So much weird stuff has happened this week that I haven't had the time to take the piss out of it properly. Such is the sad fact of Christmas and the last week of work. I blame The Kooks, causing harm and destruction like so many voodoo crows. If only they'd fuck off to America and get killed by alligators I could relax into the Christmas spirit.

That MP and his Cheeky Girl
First of all, of course, is Lembit Opik's spectacular relationship with one half of the Cheeky Girls, my absolute favourite news story of the week. I was living abroad when their "fame" hit the UK and so was thankfully spared the initial onslaught of their adorable songs and surprisingly-old-for-23 looks. On the flipside, this meant that when I came back I hadn't had the jabs and got very sick, very quickly.

RBT pointed out that The Cheeky Girls had four top-10 singles, and that that was four more than AC/DC, Super Furry Animals, Cypress Hill, and Rage Against the Machine combined. That was admittedly was a rather tortuous way of being snobby about the lack of mainstream recognition for said bands from the single-buying public, even though the single-buying public is by and large populated by the tone deaf and My Chemical Romance fans. Poor, dumped Sian Lloyd has obviously done something to piss off the subs at the BBC website because instead of the usual incredibly glamorous shot afforded to the dumped and pitiful, they've used a photo that makes her look like a drag queen on a hen night.

The follow-up article rates as one of the funniest things I've read this week, along with the Evening Standard tornado "I was there" piece, if only for the interviews with Gabriela and her family:

- "Our relationship is really genuine and it's not out of a pantomime or anything like that."

- The sisters' mother and manager, Margit, said Mr Opik had been a "little bit shy" when he first visited the family home but he had got on well with their Irish wolfhound dog, Rocky.

- Mrs Irimia promised they would bounce back with a new cheeky girl, the twins' six-year-old niece Lory, singing a new version of the Hokey Cokey. The trio released a download album in November titled In My Mind (Is A Different World - A Cheeky One). --> --> --> E BO -->

God helps us.

According to Rupert Murdoch, MySpazz turns you into a serial-killing mental
The purported prostitute killer of Ipswich (needs catchier serial killer name – suggestions please) is on MySpazz. The London Lite immediately took the opportunity of calling him an "internet loner" which spells out great things for the rest of us. I've been on MySpazz for well over a year now and there are people I only talk to via the medium of comments – does this mean I'm going to throw a wobbler up in Bethnal Green and start killing hookers? Anyway, his page has now been taken down, suggesting that Rupert Murdoch and his henchmen don't put much faith in the adage innocent until proven guilty.

Andrew Lloyd Webber has No Shame
Following the "success" of How Do you Solve A Problem Like Maria (I love musicals and it made me feel cheap and used), Andrew Lloyd Webber is launching another reality music show to find a cheap way of promoting a musical into heart failure. Again taken from the title of one of his songs, (this man is PRESCIENT, surely. He and Tim Rice/Charles Hart etc must have had this all planned for years) Any Dream Will Do is going to look for some muggins to perform in a revival of perma-kiddie favourite Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. Apparently Maria was very popular with schoolkids, so lowering the bar further should make them epileptic with joy or something. Anyway, it sounds horrid. Bring on Prima Donna, where they shoot the entire cast of Phantom and admit they hired a bunch of Butlins red coats instead of actual performers.

Factory Girl needs to re-read its McNae
Factory Girl's lawyers are living in cloud cuckoo land. Having a film where every character goes under their real name bar "Danny Quinn", a musician with a mouth organ and a natty line in poetry and scarves, and then crying "But it's NOT DYLAN" when he threatens to sue you for demation caused by overt insinuations that he drove Edie Sedgewick to suicide is not a good plan. Ever. Click here to admire Guy Pearce's brilliant Warhol and go "meh, bothered" over their fluffy depictions of everything else. Sienna Miller looks alright. I've never seen her films because she's always been in crap that I've had no desire to see, but she was absolutely enchanting in As You Like It last summer.

Next year you will be forced into liking a band called Ghosts.
Ghosts are Atlantic Records latest big signing and fall neatly into that "some boys with guitars, a keyboard and totally blank expressions" category occupied by The Kooks, this year. Atlantic hosted a showcase for them at Ronnie Scott's yesterday lunchtime. You could tell they were throwing the big bucks after them because we had two different types of meal-inna-bucket, as well as canapés, and wine waiters to top up our glasses for us with three different kinds of wine.

They'd also inexplicably forked out for Stephen K Amos – who I absolutely adore – to do a short bit of stand up beforehand. This was, of course, an absolute disaster. Industry liggers can't be arsed to laugh before 7pm, they'd much rather stand around and plump up each other's egos and feel Important about seeing next year's Big Thing before anyone else. Amos didn't help himself at all trying to appeal to the blatantly racist in the room with his pigeon-holding routines rather than just being funny. Worse, he fell into the schoolboy error trap of continually saying "Well, I've had better gigs than this," and "God, is anyone else dying? Or is it just me?" Don't draw attention to it Amos! You're better than that. Although clearly not at 1pm on a Tuesday afternoon.

Ghosts eventually came on, and their wanker singer smugly slagged off Amos in the manner of one who's heard what a sense of humour and wit entails but has never really managed to pull it off. "This one's called Ghosts, as are we. But then, I guess you already knew that," he said later, even more smugly. I don't like the c-word but my god that cunt has got cunt written all over his cunting cunt's face. Anyway, their music sounds like a whole load of Asda mums banging their pockets in unison, bog-standard boy indie topped off with Captain crossed with Delays only without the charm or any of the decent tunes. They'll be massive, and it's all The Kooks fault for proving that the British public will still buy shit as long as people are playing it themselves so they can kid themselves it's "valid" and "important." Cunts.