The reviews are rolling out after Britney Spears' first show of her Circus tour in New Orleans, and they're all pretty positive.

There are a few complaints that Britney lip-synched the whole show, which I find ridiculous! The complaining I mean, not the lip-synching.

Britney's always lip-synched, and she's not the only artist to do it. Let's face it, you would go and see her for a kick-ass show, not a display of her musical prowess. And she wouldn't be able to master those amazingly complicated dance routines if she had to worry her pretty head with a little inconvenience like actually singing.

It's like ordering fast food for dinner and complaining that it's not cordon bleu cuisine. Just go with it I say.

The show, which ran for an hour and forty minutes, saw Britney perform in front of around 15,000 fans and appear throughout clad as a sexy cop, a bellydancer, a circus ringmaster, a soldier, and in a feather boa and a jewelled metallic corset.

Perez Hilton, who appears in an opening video montage in the show, called her ‘fresh and dazzling,' and that the tour's biggest asset ‘is definitely Spears herself.'

"There is something about Britney that makes her truly special," he wrote after witnessing the New Orleans show. "She has that indescribable "it" factor. People are always rooting for her, even when she was at her lowest lows. We genuinely want to see her succeed! We've seen her grow up in front of our eyes, and we love her - shortcomings and all. She may not be perfect, but that's okay. She's our Britney."

But naturally everyone wasn't so kind. Particularly Emily Sheridan at the UK's notoriously bitchy Daily Mail, who referred to the singer as ‘Bulky Spears' and pondered the question ‘is she a bigger star than ever?'

Shut up Emily Sheridan. Check out the pictures from the show yourself and tell me if that girl looks fat. She looks amazing. That body is banging. We were just discussing in the office this morning which of Britney's body parts we'd trade for if we could only choose one, her legs or her abs. She looks like how other girls want to look. And if someone who works out four hours a day looks ‘bulky,' what does that make the rest of us?

Celebs putting pen to paper...or something

The Hills star Lauren Conrad has announced on her MySpace page the details of her upcoming debut novel, LA Candy.

The 23-year-old reality (and I use that term loosely!) star has a three book deal to pen young adult fiction, and this, the first of them, is out in the US in June.

Can't wait to find out what it's about? Read on!

Writes Lauren: "They will tell a behind the scenes story of a young girl who moves to L.A. and unexpectedly becomes the star of a reality television show. The books will be loosely inspired by my own experience and are definitely influenced by my own life."
Which may be so, but will she have actually written two words of it?

I guess it doesn't matter in the world of celebrity authordom. Can you write? Irrelevant! Let's slap your mug on a ghost written novel and watch the money roll in!

Sure, there may be a tinge of the green eyed monster there. What writer wouldn't like to be schmoozed by a publishing company for their work and then leave the hard yakka to someone else, while they go off to get their nails done?

And LC definitely isn't the first to jump on the celebrity book train. By book, I don't mean autobiographies, memoirs or non-fiction stuff like Victoria Beckham telling you what to wear. I mean fiction.

I never paid for Nicole Richie's 2005 novel, The Truth About Diamonds, but I did read it. It must have been an awful large stretch for her, what with the whole story being about a 20-something Hollywood It-girl who was adopted by a famous musician and his wife.

It took about half an hour to read and had all the substance of candy floss, but wasn't unpleasant on a sun lounger with a cold G&T in hand.

And it can't have been worse than Jordan's.

At the ripe old age of 30, the British model has released three autobiographies and two novels, Angel and Crystal - all ghostwritten.

Crystal sold almost 200,000 copies in Britain in three months, and contained such literary gems as "the shorts were so far up her bum cheeks it must have felt like she was flossing her arse every time she sat down."

See! Who needs Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Khaled Hosseini?

Even Naomi Campbell jumped on the gravy train at one stage, although her career as an author seemed to go the same way as her careers as a pop star and a perfume designer. Her 90s novel, Star, was about ‘a supermodel being blackmailed over dark secrets in her past.'

