Fellow travellers: set your faces to stunned. For a few short hours today, it seemed that Britney Spears might be in a sitcom. You know, a fictional one, as opposed to the real-life telenovela-on-meth we are currently watching round the clock.
According to Variety, US network NBC were keen to sign up Britney to appear opposite former Friends star Matthew Perry in a sitcom called Occasional Wife. The premise? A rich businessman meets a "wacky artist" and persuades her to pretend to be his wife, in the timeworn interests of Hilarity Ensuing.
"There's something about her that just connects with the audience," an NBC "honcho" apparently told the publication. "They want her to succeed now in spite of her adversity."
But the Britney story remains fast-moving. Though the honcho's suggestion is not denied, NBC now state that this plan was only a goer until earlier this week, when Britney's former bodyguard broke a silence that - let's face it - wasn't making him any money. And so the TV gold that would have been Occasional Wife was scuppered by this Tony Barretto's claims about her alleged drug use, and idiosyncratic approach to parenting Little Sean Preston and Little Jayden James.
Where now for Britney? Where now for Occasional Wife? Where now for the rapidly-oxidising career of Matthew Perry? Dammit, how much other stuff must be snatched from humanity before vengeful showbiz deities consider their pound of flesh well and truly taken?
