Good Week/Bad Week: September 18

IT'S BEEN A GOOD WEEK FOR:

 

Making amends It’s true – contrition is totally now. First this week, Chris Brown started the community service that forms part of his sentence for assaulting ex-girlfriend Rhianna. Brown was pictured in a fetching Day-Glo orange vest (which we all know Rhianna would look way better in) as he cleared rubbish and weeds from a police stables – and he wasn’t being shy about it. He took his own team of security guards with him, and kept his Twitter followers up-to-date about his activities. Let’s just see if he’s as keen about day 180 as he was about day one. Meanwhile, after players from Russell Crowe’s rugby club were involved in a bar fight, the Oscar-winning star (no stranger to a brawl himself) wrote an open letter to the public, apologising for not setting a better example to the players and telling the world that his days of bad behaviour were well and truly over. Of course, it’s all very grown up saying goodbye to Rowdy Russell Crowe but we’ll miss him just a little bit…

Still being alive There are certain rites of passage for a Hollywood star; your first leading role, your first award, your first stalker… And this week Matt Damon ticked off another – the death hoax. Following in the footsteps of Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears, Damon become the subject of rumours circulating on the internet, suggesting his premature demise. It was suggested that he’d been found dead after going trekking alone in mountains in California. But appearing at a Canadian press conference this week, Matt Damon proved he was very much alive, and ridiculed the story. We never believed it for a second. The man who plays Bourne? Beaten down by a few measly mountains? Never going to happen.

IT'S BEEN A BAD WEEK FOR:

 

Good manners Oh Kanye, Kanye, Kanye. That plain-speaking mouth of yours has got you in a whole heap of trouble this week. Being rude about George Bush? Yes, we support you in that. Bigging yourself up at every single opportunity? Just about acceptable - you’re a rapper, after all. Ruining a 19-year-old’s big night at the MTV Awards? Not OK. In case you have slept through the week (and if you did, lucky you – FYI Jordan’s at it again), he upstaged award-winner Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech by running on stage, grabbing the microphone and declaring that it was Beyoncé who deserved the trophy, amid a chorus of boos. Since then, Kanye seems to have been apologising through just about every medium possible, but he still has some ground to make up. Kanye, as my mum says, you can’t buy class.

Sk8er Bois After months of speculation, it was reported this week that Avril Lavigne has filed for divorce from her husband of three years, Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley. Celebrity marriages break down all the time, and mostly we’re not that surprised, but these two seemed to have so much in common – both tiny, both Canadian, both into skateboarding. They must have had so much to talk about. But clearly something drove a wedge between the pair – maybe Deryck couldn’t stand the smell of Avril’s new fragrance, Black Star, which she’s been promoting recently? Maybe it was just that he was a punk and she did ballet? Or maybe she didn’t do enough ballet? Either way, two more celebrities are back on the singles carousel.

Megan Fox’s boyfriends The voluptuous Transformers star is starting to acquire a reputation as something of a loose cannon. After various revelations about her colourful private life, her claims that director Michael Bay was like Hitler, and reports of an open letter from the Transformers crew claiming Fox is “as dumb as a rock”, we were wondering where she could go next. This week, she revealed she once threatened to kill her boyfriend, Beverly Hills 90120 star Brian Austin Green, and said that she couldn’t own a gun for the reason that the compulsion to use it whenever she was in a bad mood would simply be too great. “I wouldn’t shoot to kill,” she said reasonably. “But I would shoot him in the leg, for sure.” Oh, just in the leg? That’s OK, then. Many comparisons have been made between Mad Megan and Angelina Jolie, but this latest episode makes wearing your boyfriend’s blood round your neck seem like perfectly sensible. Of course, if you shot your boyfriend in the leg, you’d have more than enough blood for a locket. You could fill a fish tank. Best not to give those two any ideas though, eh?

 

The views in this column are those of the author alone and not of MSN/Microsoft