On Monday night I watched the greatest hour of Australian television broadcast in this country's history - The Farmer Wants A Wife. Having missed the last series, I wasn't really familiar with the show, but I somehow stumbled upon the premiere of the latest series and was hooked from the get go.

What's the appeal, you ask? Oh, I don't know. Rugged country boys, desperate city girls, charming scenery, amazing one liners... call me crazy, but it all clicked for me. I haven't been this happy since I accidentally flicked through channels and found late night repeats of Playing It Straight a month or two ago.

And although I had thought the moment bachelor James asked a potential ladyfriend "So what's your most favourite tucker then?" could be the highlight of the show's time on our television screens this year, it emerges that one of the country lad lovin' women appearing on the show once appeared in the hallowed pages of People magazine, as well as starring on a saucy website! Booyah!

Monique, one of farmer Nick Brown's chosen five on Channel 9's reality show The Farmer Wants A Wife, features on an X-rated pornographic website, MX is reporting today.

The pictures, taken this year, show the Melbourne resident wearing only runners and knee pads in a bicycle-themed montage.

A sexy tribute to BMX Bandits? I approve!

Monique, 21, who has a boyfriend, also featured in a shoot for adult magazine People three years ago.

Fremantle Media, which produces the reality program, said Monique listed her occupation as "student'' on her application.

Wait, are they insinuating that posing for x-rated photos isn't typical "student" behaviour? Hmmm. You learn something new every day.

Expect plenty of idiotic commentary on The Farmer Wants A Wife in the coming weeks... until I get bored.

Shock jock Alan Jones has just announced to the media that he has prostate cancer.

The talkback king said he would take time off work to undergo surgery, but he would return to his breakfast slot on Sydney radio station 2GB when he had recovered.

Jones said he had been diagnosed with the cancer after undergoing a biopsy and would require an operation in coming weeks. He would be off air for several weeks while recovering, he said.

"The prospect of full recovery is very significant," he told media gathered at the Macquarie Radio studios in Sydney.

Elderly bigots across Sydney will no doubt be relieved to hear that. In all seriousness though - cancer sucks so I wish him all the best during this difficult time.

"Cancer sucks". Wow. Eloquent, huh? Why the Cancer Council haven't asked me to join their marketing team is beyond my comprehension. Still, you know what I mean. Get well soon, Alan, so I can happily go back to bashing my head against a wall when listening to you on air!

Briefly in the last flurry of post-show Australia's Next Top Model news, Melbourne girl and second runner-up Samantha Downie, who many were surprised to see booted in favour of Demelza, has already signed to Priscillas (i.e. the agency that takes on the winner) and booked her first campaign, presumably before Demelza has even had her post-party Berocca.

From the Herald Sun:

The Melbourne Uni student emerged yesterday as the dark horse of the contest after it was revealed model agent Priscilla Leighton Clarke signed her weeks before the program ended. Downie is the face of designer Gail Elliott's brand, Little Joe.

Elliott, who befriended Cindy Crawford, knows what makes a top model.

"She told me I was her favourite, and not to worry about coming third because my career was going to go just as far," Downie cooed.

Well, just as far as what - a hurried Vogue shoot, maybe a Just Jeans catalogue, and then a spot on Where Are They Now? in ten years time? Don't sell yourself so short, Sam.

· P. Diddy couldn't be more excited about Hancock: the first legitimately mainstream black superhero! (Don't point out the drunken loutishness—he's happy as a motherfucker and we'd like him to stay that way.) [PaulScheer.com]
· "Angelina Jolie is way too thin to be an action hero!" says whoever ABCNews.com could find to offer a quote corroborating their Angelina Jolie-is-too-thin-to-be-an-action-hero story. [ABCNews.com]
· Take a tour of the insanely huge Brooklyn mansion Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany are leaving, and the insanely expensive TriBeCa loft they're moving into. [ONTD, The Real Estalker]
· Wesley Snipes can travel to London and Bangkok to shoot two movies while his Totally Insane Tax Avoidance Trial of the Century appeals are processed. [Yahoo/AP]
· Here's photo evidence of Brett Ratner holding one of his five Big Penises. [VMan]

