Sam Newman could take a leaf or two out of his NSW counterpart's book: NRL Footy Show host Paul "Fatty" Vautin has issued what seems to be a heartfelt apology after he made fun of a disabled man who he deemed to be "blind" drunk when the object of his 'hilarity' in fact suffered from benign epilepsy.

There's probably a few too many "mates" involved, but then again, what do I know? In the NRL world saying "mate" profusely in this context is probably tantamount to shedding tears.

"At the time I misassumed (sic) that he had been drunk and was drunk and I said that," Vautin said.

"Greg, I have since found out that you suffer from benign epilepsy. Mate, I was horrified to learn of my mistake.

"Mate, I'm genuinely sorry that I upset you and humiliated you in that fashion.

"My humblest apologies go to you and your family mate. It's just not in my bag to do that. It was simply a mistake made by me, an honest mistake," he said.

Vautin then stated he hoped Mr Stacey would accept his apology and said they may catch up in the future and share a coffee.

See, Sam? That's how you do an apology, because - oh hang on, wait. Sam Newman never apologised for being a dickhead and degrading women and humankind in general, did he? My bad.

After the last hoo haa over Australian entertainers visiting the troops overseas, it's perhaps understandable that the Defence Force is keen to make sure that everybody - troops and performers - are all clear on just what these morale-boosting visits are to entail.

They just didn't bet on adopted Australian R&B singer Amy Pearson's refreshingly frank discussion of the whole thing.

"They just told us all don't get drunk and don't have sex basically," the British-born Pearson, 22, said after briefing sessions ahead of the trip.

...

"We've all been strapped into our chastity belts before we go, that was first port of call."

Top work, Amy! Not only are your inspirational power ballads surprisingly not shit, you are also a hilarious broad! Keep up the cats!

Somewhere out there, Tania Zaetta wishes she'd hired Amy Pearson as a life coach instead of inhaling lemon detox tea.

· Wow—the backdoor compliments were really flying when Jane Krakowski took Letterman's couch last night, but luckily most of them flew over the talk show host's head. [Late Show]
· Behold: Today's unveiling of the massive Dave Beckham underwear ad on a San Francisco Macy's. If you think those bloodcurdling sounds at the beginning are bad, just wait until his Volkswagen-sized package is revealed. [YouTube]
· Speaking of which, we hear Will Smith has a similarly proportioned super-endowment in his new movie. [thelondonpaper.com]
· Robert Davis of Paste magazine and Sue Pierman of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel are about to become the laughingstock of the terrible-Mike-Myers-movie-critiquing field. [Rotten Tomatoes]
·And finally: What the fuck is Mario Lopez's problem? No—like seriously. What is up with this dude? [Just Jared]

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Do you think fiery television chef Gordon Ramsay gets sick of his "foul-mouthed" rep following him wherever he goes? Particularly here in Australia, where despite the best efforts of Kevin Bloody Wilson and friends, it is apparently still shocking for someone to spray out a few fucken shits.

Granted, he banks on it himself, what with calling his show The F Word and so on, but when I read another article about Gordon "Sweary" Ramsay, I always get a vision of Alan Rickman in Galaxy Quest being forced to say "By Grabthar's Hammer, you shall be avenged" again and again.

Take Exhibit A: this lead-in piece from the Herald Sun online:

They ambush him at International Arrivals (he's a guest at a culinary event in Sydney) and ask him about the food on the plane and with that entree, you half expect him to say "IT WAS THE F--KING FOOD OF C---TS, YOU ARSE COCKING F--K MONKEY SHIT-A-RAMAS", but instead:

When asked how he found the food on the plane, he chuckled and responded that he hadn't eaten.

Right. Bit of a letdown, then.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hopes you enjoyed the Enchanted three-fer nominated for last year's Best Song Oscar, because that was the last time a single film will receive more than two song nods in any given season — even if they're virtually guaranteed to lose against upstart Irish indies and/or pimp anthems. A rule change implemented Tuesday night says "there is no limit to the number of songs that may be submitted from a given film," but only two will get the dog-and-pony-show treatment on the Oscar telecast, thus saving the likes Amy Adams the indignity of going "stage commando" during their production numbers.

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Finally, after years of thinking good girl Anne Hathaway's sleazy (possibly ex!) boyfriend was the K. Fed to her Britney (or is it the other way around?), the formerly controversy-free actress is beginning to show the most subtle of signs that all is not fairy dust and rainbows in her world. In this clip from today's View, resident bitch-in-benevolent-clothing Elisabeth Hasselbeck asked how Anne got along with the more frequent tabloid cover flier Kate Hudson on the set of this fall's Bride Wars. And after witnessing the normally cool under pressure Hathaway struggle to grit her Chicklet teeth and pretend all was peachy keen between the two leading ladies, we finally got some visual confirmation of the rumours of tension between Hathaway and Hudson that we've been hearing about for months. Watch Anne's true colours fly after the jump.

