We like nothing more than a royal spaz out at a special occasion from someone who should know better, and we particularly like it when it involves the ill-fated Channel Nine, whose year is about as 'two-thousand-and-great' as a punch in the face.

Apparently 60 Minutes reporter Liam Bartlett cracked it hardcore - for no real reason - at a farewell function for Ray Martin, who quit the station earlier this year. Amongst his amusing reported outbursts:

As the party drew to a close, Bartlett's colleagues say he launched into an random attack on the return 60 Minutes episode, describing it as "s***" and cursing producers for allowing former Nine CEO Eddie McGuire to be a part of the show.

During the rant, which colleagues said "came out of nowhere" he is said to have referred to McGuire's interview with his AFL friend Sam Newman as "not a story".

Rumours of the rant were rife around Nine's Willoughby camp last night but if the claims turn out to be true he will reportedly be "in big trouble" with management, a source said.

Bartlett is said to have taken aim at the ratings the show attracted.

"If you guys are satisfied with 1.2 million (viewers), you're f******" Bartlett apparently told colleagues.

Bang bang, you're f-cked, indeed!

We weren't aware that Elle MacPherson and Bryan Adams had dated in the first place (unless by "dated" you mean "Bryan took a photo of her"); last we heard, she was playing Mrs Robinson to Vito Schnabel, a 21-year-old art curator. In any case, evidently they did, and now they're back on again.

Ain't love grand?

Earlier in the evening, the Aussie fashionista was described as "goggle-eyed" as she watched Adams perform.

Concert insiders claimed Macpherson was singing along to new songs never heard before by devoted fans (raising an eyebrow she's enjoyed private previews).

Ever the host, Adams seemed to pull out all stops to entertain the sexy single, with the duet enjoying dinner at London's chic Wolseley restaurant before adjourning to his mansion in ritzy Sloane Square.

Now, as much as we love Our Nicole Kidman, we're the first to agree she could probably lay off the facials and Botox injections. The whole stunned look is possibly not working as well for her today as it did when she was in The Interpreter and required to look permanently shocked/concerned.

However, we're not sure about The Daily Mail's choice of analogy when it comes to discussing Nic's visage:

Right, so cosmetic surgery expert Dr Martin Braun says, "She looks like a bat with too much of an (outer) brow lift. The middle of the brow's been dropped. She's crying when she accepts her Oscar, but nothing is moving."

Fair enough. But, what's that? You didn't quite catch what they were trying to say about her face? Oh, cool - here you go again:

Huh? You still don't know what she looks like? Here, how about an enlarged version of the two images above, at 1000 x 895! Something for the desktop, perhaps?

Really, we think once probably would've been enough. We half expect to log on to the Mail on Monday and find the background is nothing but tiled images of Nicole and her bat friend.

Natalie "Boog" Imbruglia has hit the singles scene running since her split from husband Daniel "I Like Vaginas, Honest Injun" Johns; first she was checked out by Johnny Borrell from Razorlight, now it seems she has her eye on someone who, should one of his dad's famed idiotic promotional pranks go wrong sooner rather than later, will one day inherit exceedingly large amounts of money - Sam "Son Of Richard" Branson.

Imbruglia, who split from her rock star husband Daniel Johns in January after four years of marriage, has reportedly been cosying up to Sam in London.

The 33-year-old Torn singer was one of the guests at a £100,000 ($216,122) ski-themed party to celebrate Sam's planned Arctic expedition.

HAVE YOU SEEN NATALIE IMBRUGLIA'S RUMOURED NEW SHAG? CALL CRIME-STOPPERS NOW.

Hola, readers!

Just a quick note to let you know that last night I carried through with my threat to shave my head for the Leukemia Foundation, and I am now sweetly buzzcut all over. Except for a small patch on the top of my head, which is somehow slightly longer that the rest of my hair and results in me rockin' the Alfafa from The Little Rascals look.

Thanks for all the kind words of support, folks who emailed in! And thanks to those who sponsored me in this quest for baldiness. You are too awesome. It's probably not too late to throw some cash in the direction of the Leukemia Foundation though, so if you've got a credit card and feel like donating now that you know I've actually gone through with this thing, go nuts.

Interestingly, a friend commented last night after the shave "Wow, I feel like I've already seen you with no hair", so spot on was the brilliant Elspeth's caricature of my shaved new appearance.

