Gordon in the morning: Whitney forgets herself

Pete Samson has been busy getting a scoop by watching Whitney Houston on Oprah Winfrey:

DIVA WHITNEY HOUSTON "totally forgot" she was a singing star in the depths of her drug addiction, she said last night.

Well, she was doing a lot of the drucks, but did she really totally forget that she was the woman who made My Love Is Your Love? You can see why that would be attractive, but is it really what she meant?

She said: "I didn't think about the singing part anymore. I'd totally forgotten about that life. I had so much money by that time."

So she didn't actually "forget" she was a pop star, she seems to mean that she no longer thought about the job.

While Pete Samson was sat watching Oprah, Gordon was watching the MTV awards (Any luck, James and Rupert, on plans to make sure that people don't take your content and use it elsewhere? I'm sure you wouldn't want your paywall breached by bloggers and other news sites writing about what your writers wrote about when they were watching television.)

KUGELSACKGATE meant May's MTV Movie Awards were talked about for days afterwards.

When SACHA BARON COHEN's bare behind greeted EMINEM's stony face, headlines were made around the world.

Well, people like you wrote about it. What was it you said, Gordon?

The “kugelsack” incident at the MTV Movie Awards last weekend was one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

It’s up there with Del Boy falling through the bar in Only Fools And Horses.

Watching EMINEM recoil in horror as Bruno’s g-string clad backside slapped his face will go down in comedy legend.

Hee hee hee. I loved the bit where he said that thing about garlic bread and did the robot dance.

But there was darkness at the heart of that oh-so-humourous moment, wasn't there, Gordon?

But that turned out to be an elaborate stunt.

It turned out that you can't just drop a guy from highwires and have the camera team and producers catch it without it all being set-up first. (I think Gordon means 'set-up' rather than 'stunt' - even if Eminem had been unaware that MTV feel he needs a comedy sidekick, it would still have been a stunt, wouldn't it?)

So, having fooled Gordon once, he's not going to be fooled again:

I wonder if the same will turn out to be true of the unsavoury events at Sunday 's MTV Video Music Awards?

Do you wonder that, Gordon?

The odd thing is, he then writes his piece as if he wasn't wondering that at all, but just taking the event at face value, ending on:

Not surprisingly, Kanye won nothing.

But if he'd been taking part in an elaborate stunt set up with the producers, that everyone was in on, why would that have made it unlikely he'd win an award? And if it was spontaneous, how would that have changed the names already sealed in envelopes? Or if you just mean that Kanye and his increasingly dull activities make it unsurprising that he didn't win? But if he's such poison, why did MTV invite him in the first place?

Twittergem: Tim Westwood

There has been some debate around Bruno. Does it expose and ridicule homophobia, or does it legitimise and amplify it?

@westwood provides the answer:

This Bruno lookin flight attendant has just invited me to go up in his cockpit - that smells fishy to me

Gordon in the morning: Optimus Prime was busy

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha. This morning, Bizarre is guest-edited by Sacha Baron Cohen in his guise as Bruno. It's a crazy inversion of everything we've come to expect from Bizarre - a straight man pretending to be gay running articles that are intentionally trite and meaningless. A complete inversion.

Opinion is divided on Bruno, as to whether it's a comedy which satirizes homophobes and racists, or if it's actually a bunch of racist and homophobic stereotyping that is Making Some Sort Of Point. I wonder if this large advert for the film will clarify matters?

EMINEM pretended he'd never had a guy so close before at ze MTV Movie Awards.

But vhen I vas down zere soon ze real Slim Shady began to stand up.

Ich vould love to get zat vay mit BRYAN ADAMS.

Vould be real Summer Of 69.

Wow. This has got to be Baron Cohen's most searing satire since he dressed up in a shell suit and sunglasses to shock the world with the discovery that Sir Rhodes Byson didn't understand street slang. I mean, seriously:

"Paris Hilton is everything I despise in people. She dresses to get attention, she's a real name-dropper - Orlando Bloom told me zat. Und she is fame obsessed - she's alvays standing next to me on ze red carpet."

This is the sort of thing that Benny Hill was doing decades ago - although, to be fair, Hill would only have worn a neckerchief and a pastel shirt to be dressed up like a gay.

Gordon in the morning: Eating kidneys with relish

All those people hoping for an Atomic Kitten reunion (or "Kerry Katona and her dependents" as they're known) will find Gordon Smart's pages grim reading this morning:

The former ATOMIC KITTEN star [Jenny Frost] reckons she would rather "eat her own kidney" than reform the girl group with original member KERRY KATONA.

Nadia Mendoza knows this because, erm, she read it in Closer.

Quite why a reunion would feature both Frost and Katona, though, who weren't in the band at the same time, isn't explained.

Also, it would be handy to know if Frost meant she'd rip out her own kidney, with her bare hands, before eating it; or if she'd have it removed painlessly and professionally before being served to her. Perhaps the confusion on that point is why Gordon hasn't had his "boffins" create a photoshop image of this event.

In other news: Gordon's obsession with Bruno reminds me of the way three year-olds get fixated on Ice Age.

Gordon in the morning: Further into base camp

Having spent two or three days after the first confused, slightly frightened piece on Ronaldo's "camp" behaviour backpedalling by running guff about the footballer standing near women, you might have thought Gordon would leave it alone now.

Oh, no.

I FEAR the sunshine has been getting to the normally well-attired footballer RIO FERDINAND.

Either that or the Man United ace has fallen under the combined spell of former teammate CRISTIANO RONALDO and gay fashion icon BRUNO.

Smart does try to tone down the playground construction of 'wearing tiny shorts = gay = bad', and relies on references to Bruno - who he talks about as if he was real and not a tiresome construct - to nudge his readers in that direction.

Trotting round his Tel Aviv hotel pool in tiny denim shorts and a multi-coloured crop top is a fashion crime of the highest magnitude.

It's a get-up camp Austrian fashionista Bruno might happily sport.

And he is a gay. Or at least would be, were he not a made-up, clumsy stereotype.

Gordon, though, is all man. And to prove it, he sends Richard White to stare at Victoria Beckham's breasts. Apparently breast reduction surgery is a sign of a new seriousness.