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A Defamer operative sends disturbing word from the Chicago set of Michael Mann's Depp-as-Dillinger drama Public Enemies, where assistant best boy trainees and part-time bagel replenishers are now jockeying for a spot at the film's unusually exclusive wrap-party for "deserving crewmembers." We hear the 40-work-day minimum isn't stopping some serious last-minute politicking with the unit production manager and even with Mann himself, whose loyalty to well-connected extras has nothing on his famous weakness for sheepish, sad-eyed honey wagon drivers. The full text of the letter follows the jump. Best of luck to everyone in advance of that Friday deadline!

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If Charlie Kaufman were approached to reignite the long-stalled career of Belgian action hero and gameshow-erection-haver Jean-Claude Van Damme, it might come off a lot like J.C.V.D.. In it, he's called upon to play a loose version of his own, frequently maligned persona—blow-Hoovering warts and all—and the turn has been described as everything from "subtle, funny, and capable of self-deprecation" to "not only touching, but troubling and moving too." And those are quotes from real critics—not Van Damme himself! We've included a pivotal scene above, in which real J.C. plays movie-J.C., discussing the factual accuracy of the character of movie-within-a-movie J.C. on the set of a J.C. biopic. Not mindfucked enough yet? Well, what if we told you that a secret portal at the back of the ladies sportswear department of Les Galeries Lafayette allows the traveler to view the world through Van Damme's eyes, before being unceremoniously dumped somewhere along the Port of Antwerp? (Just kidding. We don't want to see that end up on some J.C.V.D. synopsis on IMDb.)

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We're not sure how many impatient fans it takes to make something "long-awaited," but we'll give Lionsgate's Angelina Jolie-starring adaptation of Atlas Shrugged the benefit of the doubt — especially now that the attached director Vadim Perelman has officially left Objectivist headquarters:

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Despite her having been in the States for some time now, many are still surprised to hear that ex-Home & Away starlet and erstwhile singing star (who can forget the powerful Pointless Relationship lyric, "The kids, the house, the dog, and the SUV"?) Tammin Sursok is kicking goals in the USA.

Well, your definition of "goals" will likely vary, but little Tammin is today gearing up for the Daytime Emmy Awards, where she is up for Best Young Actor for her role in The Young & The Restless (note: award not sponsored by The Young & The Restless).

The glamorous actor said she was still deciding which of two dresses she would wear to the big event; one is from Aussie designer-to-the-stars Alex Perry.

"I am always pretty indecisive with things like that. I will probably try them both in the afternoon and then make a decision," she said.

She said even being nominated for the award had made a huge difference to her profile.

"People are a lot more aware of who I am," she said. "It has already opened a few more doors for me."

We may scoff, living as we do in a country where ex-soapie stars are good for naught but brief music careers and ads for Spray 'N' Wipe, but she could be right - plenty of "real" actors have got their start in the soaps. Like, er, Sarah Michelle Gellar!

Along with Sienna Miller, formerly angelic soprano turned dirty pop star, chat show host and breast-feeding champion (as in, she champions it, not that she's a champion... oh, never mind) Charlotte Church is another of Defamer Australia's potential party partners; she seems right up for a large night and is a hilarious broad to boot. Even if we'd now have to party with her over a bottle of Passion Pop at the next Cry-Baby session at the flicks.

Yes, that's right, Charlotte and her rugby playing bum-chinned husband Gavin Henson are expecting again!

Charlotte Church is expecting a second baby just nine months after giving birth to her first child.

The 22-year-old singer and her partner Gavin Henson said they were 'thrilled' at the news.

The couple, whose daughter Ruby was born in September, made an announcement on Miss Church's official website last night.

A statement said: 'The couple are thrilled, as are their immediate families.'

One of the only good things to come out of this year's The Other Boleyn Girl was a tough lesson in public relations for young actresses. As leading ladies Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson took their quasi-lesbian chic press tour from S&M magazine covers to poufy-lipped faux-kisses on red carpets, the period piece will sadly be remembered only for those posters shoving Scarlett's mushy cleavage in America's collective face. But the British version of Nat/ScarJo is still trying ever so hard to emulate the strategy, getting cheeky at film festivals, hugging one another just this shy of arousingly, and yes, even copying the original pair's near-miss-kiss in public. Some visual examples, and why this admittedly less voluptuous and curvy duo may succeed where the corset-strapped Boleyns failed, after the jump.

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Despite the defiant source who today told the LA Times the DreamWorks/Reliance deal could yet fall apart, we think we'll just go about retrofitting our office anyway in preparation for the worst. Like "custody battle" worst, as Claudia Eller mentions in parsing the 'Works divorce from Viacom/Paramount: Who gets Ben Stiller? Who gets Eddie Murphy? Who gets the retiring David Geffen's parking space and the office's unparalleled catalog of faxable lunch menus? And who gets the movies?

