Summer Madness

Sheesh, I go on holiday for two weeks and I miss out on all the good stuff. Brad and Ange on the rocks? Looking at the cover of celeb magazines in the US you'd think they were definitely over but they've been out on the town to prove the opposite. Judging by Angelina's whippet-thin look, things can't be all that good. Some people might eat less when theyy're in love but they don't starve themselves as a rule. Odds on lasting out the year: lower than Britney's bikini line.

As we're talking about Britney, we might as well accept the fact that KFed will get the kids. He filed for primary custody of Sean and Jayden last week and is worried that Britney may be exposing the boys to "unnecessary risk." If unnecessary risk is leaving them at home while she's out drinking and whoring, then yes, he should get custody. Britney can barely walk in a straight line and she shaved all her hair off. Do we need more proof of her unfit parenting skills?


And then there's Mel Brown aka Scary Spice, who should really be known as Stupid Spice. Or Serial Monogamy Spice. Not content with getting knocked up by Eddie Murphy, she's now married some guy movie producer Stephen Belafonte. In Las Vegas, the beginning of many longterm, successful celebrity marriages (like Britney's 55-hour marriage to her childhood friend, for example). Belafonte is no picnic either - Belafonte is not his real name and he has convictions for assaulting a girlfriend. And he doesn't look at all like a scary-eyed psycho.

Mother Brown is understandably worried. "I think she's made a big mistake. How can you fall in love that quick? I'm desperate to speak to her. I feel like jumping on a plane and flying out to her, I'm so worried. I've read that he's got a conviction for assaulting his ex girlfriend and it really worries me." No shit.

Baby Spice has also been busy, this time producing a son called Beau. Of all the Spices, she seems the most sensible. She's had the same boyfriend for eight years and is not always out desperately hogging the limelight. Congratulations!

Revenge is a dish best served for lunch

Is your heart bleeding right now? Well, it will be when you read about the terrible time poor little Angelina Jolie is having. Apparently Brad took Shiloh to dinner at ex-wife Jennifer Aniston's house and Ange is not happy. Ah, our hearts collectively bleed for you. After cheating on Jennifer, publicly humiliating her and pumping out Brad's baby, a lunch is the least she can have surely. But according to Star magazine, Brad and Ange are over if he ever goes to lunch again.

"Angelina went totally ballistic," said the source. "She was shouting so hard at Brad that the veins were bulging in her neck. She told him in no uncertain terms that they were finished if he took Shiloh anywhere near Jennifer again. Angelina couldn't believe it. She asked Brad what the hell he thought he was doing, and why he was humiliating her like that."

This is the bit I love: "Angelina told him, 'She, Jen, is just loving it. Can't you see? She's in touch with your mom, too. She might as well move in with us.'"

You can see why Aniston is doing it. She's waited long enough to get her revenge, first with Mommy Pitt and now with Baby Pitt. But what is Daddy Pitt up to? No good, that's what.

The Long Game

Jennifer Aniston certainly knows how play the long game. Her husband might have left her for another woman but Jen can still throw a little chaos into his life. By maintaining a relationship with Brad's mother, who clearly yearns for the old days before Angelina, Jen has the power to piss off her replacement. What better way to eat away at Brad and Angelina's relationship than by hanging out with your ex-mother-in-law? You just know Jen and Brad's mother are not going to be talking about how Angelina is the best thing that every happened to him.

When you pitch Jen against Angelina in the mother-in-law league table, you just know who's going to win. Nice, inoffensive, good with parents-in-law versus weird, tattooed, good with perverted obsessives (Billy Bob Thornton). Angelina wins in the beauty stakes but that's not really going to win over all but the most superficial mother. She's going to want to see her son happy and settled not flitting round the world collecting children like this season's must-have handbag.

All those years of carefully nurturing her relationship with the Pitts is paying off. Never let it be said that Jennifer Aniston lacks strategic vision. Angelina might have Brad now but Jen has the trump card: his mum.

A Chip Off the Old Man's Block

Hating your dad is clearly far easier than hating your partner. Or yourself. Old Angelina Jolie famously detests her father, Jon Voigt, and has cut him off for the last five years. Why? Because she claims he cheated on her mother. Funny then that Ange cheated with Jennifer Aniston's husband and doesn't hate herself or, more importantly, Brad for it. Ah, the hypocrisy.