Another nice bonus of having no pesky ponytail getting in the way of things? Hats, dudes. I can wear a whole assortment of headgear I'd never been able to comfortably don in the past!

THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN SPEAKING. HAVE A FUCKING SWEET WEEKEND.

Sure, Yacht Rock is soooo last year (soooo the year before last year, actually) but I don't care. I can wear a captain's cap now to my heart's content and I am bloody well pleased about it.

x

PS: I feel totally Renae Lawrence-y at the moment. Big ups to my Kerkoban Prison homegirls!

Naomi Watts recently encountered some cranky airline passengers when her baby Alexander cried for forty minutes during a recent flight.

Pointy-end-of-the-plane passengers "literally stood out of their seats and gave me glaring eyes," Watts told a US chat show this week, after her infant son squawked for 40 minutes on a recent flight from Los Angeles to Sydney.

"I think they just felt a little p. . . ed off they spent so much money on a flight and they have to listen to that." So she stripped. "He's too young for drugs, so I just put him on the boob," Watts said.

Quick thinking, Watts!

Naomi's tale of first class infant prejudice leads News Ltd to ask their readership "Should babies be allowed in business class and first class?"

What a ridiculous question! Of course children should not be allowed in first class. Nor should they be allowed on any kind of transportation whatsoever if there is even the slightest chance of them disturbing paying adult passengers.

In fact, let's not stop at banning them from planes (both the moneybags end of the airline, and the poverty class). If you ask us, all small children should simply be placed in a giant pit filled with cushions (with bowls of breast milk scattered around the place, we don't want the little tackers to starve) and left there to frolic in their own waste until they grow large enough to be gagged without the risk of choking to death. Then, and only then, should small children be allowed to mix with the rest of society.

What have we learned from this recent article about Deborah Hutton in the Daily Telegraph?

· She's not all about vagina! (Australian Women's Weekly readers can breathe easy!)
· Has she mentioned her love of doodle recently?
· Her love of doodles belonging to younger men? (Oh Debs, you cougar you!)
· She is now single. (Boo! She's so cute! Someone snap that hot tamale up!)
· She is looking for love!
· Perhaps that new love will be the owner of a furious rack, or perhaps they will be packing pants heat. Who cares? The love bit is the important thing, not the package it comes in. Or at least that's what the Daily Telegraph headline would have us believe, the actual Deborah Hutton quotes make no reference to searching for Sapphic companionship.
· She was certainly never dating a lady television host like we believed. No, sirree.
· WE STILL THINK SHE WAS DATING A LADY TELEVISION HOST LAST YEAR.

And there you have it.

(Shout out to our homies at SameSame.com.au!)

Remember Emma Cornell from last year's Big Brother? We know, we know - it's strangely hard to recall the many amazing and in no way bland Dreamworld residents who molested our eye sockets on a nightly basis last year, but if you really, really strain yourself, you will probably faintly recollect a blonde catty young thing whose estranged father died during her time in the house but no one informed her of the fact (although some eviction night audience members tried their hardest) because they didn't want to ruin her "experience" and the feverish media debate on ethics that followed.

Not ringing any bells? Well, perhaps you remember her post-eviction spread for Zoo Weekly? Yeah, that's the one.

Moving on. In this fairly dull excuse to make reference to Krystal Forscutt's gravity defying rack, we were tickled to note the following tidbit about Big Brother's Emma and her latest career.

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· All it takes is some speed metal and a blowdryer to transform this mild-mannered terrier into the wire-haired Knight in Satan's Service he truly is. [Break.com]
· The biggest breakout star of American Idol's sixth season--Crying Girl--is back! And she's brought her thoughts about Season 7 with her. (Preview: It isn't as good.) [LAT]
· Tobey Maguire is a strong believer in allowing one's infant child to pick up on the whole walking thing on their own, even if that means spending the first few years of their lives face down in a shag carpet. [Popbitch via Wendywayrad]
· "'I've been a fan of One Life to Live since I was a baby,' said Snoop." [USA Today]
· Not On Our Watch, co-founded by George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, has given $500,000 to the United Nations World Food Program, but since it wasn't presented in the form of a giant check on The Oprah Winfrey Show, it took a couple days for you to find out about it. [Reuters]

