File this one under "a nation shrugs": Mr Delta Goodrem, aka Potato, aka Ex-Mr Kerry Katona, aka The One From Boyzone Who Isn't Ronan Hold On He's From Westlife Oh Well Same Dif, aka Brian McFadden, reckons he likes Australia so much he wants to take our idiotic citizenship test and become a "mate" of the country.

Well, isn't that just enough to make your week?

"Absolutely, yes," he said when asked if he would eventually become an Australian.

"When Delta and I get married and some day we do have kids, we see Australia as the place we want to raise them. When I do get married I will apply for citizenship."

McFadden said he would keep his European passport.

The singer hosts Foxtel's Football Superstar show and is filling in for two weeks on the FOX FM breakfast shift.

Yesterday, on his first day, he arrived half an hour late at 5.30am, but the group made light of it. According to FOX, he didn't sleep in; his schedule said 5.30am and not 5am.

He'd want to watch himself, it's good-for-nothing tardiness like that that leads to the traditional Australian ejection from the country; we've all seen that episode of The Simpsons where Bart gets a boot up the arse, so let that be a lesson to you, Sleepy McFadden. Your no-good potato sleep-ins won't wash with us! That's just plain un-Australian!

(Etc, etc.)

It's been quite a while since we've had reason to check in with Channel Nine's continued Underbelly woes, though it's always a pleasure to do so - and so I can't say I was disappointed to read that Nine has been ordered to pay the legal costs following part of their legal battle to get Underbelly screened in Victoria.

Wow, two-thousand-and-great just gets greater and greater, doesn't it, Team Nine?

A spokesman for the Office of Public Prosecutions yesterday confirmed Nine's failed appeal against Underbelly's ban in Victoria cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Nine has been hit with the expensive bill after already losing million of dollars of advertising revenue and wasted marketing when the 13-part crime drama - starring Kat Stewart and Gyton Grantley as Roberta and Carl Williams - was banned by a Supreme Court judge.

Nine's legal team clashed with the state's Director of Public Prosecutions Jeremy Rapke, QC, during an urgent appeal hearing in March.

The life and times of Nine - once the most impressive ratings beast in Australian network television - becomes more and more farcical every day. At this rate Chris Lilley's next show may as well be called Still The One; he wouldn't even have to write a word - it's all there for him!

THR reports today that Briana "Daughter of B.J. and the Bear's Greg" Evigan has been cast as the lead in Burning Bright—a Born Free meets When A Stranger Calls thriller from Sobini Films in which "a woman wakes in the midst of a hurricane to find a tiger roaming through the home, [and is] forced to drag her autistic young brother through the house in a desperate attempt at survival." As if that isn't intriguing enough, an operative points out that two paragraphs from the end comes this curious statement, which has since gone missing from the online version:

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Jay Leno is going through a sexual identity crisis. After getting in trouble with the gays for Ryan Phillippe GayFaceGate, it seems as though all the apologies and gay wedding attendances have him worried his flyover state fan base may have lost faith in his man's man, Harley-riding rep. And in an effort to clean up that potential mess, he's resorted to eagerly provoking Justin Timberlake into pervy chatter about the improvisational humor-challenged song and dance boy's girlfriend Jessica Biel. To prove his macho prowess, he leaps suggestively into a tale about meeting Biel on a Jaywalk when she was just 15 or 16, and insists (twice, in fact) that all sorts of very heterosexual thoughts went flooding through his head. As uncomfortable as this clip makes us, Timberlake finds the entire ordeal a (quite literal) thigh-slapper. The pair's respective desperate attempts at humor and machismo, after the jump.

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You know, Winegums stories are becoming so stupid I may as well start making them up. Like, Amy Winehouse got into a fight with a unicorn on top of her local Maccas, shouting "It's reading my thoughts! The CIA sent it!" before flying across London thanks to her magical cape made of sparkling cocaine rocks and eating the head off a statue of Winston Churchill.

Because, really, this one's not much saner: Amy has been handing out icypoles to the kids hanging around her house.

Amy Winehouse and her home has become a bit of a tourist attraction in Camden.

And it seems she's happy to accommodate the many visitors, even handing out her favourite ice-pops to local kids.

