So Joaquin Phoenix has had a right-old tear-up with a heckler. But you have to wonder whether Phoenix is actually on the greatest wind-up in history – one deliberately designed to satirise Hollywood and make us reconsider our attitudes towards eccentric behaviour, beards, hip-hop, beards and beards – or whether he's actually having a genuine meltdown that isn't very funny. After all, he has grown a beard so ridiculous that even Ed Reardon would find it unclean, and his behaviour has become so odd that the only thing left for him to do is announce that Marlon Harewood is the second coming.
Mick McCarthy isn't quite of that opinion, and unlike Phoenix he doesn't have a sniffable beard, but he does want to pay Aston Villa £2m for Harewood. That's the same Harewood who, and you'll like this, has started one league game for Villa since joining them for £4m in the summer of 2007. It's also the same Harewood who, and you'll like this, too, was apparently an injury away from being in England's last World Cup squad. If Neil Ashton says so, it must be true.
In other news, Huus Giddink will stay at Chelsea next season. We know this, because The Mirror knows this, because Hiddink was seen talking to Scott Sinclair. And that means he'll stay? Eh? How do we know they weren't just discussing the ending of The Shield?
Manchester United's 84-man squad will share total bonuses of £9m if they win the quintuple, with a big chunk determined in accordance with each player's contribution to the season. John O'Shea stands to make at least 42p.
Zinedine Zidane says that Steven Gerrard is the best midfielder in the world, a eulogy only ever so slightly tarnished by Zidane then comparing Gerrard's role to that of Patrick Vieira and Claude Makelele, a role he last played in about 2002.
That is basically the long and the short of a preposterously thin day's rumours, so we're off to watch our beard grow.
