Until Channel Nine axe it, or something. We're not sure how successful Sea Patrol's gonna be considering its hideous and glaring lack of ladies on horseback/Georgie Parker, but Lisa McCune may be enough to ensure we see at least one full series. That, and the $900,000 per episode being spent on the show.

Sea Patrol is a 13-part drama series about the officers and crew of a fictional Royal Australian Navy patrol boat, HMAS Hammersley, which is tasked with "security, surveillance, protection, support and relief " along the coastline of the Australian mainland, at 35,877 kilometres, the longest in the world.

We're already quivering with anticipation. And it's always a good sign when a show's producer gets all dramatic and deep on yer arses when describing the allure of their show's main focus.

Understanding the anticipation that surrounds the new Nine drama Sea Patrol, says executive producer Hal McElroy, is as simple as the powerful allure of the sea.

"The sea is elemental, and when we look at it we know that it's bigger, stronger, deeper and darker than us. We can't beat it and we also know that anyone who goes out to work at sea is a brave person," he says.

Say it again, Hal. This time slower and a little deeper.

(lights cigarette)

We are also right the fuck into the character names on the show.

In addition to Buffer, Charge and Swain, the ship's crew includes Nav (Saskia Burmeister), ET (David Lyons), Chefo (Josh Lawson) and Spider (Jay Ryan). Naval Command is manned by Commander Steve Marshall (Steve Bisley) and there are two other characters: Dr Ursula Morrell (Sibylla Budd), a scientist enveloped in the Bright Island mystery; and federal agent Greg Murphy (Christopher Stollery), who is investigating it.

Palpitation alert! Palpitation alert!

Interesting Josh Lawson Fact! We once took him to Sexpo with our friend Nads and frightened the beejesus out of him by gaily waving menacing looking vibrators in his direction as he quietly wished the ground would swallow him up. He is also extremely amusing in real life, not just during Thank God You're Here appearances. WE CAN ONLY HOPE CHEFO IS SOME KIND OF LOVABLE LARRIKAN! WHO PERHAPS SEXES LISA MCCUNE! OR HER CHARACTER!

There's nothing like a dash of cross-dressing in the Dreamworld compound to get our attention. Or at least make us raise one eyebrow and go "Oh, real - oooh, look over there. Some paint drying. We'll grab the popcorn if you can sort out the cushion and doona situation."

In the Number 1 room, Billy has been christened “Billinda” and is getting in character, getting his nails done and talking about love. Daniela and Aleisha give him advice.

Everyone agrees Travis would have been hilarious in the role and Joel would have loved it.

“Big Brother better make this nail polish remover available, because I don't want to leave on Sunday with my nails done,” Billy says in his girly voice.

Daniela admits she told Zoran and Joel that nail polish remover wouldn't remove their polish and she thinks they believed her when she said it has to grow out.

Billy suggests waxing his legs. Aleisha tries to tell him that it will look ugly. The girls decide to put purple eyeshadow on him, as it will “go with” his shirt.

“Can I put something on him?” asks Travis.

Travis calls Billy “love” and “baby” as he applies makeup to his friend.

True or false - this year's batch of housemates were actually selected by Dr Kevorkian in a nefarious attempt to euthanise the entire Channel Ten viewing public through boredom?

Talking cats was the YouTube flavour of the month at least six months ago, but we're now far more enthused about vicious, psychotic, angry pussy.

(coughs)

The highlight of this video is, for us at least, the creepy cat that just stares menacingly at the video camera about half way through the clip.

Oh, heavens be praised - the Spice Girls may head down under to perform their MASSIVE SETLIST OF HITS in front of Australian audiences!

The '90s pop phenomenon are expected to announce plans at a press conference in London today for a whirlwind world reunion tour.

The reformation tour featuring all original five members - Geri Halliwell, Victoria Beckham, Emma Bunton, Melanie Brown and Melanie Chisholm - will start in London in December.

...........