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Exactly one week ago today, we ran a fairly innocuous item about David Caruso's effusive bullying of a young director on the set of CSI: Sunglasses. Unbeknownst to us at the time we posted it, this item would generate a tremendous amount of feedback from you, the Defamer community. In particular, we received one incredibly detailed recollection of Caruso's on-set behaviour from a commenter with the nom de plume of OnSetSnitch. While we normally don't make a practice out of reprinting comments verbatim, this one is so full of Grade-A juice that we felt compelled to share it with a wider audience. With that, please enjoy this unfortunate (yet hilarious) tale of what it's like to work with the likes of David Caruso on a daily basis:

It's taken me a bit of courage to actually fess up to what I've seen on the set of CSI:Miami, but I actually worked there for two years and saw first-hand almost 50 episodes being filmed. Caruso is without a doubt, the most tortured, saddest man-child/ actor I've ever seen in over 15 years of movie and tv-making. Everything you have heard is true, but worse.

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We're a fan of all of Natalie Portman's film work, but it's her strides in the shortform variety that have particularly astounded us lately. Just six months after she at long last unveiled both Boleyn girls--along with the rest of her--in Wes Anderson's Hotel Chevalier, comes another drastic about-face for the consummate actress and Star Wars-geek spankbait-object. In a sequence in New York, I Love You, an anthology of love stories set in Manhattan (including one directed by shameless romantic Brett Ratner), the Israeli-American actress bundles up to play a Hasidic woman--albeit notably unencumbered by one of those tricky-to-manoeuvre, five-seat strollers. Could the dashing young mensch to her right be searching for just the right moment to pop the question, and get a little under-the-chupah action going? Those smiles say yes.

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After what feels like decades spent snorting wasabi and chugging live goldfish, time has finally clocked out on Jackass star Steve-O's sanity. Star reports that Nicole Richie's ex has been placed on the ever-popular 5150 hold popularized by fellow bipolar sufferer Britney Spears. Steve-O was sent to Thalians Mental Health Facility (the same place Owen Wilson once graced with his presence back in the Stallion's sick days) after emailing suicide notes to friends and allegedly putting cigarettes out on his body. But Steve-O has more than straitjackets and a daily rainbow of pills to look forward to; he's also been officially charged with cocaine possession, a charge dating back to when he assaulted a neighbour while high. We personally think Thalians should begin work on an annual yearbook, just so all these celebs who waltz in on one drug and out on another can KIT! and XOXO! each other after the misty water-coloured memories fade. [Star]

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Never one to miss an endorsement opportunity, Diddy has taken his partnership with Ciroc Liquor to a publicity-heightening new level. Citing not his fondness of earning Benjamins but rather his achy breaky heart as the reason behind this pragmatic endeavor, Diddy plans on launching a car service for celebrities who've had too much to drink at Opera and Les Deux and need a way home that doesn't involve cokepants or Vicodin swerves. More than anything else, we can't wait to see what the cars in question will be emblazoned with. We're envisioning that the rides will be pimped out in twead or pinstriped paint, with an oh-so-subtle 6x6 logo on the hoods stating "styled by Sean John." Which, if you think about it, would really flatter the drunken, passed out heads of Lindsay and Paris quite nicely. [Us]

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If the old adage about the lawyer who represents himself having a fool for a client is true, then Anthony Pellicano's cross-examination today of Garry Shandling at his own trial (Underwhelming Hollywood with Nothing of Juicy Significance Since 2002™) was like the Comedy Store main room. When asked by the court what he does for a living, Deadline Hollywood Daily reports, Shandling responded, "That's a bad sign. I'm a comedian." To which the judge responded, "Not to me you're not." (To which the entire jury snapped in unison and remarked, "Ooooooh girl.") Shandling was there in connection with a long-running feud with onetime manager Brad Grey over lost earnings from his The Larry Sanders Show deal, during which Scary Hollywood Lawyer Bert Fields, a regular subscriber to Pellicano's eavesdropping services, allegedly used the P.I. to tap Shandling's calls. From DHD's courtroom report:

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Axle Whitehead, scat-happy former Idol contestant, disgraced Video Hits presenter, and a man currently flirting with musical success thanks to his surprisingly likable Coldplay-lite ballad "I Don't Do Surprises" has announced he has no regrets about infamously displaying his manhood at the ARIA Awards a few years ago, and damn it - he'd pull it out once more if he was lucky enough to win something in 2008!

