What Celebrities Have Been Doing In My Absence

Sunday 14th March 2010, 3.30pm, Melbourne Airport - Australia

It's a transit day. Ella and I are on our way to New Zealand after one last heavy night out in Kuta on Friday. Dean and Katie joined us for our Indonesian farewell and I remember just about enough of it to say that it was a very enjoyable evening. Due to a game that involved seeing who could swig the most straight vodka without heaving, I have vague recollections of myself and Dean, the Vodka Competitors, ending the night by performing Elton John's Crocodile Rock on karaoke (despite neither of us knowing any of the words apart from something about remembering when rock was young and Suzy having so much fun) to an audience of mostly confused and silent Balinese people who were undoubtedly desperate to remove the microphones from our clumsy grasps. I believe that Katie and Ella, more sober and sensible with no Essex-born predisposition to karaoke when abroad, caught some of the action on film; I'm hoping it never sees the light of day.

So here we are in Australia! Well, sort of. In fact we are stuck for 11 hours at Melbourne Airport, nursing hangovers that have lasted a good 36 hours and feeling terribly sorry for ourselves at the injustice of bad flight timing. To ease the burden of this injustice we have indulged in a pastime which has evaded our clutches since coming away at the end of November. We have purchased some glossy magazines! When I say "some", I am referring to 40 dollars worth of celebrity and fashion centred gossip and nonsense, oh, bliss.

Asia had untimely cut me off from the world of celebrity with which I am usually so well acquainted. Only 4 months ago you could have named for me any famous face on the planet and I would have been able to give you a rundown of their relationship history, their daily calorie intake, the names of their children, and their stance on global warming (Mel Gibson doesn't give a shit). But lo and behold, my "knowledge" has been sapped, I am out of the loop and seriously ill-informed, and so today I have been studying. Here is what I have learnt with additional notes voicing my thoughts on these topics affecting our world today:

1. You can be really, really good at golf, but this does not make you immune to public humiliation.
2. Emma Bunton is the new judge on Dancing on Ice. Why? I was an avid Spice Girls follower back in the 90's and I am pretty sure that not once did I see them with skates on.
3. Jordan has remarried. She has married someone by the name of Alex, who has obviously previously suffered some kind of nasty face-on collision with a heavy duty vehicle.
4. Lady Gaga can only be approximately 4 months away from a full schizophrenic breakdown.
5. Simon Cowell is engaged, surely proving that eventually, the benefits of bachelorhood always become boring.
6. Cheryl Cole found her backbone (but unfortunately not her mouth, that's where you put the food pet!).
7. Vernon Kay should be ashamed of himself.
8. Stealing other people's husbands only gets you bad press, which gets you bad movies. So do a Sienna and go back to the successful scoundrel who cheated on you with the Nanny and made you famous in the first place.
9. Gerard Butler is the least attractive film star to ever get lucky with so many women out of his league. Stop it Jen, it's embarrassing, and Brad doesn't care.
10. Sandra Bullock is a really nice lady who should have married Keanu Reeves, they were so perfect together in Speed.
11. I am missing new series of Skins and Shameless, two of my all time favourite reasons to put the telly on. But it's alright, I'm sure someone is taping and saving them for me...
12. Kristen Stewart should smile more. Especially seeing as she has a 6ft 2", tousle haired, unshaven, pallid skinned, haunting eyed, bloodsucking reason to do so. It should be illegal for her to look that miserable.
13. The world has been robbed of the beauties that would have been Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal's children. Selfish.
14. A woman won the Oscar for best director, the times they are a changin'.
15. Megan Fox. Lovely to look at, painful to listen to. Shouldn't there be a publicist somewhere who stops her from talking?
16. If you have so many children that you are incapable of taking them all out at the same time and instead operate on some kind of shift pattern/rota system for your interaction time with them, then you have TOO MANY CHILDREN Angelina.
17. Orlando Bloom is making the biggest mistake of his life and marrying that fugly troll of a Victoria Secrets supermodel Miranda Kerr. He's not even trying to give Us a chance.
18. In between my current travelling and writing commitments I am considering starting up some kind of Save Lindsay Lohan From Herself charitable foundation.
19. If I were Madonna's child, and my Mother was still wearing leather, and dancing around in her pants, and dating a 23 year old boy by the name of 'Jesus', I would stow myself on the first flight back to Malawi.
20. Mark Owen, previously the nicest married man in showbiz and father of two, is in a clinic for drug and sex addiction. I never heard anything more depressing. Mankind is doomed.