The band's management has been pitching one or two Australian dates - in Melbourne and/or Sydney - to local promoters to take place after the Japanese shows in January or February.

It would be 10 years since the Spice Girls' only Australian visit, in January 1998, for a promotion-only tour that saw them venturing to Highpoint for a screening of their movie Spice World.

Bring it, Spice bitches, we say. We're positive we can get our grubby paws on a pair of offensively high platformed sneakers, and we may even pull out our Limited Edition Official Spice Girls Polaroid Camera for the affair!

We'd be good folk to put on the door list, promoters.

(winks in conspiratorial manner)

(slips five pound note in the post)

Defamer Australia's beloved UK Correspondent Will (we are currently awaiting his "latest report" which will be filled with hot pop tips and UK Big Brother anecdotes) has let rip on his personal blog about Ricki-Lee Coulter's ditching of the powerful Young Divas supergroup in favour of focusing on her solo career.

The catalyst for his diatribe was not the official announcement of Ricki-Lee's departure, but rather news that her first move as a solo "artiste" has been to sing with a cartoon character named Coco the cuckoo.

Marvel at his fury, as we did.

I was too upset when Ricki Lee resigned from the Young Divas to speak much about it, because I so desperately didn't want it to be so, and I knew it would be coming sooner or later. Then I felt an odd, bitter feeling about how deluded she is to think she can have a solo career in Australia, and considered it to be broadly emblematic of most people's inability JUST TO MAKE THE BEST OF SOMETHING MEDIOCRE WHICH IS ALL YOU WILL EVER HAVE IF YOU ARE TO BE BRUTALLY HONEST instead of constantly looking for something shinier and therefore better and with less Paulini involvement. We all have such wishes at times but don't you think it's a sign of maturity just to accept that life will never be the perfect Paulini-free tableau we believe we are entitled to and to just crack on and make the most of a fucking hilarious situation such as being placed in the cheapest but second most successful Australian girl band in history? Now you RIDICULOUS WOMAN, you have had to sing with a cartoon bird and it is very unlikely that this will have been a dignified experience for you.

You can see why we love him, can't you? Read the rest of his spiel here.

Any excuse to reference Hall & Oates in a post title...

ShowBUZZ excitedly informs us that all may not be well between the scrawny gazillionaire Olsen twins, with the two lasses falling out over Mary-Kate's spunky but bossy lover Max Snow.

A source told Celebrity Babylon: "Ashley never liked him from the get go ... It worries Ashley that Mary-Kate is so passive around him, and lets him do the decision making ... Mary-Kate forgot to pick up something he wanted at the store. Max was screaming some awful and insulting things. Mary-Kate was teary-eyed and upset, but told Ashley 'He does that a lot - it blows over.' "

On a different note, have Mary-Kate and Ashley done anything career wise lately which would vindicate the continued reportage of their movements and feelings in the tabloid media? Tottering about town dressed as a bag-woman and desperately clutching at a Grande Starbucks latte which threatens to topple their fragile selves over with its intimidating size does not count...

The Age published an article this morning which asks whether online readers should trust the blogs they frequent.

Populated by anyone with a viewpoint and an internet connection, it's a daily ping-pong match of unfiltered opinion. But without the traditional checks and balances of mainstream media, can we really trust what's being said?

The answer, says new-media commentator Mark Pesce, is yes - for the most part at least.

"There's a great deal of oversight within the blogosphere itself," explains Pesce, the founder of Sydney media and technology consultancy FutureSt.

"If a blogger says something that's completely outrageous, then another blogger will take them to task on it. If someone has a reputation for being inaccurate, that will become diffusely known within the (blogging) community."

We'll give you the hot tip - take everything you read with a grain of salt. Most bloggers are liars. We can safely assure you that we definitely are.

(sound of gun being loaded)

Erm.

Especially if you feel we've ever insinuated any famous Scientologists are gay. Because they are not. They crave poontang with a frightening, feverish enthusiasm.