Like beating up her maids with cellphones, I wonder? It could have foretold the future!
Naomi airily explained away the revelation that the book was written by an author, declaring "I just did not have time to sit down and write a book."

Then don't, you gobshite.

By all accounts, one of the rare gems in the celebrity book market is Geri Halliwell's Ugenia Lavender series. The tales, which centre around a rambunctious nine-year-old and her adventures, have gone down a storm in Britain. The first is even in the process of being turned into a film by Disney.

But I guess you get what you pay for. People who love books will always buy good books. People who want to read the hyperextended dicso version of a magazine article will buy these books. And some people will buy both.

The odd couple

It's been reported today that the Madonna wants to set up a meeting with actress Sienna Miller for a chin-wag to discuss why women don't like them.

Which isn't right. Women like Madonna. Women admire Madonna. Sure, she may look like she could eat you for breakfast or squeeze the life out of you, boa-constrictor style, with those huge arms. But she's discliplined, focused and dedicated, if a bit me, me, me. Madonna actually has girlfriends - as Stella McCartney and Gwyneth paltrow and Demi Moore and Rosie O'Donnell can attest to.

You hardly ever see Sienna photographed with girlfriends. Does she have any?

And she's right. Women don't like her. The poor dear threw herself a little pity party recently in a magazine interview when she discussed how ‘shocked' she was at the public reaction to her dalliance with married actor and father of four Balthazar Getty.

"I've been at war, without a doubt," she moaned. "I have really experienced the judgment of women in the past year. It's women who are holding us back.

"It's women who are judging. I find it sad. We say we want to be on an equal path, but men don't sit around bitching at each other. It's very competitive. There's no sisterhood."

Funny, Sienna, that you make out that you so badly long for a sisterhood of women. Not really the thought foremost in your mind when you started doing the business with Rosetta Getty's husband and rubbing her nose in it, was it?

Women don't hate you because there's no sisterhood, Sienna. They hate you because you're an unapologetic home wrecker. Why would any of us like someone we couldn't trust? Sienna's beautiful and she's talented, but she's got one foot planted firmly in the land of the slappers.

What did she expect people to do when she ran off with someone's husband so blatantly, applaud?

In other Madonna news, the singer has been sent 100 DVD copies of the movie It and 50 copies of the Stephen King novel of the same name, following the news that ex Guy Ritchie used to refer to her as ‘It'.

"He told people, ‘We can't make It angry.' Or Guy would say, ‘Oh, ‘It' is in a bad mood today."

Hee.

The title character of the Stephen King ‘80s classic (which still scares me, btw) was a shape-shifting evil entity which lurked in the sewers and drains of a fictional Maine town - and terrorised children.

Careful now, baby Jesus! You could be next.

Until April, Jolie-Pitts!

It may be a week late, but I've made a momentous decision today. I'm giving up Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt for Lent.

Not that it should be hard, theoretically. It's not like they're mini-Crème Eggs, my total and absolute favourite which I can't stop scoffing. Don't even attempt to part me from my teeny-weeny Crème Eggs. Unpleasantness will ensue. Why do they taste so much better in tiny form?

But I digress.

Brad and Angie are big, huge stars, but they're definitely not my favourite celebs. I don't hate them either. I'm neither here nor there. I'm ‘Sweden about it', as Jessica Alba once said.

Thing is when you're writing about what's in the magazines and what's in the gossip headlines it's hard to avoid the two of them with their gaggle of kids and their perfect, smug grins.

So in a move partly religious observance, partly gossip science, I hereby promise not to mention the Jolie-Pitts in this blog until Lent is over. No adoption plans, no breaking up, no getting married, no dredging up the Jennifer Aniston love triangle. I even swear not to mention Jen if it's in relation to these two.

Since I'm a week late I even promise not to mention them until a week after Easter which is...April 20th.

Let's see how it pans out. I shan't even refer to them as They Who Shall Not Be Named, Voldemort-style.

It'll be complete cold turkey!

Let's see if I can fill this blog completely with the tawdry tales and scandalous shenanigans of some other people instead.