Genereous Amy, dressed for the warm weather in strapless bra top, hotpants and bare feet kindly shared some of her stash of ice-pops with the kids hanging out outside her home.

Uhh... you know, at least she's doing something nice for the community, I guess.

The sweet, delicious ironing of all this is that what would be the most wacky would be to 'open the papers' one morning to find a story that goes something like "Amy Winehouse woke up early this morning, had a healthy breakfast and paid her Mum a friendly visit, before entering the studio and recording solidly until about 9pm, upon which she went for a dinner date with Mark Ronson before going home - alone - to feed some homeless kittens and getting to bed at 11pm."

You'd be forgiven for assuming the last award Peter Andre would receive would be "dad of the year" after the extensive evidence to the contrary was revealed by Jordan and hubby Andre's fly-on-the-wall series.

But there he is, the lucky bugger, winning the UK's Father Of The Year award. Though, perhaps tellingly, the article announcing his win doesn't seem to attach any credentials to the title. Whoda thunk it?

"For the last couple of years I've been saying that if there's any kind of award I could win it would be dad of the year," Andre said.

"I'm over the moon."

More than 2000 mothers across the UK were questioned for the poll.

Were the mothers presently committed in mental institutes, or perhaps blind, or living on an island where The News Of The World and I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! has never been heard of?

But then again, people in the UK managed to vote Kerry Katona the UK's Celebrity Mum of The Year - twice!

No doubt Channel Ten would've preferred this particular story to stay quiet: Biggest Loser host Ajay Rochester (who is still contracted to the network) is headed to court next week to face 23 charges of fraud.

Yes, 23! Well done, Ajay, nice work for the blue team there.

Rochester, 39, is facing nine charges of receiving a financial advantage from a Commonwealth entity and 14 of dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage.

The TV personality, who has cultivated her celebrity status through penning several weight-loss books and fronting reality show The Biggest Loser, will begin the challenge of overcoming the next super-sized hurdle in her life on Tuesday.

While official documentation on the 23 charges is limited at this stage, Confidential understands they pertain to a period in Rochester's life which pre-dates her employment with Channel 10.

The Tele then goes on to use the phrase "larger than life personality" - kicking goals as usual!

Surprising that they didn't also find a way to fit in a few zingers like "Ajay is in big trouble" and "large amounts of legal issues"; really, why stop at one pointless dig at a famous woman's size, guys? Keep it coming!

News to make thousands of shitty fantasy writers hurriedly file their first drafts away in safe deposit boxes for the inevitable day when they are touted as the new voice of a generation: an 800-word Harry Potter "prequel" scribbled by author J.K. Rowling has sold for £25,000 at a charity auction.

Thirteen writers and illustrators donated original short stories on notebook-sized pieces of card to Waterstone's book store chain, which sold them to benefit English PEN, which champions freedom of expression, and Dyslexia Action.

Rowling's tale accounted for more than half the night's proceeds of 47,150 punds sterling ($A98,116), although it could yet be considered a literary bargain.

In December, a hand-written, illustrated book of wizardry by Rowling fetched 1.95 million punds sterling ($A4.06 million) at another charity auction, nearly 40 times its expected price.

"I had great fun writing the card and I'm absolutely delighted that it has raised 25,000 pounds for two such worthy causes," the 42-year-old said in a statement.

It's only the fact that it was for charity that stops me from going on a Falling Down-esque spree at my local McDonalds while screaming "THERE ARE BETTER THINGS TO SPEND YOUR MONEY ON, PEOPLE!!"

And I know she's still J.K. from the block, but do you think there are ever times when Rowling rolls around on her bed, naked, in a pile of $100 notes?

Since everybody seemed to have such a lark the other day either defending Brisbane or trying to make the claim that their home state actually reads more nonsense journalism than yours does, I feel it's only right to continue this idiocy statistical research by proving, sorry, providing another insight into the average Brisbane Times reader:

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen of the jury - I rest my case.

(And, yes, I did leave off #4 and #5 for comedic effect, because, you know, that sort of massaging of the data is what wins Walkley Awards!)

If it isn't already sad enough when a person's health begins to suffer in their twilight, it's worse when said person is a public figure and those close to them start squabbling over the details and issuing conflicting press statements.