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It didn't take long for Katie Holmes to prove she cannot compare to Nicole Kidman when it comes to Broadway appeal. Months before she even sets foot on stage, Tom Cruise's replacement wife is striking out at the box office, managing to sell only $1 million worth of advance tickets to her September theatrical effort in All My Sons. That may sound like a decent take in the world of steadily declining Broadway sales, but it doesn't even come close to Kidman's number, which was $4 million. So why the distant gap in interest between seeing Holmes hack through Arthur Miller and Kidman feign sex live? It's not just a matter of full-frontal cartwheels...

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I remember the first time I heard about Megan Fox. "Man, this chick has it all," I thought to myself. She's hot, not a terrible actress, uh... did I mention hot? In fact there was only one problem with her. Her fiancé was a douchebag. And not just any douchebag, but Brian Austin Green! The whole B.A.G. affair was such an affront to my sensibilities that it tainted Megan Fox as a whole. She couldn't be that great if she was into a dude who not only devirginized Donna on 90210 but also released a terrible rap album entitled One Stop Carnival. But now that's all changed, thanks to this little tidbit of information: Megan Fox has called off her engagement to Brian Austin Green! [cue Handel's Messiah, ring church bells, light fireworks]

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Apart from the obvious outcry over Demelza "Bully" Reveley taking out the crown, the biggest hoo haa following the Australia's Next Top Model Cycle 4 finalé has been about Jodhi Meares' no show as the host of the finale.

It's a bit of a moot point, as Charlotte Dawson proved (again) that she's the better, funnier and more capable host, but really, if Meares is getting the mad bucks to be the face of Australia's Next Top Model, surely she can take some Rescue Remedy and bring herself to face a live audience?

Apparently smarting from the backlash, Meares has had a rep talk to the press, because evidently she's afraid of that, too.

"From the beginning Jodhi never agreed to do a live show of that scale," Ali Hainsworth said.

"It needs to be put out in the open because to throw something like that on someone wasn't entirely fair."

Uhh, that may be the case, but a casual viewing of either Cycles 1 and 2 of AusNTM or, like, every single Cycle of America's Next Top Model would reveal the obvious point that the grand final is always "a live show of that scale".

Those friendly folk over at the Daily Telegraph have helpfully assembled a few YouTube highlights of Jodhi's "work" at last year's grand final.

And seeing as our "C'mon Tiny Mouth" campaign for Alex to win the gong didn't go so well, we'll be doing nothing similar to try to get Dawson the hosting slot full-time next year in case we jinx her, but let it be known that I reckon Charlotte Dawson is the bomb shit.

"Our" Naomi Watts is apparently expecting another child with her partner Liev Schreiber - I say "apparently" because the ever reliable Us Weekly has the "exclusive", and any "exclusive" that doesn't "exclusively" involve the words coming "exclusively" out of Naomi Watts' mouth is to be taken with a fairly large grain of salt.

So, "exclusively", here's the word from the mag:

Us Weekly has the "exclusive", saying Naomi Watts, 39, is four months pregnant. The couple's first child, Alexander "Sasha" Pete, is 11 months old.

When she was pregnant last year with her first child, her partner, Schreiber, 40, didn't confirm the news until he casually told Conan O'Brien, "Yes, I'm going to be a dad."

Naomi's rep told Us she doesn't comment on her client's personal life.

See? Your story is on shaky ground when even Confidential calls it an "exclusive" (i.e. with the sarcastic Clerks-esque inverted commas).

So, Defamer Australia tentatively congratulates the happy family, with the small print on the congratulations reading "These warm-hearted congratulations become null and void if Us Weekly's exclusive turns out to be total rubbish".

It's only fair, really.

