In anticipation of this Sunday night's festival of Australian television awesomeness The Logies, The Australian has published a riveting article describing the ceremony's wild days of yesteryear.

Highlights of the story include -

"Raquel Welch pretty well figured out she was the star turn and wasn't being paid enough so she asked for, I think, $20,000 worth of jewellery," says one executive. "Most stars are too stupid to realise but she was a crafty sort of girl." Others are just rude.

Mama raised no foo. If you ever wake up one day feeling as though you'd like to sit back and revel in the brilliance of La Welch, find yourself a copy of Myra Breckinridge and watch the movie with Raquel's commentary. Although if you don't have the time or inclination, her thoughts can pretty much be succinctly summarised as "Gee, this movie was a bit shit. Look at me rape that guy with a strap-on! John Huston is a genius. Mae West is a difficult bitch."

"Star of Friends, Matt LeBlanc was over it and wasn't interested," says a former Nine publicist. "But he was good fun at the after party although we had to have Cristal champagne until we ran out and then he switched to vintage Bollinger and finally tequila slammers with TV game show host Larry Emdur."

We always knew Larry loved to party.

"Most of the time the international guests don't know why they're there," says one publicist.

Most of the time, we don't know why the international guests are there either.

A major, and now respectable, Seven star was unexpectedly found in Isaac Hayes's suite one year. "She was a big South Park fan," laughs her former publicist.

Ten points for whoever guesses correctly the name of the lady from the Channel Seven stable of talent who got caught sucking chocolate salty balls at The Logies, please. Answers on a postcard.

That said, many remember the night the entire Neighbours cast tried to crash Nine's after party.

Oh, those crazed Neighbours kids. God love 'em. God love 'em to bits.

Of course, our personal highlight of the Logies would have to be last year, when mad-as-a-cut-snake Joan Rivers delivered the best five minutes of awards banter we've ever seen. Hey, anyone who claims on stage to have enjoyed the trick pelvis of John Wood wins points with us. Times a billion for frightening Richard Wilkins and exclaiming "I don't know why the fuck I'm here!" within a minute of hitting the podium.

BONUS! After the jump, two Aussie showbiz blind items of our own.

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Literary noise rockers* and first ever winners of the Australian Music Prize, brilliant Melbourne band The Drones, are currently touring Europe.

It's been an interesting trip to say the least, with amps blowing up, trouble with the tour bus (dubbed 'Van Morrison'), crazy tour managers and other such things.

Oh Calamity: A Drones Tour Diary is being penned by handsome guitarist-turned-scribbler and new addition to the group Dan Luscombe, and it's a highly entertaining read.

After a dinner of crisps and water at the venue, stuck there while our tour manager drove all over England trying to find a hotel for the night, The Drones played what Gareth so succinctly described as “our worst show ever”. This show was cursed. Cursed people! Perhaps it all began with our support band for the evening, “The Talentless Twats with the Way Too Big Drum Kit”, and their unconvincing set of Sex Pistol covers and wretched “originals”. Or perhaps when the guitar amp finally did die on stage. As I put my ear up to the speakers, I swore I could hear my amp whisper “Get off the tour. It is cursed” in a Spanish accent. Then it's little red light went out. Mike and Gareth had to finish the set off with “Sixteen Straws”, a big favourite in York.

Go check it out. We know for a fact that the next installment should be an ace read.

*We don't know what this means, either. We just wanted to sound more pretentious than ever. But they're very good, trust us.

A 47-year-old British woman has faced court after feeding her husband a delicious steaming plate of Fecal Tikka Masala.

Jill Martin, 47, pleaded guilty in a Scottish court to culpable and reckless conduct against her ex-husband Donald Martin.

The court heard that Martin served the dinner to her husband and started laughing as he began to eat it.

At first she claimed she had laced the dish with arsenic but then confessed she had added dog excrement , the BBC reported.

It's always the self-satisfied snicker that gives us away when we're trying to convince our chums to eat bowls of poo.

Martin's defence lawyer Terry Gallanagh compared the case to "an episode of Desperate Housewives", and said that at the time of the curry incident, the couple's 21-year marriage "had hit an all time low".