"If I get nominated this year for an ARIA, which would be fantastic, I might have to take it all off," he laughed.

Whitehead has no regrets about the incident, which led to him being sacked from his presenting job. "It was all fun and games," Whitehead said. "I just thought, 'why not lighten the mood and get my tackle out,' but I ended up getting fired for it. But I have absolutely no regrets – I think more people should do it."

So do we, Axle. So do we.

Andrew G, James Mathison - we're looking at you.

Reader Stephen emailed us saying "I would like you to consider posting this as your youtube clip of the day. i feel that it is my duty to share this with the world."

We'll not just consider it, Stephen, we will proudly offer it up to our readers as a fine example of everything that is good and wonderful about the internet.

That bitch totally owns her office chair! Yahweh represent!

With Sex and the City: The Movie inching ever closer to its May 30th release date (will Carrie and Big end up together? No don't tell us--we don't want to know! Hurts so good!), and today's announcement of a Beverly Hills 90210 primetime reimagining, we're certain more than a few of you have some Sarah Jessica Parker and Tori Spelling on the brain. Sadly, both women are currently taken, and idling outside their homes in a red '84 Ford Tempo with tinted windows in the hopes of winning some much-needed face time with your TV idols is largely frowned upon by the authorities. (Just trust us on that one.) That's where Pipedream Products' celebrity blow-up dolls come in handy, offering easy-to-inflate, polyurethane likenesses of some of your favourite stars.

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After watching this clip of new ANTM contestant Fatima's greatest hits, we are currently praying to the Top Model gods to please, please send house bitch Fatima home next week (pretty please with Janice Dickinson's remains on top!). Why? Not because she is a former victim of female circumcision (as she will have you know, over and over again), not because she can't even button a sweater, and not because she has a Mischa Barton-like ability to make legs even as skinny as her own look like thunder thighs on top of toothpicks. Nope, none of the above. We need Fatima to go home primarily because if we see Tyra do one more tiger growl impersonation of her, we will personally gut our televisions. And that will not be good for our career.

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While execs at the Fox network long ago learned that people have a strong desire to watch shows aimed at an audience of gore-hound rubberneckers (think, America's Most Shocking And Deadly High-Speed Rollover Accidents Part Six), the folks at the more family friendly American Broadcasting Channel rolled the dice when they cast the last season of Dancing With The Stars. Their bet was that they could appeal to an under-exploited niche of the American television viewing audience by casting a one-legged former trophy wife of a Beatle. After all, would people really tune in to see whether or not she would fall on her arse while doing the Cha-Cha? Not surprisingly, they did tune in ... in droves, even. So when it came time for this season to roll around, producers decided to go right back to the developmentally-challenged well when they decided to cast the hearing-impaired Oscar winner (and stone fox) Marlee Matlin.

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Break out your varsity jackets and teasing combs, because Beverly Hills: 90210 is getting a B12 shot in the arse. As THR reports this morning, the beloved fictional halls of West Beverly will be refurbished and re-populated with a brand new spinoff on the CW. Though a pilot has yet to be written by Veronica Mars producer Rob Thomas, and the tweeny network has yet to sign any papers, we'd like to prevent Aaron Spelling from rolling over in his grave by offering our own suggestions for who should play Brenda, Brandon and their rotating group of bed buddies. Although we kinda doubt a marching band dusted with school spirit could help our Donna Martin graduate...

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We have some troubling news to report: contrary to popular belief, Justin Timberlake is (spoiler alert) not funny. According to Radar Online, that masterful introductory speech JT recited at the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame on Monday night was more than just a fun series of anecdotes about Madonna's B12 shots and Britney putdowns. For those on the scene, it was a painful series of awkward silences and lame attempts at humor, made even more painful by Justin's Norton-like tries at improvising some jokes of his own:

"Timberlake's attempts at humor flopped, and breaking into a falsetto sing-songy funnyvoice after botching a scripted line didn't help...When he finished, the NSYNCsman was asked by one of the producers if he 'felt good about the speech.' 'Yeah. I mean, how is everyone else's [speech]?' Timberlake replied nervously."