Such is the case with entertainment icon and Friend Of Bert, Don Lane, who has not been well lately, and is either suffering from dementia - if you believe his friends - or is just in an aged care facility - if you believe his manager.

Lane's long-time friend, radio personality Chris Kearns, announced today on radio station 2UE that the 74-year-old entertainer had dementia.

But Lane's manager Jayne Ambrose flat-out denied the claim, saying "certainly that is inaccurate."

"Don is very physically fine and he is in care," Ambrose said.

Kearns told 2UE's Steve Liebmann that Lane's condition was "pretty advanced" and he soon would not remember his wife and son.

"Don is suffering from dementia -- he's not well," he said.

"He's in very good care apparently and very good spirits."

It's hard to know who to believe here, other than to say that either way it's sad news for Lane and his family and friends (and fans, myself included), so Defamer Australia sends a grab-bag of well wishes and various sympathies to Lane and those close to him.

Hopefully Bert will take his former co-star and mate a fruit basket - lord knows seeing Moonface come through the door would cheer anyone up. Or maybe that's just me.

In a breaking celebrity-dumpee cup-enlargement stunner, In Touch Weekly is reporting that Sarah Larson, the woman who spent one year as George Clooney's girlfriend before being unceremoniously relieved of all arm-candy-tendering services, was actually recovering from breast enhancement surgery when she received the life-changing news. They report:

George Clooney broke up with his model girlfriend, Sarah Larson, shortly after she had a breast augmentation in mid-May. Was surgery the final straw in their already fractured relationship?

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Jeremy Piven is important, he will have you know. He can pick up girls in a hooptie. He can cut Stephen Dorff in bathroom lines. He can tell Billy Bush to fuck off on the red carpet and his own mother to fuck off over brunch. And, as Janet Charlton reports today, he can also cast wildly eccentric and ill-suited stars in cameos on Entourage based solely on fun chatter he has with them on aeroplanes. As the piece claims:

"On a recent weekend, Jeremy rode the Planet Hollywood private jet from Las Vegas to Los Angeles and...started chatting about Entourage. [Piven] suggested that it would be fun to have [his seatmate] make an appearance...Jeremy was overheard calling a producer and telling him as soon as the plane touched down in LA."

So which diva extraordinaire tickled Piven's pickle so well she earned herself a much-needed spot on the HBO hit? Details after the jump.

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You gotta hand it to Katherine Heigl. In the last two years, thanks to plum roles in Knocked Up and on Grey's Anatomy, she's gone from the forgotten child star from My Father, The Hero (forgotten by everyone except pervs, that is) to an Emmy winning actress who's bumping her way onto the A-List. But along the way, thanks to a string of questionable PR snafus like publicly lambasting Judd Apatow and emasculating her husband Joshua at every conceivable turn, she's racked up more than her fair share of detractors. But being the determined ball buster that she is, she's not going to let a little thing like criticism get in her way of becoming her generation's Julia Roberts. Today, Variety reports that she is set to star in and co-produce Escape, based on the true story of Carolyn Jessop, whose memoir of escaping her polygamist husband became a best-seller. While it remains to be seen if this role will earn her a nod at the 2010 Oscars (if it walks like Oscar bait and talks like Oscar bait, it probably is), we can confirm that she won't be accepting any awards at this year's Emmys. As Tom O'Neil of the LAT's Gold Derby blog reports:

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Having now spent two consecutive summers curled up inside frigid multiplex screening rooms with champion switchblade-twirler Shia LaBeouf, it was really starting to feel as if the hot young actor was becoming part of the family. Which made it all the harder to watch a leaked video of LaBeouf partaking in a very real round of Five-Fingered Mexican Roulette—an extreme subgenre of backyard fighting banned in 50 states, five territories, and several Maritime provinces—in which he was heard to drunkenly goad his bromantic sparring partner with a dropping of the dreaded rainbow F-bomb. A pink-faced LaBeouf has now dispatched his right-hand flack to deliver this apology! exclusive! to E! Online:

"The videotape that is currently being circulated is several years old and captures Shia playing a game among friends in which he uses a derogatory word toward a friend," LaBeouf's rep tells me exclusively.