I'm sure Ange's wrath had nothing to do with Voigt telling Access Hollywood that she was "unstable". Fair comment, you'd think but no. Five years of excommunication.

But light is now at the end of the adulterous tunnel for Voigt. This week Ange said: "I am hoping my relationship with my father will be more private in the future. At the end of the day we both wish the best for each other and we'll try to start communicating in some way."

When they do finally meet at least they'll all have some common ground. In fact it could be a meeting of Cheaters Anonymous.

April Update

You go on holiday for two weeks and come back to insanity. Prince Williams has ditched Kate Middleton for another woman. We don't know who she is yet but British tabloids say she's 'naughty' and she's turned his head. Does that mean she's a commoner with common tastes or simply a posh filly with a taste for horse whips?

Courtney Love loses half her body weight and claims it was all down to dieting. On what? Rice cakes and crack?


Madonna goes to Africa with wardrobe full of bad sarongs and tshirts. Haven't those people suffered enough?

Britney Spears keeps her knickers and her wig on. That must be some kind of record.

Matthew McConnaughey is still screaming "I'm gay!" but no-one is listening.


Victoria Beckham still hasn't cracked a smile (or eaten) but worse still, she hasn't worked out how to just a Continental toilet yet.


Reese Witherspoon is still dating Jake Gyllenhaal.

Tom Cruise continues his mission to grow a fully formed pair of moobs. No long to go till you can buy your first bra, Tom.


And finally, sexism is alive and well. Angelina, says Star magazine, has "walked out on Brad", leaving him with the four kids so that she can start work on a new film in Chicago. While I question her pick'n'mix attitude to motherhood, I also wonder whether male actors make the same headlines when they leave their wife and kids at home go on location.

Hello sweet Hello

What does any recently adopted child need? Time to adjust to their new family, new country and new language? No, of course not, silly. A child shipped in from an orphanage in Vietnam to Hollywood needs their own Hello spread. It's what any self-respecting child is asking for these days. Forget toys, clothes and a trip to Disney, a wildly disorientated child unable to speak to anyone in its new family is crying out for a few pages between photos of Heather Locklear's latest date and bald Britney Spears playing tennis in rehab. I hope poor Pax Thien Jolie is at least getting a cut of the reported $2m Angelina and Brad got for the pictures, if only in compensation for the God awful name.

And Vietnamese boy makes four

No baby is special in the Jolie-Pitt household for long. With the exception of Maddox, who had Angelina to himself for a while before Zahara turned up, new kids are only new, shiny and special until Mom's eye goes roving again. So pity poor Shiloh. Not only has Angelina said that Shiloh isn't that special because she's had it easy in life (hope Angelina has started a therapy fund for the poor child), but there's going to be a new kid in the pram to suck up her parents' attention. Yes, that's right, the Jolie-Pitts have been foreign baby shopping again and this time they've got themselves a three and a half year-old Vietnamese boy. And they started shopping for him (or, as they like to say, started adoption proceedings) just after Shiloh was born in May. Not many parents would take home their third child and immediately start casting around for their fourth. Unless, of course, they're famous, got staff coming out of their arse and have some huge gaping chasm in their lives that wealth, fame and a relationship just can't plug.

Kids in America

It's all happening this week. First there's Britney. Her family and agents think that the bald head warrants rehab so she's been in and out a couple of times over the last few days. Her commitment to doing something she's been told to do is so strong that she lasted 24 hours the first time and a couple of hours the next. I know rehab is Hollywood shorthand for 'contrition in return for increased record sales' but Britney obviously doesn't want to go and until she does, it's not going to work. Also, has anyone considered the possibility that rehab is not going to undo the damage done by years of fame and money. Group therapy and chanting are not going to change her personality. If they can change her choice of wigs, though, that would be a start. The girl has money but she still insists on buying white trash tat.


Then there's Mrs Beckham. If she carries on subjecting her children to this kind of attention then she can expect them to start shaving their heads and wearing cheap Marilyn Monroe wigs in about ten years time. Don't want to fuck your kids up, then don't expose them to the media circus. And don't complain about it. I wouldn't recognise most footballers never mind their wives. There's a good reason for that and it's because Victoria Beckham is a media whore. One look at these kids' faces tells you all you need to know.

