Celebrity News:

ANORAK looks at 2007…Paris Hilton, Shilpa Shetty, Britney Spears, Bob Woolmer, Celebrity Perfumes And Tony Blair

JANUARY

SHILPA ‘fucking’ Poppadom, Jade ‘Hoody’ Goody, Danielle ‘Footballer Fan’ Lloyd and Jo ‘SS Club 7’ O’Meara contestants on celebrity Big Brother gave us an international race row.

Refereed by Ian ‘Preparation H’ Watkins, the spot of bigotry and bullying scored 45,000 complaints to Channel 4 and it as the TV hit of the year.

FEBRUARY

BRITNEY Spears has done for bald men what Victoria Beckham has done for thin women: she has made people question their motives.

Reasons why Britney took up the clippers and shaved off her hair were many. While Anorak looked for lice and a Nazi boyfriend, a customer at Ester’s Hair Studio in Sherman Oaks, where Britney Spears became Britney Shears, said: "She basically just said she was tired of having things plugged into her."

MARCH

IF the plan was to make more people notice the sport, then this Cricket World Cup has achieved its objective by some distance.

For the few actually watching the show on Sky Sports, the biggest story was always going to be how fit the cricket into the holiday brochure.

With the commentary team bathed in sun and ensconced in a five-star beachside resort, viewers were treated to England’s Paul Nixon running into the surf topless with an equally underdressed Tim Abrahams, Sky’s cricket news man.

We live in enlightened times, and were encouraged to wonder how many of the travelling production crew were on a busman’s holiday, working the cricket around a civil partnership honeymoon.

But now that has been overtaken by news of Bob Woolmer, who began the tournament as Pakistan’s coach, and England’s coach-in-waiting, and ended it a murder victim.

As the Sun says: "IT WAS MURDER - Bob strangled in hotel room." Or was it. Er, well, no. He died of natural causes…

APRIL

FRESH from an audience with President Ahmadinejad of Iran, Faye Turney looks out at Sun readers. Pictured with an Ahmadinejad own brand headscarf in her hand, Turney strikes a defiant blow for Western fashion and British military might.

"I feared being raped by Iranians," says one teaser. "Stripped to knickers in dingy cell." And: "The truth behind our TV smiles."

Sun readers have every right to be appalled. Granted, Turney was not raped and at no time molested in a sexual manner. And being stripped to her knickers would, perhaps, be more shocking if Turney had been stripped to her Y-fronts, but the point is made..

NO little shock as Able Seaman Arthur Batchelor, friend to Faye Turney’s mother figure, is pictured not wearing in his Man At Ahmadinejad suit.

It was believed that having been captured and then set free by Iran’s fashion conscious leader, 5ft 2in tall Batchelor would wear his suit every day without fail thereby cementing his celebrity as the Iranian hostage who survived to sell his story. Never mind the length, admire the quality.

But here he is in the Mirror clad in a canary yellow shirt. Around his eyes is held a green and white tea towel. A gun (reportedly fake) is held across his throat.

Being kidnapped once is unlucky, twice suggests carelessness, a fetish for such role playing or a ploy to maintain his fame.

The Mail has a similar picture. And, as ever, it shows that Batchelor is grinning from ear to ear. This is the grin of defiance readers last saw when Batchelor was displaying his ping-pong skills to his Iranian captors.

Reading on we learn that Batchelor has been captured in a Plymouth nightclub. By our estimations this is well outside Iranian national waters. But while we await confirmation of that, Batchelor appears dressed in a nightie.