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It took six years, but the farce, sorry, exemplary model of jurisprudence that has constituted R. Kelly’s trial for child pornography has finally come to an end.

And the verdict? Although it seemed highly unlikely, the “Trapped In The Closet” singer was acquitted of all charges (which is considerably more than you can say about his musical oeuvre).

The trial has proved to be one of the more entertaining celebrity offerings of recent years, with highlights including a sex tape, mole jokes, Hannah Montana references and key testimony from a witness named Sparkle. If only all statutory rape trials could be so amusing (although poor Miley Cyrus, having her name linked to pornography again).

'I'm a Barbie girl'

In case you were wondering about the actual charges, in 2002 a tape came to light that showed R. Kelly giving money to, having sex with and urinating on a girl purported to be his goddaughter, who was 14 at the time.

This was after four previous settlements from R. Kelly to underage girls who accused him of sexual misconduct; and also after his marriage to R&B star Aaliyah when she was 15. At the time, Kelly was producing Aaliyah’s first album, titled “Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number.” Obviously.

Kelly, who has worryingly taken in recent years to referring to himself as “The Pied Piper,” has always claimed that the person (the urinator?) in the tape is not him.

While there’s nothing new about “The Shaggy Defence,” this is one of the few cases when it’s actually worked.

The odds were insurmountably stacked against Kelly, after all.

Allegations of sexual activity with underage girls have plagued him since 1991. In 1998, Kelly’s manager, Barry Hankerson (Aaliyah’s uncle), quit, advising Kelly’s record company that the singer “needs psychiatric help for his compulsion to pursue underage girls.”

And in 2007, his publicist Regina Daniels also quit, stating that Kelly’s “inappropriate” relationship with her daughter had “crossed a line.” That’s one way of putting it.

So how on earth is he not passing prison soap to friendly felons right now?

Well, kelly may be bordering on the moronic (it emerged during his trial that the singer is functionally illiterate), but his lawyers were remarkably brilliant.

Not only did they dismantle the credibility of the witnesses who testified that it was Kelly in the tape, but they also managed to persuade the jury that the tape was a fake.

Lawyer Sam Adam’s shining moment came, however, when he claimed that there was no way the alleged victim was really the girl on the tape, not only because she denied it and refused to testify, but because her relatives would have “beaten the crap out” of Kelly if it had been. Naturally.

In the end, it all came down to a lack of evidence (apparently, a tape isn’t deemed reliable enough). One juror told MTV News that he had no doubt that the man in the tape was R. Kelly.

“I just wasn’t 100 percent on the girl,” Juror #9 said. Well, she is considerably less famous. Kelly, in the meantime, is back in the studio. After his last hit album, “The Chocolate Factory,” fans expect a sequel. “The Lemonade Factory” perhaps? He wouldn’t even need to make a video.