Yes, it's fair to say that things were at their most dire when Jill decided to dish up shit for Don's tea. Not to be confused with The Time Don Flirted With His Secretary Right In Front Of Jill At The Office Christmas Party So She Later Urinated In His Orange Juice, or When Don Made That Comment About Jill's Mother And Jill Was Forced To Vomit A Little Bit Into His Bowl Of Minestrone.

The timeless Hollywood power struggle - studio wants a prestige picture that will appeal to as many moviegoers as possible, director just wants to get his fucking vision on the screen, if you don't mind - is on full display with Warner Bros. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Suffering at points in its post-production phase from a running time as unwieldly as its title, and a general divergence of above-the-line creative opinion, the upcoming Brad Pitt Western has been gathering dreaded Bad Buzz, the LAT reports, as the calvary is being called in to oversee the cobbling together of alternate, more test-score-friendly cuts:

[Writer-director Andrew] Dominik, a New Zealand filmmaker who rose to prominence with the 2000 crime drama "Chopper" starring Eric Bana, wanted to deliver a dark, contemplative examination of fame and infamy, in the spirit of director Terrence Malick ("The New World"), according to several people familiar with the production. The studio, on the other hand, wanted less contemplation and more action, closer to Clint Eastwood's filmmaking style, sources said. [...]

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Alice Springs is set for a cold, lonely winter after current affairs juggernaut of honesty Today Tonight revealed it to be the "murder capital of Australia".

The Northern Territory Government has moved to allay fears that Alice Springs is a violent town awash with gangs, alcohol and criminals, following the screening of a Today Tonight program which dubbed it the "murder capital of Australia".

The Channel Seven's Today Tonight program, broadcast last night, has destroyed hopes for Alice Springs' upcoming tourist season, the Central Australian Tourism Industry Association (CATIA) said.

Today Tonight painted Alice Springs as a city of sin and a place where many residents were too scared to leave their homes.

Finally, the ugly truth about Alice Springs is out. Well done to Anna Coren and team for another sterling report uncovering unpleasant but necessary truths about our nation to the general public.

The only suggestion we could come up with for the Central Australian Tourism Industry Association on how to make the most of Alice Springs' chilling description as "a violent town awash with gangs, alcohol and criminals" is to rename the place Deadwood and hope that your average foreign tourist assumes it's a theme park of some sort.

Coming soon to Today Tonight:

- Adelaide - Downer breeding, serial murdering city of Churches. Erm, of Australia.
- Melbourne - pretentious insecure latte capital of Australia.
- Canberra - pot smoking, pyromaniacal porn capital of Australia.
- Gold Coast - Big Brother capital of Australia. Enough said.

Perhaps afraid that the Peter Jackson spec adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones that was offered up for a studio bidding war on Monday might find its way into the hated, LOTR royalty-withholding clutches of New Line and be rushed into a competing production before someone ponies up eight figures for the rights, Jackson's lawyers have issued a friendly cease-and-desist note to an industry assistant tracking board that is sharing the script with its members. The c-and-d is now making the rounds on other tracking boards and popping up in inboxes around town, letting everyone know that Bones is for pre-approved eyes only:

Re: "Lovely Bones" Cease and desist from further copyright violations

To Whom It May Concern:

We are counsel for Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. It has come to our attention that a copy of our clients' screenplay "The Lovely Bones" has unlawfully been placed on this tracking board without the consent of our clients, whose copyrighted works are being illegally exploited. A secret id word has been imbedded [sic] in each copy of the screenplay and we are presently investigating the source of the leak and appropriate action will be taken.

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Embattled Grey's Anatomy actor Isaiah Washington may have appeared to have mostly recovered from his rageoholic ways as he gawked sweetly at swollen testicles on a recent episode (ABC's claiming it was the guy's head, but - paging Dr. McFreudy - we still see a pair of hairy cantaloupes), but apparently his gayhab work is not yet done:

Isaiah Washington, who came under fire after using an anti-gay slur, will appear in a public service announcement on behalf of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network.

"We're gonna have - I want to say at least two versions of it at this point. We may broaden our message a little," the actor's publicist, Howard Bragman, told The Associated Press in a phone interview Wednesday.