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· The Dracula: The Puppet Musical sequence in Forgetting Sarah Marshall so impressed the Jim Henson Co., who produced the puppets, that they've hired Jason Segel and Nick Stoller to write and direct the next Muppet movie. They're hoping the whole Apatowian raunch-with-heart formula will lend itself nicely to a story about Miss Piggy's accidental knocking-up by Kermit's unambitious stoner character, which will result in a mutant frig baby that both will love despite its freakishly beflippered snout. [Variety]
· As we noted yesterday, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (that's the one where everyone except Draco Malfoy dies at the end. Kidding! Never read it.) is so expansive, Warner Bros. had no choice but to split it into two, billion-dollar-earning blockbusters instead of the regular one. Consider this a coup for everyone involved--particularly fans of post-jailbait-aged Emma Watson. [Variety]

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As part of Defamer's ongoing commitment to bring you the latest in viral videos that your far more savvy and productivity-challenged friends may have already seen a day or two ago, we now introduce you to Fred and Sharon Spencer. Like Lionsgate, their indie studio started in British Columbia (Kelowna, to be exact), and offers a wide array of production services, executing everything from low-budget horror to computer animation with trademark Spencer panache. They also are known to get in front of the camera from time to time, and for a small premium are available to swede your favourite blockbuster--or even recreate your child's graduation footage they accidentally erased when they used your Betamax tape to record a CBC Coronation Street marathon. So who needs a movie?

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In case you hadn't heard, recently resigned NY governor Eliot Spitzer likes call girls. A lot. And while we're still busy casting the inevitable movie of the week, our slideshow-obsessed friends over at Us dove into their archives to reminisce on the hooker-laced pasts of Hugh Grant, Eddie Murphy and escort king Charlie Sheen, who've all been caught with their pants (and dignities) down. But call girls don't always come in the form of silicone sketchballs straight out of the Bada Bing. Sometimes they have hearts of gold and charisma as thick as the air on the 101! If they're played by stars, that is. We dove into our own archives and selected our top five films that revolve around the World's Oldest Profession, flicks that will surely be making their way onto Eliot Spitzer's Netflix queue in no time.

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We're loath to admit we've fallen behind on new episodes of The Simpsons, so we're extremely grateful to the reader who pointed the following out to us: On Sunday's show, after a fairly hilarious sequence in which Homer engages in an illicit affair with a gyro cone (which, for $4300, could basically give you all the unsafe satisfaction you could handle), the portly paterfamilias then puts a happy ending on his marathon session of rotisserie lovemaking with a trip to Pudding on the Ritz. His order? "One Butterscotch Stallion."

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Page Six has ignited quite the firestorm with their report today that Rachael Ray, the homecooking guru whose open-mouth circumference quite improbably exceeds that of her entire head, is at high risk for cancellation. The reason: dwindling ratings and a rapidly aging demographic, whose calcified joints can barely manage to crack open a bottle of EVOO. (We wont get into the hard numbers here, but if you're really interested, the Sixers throw up a bunch of pie charts and nanaimo bar graphs to prove their point.) But wait! A representative from King World disputes their claims, saying Ray has managed to even outperformed the talk show deity who fashioned her in her own image out of a variety of dipping sauces. From HuffPo:

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Having devoured celebrity knees and lips in their quest to mock each and every imperfect body part they spot on the red carpet, the British press is now preying on something they've dubbed Bat Face, singling out Nicole Kidman as the epitome of Botox overload. Though the picture of Nicole they use isn't pretty, the bat is actually kind of adorable (at this point, we are far more scared of seeing Nic enter our room in the middle of the night than this cuddly little rat with wings). In fact, Nicole looks less like this animal than she does another: Michael Jackson. And she's not alone. Rather than naming the immobile facial trend Bat Face, we're thinking the look is more a symptom of MJ Syndrome, which also counts Renee Zellweger and Teri Hatcher among its victims.

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If you want to look just as scarily skinny as the likes of Kate Hudson and Renee Zellweger, the solution is simple: eat nothing but boiled eggs and water, develop a healthy addiction to caffeine and cardio, and devote your evenings to chain-smoking and reading Us Weekly on the john. The latest "news" on celebrity diet secrets comes to us courtesy of the Daily Mail, who asked a handful of trainers and nutrition experts what's in between the lines of all those helpful How Kate/Jessica/Reese Got Slim stories. And even if some of the answers don't exactly whet your appetite, guessing which celebs the so-called experts are outing is almost as much fun as biting into a Double Double. Take this nugget for example:

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