We've never felt much for Channel 9's rip off of US chat show The View, cleverly dubbed The Catch Up. Well, we felt the sensation of our eyes rolling back in our head when we caught half an hour of it when it first began, but since then? Nothing at all.

That was until today, when we read this.

The panel show Beauty and the Beast, pioneered in the 1960s and revived by Foxtel to enormous success during the past decade, tackled big issues with intelligence, poise and bravura.

The Catch-Up, on the other hand, presumes too easily that women prefer stupid, shallow chatter about fashion and celebrities.

Suddenly, we can't help but feel a kind of kinship with The Catch Up. Sure, we'd never excitedly "cross live" to Peter Timbs in the Woman's Day office to discover the latest on Lindsay Lohan (we'd be reading it online, for fucks sake) but still. If people stop caring about stupid, shallow chatter about fashion and celebrities, then it's not going to be a good Christmas for Timmy and the other crippled orphans here at Defamer Australia headquarters.

As a direct result to this new found feeling of empathy towards The Catch Up, we're going to attempt to adopt the show for a week starting Monday, and really try to convince you of its good points. It'll be our very own (temporary) Maddox/Zahara/Pax/David!

Until we get bored, which will probably be about one post into the project, fickle fools that we are.

It'll take a helluva lot of meditation before Sting calms down over this, we reckon. You see, everyone's favourite yoga devotee and his missus have been found guilty of unfair dismissal. Unfair dismissal? How un-hippy of them!

Celebrity couple Sting and Trudie Styler face having to pay record damages to their former chef for unfair dismissal after a tribunal found them guilty of "shameful conduct".

The singer and his actress wife - formally known as Mr and Mrs Sumner - broke employment law by sacking Jane Martin, 41, after she became pregnant, the panel has ruled.

In a devastating judgment, Styler is accused of using "subterfuge" to get rid of Ms Martin, and of using "minions" to do her "dirty work".

The employment tribunal was told that staff at the couple's country estate lived in a climate of fear because Styler subjected them to abuse to make her "feel royal".

Good lord. The story is especially disturbing if we choose to only pay attention to the words appearing within quotation marks. In fact, we'll re-type them in caps and make them bold just to add an air of authentic UK tabloid reporting!

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Now put those hands down, you silly buggers, and instead focus your digital energies on banging out a fucking dazzling resume and cover letter, because Allure Media is hiring, yo!

Here's the official spiel.

Administration and Editorial Assistant

Allure Media is in the business of building great websites. Our gossip site Defamer and gadget guide Gizmodo are the first of many, and we're looking for an administrative and editorial assistant to join us for what's sure to be a wild ride.

The role is a unique blend: two-thirds administration and sales support, one-third editorial.

The successful applicant will capably respond to reader and advertiser enquiries, manage advertising campaigns, maintain financial records and produce regular reports.

The right candidate will also have an opportunity to write for our websites, producing regular features and scouring the web for the juiciest news.

To apply for this Sydney-based role, send your resume with a covering letter to jobs@alluremedia.com.au. Include two short posts in the style of either Defamer or Gizmodo.

Unofficially, you will spend most of your day bouncing emails containing vaguely entertaining YouTube links and completely libelous and false gossip back and forth with us, regularly spend at least half an hour giggling on the phone about our respective love lives, and eventually we will take you out, get you drunk, and we'll all take saucy photos of each other.

FUN!

We've not even been "live" a month, and we're already resorting to buying your affection with gadgets. Well, not all of you. We're not mad, nor are we made of money. But we do have a snazzy piece of technology to give away to a very lucky (and clever) reader, as well as tickets to the no doubt celeb-riddled (if the US equivalent shindig is anything to go by) launch party of Telstra's new HipTop3! All the details on how to enter are here. Go nuts.

UPDATE: The competition has now closed. Congrats to David Hall-Johnston of Canberra!

Unable to come to grips with the idea that it might lose its favourite local socialite for the full 45 days of her recently handed down prison sentence, the LAT embarked on a quest to find someone willing to envelop it in a warm hug, gently stroke its hair, and reassure it that those scary men don't really mean all their nasty talk about Paris Hilton serving every last minute of her hard time:

Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said Hilton's sentence could be cut nearly in half by state law allowing for credit for time served for good behaviour. In addition, he said, overcrowding in the jail system could further reduce the time she spends in custody.

Overcrowding has been a major issue in the L.A. County jail system, with some inmates - even violent ones - serving as little as 10% of their sentences. (If that standard was applied to Hilton, she would serve less than a week in jail.)

