I don't eat squirrels: Britney shoots down 2009 rumors

Britney Spears took aim at some of the tabloid stories that have dogged her through 2009, publishing a list of the top 75 articles deemed to be the most ridiculous. A statement on Spears’s official website said more than 13,000 stories had been written about the singer this year — and many were either “patently absurd or simply offensive.”

“We ranked the ones we believe were the most ridiculous,” the statement said, trumpeting the website’s list of the “top 75 Bulls#!t Britney Spears stories” of 2009.

Among the stories to make the list include a report from a London tabloid citing a new Spears biography which stated that the singer’s family used to eat squirrel meat during her “trailer park childhood.”

According to the Daily Star, the revelations had sent “sales of squirrel meat soaring” as fans “snapped up squirrel, rabbit and possum meat from butchers and restaurants.”

Another item on the list — weighing in at 57th place — was Spears’s addiction to “flower therapy,” a system which uses plant essences to “balance physical and emotional disturbances.”

Also on the list was a report from London’s Evening Standard claiming that Spears had requested a stripper’s pole to be installed at her suite in The Dorchester Hotel to help the singer stay in shape.

“Britney loves pole dancing, it is her new favorite workout,” an unidentified source told the newspaper. “She wants to be able to do it in the privacy of her own hotel room.”

At number one was a January story from Britain’s Daily Mirror revealing that Spears was dating Indian choreographer Sandip Soparrkar and that she had hosted a private New Year’s Eve party to introduce him to her friends and parents.

Several of the stories near the top of the list related to Spears’s recent troubled tour of Australia, including a November 7 story from the Herald Sun newspaper which revealed fans had walked out of a concert in Perth because of her lip-synching.

Despite quotes from several named fans unhappy at Spears’s performance, promoters for the concert insisted that reports of a walkout were inaccurate. (AP)