Culturite

MTV Networks Europe has been fined a total of £255,000 ($484,500) by U.K. media regulator Ofcom for “widespread and persistent” breaches of its broadcasting code by four of its channels.

The Viacom-owned operator will have to pay the following penalties: TMF £80,000 ($152,000), MTV France £35,000 ($66,500), MTV UK £80,000 ($152,000) and MTV Hits £60,000 ($114,000).

The “highly offensive language and material” was broadcast before the 9pm family-viewing watershed.

Auds complained about a number of shows. They included: repeated use of the words “motherfucker”, “fuck you” and “fuck” in a music video by Aphex Twin for the song “Windowlicker” on TMF, and racist and homophobic text messages aired by MTV France in “Belge Chat.”

Additionally TMF screened a trailer for the reality skein “Totally Jodie Marsh” on seven occasions between 9.48am and 3.15pm on July 24 last year containing the sentence: “I just don’t want you settling down with some fucking wanker from a modeling agency.”

Other breaches identified by Ofcom included a 4.30pm broadcast of MTV UK show “Totally Boyband” in 2006 featuring “extensive offensive language.”

Now you, too, can smell like a faux punk rocker. If you’re in to that sort of thing.

Avril Lavigne has signed on with Procter & Gamble Prestige Products to launch her own fragrance line, with the first top-noted fruit of her labor due out in fall 2009.

The 23-year-old singer said she was happy “to be working with Procter & Gamble on releasing my first fragrance. Creating this fragrance is a fun process and I am looking forward to sharing it with everyone.”

An Irish millionaire has humble plans for Charles Dickens’s writing desk and chair, which he bought at a charity auction on Wednesday.

Tom Higgins, CEO of a company that gives live tarot card and psychic readings online and via cellphones, said he simply plans to write letters at the desk.

“I don’t think I’ll write anything more in depth than that or try to lift the spirit of Charles Dickens from the desk. But you never know — there might be some spirit left in it for me,” Higgins, a self-described Dickens fan, said after his successful bid of the equivalent of nearly $860,000 Cdn at the Christie’s auction on Wednesday.

The mahogany desk and walnut chair, which Dickens used while writing Great Expectations at his country home in southern England, were among the lots sold to raise money for London’s Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.

Drank is a new “anti-energy drink,” designed to, er, “slow your roll.” The grape-flavored drink is fortified with melatonin, valerian root, and rose hips. Based on the color and the name of the beverage, I’d venture to say that they’re playing off the popular underground libation Purple Drank. This Village Voice quotes the following from a press release:

From design to production, every aspect of this calming drink was inspired by today’s popular hip hop artists who embrace the much sought-after hip hop lifestyle that encourages people to capture a stress-free state of mind.

A Winnipeg rap artist is concerned he may have been the target of racial profiling after police pulled him over, pulled their weapons and accused him of driving a stolen car.

Robert Wilson, a youth worker also known as Grammy-nominated rapper Fresh I.E., said he was driving in downtown Winnipeg with a youth he mentors Wednesday afternoon when several unmarked police cars boxed him in on Donald Street.

“I was actually coming from Starbucks … and the cops just pulled up to my car — almost hit my car — and pulled out their guns on me and told me my car was stolen,” he told CBC News.

“They handcuffed the youth that I mentor, they pulled him out of the car and handcuffed him and threw him on the ground.

“It just threw me for a loop. I just couldn’t believe it was happening.”

Wilson said officers didn’t believe he was who he said he was, and told him his car had been reported stolen.

“I said, ‘It’s my car. It can’t be reported stolen,’” he recalled.

“I said, ‘Well, I’m Robert Wilson. I’m a youth worker in the city’ and stuff. And they told me to shut up and shut the door, and then they came back and said, ‘Oh, we made a mistake.’”

Wilson believes he was pulled over because he was a black man driving a Chrysler 300.

“It’s a case of stereotyping. Not every black or native man or woman that’s out there driving a nice car, you know, is stealing cars,” he said.