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A whirlwind promotional tour for Shrek the Third has, unfortunately, given all of us an unsolicited glimpse into the well-ventilated mind of Cameron Diaz: She recently described to Meredith Viera on Today the fascination with her personal life as being "like high school, isn't it? We as celebrities are like the popular kids. People want to know our business." (Yes, that's exactly right! And Justin is the QB, and The Ivy is the cafeteria, and Variety is the student newspaper!) Now comes this curious quote, shared with rarely seen paleolithic Hollywood gossip entity Jeanne Wolf:

"If a woman who's a successful actress weighs 300 pounds and has warts, nobody ever asks her, 'Do you think you made it because you're ugly?' So why should there be prejudice against someone who's had some success in films and looks a little better than average.

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"Will Eddie McGuire bone himself?" asks news.com.au. We do hope so.

And further to that, we hope that there's some sort of website where we can sign up to watch grainy footage of aforementioned self-boning, and then we will pay $20 per minute to watch Eddie McGuire bone himself, and then we will gouge our eyes out with a rusty fork, stop speaking English, and choose only to communicate with others through a combination of sharp grunts and prodigious piano playing abilities - an almost miraculous side-effect of watching (and being horrified to the core by) Eddie's money shot.

Hmm. We're going to stop blathering on and instead focus our energies on acquiring coffee. In the meantime, here's an excerpt from the surprisingly - and happily - sexless article about Eddie's desires to solo-bone.

Channel 9 chief executive Eddie McGuire could be about to "bone" himself and head back to Melbourne after a reshuffle that has angered the media company's shareholders.

McGuire, also Collingwood Football Club president, yesterday said Nine's Melbourne boss Gary Pert had resigned to take up the chief executive's job at the club.

The 1 Vs 100 TV host now needs to fill the Nine job in Melbourne - and he'd need look no further than himself to find a perfect match.

As his first major order of business since the passing of his larger-that-life predecessor, current MPAA honcho Dan Glickman has announced that the federal ratings board will take the unprecedented measure of factoring in on-screen cigarette smoking into their... Read More »

While it's far too late for us to offer to help the following anonymous Craigslist poster find a lift so that he wouldn't miss his obscenely early call time, we feel we nonetheless should pass along his admirably responsible,... Read More »

It's been far too long since orphan-addicted baby-collector Angelina Jolie has opened up about her complicated feelings on biological childbirth, a selfish practice that invariably disrupts the colour-coordinated harmony of any painstakingly racially balanced brood. But Jolie is once again ready to defend her still-controversial decision to use her uterus instead of a Third World nation's adoption system to add to her family last year, this time to Reader's Digest:

"Before I met Brad, I always said I was happy never to have a child biologically. He told me he hadn't given up that thought. Then, a few months after Z came home, I saw Brad with her and Mad, and I realised how much he loved him, that a biological child would not in any way be a threat. So I said, 'I want to try.' "

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It's hard to believe, but May 25th marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the first installment in George Lucas's career-defining, not-at-all-silly<.a> epic space opera, making it as good an excuse as any to push through some civic legislation designating it Star Wars Day in Los Angeles. Our friends at Curbed LA snagged a copy of the resolution:

RESOLVE to DECLARE May 25, 2007 as Star Wars Day in the City of Los Angeles and also recognize George Lucas' 1977 film Star Wars for its tremendous impact on the citizenry of Los Angeles, the film industry and the world, and for continuing to inspire after thirty years millions of people to explore movies, fantasy, literature, and science as means of achieving their goals and dreams,

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Perhaps realising that the impromptu, beer-soaked promotional appearance he made on behalf of Live Free or DieHard at halftime of a recent Nets playoff game might not reach as many hardcore film nerds as he'd like, onetime wisecracking animated critter and resurgent action star Bruce Willis has taken to the Talkback boards at Ain't It Cool to get the word out about his comeback vehicle, which he swears will contain all the brain-splattering, hard-R violence his fans crave despite a PG-13 rating that limits him to a mere two "fucks." Here, Willis dramatically outs himself as suspiciously defensive poster "Walter B":

I am Walter B
by Walter B
i am John Mafuckin'Clane. What if I came to you all, just as as guy who in the last weeks of post, facing a 5 week, World-Wide press tour, an crazed at the prospect of it, just wanted to take a simpler approach to talking to this enormous group of people, who depsite pre-judgements from many, praise from a smaller minority, and some just waiting to see "what shakes out", merely wished to have an outlet to chat with people I seldom get to chat with, and what if I just listened?

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Late last night, all of America came to a standstill as Lindsay Lohan turned up on Letterman to help promote Georgia Rule (we'll assume it was a good faith effort to make up some of the time she missed due to "exhaustion" and "immaturity"), hoping that the perpetually troubled starlet might reveal what's actually going on in those blurry News of the World toilet cubicle photos.

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