And finally, just when you thought that Brad and Ange had been quiet for a while, the adoption roadshow is back on track. To add to their multi-ethnic brood, Brange have applied to adopt a boy from Vietnam. They saw him last November and have filed papers to bring him over. I can only assume that they'll be heading over to Africa for the next addition to the family just to keep the numbers even. And what about Latin America? They seem to be missing out a whole continent here.

Golden Globes

Will Martin Scorsese finally win an Oscar for The Departed? Will Helen Mirren get one for The Queen? Frankly, who cares? Certainly not these ladies parading round like peacocks in some borrowed dress. The awards season is all about the red carpet - who's a high-end success and who's a white trash disaster.

As befitting her status as Hollywood royalty, Angelina Jolie looked demure, well, as demure as anyone can covered in tats.

Cate Blanchett, usually the best dressed at any ceremony, was off par this time. Not sure the bustle is anything more than a catwalk concept.


As for Beyonce, did no-one tell her it wasn't a themed event? Just because it's the Golden Globes doesn't mean you have to wear something approximately a gold dress. Leave it to fiftysomething Helen Mirren to show her how it's done.

Take Two

Is it just me or do these pictures look similar? Brad looking down, as if vowing obedience and devotion to someone he's ultimately going to dump. The one with Jolie, from The Good Shepherd premiere last night, has all the hallmarks of a couple in love but then so does the one with Aniston. Ange and Jen might be on opposite sides of the Brad divide now but, a few years down the line, they may well have something to talk about.

For the time being, Ange has extended what she sees as an olive branch to Aniston, saying that she'd be willing to meet her but "that would be her decision, and I would welcome it." For the dumped wife, I'm not sure 'olive branch' would be the best way to describe it. Maybe a 'slap in the face' or 'a way for the adulteress to assuage her guilt' would be? Because peace is surely the last thing you'll get from meeting your ex-husband's new partner, the glamorous, edgy, big-breasted one he left you for and had a baby with.

And I'm sure that Ange's interview in the January issue of Vogue is also not bringing much peace and love to Ms Aniston's festive season. Despite saying that Brad was clearly with "his best friend, someone he loves and respects" when he and Ange first met in 2003, the two developed a "strange friendship and partnership that kind of just suddenly happened. I think a few months in I realized, 'God, I can't wait to get to work.' … Anything we had to do with each other, we just found a lot of joy in it together and a lot of real teamwork. We just became kind of a pair."

By the end of shooting Mr & Mrs Smith, though, their loins had started to itch or, as Ange puts it, "it took until, really, the end of the shoot for us, I think, to realize that it might mean something more than we'd earlier allowed ourselves to believe. And both knowing that the reality of that was a big thing, something that was going to take a lot of serious consideration."

So they entered that phase of being "very, very good friends" (don't you just love the euphemism?) from the time the movie wrapped in 2004 until after Pitt and Aniston split in January 2005.

It's a lovely story, particularly at this time of year; it fits right in with all the other Yuletide fables and myths. And the ending has 'Christmas tale' written all over it. One day, says Ange, Maddox "just out of the blue called him Dad. It was amazing. We were playing with cars on the floor of a hotel room, and we both heard it and didn't say anything and just looked at each other. So that was probably the most defining moment, when he decided that we would all be a family." Aah, now there's a story to warm your cockles on a cold winter's evening. Or, alternatively, a crock of shit to change the public perception of Ange and Brad from adulterers to caring parents. Good humanitarian work, and a sanitised version of your relationship, doesn't cancel out your other misdeeds.

The Pitts

Ah Jennifer Aniston, you're not having a good week, are you love? All this Vince break-up stuff has been a pain, especially as you probably split up a while ago and have just been playing the happy couple for the sake of good PR. But then your philandering ex-husband goes and decides to marry that damned Jolie woman before Christmas. At least he's not planning one of those Tom Cruise media events, complete with a magazine deal and a crazed but handsomely paid bride. At least it'll be in South Africa and only Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, Daniel Craig, Madonna and Guy Ritchie will be attending. That's got to be some small consolation, hasn't it?

The other consolation will be that it will be Angelina's third marriage and Brad's second. Statistically speaking the odds are against them which won't make Jennifer feel better now but might make all the difference when the Lips decides she's over marriage and wants to have an open relationship with a eunuch instead.