Did Australia ruin Johnny Depp?
The breathtakingly beautiful actor, who has managed to live more than half a century on an aesthetic plane the rest of us could only dream of reaching, has in the past six months, become â€¦ well, there's no other way of saying it, fat.
He's morphed into his Australian nemesis Barnaby Joyce. The tears of millions of women are falling as I type. 
Alarm bells began ringing when Depp did the rounds for his movie Black Mass at the Venice Film Festival in   September, looking like a portly old uncle distantly related to the sex god. The combo of chunky cheeks, rotund tummy and lank locks wasn't a good one. He'd mutated into one of those middle-aged men who haunt nightclubs way past their prime in open-necked shirts, thinking they've still got that magic with the laydees.
Onlookers initially put it down to weight gained for a movie role - and indeed, filming has just wrapped on Yoga Hosers, a comedy horror that will premiere at Sundance in   January, in which he stars alongside his daughter Lily-Rose. In it he plays a character so unrecognisable to his former beauteous self that he looks more like Gerard Depardieu, complete with goatee, paunch and huge nose. In fact, you'd wonder why they didn't actually cast Monsieur Depardieu and save some cash in the prosthetics department. (  Maybe the answer to that is the gastronomic Gallic tax exile who now boasts Russian citizenship isn't being cast in anything anymore thanks to his constant sprays against France, which he calls "a filthy mess".) Depp also looked less than lovely as Irish American mobster Whitey Bulger in Black Mass, replete with shoehorn bald spot and bad teeth. So maybe it's all just artistic licence, and he's doing the opposite of Christian Bale starving himself for arty roles.
Let's hope so. Although it doesn't explain why he still looks like Mr P.I. Eater two months later. At The Danish Girl premiere in Los Angeles last week, he looked so sweaty and bloated he could have doubled as Mickey Rourke. And I don't need to tell you that's not a compliment.
So is there something more sinister going on? Gossip sites put it down to the fact he's given up the booze and is trying to clean up his act, so perhaps is turning to too many sour cream and onion Pringles.
Or could it be that it's all our fault? My theory is he's never been the same since we threatened to exterminate his pet pooches Boo and Pistol back in   May - with Barnaby Joyce taking a hard line against the illegal importation of the two Yorkshire terriers while Depp was filming Pirates of the Caribbean in Queensland.
"Just because he's Johnny Depp doesn't make him exempt from Australian laws," Mr Joyce thundered at the time. "If we start letting movie stars - even though they've been (voted) the Sexiest Man Alive twice - to come into our nation, then why don't we just break the laws for everybody?" He added: "It's time that Pistol and Boo buggered off back to the United States." Which they promptly did.
The court case is due to conclude on   December 7.
This classy display of Australian politics outraged Depp and even managed to disgust our very own Kyle Sandilands, who leapt to the actor's defence, telling the minister on air: "You sound like an absolute clown telling the guy to bugger off back to Hollywood or we'll kill his dogs. You sound like an idiot.
"You're a government minister, not some idiot off the street mouthing off to a news camera. Have some decency." He then called him a wanker and a gerbil.
Clearly outraged by the whole farce, the Pirates star was still thundering about it in Venice in   September, telling the press: "I killed my dogs. And ate them. Under direct orders from some kind of sweaty, big-gutted man from Australia." And yet, it's mysterious indeed that Depp appears to be emulating the Minister for Agriculture - transforming into a sweaty, big-gutted man, the very thing he so despised.
Is it a ploy? Or have we infected him with a strand of Straya virus that is turning him Kafka-esque-like into a Les Patterson pollie? Can we expect stained polyester pants next? I'm concerned.
I mean, I know he's 52, but he's done so well - the role model for funky dads the world over. If Depp can still rock it into his sixth decade, then there's hope for all mankind. Please say it's just a blip and he hasn't given in to middle-aged spread. If so, I'll be in the Depp-th of despair.And know this, Mr Joyce: the women of the world will blame you for yapping on about those damned dogs.