Can I Have One That's House Trained? Asks Madonna

MADONNA yesterday told a Malawian court she was keen to adopt another small African as long as it was house trained and had received all its jabs.

The pop star is looking to add to her collection of Malawians, which she described as strong characters, with deep rooted hunting instincts who took well to training but were in need of strong discipline from the start.

Madonna currently has one Malawian, a three-year old male called David and it is thought she may be looking for another as either a companion or to form a breeding pair.

A spokeswoman for the singer said: "Malawians are generally friendly and can make do with little exercise as long as they have a garden to tear around, ideal really for a hard working single mum.

"But they do love to be with their own kind, so it is advisable not to leave one alone too much, as a bored Malawian is a destructive one."

She added: "In general they are very hardy little things, and they can jump much higher than you would think to look at them.

"But this, coupled with their enjoyment of digging, necessitates a tall secure fence or wall around any outdoor play area."

The spokeswoman said Madonna found Malawians unbearably cute but she was keen to secure one with good bladder control as she had recently purchased a new hall carpet for her main home in London.

Africans have proved a popular breed among celebrities in recent years with actress Angelina Jolie adding one to her collection, which also includes a Cambodian, a Vietnamese, an English springer spaniel and one of those weird-looking bald cat things.

My Big Gap Year: Slum Girls Have All The Luck

At the backpackers’, I met two Hindi girls called Bindi and Sunita. They were lovely but I did point out that they didn't look particularly Hindu. Sure enough I soon discovered their real names were Fi and Tori and they were taking a gap year from their German honours course at Cambridge. Despite being a posh English girl Bindi had the Sanskrit word for 'India' tattooed onto her ankle – that's how serious she was about being all Hindu. Pretty impressive and certainly much more serious about it than David Beckham.

They also said 'Slumdog' was the best film they'd ever seen, so we all agreed that we had to experience one of these slums immediately. But despite our efforts, we ended up in a rather nice place with trees and pavements. After a fruitless half hour of urchin-hunting we found a small tea house with a table of gorgeous guys inside it, drinking tea. Turns out they were Israeli and had come to India to relax after their gruelling military service and had decided to use bales of skunk as their relaxation method. They soon invited us back to unwind. As Hindus, Bindi and Sunita weren't sure but the waiter said it was fine, and he was a local so he must have known. After a few bong-rounds back at the cabin, they spoke about their tough years in the military working at checkpoints (a bit like Tesco, but slightly more dangerous, apparently). They told us that being Israeli is something no foreigner can truly understand. But really, us girls totally related to their plight: Bindi and Sunita started crying because they were ashamed to be studying German and said their parents were a bit like the Nazis for making them go to university.

Then, I had an amazing idea: we should form a band! We could travel the world and create awareness about Israel. Everyone wanted to be the sitar player, so eventually we decided the band would have nine sitar players and a rhythm section. I offered to play that mad Indian drum thing that kind of sounds like a plop. Unfortunately, no-one knew how to say 'plop' in Hindi so when we went back to the tea shop to ask the waiter he just got confused. The Israelis then called him a stupid bastard, which was kind of excessive, but they have been through a lot.

After our failure to find a plop drum the band will now have nine sitar players and a decks master. We also decided to adopt stage names. I wanted to be Chewbacca, but they said it sounded too much like Jewbacca and was ruled out as anti-semitic. I eventually went with DJ Bombay Mix Master, partly because of its huge role in Mumbai history, but mostly because I was peckish. It's the heady combination of spicy chickpeas and militant Judaism, that makes Mumbai the greatest city in the world!