If there is a more odious, vacuous, smug, conceited, irritating waste of space than Peaches Geldof, then we have yet to encounter it.

Appearing on Fearne Cotton's show the other day -- now there's a remarkable meeting of minds -- she decried her brain-dead party-girl image, saying: "You know what I'm intrigued by? Like, space and wormholes and Stephen Hawking's theories and Richard Dawkins's theories. That's what I care about."

She then extolled the virtues of Scientology and said she has been one for years, which you would have to admit, is rather at odds with what Richard Dawkins would think.

But she really excelled herself when talking about her father.

Appearing outraged at the notion that being Bob Geldof's daughter has had anything to do with her celebrity, she whined: "My Dad is literally the biggest tight arse. He's a miser, an Irish potato famine miser."

Well, that's a first -- someone who can actually make you feel sorry for Bob Geldof.

Although it should be pointed out that when it comes to famines and Geldof in the same sentence, that's probably the first time the Irish version was used.

IS IT BECAUSE HE IS BLACK?

One of the more pleasant news stories of last week came with the incarceration of uber-scumbag Marlon King, the moderately talented footballer who perfectly epitomises the reasons why football and footballers are held in such low regard by so many people.

King, you may have read, went out to celebrate the news that his wife was expecting a baby and did so in the style every proud expectant father would -- he sexually assaulted a young woman in a night club before breaking her nose with a punch so hard that two other women were also felled by its force.

After the verdict was announced, it emerged that he already had 12 other convictions, including two for assaulting women.

So, the verdict was just, right? Wrong.

Because when the sentence was read out in court, pandemonium erupted when his family went mental and started screaming "institutional racism" and, bizarrely, 'Heil Hitler' at the judge.

Yeah, King was sent down for a year and a half because of his skin colour; nothing to do with the fact that he has a long record of violence and sexual assault against women.

Still -- what are the odds he will be back with a club as soon as he is released, bringing further shame to the game?

BROWNE NOSE DAY

Anyone who watched the circle jerk between Vincent Browne and Arthur Scargill last week will have been stuck on the horns of a dilemma -- do you laugh or do you puke?

Scargill, lest we forget, was more responsible for the devastation wreaked on northern England than Thatcher ever was and remains an unrepentant, unreconstructed Stalinist moron whose only value on this earth is to remind us of just how loony the Left could really be.

During the Arthur and Vinnie laugh-in, it was widely agreed that capitalism was a mean and nasty thing and we would all be better off living in a proletarian workers' paradise.

And you know what? They were right.

After all, if we all lived in enforced egalitarianism, then presumably we would also all be able to afford to live next door to Vinnie in his beautifully appointed Dalkey home and earn his huge salary.

Or does socialism only apply to the rest of us?

What fresh Mel is this?

Honestly, Mel Gibson really is the git who just keeps on giving.

Hollywood's favourite alcoholic, misogynistic, anti-Semitic Holocaust-denier is back in the news following his refusal to return to Scotland to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Braveheart because, he says: "It's too cold, I'd never be able to stay sober and I don't want to wear a kilt."

The comments, inevitably, have irritated thin-skinned Jocks everywhere who think that, as the man behind Braveheart, he owes them at least the courtesy of turning up to mark the celebrations.

But on Planet Mel he doesn't owe the Scots anything, because he claims the film: "started the ball rolling" for a devolved Scottish parliament. Which, you have to admit, is an impressive piece of hubris.

And, it would appear, his interest in cinematic violence didn't start with that disgusting piece of gratuitously violent, masturbatory crap, The Passion Of The Christ.

He has now admitted that the original cut of Braveheart was even more gory than the version that was eventually released.

Gibson says: "My assistant made a gag reel of the most violent bits of the film and set it to Julie Andrews singing 'My Favourite Things' from The Sound Of Music."

Dear Lord -- this really is a case of life imitating art.

After all, the infamous South Park episode The Passion Of The Jew saw Gibson running around and torturing himself.

Now it appears that in real life he likes to sit down and watch scenes of himself being brutalised.

In fairness, anyone who had to sit through The Passion would quite happily pay good money to see a tape of Gibson being tortured for several hours.

BOOK WORM ESSENTIAL SOUNDS

Martin Amis is in the news at the moment for slagging off the cult of Jordan and the fact that there are people out there so monumentally thick that they would actually buy one of her books. This has, inevitably, lead to a backlash from the cabbages who like Jordan, with most of them saying they have never heard of Amis.

Well, if they took their heads out of Heat magazine they could do worse than introduce themselves to the works of one of the finest authors in the English language.

The likes of Money, Success and London Fields, as well as an astonishingly good array of short stories, have ensured that his legacy will live on even longer than that of his father, Kingsley.

Sample quote: "He awoke at six, as usual. He had no need for an alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed."

ESSENTIAL SOUNDS

Before he went to Galway and morphed into a magic mushroom-munching hippy, Mike Scott and The Waterboys were actually a rather interesting band.

Listen to A Pagan Place (1984) and This Is The Sea (1985) to hear what they were like before bloody Galway ruined them.

Irish Independent