Celebrity News:

Nearly halfway through 2008 and we are still, as a species, waiting for answers. What pictures will return from New Horizon's mission to Pluto? Will anyone crack the P v NP problem in theoretical computer science? And when they finally fire up the 27km-long subatomic particle collider at Cern will we finally discover what fomenting, molten, starburst state the Universe was in, moments after the Big Bang?

While we eagerly count down to these moments of revelation, we can comfort ourselves that another set of results, equally valuable, have finally come in. Yes, that's right - a survey conducted by T-Mobile has pinned down Britain's favourite celebrity couples! No longer need you wonder where in the rankings the sexually and intellectually explosive union of Tess Daly and Vernon Kay lies; or whether Britain favours Richard and Judy over the Beckhams (short answer: yes). Good old T-Mobile customers have nailed the lot.

When all the votes were in, it was discovered that the marriage of Lenny Henry and Dawn French had topped the poll, which many commentators - well, the Daily Mirror - found "surprising". Personally, I find it surprising that the Mirror finds it surprising, given that French and Henry reflect a great many relationships in modern Britain, ie, a multiracial, working couple, one of whom one is vastly more interested in The Vicar of Dibley than the other.

Farther down the poll, we find that Britain still continues to view Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne as two loveable eccentrics with a penchant for small dogs - rather than, as is the reality, a ruinously raddled Gollum and his icicle-hearted fame-pimp - and that, "favourite celebrity couple"-wise, the Clintons edge in over the Blairs by a single chart position. Whatever the ultimate morality of it, the Clintons just have that undeniable, illicit-blow-job glamour, and there's nothing the Blairs can do about it.

Of course, having once stared at the poll, I started to wonder what I - as an ideologically differing O2 customer - would have answered, had my mobile company given a damn enough about my views on celebrity couples to conduct a poll. Anjelica Huston and Jack Nicholson. The best celebrity face-clash ever. Better even than Kermit (small, green) and Miss Piggy (hog). Huston-Nicholson was like an AGM of the world's most extreme facial features. Between them, they must have been able to raise their eyebrows more than a foot and a half, and possessed more than two thirds of the 20th century's "Gimlet Eye" chromosomes. It is an eternal pity - from both an aesthetic and a scientific point of view - that they never had children. Their putative offspring would have looked like sexy, cigar-chomping pterodactyls, with incredibly elegant wrists.

Kate Garraway and Derek Draper. She's the ostensibly helmet-haired GMTV presenter. He's the formerly weasellous new Labour spin-doctor. But when they met it was moider. No, hang on - that's the intro to Hart To Hart. What I meant to say is that when Garraway and Draper got together their marriage - as all relationships are supposed to, yet so rarely do - palpably transformed each of them into a wholly better person, with no moider at all. Draper quit politics, put on 3st, studied psychotherapy and grew a gigantic, Kris Kristofferson-style beard, as if to signal his new, emotionally connected status to the world. Garraway, meanwhile, became so relaxed that she spent all of her stint on Strictly Come Dancing falling over, flashing her knickers, waltzing like a circus dog in callipers and hooting with laughter in a most endearing way. I am unbecomingly obsessed with the idea of meeting them at a dinner party, getting tanked, holding their hands and weeping: "Before everyone thought you were awful, but now you guys just rilly, rilly love you [sic]." Best of all, should one nickname the couple in the manner of "Brangelina" and "TomKat", their celebrity portmanteau name comes out as KatRape.

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. While whole books and films have been dedicated to the volatile, creative, pansexual relationship between Frida Kahlo and her on/off husband, Diego Rivera, there is a single, pertinent incident in their union that niggles. Kahlo was one of the brightest minds of the earliest 20th century - overturning sexual mores, giving intellectual support to Leon Trotsky and manipulating and reinventing Mexican mythology to serve modern feminism. However, when turning her genius to the ultimate artistic depiction of their relationship, Kahlo painted first herself, then Diego's likeness across her forehead - and entitled it Diego On My Mind. No - that's Diego On My Face, love.

Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. Even though this didn't happen, it kind of did, didn't it? I mean, I for one have a pretty convincing memory of Elvis and Marilyn, sitting in a bright red T-Bird, driving off to meet James Dean in a diner. It all kind of feels so right. The great sex symbols should have sex with each other - they are, after all, the prime examples of our species. Their union is inevitable. This is why we are so obsessed with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. They're mankind's prize bull and heifer. Had they not met on the set of Mr & Mrs Smith, we would have had to separate them from all the other, objectively uglier people, lead them into a mating pen and let nature take its course.

In 2000 years' time - when we have collated the entire writings of humanity on to a single, opalescent, 6 gabillion-terrabyte egg, which subsequently crashes - our folk memory of the 1950s will be of the time when Marilyn and Elvis dated and married, then gave birth to cute little Bob Dylan.

C-word incident makes me cringe with shame

It's not often that I'm embarrassed to be British. Generally, I think this country rocks - we have tea, Pembrokeshire and Doctor Who - but holy moly, last week we looked like a confederacy of arses. We (our country; my country) issued a summons to a 15-year-old boy for taking part in a peaceful protest against the Church of Scientology. His offence? To hold up a placard that included the word "cult". Yes, "cult". Apparently, that's "threatening, abusive or insulting". A child with words on a piece of cardboard. In the end, thankfully, the boy was told that he would not be taken to court after all.

Aside from the fact that if we ignored our brains and filtered this story purely through our dumb animal emotions, it felt a bit as if Tom Cruise was about to throw a child in jail - which was obviously quite exciting - you do have to ask, what is happening to this country? Have we turned into a bunch of wet nuns? First, we should be thrilled that we've got at least one teenage kid up, fully dressed, philosophically engaged and able to spell. Secondly, I'm embarrassed that all the grown-up liberal countries such as Canada and Denmark are laughing at us.

Copyright R. Kelly?

In America the R&B star R. Kelly is on trial, accused of having sex with a 13-year-old girl. If he is found guilty, many will speculate that his fatal error was allegedly filming himself throughout the deed. Doh! But if this trial proves him innocent, the video's status will change instantly. It will stop being "evidence" and become "amateur porn with the biggest pre-publicity campaign since the Paris Hilton tapes". Even the prosecutor seemed to have some subconscious knowledge of this. She introduced the video thus: "[These are] acts you will never have seen before. Vile, disturbing and disgusting sex acts - actions that were choreographed, produced and starred in by R. Kelly." Is it just me, or does that sound a tiny bit like an assertion of copyright?