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OK, so that didn't happen. But were you going to watch this video if we billed it as "Antonio Sabato Jr. recreates some of the most famous hood ornaments of all time on NBC's ghetto, circus-themed reality experiment?" Every time we tune into Celebrity Circus, we feel like something really awkward and sad just happened the second before—like that weird French contortionist judge lady just broke the news to Rachel Hunter she has trapeze cancer or something. Everyone's always crying and looking down at the floor and snapping at each other. Then they cut to a training video, and Stacey Dash is sliding into an MRI machine and her Hammock of Death partner is standing in a hospital waiting room, tensely explaining that things don't look good. You get the point. This is not fun! This is nothing like a circus! These Z-list celebrities clearly don't want to be there. Would you really want to told by a panel of circus freaks that you failed to maintain a convincing smile while roting 360 degrees in a little-person gyroscope? Let's face it—this was a terrible idea. [Celebrity Circus]

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Having nowhere to go but down, this summer's reality TV-infested schedule is getting back to basics, revisiting the kinds outrageous gross-out stunts spawned by early goat-scrotum-consumption adaptor, Fear Factor. ABC's Wipeout, currently previewed in promos running ad nauseam on that network, requires contestants to run a treacherous gauntlet filled with boulder-sized versions of the terrifying red dodgeballs of our youth. But G4 goes one better with their July entry into an already crowded people-doing-really -stupid-shit-on-TV field, with perhaps the greatest gag-reflex competition ever mounted: Hurl! From ABCNews.com:

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Shame on anyone — anyone! — who would dare trivialize Anne Hathaway's recent break-up with entrepreneur and check-kiting hobbyist Raffaello Follieri as anything but a natural process of hearts drifting apart under the intense pressures of careers, fame and/or state investigations. And can't a nice girl just stay friendly with her notorious ex without facing insinuations she's manipulating their relationship on the week of her new film's release? We mean, really, Page Six — what's so wrong with that?

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Sex and the City: The Movie—already a sacred Women's Studies text, pored over on campuses throughout the country as the prototypical example of early-21st Century "shoe-me" feminism—has found itself on the receiving end of some of the most petty and vicious critiques of any movie in ages. There was Rex Reed's NY Observer review, in which Reed spent the first 90 words obsessing over Sarah Jessica Parker's chin growth, and likened to the cast to "plow mules in lipstick," and Anthony Lane's subtler ("...thudding closeups of her slurping through a cocktail straw or swallowing a mouthful of guacamole..."), but no less nauseated, take on the film's middle-aged stars in the New Yorker. Now, approaching its fourth week of release, the hits keeps coming. From Page Six:

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The day after DreamWorks was deported to the Asian Subcontinent was a bittersweet one around town — unless you're Steven Spielberg, we guess, who is a few signatures away from finally sticking it to Viacom, or maybe if you're CAA, which had previously wooed the Works' deep-pocketed Indian investors at Reliance ADA to throw money at projects for George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey and a few of the agency's other heavy hitters.

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This may come as a shock, but we have some troubling news to report: it seems that the Double Dating, Non-Eating foursome of Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes and power duo Posh 'n Becks differ in one key regard. As opposed to TomKat's demure sartorial choices, from their first public motorcycle ride to their wedding attire to Katie's current desire to wear dresses with hemlines as long as possible, their British counterparts just love showing us some skin. As People reports, frosty-locked David has been confirmed to appear in yet another glossy ad campaign for Armani, in which the soccer star will continue to contort his Adonis body into poses highlighting his too-good-to-be-true physical assets. Since the new pictures coincide with recently released oddball shots taken of permanently deadpan wife Victoria Beckham for Marc Jacobs' Spring/Summer print campaign, we took a nostalgic (and arousing) look back at just how many times the Beckhams have admirably sold their bodies for bundles of cash. Enjoy the various real and fake body parts belonging to Britain's most rare creation: a real live hot couple.

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We can now joyfully report that Jamie Lynn Spears, 17-year-old sister to Britney and an accomplished children's TV star in her own right, has delivered her first child at Mississippi Southwest Regional Medical Centre in McComb, Us reports. It's a healthy girl, named Maddie, weighing in at 7 lbs., 11 ounces. New-Spears-Family-Member fun facts after the jump!

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We'll take any opportunity we can get for a furlough from our shackles at Defamer HQ, so off we go to the Los Angeles Film Festival, which opens tonight with the world premiere of Angelina Jolie's emaciated-assassin actioner Wanted. Maybe not the gritty, funded-by-credit-cards entry you'd expect from fest organizers Film Independent, but that's what the rest of the event is for; running until June 29, this year's LAFF is enticing enough for us to call in sick at least a few days, maybe even all of next week.

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Clive Barker's legions of horror fans have gotten their barbed-wire panties in a bunch. At issue is Lionsgate's release plans for their adaptation of Barker's short story, The Midnight Meat Train. Despite the story being a fan favourite, and a satisfying trailer (mmm...yuppie chops!) featuring the U.S. directing debut of Japanese horror maven Ryuhei Kitamura, new studio president Joe Drake bumped the movie from its May 15th date—which allowed The Strangers to clean up as the only R-rated horror option of the weekend. It was a curious strategy shift, to say the least, and not the least bit helped by a significant conflict of interest. Or as Deadline Hollywood Daily puts it, "Guess who was exec producer of The Strangers? Joe Drake." Fansite shocktillyoudrop.com, meanwhile, has since discovered the grim truth of what's become of Meat Train's remains:

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