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Despite less-than-stellar ratings and only one season in the bank, the creators of the hormonally charged, red lipstick-laced Gossip Girl are already hard at work on putting together a spin-off. As THR reports, producers will use the original books' It Girl series as a blueprint, in which the social-climbing, scandalous and date rape-prone Jenny Humphrey character (Taylor Momsen) is shipped off to boarding school to clean up her act — just as the show's main character, Serena Van Woodsen, had been punished for bad girl behaviour like sex with BFFs' boyfriends and being an über-lush by spending a year in the supposedly rigid countryside enclaves north of Manhattan. As the producers spin their wheels hoping that GG network CW bites, we took a look back on the Boarding School For Bad Boys And Girls phenomenon on television to get a sense of how ridiculously and erroneously Hollywood writers have been depicting these New England pastures in the past:

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With Angelina Jolie in her final trimester, the last few weeks have brought an onslaught of Exclusives! that turned out to be false terribles, Bloopers! from co-stars over-spilling details about the impending birth, and most recently, Intimate Details! regarding the exact coordinates and furnishings planned for the Chosen Two's habitat. While all the murkiness adds up to a few simple assumed facts (the twins are girls, they will be born in France, and no, they have not been born yet), we still can't help being fascinated with Brad's inner architect distracting him from any fear he may be suffering regarding the fact that his nervously alluded to "soccer team" dream is kinda coming true. And when nerves and cold feet collide in the form of rumoured disputes on how to decorate the girls' nursery, there is only one person to solve the argument over "60s modern" or "classic European": a psychic, of course. What "vibe" the all-knowing cosmic guide got from the pair, and an update on that Versailles monstrosity of a nursery after the jump.

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The legend of the "James Bond Curse" took another wholly contrived media twist Tuesday, when Daniel Craig reportedly severed the tip of one of his fingers while shooting the particularly unlucky Quantum of Solace at Pinewood Studios. The injury is Craig's second in a week (he'd previously required eight stitches to close a gash in his chin), but that's just the beginning, notes The Daily Mail:

'There was quite a lot of blood and it was decided he needed to go to hospital for emergency treatment,' explained a member of the Bond production team. 'Some people are beginning to believe the film is jinxed.' ...

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Steven: The thing of it is, in this new internet era, you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. One second they're clamouring for the next Indy adventure...
Eddie: Well, no one was "clamouring" for another Axel Foley adventure, per se...
Steven: The next they're accusing you of having killed the franchise. Have you seen Crystal Skull?
[Murmurs of affirmation.]
Steven: I mean, it's not like it's even close to the worst of the four, was it?
[Beat. Crowd noise.]
Eddie: Hustle, Pau!

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After yesterday's HamburgerGate drama from the set of Transformers 2, we know how poorly things can go when an extra's big, swinging ego good intentions override his place in a production's creative food chain. As if on cue, Vanity Fair contributor Bryan Burrough — whose book Public Enemies, about John Dillinger and the founding of the FBI, is being adapted by Michael Mann — chimed in at the magazine's Web site with a dispatch from his own cameo in Mann's film. Not quite surprisingly, we suppose, the spoilerrific Burrough fared a little better with his director than one "Hedgehog" did with Michael Bay:

It was just like that hot night in July 1934. ... Then, flanked by actresses playing the brothel owner Ana Sage and Dillinger's girl for the night, Polly Hamilton, came Johnny Depp. He wore the same clothes Dillinger had worn, light pants, a straw boater, a clean white shirt. He emerged from the theatre, turned to his left, then meandered with the crowd maybe thirty feet down the sidewalk, where the FBI, in the person of the actor Steven Lang, portraying Agent Charles Winstead, was waiting.

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By now we agree that an opera is no real way to honour the legacies of either Brokeback Mountain or Heath Ledger, but at least an alternative arrived quickly. Or sort of, anyway — and only if you have a spare $1,500 (at least) to "invest": Amid Marilyn Monroe's pencil cup, fishnet stockings and other dustbin diamonds, an auction next week at Bonhams offers up Ledger's director's chair from the Brokeback set, bittersweetly redolent of oak, denim and, we hear, Canada.

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