We gave you the heads up about the marvellous Drones tour diary, penned by the band's guitarist Dan Luscombe Esq, right when it started. Well, the end is nigh with just one post to go before the tour - and thus Oh Calamity: A Drones Tour Diary - is over for good.

Haven't bothered checking it out? Here's an excerpt from when the band were in Germany.

Two more shows followed in Italy, which were once again fatality free, and then a festival here in Mainz, Germany. A festival which at first seemed downright scary in a fun for the whole family kind of way, turned out to be a real humdinger. Hundreds of writhing Germans, and our first encounter with en masse bodysurfing. After the show two little guys about the age of ten came backstage, and made us write all over their arms with a permanent marker, and declaring in a very thick German accent that Gareth is like “Dracula with a guitar”. Which he is, of course.

I have to stop writing this claptrap now. We went to a fucking disastrous sushi train earlier, and frankly, I'm a little frightened for my life. I have never seen sushi that colour before, and canned peach and pineapple on a plate is surely a sign of a restaurant a little unsteady on it's feet. Let's face it, the last time the two countries teamed up it wasn't a roaring success.

Gracious.

Luscy has promised that the upcoming last ever post on Oh Calamity "is going to get me sued - I can't wait."

Neither can we, sir. Neither can we.

This morning we awoke, weak and weary from a vicious two-day battle with the dreaded lurgy (some virulent strain of cat AIDS, we think), and returned to our regular pre-dancing with death morning schedule of checking the newspapers online.

We know we've been pretty much out of it for two days - an eternity in pop cultural time - but this report stating that Rove McManus is a top candidate to replace Conan O'Brien in the States doesn't really seem feasible to anyone else, does it? Surely this is the work of a fiction-happy publicist over at Roving Enterprise, and not actually a possibility? We are rubbing our eyes with disbelief!

Rove McManus has put his hat in the ring to become a US talk-show host by signing with American talent agency UTA.

The signing by the triple Gold Logie winner and Network Ten host comes less than two months after he made his US talk-show debut as a guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Now he is likely to be a contender to replace talk-show host Conan O'Brien in two years.

Recycling Conan schtick such as the "photo of famous person with moving mouth and quips provided by amusing person" (we can't recall the official name of the segment so this'll have to do) is one thing, but stepping into Conan's awfully hilarious and gigantic boots? Rove is, admittedly, much funnier now than he has been in years - but enough to replace CONAN MOTHERFUCKING O'BRIEN?

Rove, you have two years to get your shit together.

Over at TMZ, the popular online inmate-support group with which an incarcerated, existentially despairing Paris Hilton established such a strong emotional bond that she was moved to create great art celebrating their connection, teaser clips of tonight's Larry King Live appearance are being posted so furiously they we may not have to watch the actual broadcast when it airs in about 90 minutes. [Ed.note - HAHAHA. Just for that, you will watch it on a loop until daybreak while hungry crows peck at your breadcrumb-encrusted genitals.] Above, enjoy our exclusive screen-capture of the exact moment when Hilton's eyes, finally free of the tinted contact lenses that so long obscured their natural brilliance with a lifeless azure, sparkle with pride as she explains how her trip to the MTV Movie Awards was merely a clever subterfuge designed to conceal her trip to jail from the media. After the jump, enjoy a bonus image just e-mailed to us by God Himself, who was so excited about the interview that He couldn't help put sneak a peak at the wizened instrument of His will as he entered the CNN studios earlier this afternoon.

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Is the following a comprehensive rundown of all the latest Paris Hilton-related news produced since we passed out Tuesday night? No, it is not. But it should provide you, the person who desperately wants to avoid making a personal connection with a co-worker as you wait for your turn at the office coffee pot this morning, with enough vapid small-talk material to keep the too-friendly from knowing your heart. · Although the V-D Day the NY Post celebrates on today's cover officially began lifting the hearts of bimbos everywhere at midnight yesterday, the bacchanalia will still be raging on nearly 48 hours later, when Hilton joins skeletal softballer for her first post-incarceration TV appearance later tonight, as we're so subtly reminded by the understated, full-page ad in today's Variety. [NY Post, Digital Variety]

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In just a few short hours, Michael Bay's Giant Fucking Robots will lay waste to Westwood Village for the L.A. Film Festival's orgiastic premiere of Transformers, but right here, right now in your browser window, Black 20's Cheap Fucking Robots are coming. Be afraid.

