Dr. Phil Now Second-Guessing Sharing His Britney Files With ‘ET’

To watch an actual doctor actually do something towards curing non-actual celebrities with actual drug problems, we refer you to the goings on over at VH1’s Celebrity Rehab, with board-accredited, medical-degree-holding Dr. Drew and his ragtag gang of Z-list addicts. (And a constantly-moaning-in- withdrawal-system-agony Jeff Conaway. Seriously–shit’s fucked up. We don’t think the I Love New York 2 people really realized what they were getting into.) For all your other TV quack needs, we refer you instead to Mr. Phil, who apparently now regrets breaching Fake-Doctor/Someone-Else’s-Patient confidentiality laws by blabbing all about Britney Spears to those guys over at Entertainment Tonight:

“Was it helpful to the situation? Regrettably, no. It was not, and I have to acknowledge that and I do,” the talk show host told his audience Thursday during taping of a “Dr. Phil” episode that will run Monday.

“I definitely think if I had it to do over again, I probably wouldn’t make any statement at all. Period.”

With that, the studio ceiling split into two, and a dazzling column of light poured through the rupture, tapering itself, as if through magnifying lens trained onto a hapless insect by a sadistic youngster, onto the hosts’s highly reflective scalp. Squinting as they slowly began to regain their vision from the sudden white-out, the audience’s stunned silence soon gave way to gasps and scattered shrieks as they began to realize that all that remained of the syndicated therapist was now a three-ounce pile of still-smoking ash.

• Dr. Phil Says He Regrets Statement on Britney [abcnews.go.com]