

And when you're done with that you can ponder to yourself how we got to this mental place when THIS is where we started...

Lunacy. Or, indeed, lünacy.

The Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup.

2011-08-17T13:30:00.016+01:00

I am back from my holidays. Me and Kate had a properly lovely time in Tenerife, caught a lot of sun and had a lot of laughs. Back home now, where it's all suddenly got very serious as I thunder furiously towards my year abroad. It is basically now just over a month until I start my language assistantship in France. Scared doesn't even begin to cover how I feel, but it's very exciting as well so it's all good. Meanwhile, celebrities are doing stuff and some of that stuff is covered right here in a brand new Silly Old Daniel Celebrity Roundup...

1. Amy Childs is hot then she's cold she's yes then she's no she's in the Big Brother house she's out of the Big Brother house and so on and so forth.

'Twas the night before Celebrity Big Brother and all through the house, not a creature was stirring not even a mouse. Except, as it turns out, creatures are indeed stirring because if rumours are to be believed Amy Childs has thrown a right spanner in the works for the reality show, which begins its first ever run on new home Channel 5 tomorrow.

The story goes that The Only Way Is Essex were refusing to let Amy pursue any extra reality TV projects, including the latest series of Celebrity Big Brother, which led to her deciding not to return for the third series of the show which begins filming later this year. However, Channel 5 have confirmed that one of the celebrities have pulled out causing "a major headache for everyone". It's widely believed the celebrity in question is Amy Childs, who tweeted earlier that she can't wait for V Festival which takes place over the time she would have been in the house.

While the official lineup for Celebrity Big Brother remains unconfirmed, one woman who won't be appearing is Katie Price who is fed up of rumours surrounding her appearing on the show (I had no idea there were any, to be honest, but that's another story), putting on her Twitter yesterday:

I decided to tweet Katie myself, just to find out THE TRUTH:

I am yet to receive a reply.

2. Michael Jackson tribute concert causes a right old fuss.

Breaking news, people. The King Of Pop Michael Jackson continues to be dead. You read it here first. Because clearly not enough fuss has been made already since the singer died two years ago, it's been decided that a tribute concert to honour the life of everyone's favourite chimp-loving, hair-setting-on-fire baby-dangler will take place later this year in (where else?) Cardiff.

The line-up for the concert is exactly what you'd expect for a tribute concert that's really taking place two-years too late, ie. people with nothing better to do such as Leona Lewis, but will also feature friends of the late star such as Smokey Robinson. Sounds lovely so far, yes?

Unfortunately someone made a right balls-up and decided to invite rock band Kiss to perform at the concert which had fans of Jackson up in arms. And why were they so angry, I hear you ask? Probably because in an interview last year when asked about Michael and his death, lead singer Gene Simmons was quoted as saying "there is no doubt in my mind that he molested those kids". Wow.

Needless to say, Kiss have since been removed from the line-up prompting Jermaine Jackson to speak out against the concert which he believes is "distasteful" as it's taking place at the same time as the trial to determine whether or not Jacko's former doctor Conrad Murray is guilty of "involuntary manslaughter". You know when Jermaine Jackson is calling a Jacko-related event tacky that it's time to put the breaks on it, surely.

3. One Direction have a right "laugh" filming their new music video.

For some reason, when One Direction came third in last year's X Factor they failed to fade away from the public consciousness like fellow third-place acts Eoghan Quigg and Ben Mills. Instead, here we are one year on still discussing their private lives and talking about them as if they're one of the biggest acts in the UK music scene right now when in fact they are yet to release a single.

Here are some things that annoy me about One Direction in no particular order:

1. TOUCHING EACH OTHER

They're always touching each other and it makes me a bit nauseous if I'm honest.

2. CHINOS

They look like Topman threw up on them. I'm all for popstars being "on trend" and that but they look like they've walked straight into the shop, seen what the mannequin was wearing and gone "yes I will have that please". CHINOS OVERLOAD, WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST.

3. NIALL

LOL

4. THAT ALAN CARR INTERVIEW

It was a right awkward mess wasn't it? You can't just go on a chat show with nothing to talk about, the very nature of a chat show is that you discuss, you know, upcoming projects you have and put right any rumours that may be circulating. Instead they kind of sat there going "Hiya we're One Direction and I suppose that warrants us a spot on this show".

HOWEVER, good news for fans of the boys (which I was when they were on X Factor but this wilderness period that's followed has pissed me right off) as the wheels are about to start a-turnin' for the release of their first single What Makes You Beautiful *gags*. I haven't heard the song yet because for some reason it seems that the world media haven't yet realised my blog is practically the world's go-to blog for all their celebrity needs, but from what bloggers who actually matter have said it sounds like it's going to sound exactly like you'd expect it to.

As a sure-fire way of making sure the song is a hit, the lads will be taking their kit off in the accompanying music video and frolicking about in the sea. I IMAGINE THAT AT THE SAME TIME THEY ARE CASUALLY TOUCHING EACH OTHER UNNECESSARILY AND TURNING MY STOMACH WITH RAGE. Today some shots taken when the boys were "chilling" on the set of the video have been released, and you can see them right here. They aren't even a little bit staged, why would you say that?:

All I can say is that this was clearly not filmed at South Shields beach. If five chino-wearing teenagers whipped a guitar out and decided it was as good a time as any to have a sing-song at Shields beach they'd be chased into the sea by dog-shit-throwing chavs faster than you can say "syringes in the sand". What a ridiculous photo.

It wasn't all serious guitar shots in between filming though. LOOK WHAT THOSE RASCALS HAVE GOT TIME FOR NOW. In what can only be described as NOT STAGED IN THE SLIGHTEST BIT, Zayn Malik and Liam Payne are throwing Harry Styles in the sea!! BLOODY HELL THOSE LADS ARE OUT OF CONTROL. Not staged.

Speaking of completely genuine things that definitely happened without provocation and therefore aren't staged even a tiny bit, look what those CHEEKY boys have gone and done now--- they've bloody well buried Zayn up to the neck in sand! BLOODY HELL HE'LL BE PICKING SAND OUT OF HIS CREVICES FOR WEEKS TO COME NOW. They're so badly behaved, but not in a hooligan-esque way so you could still bring them home to meet your mother, couldn't you? OF COURSE YOU COULD. Not staged.

This is my favourite of the pictures because it says so much while actually saying so little. Here is what I imagine the conversation went like shortly before this was taken.

Teenage Girl: Hello there I am a teenage girl and these are some of my friends. We all fancy you and would love to get a picture with you.

Liam: Well that sounds like a lovely idea. Especially since none of us are gay, we obviously fancy you all too.

Louis: That's right, we're not gay.

Zayn: Not gay.

Harry: I love boobies.

Teenage Girl: I saw you burying Zayn in the sand earlier, you're so badly behaved but in a non-threatening way that means I could probably still bring you home to meet my mother.

Zayn: Exactly-- did you see me turn down that alcohol on Alan Carr's chat show-- even though I'm 18.

Teenage Girl: I did. So Niall, would you mind taking this one?

Niall: Well actually if you look there's someone over there with a professional camera so really there's no need for me not to be in the photo.

Liam: ...

Louis: ...

Teenage Girl: ...

Zayn: Maybe you should just take the photo, Niall.

Niall: Oh. OK then. Say cheese everyone.

Everyone: CHEEEESE

Harry: BOOBIEEEES

*girls walk away giving phone numbers to everyone except Niall*

Niall: *writes sad song on very serious acoustic guitar*

That's all for now.

Laters.