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· After shattering a number of box office records in Asia, Spider-Man 3 is now making a mockery of European ticket-buying benchmarks. Based on this preliminary data, we now predict a $US400 million opening weekend in America, kicking off an eventual $US3 billion domestic run. [Variety]
· We much prefer The Hollywood Reporter's "Tom Poston, master of sidekicks" obit headline to yesterday's weak "clueless everyman" effort. [THR]
· Emma Roberts will star "as a spoiled Malibu princess" in the Universal comedy Wild Child; accusations that Auntie Julia somehow got her the role by promising Universal a favour to follow. [Variety]
· NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg honors late MPAA copyright enforcer Jack Valenti's legacy by announcing a "three-pronged" attack on the city's movie pirates. [THR]
· Still giddy over the huge piles of cash Frank Miller's 300 generated for them, Warner Bros. options the rights to his graphic novel Ronin. They plan to shoot in the same CGI-heavy way, hoping that hordes of well-muscled "gangs of mutants and thugs" with computer-enhanced six-packs will prove as wildly popular as the first project's sweaty, ripped Greeks. [Variety]

With Katie Holmes' recent hiring of her "own" publicity team, we knew it wouldn't be long before the efforts of their Operation Make Katie Seem Like Any Other Totally Normal, Non-Imprisoned Working Actress started to appear in the tabloids. Phase One of the campaign is appearing in the new issue Life&Style, which apparently involves reinforcing the strength of Holmes and Cruise's relationship through public ambivalence about some harmless, on-the-job flirting:

"They shot a scene in which [Mad Money co-star Adam Rothenberg] wrapped his arms around Katie's waist, then the two of them had an intimate discussion," a "set insider" told L&S. "They lingered after the director said 'cut,' and it got everyone talking."

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For people who gambled hundreds of dollars hoping that a series of area House of Blues concerts for mystery act The M+Ms would actually feature Britney Spears's triumphant return to live performance - some good news, and some bad. First the good: As San Diegans in attendance can attest, it was indeed the troubled pop star who had taken to the stage a mere two hours late (despite the best efforts of a speeding tour bus driver), where, accompanied by a quartet of background-dancing skankettes, she gyrated to familiar hits with a shapely figure that bore only a fleshy hint of her recently acquired rehab fifteen. Now the bad news:

Her entire set lasted a mere 14 minutes and consisted only of past hits, nothing new. [...]

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Bay Area land baron George Lucas dropped by to chat with Conan O'Brien on last night's show from San Francisco, stoically enduring a procession of cheaply revised Star Wars characters meant to elicit a chuckle from a creator who wasted untold millions developing his own ridiculous affronts to the 'Star Wars' legacy. The unamused Lucas did offer a grudging thumbs-up to R2-Mr.T2 and seemed indifferent at best to Liposuctioned Jabba the Hut, but we think we detected a flash of annoyance at the appearance of Jewbacca, whose unexpected embrace of Judaism makes a mockery of the Wookiee's deep-seated faith in the Force.

• Late Night with Conan O'Brien in San Francisco [NBC.com]
• Previously: Hollywood FeudWatch: Frank Darabont Vs. George Lucas

If the number of full-page Variety and Hollywood Reporter suck-up ads purchased in one's honour on the day he receives Walk of Fame immortality is a reliable metric of an individual's popularity in the industry, then we could quickly conclude from a quick survey of recent star-on-a-dirty-sidewalk honorees that everyone in Hollywood is trying to get into Halle Berry's pants (in fairness, she did pretty much invite the whole town to get all up inside her), while no one but Warner Bros. would much mind if erstwhile hairstylist and Superman Returns producer Jon Peters decided to give up the moviemaking business and open a salon in Beverly Hills. Today's Page Six reports:

MOVIE people are laughing over the cover of yesterday's Hollywood Reporter with a bleached-blond Jon Peters on the cover. Peters - the hairdresser who parlayed an affair with Barbra Streisand into a career producing such movies as "A Star Is Born," "Caddyshack," "Rain Man" and "Superman Returns" - was featured in the trade journal because he's getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

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