• Gobots: The Movie [Black20.com]

In the end, hosting The Price is Right would remain a wish unfulfilled for Rosie O'Donnell, who recently announced on her blog that after having met with producers, the stress of uprooting her family and relocating to the West Coast would be too much for the former co-host of The View. (Or as one relieved executive put it once she was safely out of the building, "Oh well - I guess we'll have to find some other clinically depressed, rageoholic military-hater to man the Big Wheel!") O'Donnell, meanwhile, posted a photo of daughter Vivienne Rose yesterday, uniformed like a baby Fallujah insurgent preparing to rise up with her like-minded brothers and sisters against the corrupt Hasselbeckian regime. Rosie e-mailed The ShowBuzz to explain how the controversial image was taken during an afternoon of innocent, backyard dress-up:

The kids pick a new costume from buycostumes.com every few weeks. "They don't watch TV - this is how they play/the boys had fatigues and were playing war/the girls wanted some/they run around the house with water guns/shooting each other," she said.

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· Court TV explores the explosive intersection of molesty elves, Dolly Parton, and dinner theatre. · A bullet to the head: the miracle cure for so many of life's little problems. · Things have gotten so bad for ditzy famous people that they can hardly purchase a really cute Chinese handbag emblazoned with Commie slogans without human rights watchdog groups shitting all over them. Will the persecution never end? · And you know what? If Clooney was walking around with one of those Commie-purses, we bet the press would just give him a free pass, what with all the Darfur stuff and whatnot.

· On the Lot CancellationWatch: Fox's unkillable Nielsen invalid draws just 2.3 million viewers, despite a return to an earlier format in which its contestants were challenged to direct comedy shorts featuring bank-commercial-quality humour levels and production values while racing against a ticking clock. (Adrianna Costa CleavageWatch: Covered up, again.) [Ed.note - Don't worry, despite the creepiness of that image from TheLot.com contestant Jess Brillhart is not dead, she was just dismissed from the competition at the top of the show, in blatant disregard for reality TV convention. ] [THR] · Stalag 17: It's Spike Lee meets Broadway meets WWII prison camps! [Variety] · The NBA will remain on ESPN, ABC and TNT through 2016. Pop quiz: Who won the recent, scarcely watched NBA Finals? [THR] · Tom Cruise and longtime enforcer Paula Wagner will drop by the Cinema Expo in Holland to promote Lions for Lambs, as well as Valkyrie, the movie whose shoot the German government isn't too excited to be hosting. [Variety] · Another sign the Hollywood apocalypse is nigh: FX pays about $US16 million for the cable TV rights to Wild Hogs. [Variety]

In the discussion of the potential work stoppage waiting to cripple Hollywood upon the rapidly approaching expiration of several union contracts, it's all too easy to become consumed with talk of multiplatform residuals, de facto strikes, and script stockpiling,... Read More »

It would seem on the surface that there are few parallels to be drawn between Sir Winston Churchill and Paula Abdul, but there nevertheless exists striking similarities between the two popular figures: Both have suffered at one point or... Read More »

In its current issue, The Advocate pointedly asks why I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry was scheduled to premiere opposite Outfest's opening night - the one night that was sure to siphon off at least some of the... Read More »

By now, we've all gotten to know new NBC co-chair/rock-star Ben Silverman well enough that we feel sufficiently informed about his lofty goals, party "problems", recreational passions, and early corporate triumphs, but now that his reign at the network... Read More »

According to an item in today's Page Six, there is at least one place in LA where celebrities and industry power players can enjoy a refreshing cocktail without being surveilled by media spies, an old-school establishment that deals harshly... Read More »