Cheeky Girls get time to pay

The thought of the Cheeky Girls homeless and sleeping on a park bench somewhere is something you can put out of your mind - unless it amuses you, of course - as the video company seeking £3500 owed from the making of Boys and Girls Christmas Fun clip have been told to give them more time to pay the courts.

The Girls had been trying to avoid paying by saying that the finished product was "poor", something rejected by the judge (A Cheeky Girls video which isn't rubbish? Is such a thing legally possible?) but said they could have until the end of the month to find the rest of the money.

Meanwhile, Lembit Opik has made his first appearance in the House of Commons since it became common knowledge he dumped the nice weather presenter to take up with one of the Cheeky Girls - which one need not detain us now. Seemingly at a stroke (or, we fear, several), Lembit has turned from being one of the geekier members of parliament to... well, "mid-life crisis man incarnate" is what we wrote in our notes:

So when he stood up at the end of Northern Ireland questions there was a great ironic - possibly envious - cheer from Labour MPs.

Mr Lembit, who had had several weeks to work out his response to this inevitable moment, merely said: "I think that hon members should leave the cheeky business entirely to me."

He wasn't done - perhaps the Speaker was confused and seeking clarification ("can this really be Lembit Opik effectively chanting 'I've done it with a minor pop star lady?") or maybe, just as the Cheeky Girls do everything in pairs, Lembit now does, too - but he got called a second time:

He rose to an even bigger cheer. We waited excitedly to discover if his next gag would match Oscar Wilde or La Rochefoucauld. It didn't.

"Not wishing to be cheeky, Mr Speaker," he said, just in case we might have forgotten that he was sleeping with one of the Cheeky Girls, "I thank the house for being so happy that I am so very, very lucky. And I should point out that the other sister is single."

You begin to see why Ted Heath remained a doughty bachelor throughout his time in the Commons.

music lembit opik cheeky girls