The List

We're not sure when, or who we were with, but somebody once asked H&G's opinion of a certain celebrity during an otherwise convivial conversation. We don't even remember which celebrity it was (it's odds-on, however, that that person is mentioned below) and it doesn't matter; the reaction was the key issue, a catharsis if you will, and that reaction was a teeth-gritted, guttural growl: "Just give me ten minutes in a stuck lift with him...".

Friends, it tapped a latent homicidal belligerence which lurks untapped within us all. There are certain people out there - we'll concentrate on the famous here, as H&G don't know your immediate social circle - who need brutal, merciless execution. And friends, don't get all high-and-mighty about this, look within yourselves, and you will find a List lurks within you too. Please note: we were forced early on to disregard the stuck lift for certain murders as they required equipment which one does not find to hand in a lift.

A few tips on using the List and forming your own List:

1. Deciding on the Top Ten to feature within your List is nigh-on impossible. It's H&G ambition to set up a public voting system, either on this site or on another, where we can elevate and relegate those putrid specimens whom we all would extinguish, given even a quarter of a chance. If you know how we do this, please please please tell H&G in the comments section.

2. Deciding on the order of your Top Ten is similarly difficult. Yes, we really, really need a voting system.

3. The manner of death should suggest itself naturally, if you truly feel psychopathic hatred for the celebrity in question. These ideas will spring fully-formed to the mind and in graphic detail. You will feel warm inside and smiley on the outside at the visual imagery.

4. Do not be afraid of revealing your List: almost all social occasions are appropiate, and often the more awkward the situation, the better ice-breaker it is. As you will note, as you read H&G's List, everyone has their own List and are just waiting for the opportunity to share it. Alcohol does help. For example, The List is not recommended for first dates, should be used with caution on second dates, but is highly recommended for third dates, where the assocation between sex and death becomes extemely powerful.

Without any further ado, and not in any order:

Justin Lee Collins
Utterly talentless - the least funny comedian ever encountered who thinks his reminiscences on Space Hoppers and Spangles are insightful - and seems to think his West Country Wurzel accent and matching facial hair give him a free pass to be both ubiquitous and spirit-crushingly banal. A personification of the "I'm-wacky-me" bloke at a party who thinks he' s the most entertaining thing that ever happened, but is as pleasant to be around as a staple in the eyeball.

Method of Death: he will be crushed beneath an Industrial Press in the manner of the first Terminator. Except the press will move at near glacial speed, say two millimetres per day, so that it crushes that bumpkin whine out of his body as it turns his bones slowly to puree.

James Nesbitt
It's that bloody cheeky-chappie, twinkly-eyed, ho-ho-shillaylee-I'm Irish schtick that he does. No: you are not loveable, James; you are not sweet and vulnerable and charming; you are a one-trick pony whose trick was barely tolerable the first time (Cold Feet) and grown exponentially more tedious and irritating since. You, James, are to versatile character acting what George W. Bush is to particle physics.

Method of Death: Victorian iron railway spike to his giant forehead. Let's freeze that oh-I've-kissed-the-Blarney-stone look on his face for all eternity.

Vernon Kaye
I'll let one of H&G's heroes, Charlie Brooker, sum this one up:
"Vernon Kay is a one-man walking blight-on-our-culture, a dog-haired toby jug, a self-satisfied banality engine, a git, a twit, a twat and an oaf. He shouldn't be on television - he should be sitting on a country stile wearing a peasant's smock and chewing on a hayseed, some time during the Dark Ages and preferably at the height of the Black Death".
Charlie, it was your zenith.

Method of Death: Chased with a chainsaw and sliced up in stages.

Helen Hunt
You know how they say that you get the face you deserve when you reach forty? Her pinched, grim visage is living proof, friends. That uptight, nasal mewl of a voice, the posture that defaults to confrontational, hands-on-hips berating, the scowling, growling, frowning forehead. Everything about it - oh she is an it, friends - is pinched. Pinched like your rapidly winking rectum when you're in the car trying to hold in an attack of food poisoning.

Method of Death: One you can actually do in the lift! Should you get the chance, friends: a bare-hands beating. Nothing more satisfying than the crunch and squelch of a well clenched fist into yielding flesh and bone.

Russell Brand
Regular friends of the blog will know this pathetic specimen has previously featured. Such an elevated self-perception, so divorced from the cold, grey reality of the misery it causes to general humanity. He makes Niyazov - the recently deceased Turkmenistani despot - look like Jesus in one of his most modest and altruistic moods.

Method of Death: Well, it's a bit obvious, but if it feels good, do it: Brand gets his throat cut with his tongue pulled through the hole in the manner of "Columbian necktie". It mimics those scarfs he ties round his neck, you see.

Jeremy Clarkson
No need for a heartfelt, impassioned diatribe here. The man is just a 24 carat wanker. If you don't wholeheartedly agree, then you are too. This is not up for discussion.

Method of Death: Repeatedly buggered by numerous gay rugby teams. In front of his little Top Gear pals. Then we give him a few days in solitary confinement to think about it. Then we tell him his ordeal is over, the healing can begin and he may return to his family. Once outside on the street, he is run over by a speeding Citroen 2CV.

That's all for now, friends, but stay tuned because this list is dynamic and we'd like your suggestions...

A quick update on the My Furry Alarm Clock count on google:

as of noon GMT 23rd January the count is up to 12,800. Catch the fever and spread the word!

Advertising is a subject H&G known a little bit about. So it is with great pleasure we salute some of the finest copy known to man in the latest IAMS cat food TV ad. Yes, folks, it really does end with the line: "I can't get up in the morning without my furry alarm clock." This is in reference to a cat, ladies and gentlemen.

Already the ad has a cult - that is not a misprint - following on the interweb, with a search for the phrase yielding 6,310 hits on google at 15.14pm GMT today.

Honourable mention goes to Kandoo training nappy/pants whose "You are the Lord of the Loo" gets 400 odd hits. But really, Mr. and Mrs. client, are you seriously signing this stuff off? Can't you picture your creative agency chuckling behind your back?