Hello, New Closer Heat out now today, OK?

Is there anything that better demonstrates the cretinous cretinality of our burgeoning cretinocracy than the litany of 'celeb' magazines that adorn the shelves of all friendly news agents and supermarkets? OK, Hello, Closer, New, Heat, why do they all have one-word names that lose almost all meaning when suffixed with the word 'magazine'? I literally don't know whether "OK magazine" is a question or an all too honest statement of mediocrity. Meanwhile 'closer magazine' sounds like some kind of whispered come-on that would slip out of the mouth of a periodical obsessed pervert. Why do they all share the exact same disgusting front cover design, replete with garish pink, red, yellow and blue colour motifs?

I'd love to mount a scathing attack on everyone who has anything to do with these atrocities but I can't and neither can you. I read them, you read them. You might not buy them, but if it's there lying on a bus, train or in a doctor's waiting room... "But I never pay for it" you may cry like a fourteen year old kid whose parents have just found out that they smoke weed. Shut up. I was in the dentist's today and was drawn to 'New magazine' like a smack head to a big lump of brown. Inside I knew it was wrong but I read every bloody page, morbidly drawn to the seedy stories of Eva Longoria's weight gain, imagining myself to be above it all, smugly heralding my own superior intellect. Then came the creeping realisation that this arrogant belief in my own cultural eminence was a complete sham, I fucking loved it, every second of tawdry private life revelations, just like the sniveling 16 year old wanabee glamour girl reader I was taking such pleasure in deriding. I am a dick, I am ruining society. And so are you.

Now that's out of the way let's indulge:

Further lending credence to my long-held views on celebrity chefs, and reinforcing the utter banality that characterises 90% of these magazines' content, Jean-Christophe Novelli delighted the reader with the following:

"I’ve got every single episode of Columbo on DVD. My fiancée Michelle and I were invited to go to a party in LA attended by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. But Peter Falk, who plays Columbo, was opening a gallery nearby, so we went there instead! Sadly, he’d gone when we arrived."

Why do I want to know this?

Next up the current cover of 'Closer Magazine':

Seriously? You'd think that the old adage of 'once bitten, twice shy' might have applied here. It really worked last time! Poor Harvey. Still, at least this all happily reminded me of the episode of Peter and Jordan's reality show where Peter took acting lessons. For the rest of the week, during every conversation Peter would suddenly, and completely out of context, start menacingly demanding "are you patronising me?!?" After a few seconds of social awkwardness he would relent and proudly admit that "I'm acting! That's just acting!" Only Harvey saw it fit to truthfully react to this tiresome scenario:

FC