Rescued from the precipice by the courageous members of NYPD's Anti 'Former Child Stars Trying To Score in a Park From Some Homeless Dude ' Vice Squad, Tatum O'Neal has finally learned what her sentence will be for trying to drown her Scottie-losing sorrows in the arms of her former lover, crack. Brace yourselves. This is not pretty:

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The upcoming remake of Beverly Hills: 90210 is continuing the process of putting its out-of-work alumni back in business. Spurned by producers for just being her normal bratty self back in 1994, Shannen Doherty is reportedly in talks to join Jennie Garth and return the characters that launched each of them into the zeitgeist back in the early `90s. But despite Shannen and Jennie's overenthusiastic acknowledgment that they've got nothing better to do, not every cast member is so eager to pull the trigger and willingly euthanize their own careers. Which stars are only contributing to the remake in off-screen roles, and which are phoning in Hell Nos from Italy as they shoot far more important Hallmark Channel movies, after the jump.

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What took Hollywood so long? Tim Russert died on June 13th and they're only just now announcing plans to make a movie about his life? On July 2nd? Come on, people, that's 19 days. Used to be a movie like that would get announced under a week after the tragedy. Summer must be making everyone lazy.

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Daniel Radcliffe has got to be sick of playing Harry Potter already because he's starting to talk all kinds of crazy talk about the upcoming 6th installment (feels more like the 100th) of the series, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, to make it sound more exciting. In a recent interview with Empire Magazine, Radcliffe went so far as to say, "There's a fair amount of sexual energy and drug parallels. We have a couple of Trainspotting moments."

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While most of her employment opportunities of late have come from Down Under in the capacity of a celebrity shot-girl for hire (do they swirl down your throat in the opposite direction, we wonder?), Tara Reid has apparently also been keeping busy on our own shores, gearing up for an exciting new reality show. (We see no mention of it on her IMDb page, so we'll assume the first season of Tarafied: Celebrity Foreclosure is a staight-to-web venture.) In the above TMZ segment, one of the scripted verité sequences requires the frequently botched actress to enter formerly fashionable Hollywood social establishment Hyde. One of TMZ's stanchion-shackled documentarians then helpfully offered some improvised crowd noise—which leads, for some reason, to the frustrated crew repeatedly pointing out his Asian heritage: first disparagingly, then, as a means of bridging the paparazzo/Z-list-entourage divide. Oh, let's just let TMZ's Great and Powerful Harv explain it. Roll it, Harv!

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The buzz on the streets has been that Heath Ledger would deserve a posthumous Oscar for his work as The Joker in Christopher Nolan's latest Batman flick, The Dark Knight, but it's only been recently that critics and assorted media have actually seen the film - and now the buzz is even stronger.

In particular Peter Travers' Rolling Stone review, which is pretty much the biggest rave I've ever read (and Travers isn't usually prone to hyperbole); on top of that, industry notables like Kevin Smith are also starting to join the call.

Travers said Ledger "is mad-crazy-blazing brilliant as the Joker".

"If there's a movement to get him the first posthumous Oscar since Peter Finch won for 1976's Network, sign me up.

"Miles from Jack Nicholson's broadly funny take on the role in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman, Ledger takes the role to the shadows, where even what's comic is hardly a relief."

Peter Finch (also AUSSIE! AUSSIE! AUSSIE! - and, for those of you who have FOR SHAME not seen Network, is the shouting/pointing dude Defamer Australia uses in our television 'industry' stories) has so far been the only posthumous Oscar winner (others have been nominated) and beat Robert De Niro (Taxi Driver), Giancarlo Giannini (Seven Beauties), William Holden (Network) and Sylvester Stallone (Rocky) for the gong.

Cheery news today for Our Kylie with news that the pop princess, unable to capture the hearts of the Americans but still firmly clutched to the collective bosoms of the Brits, is receiving an OBE from the Queen today.

Kylie, along with TV personality Michael Parkinson and Lord of the Rings star Ian McKellen are among a glittering list of film and sports stars, business leaders and ordinary citizens named in the Queen's New Year's Honours list.

The 40-year-old singing sensation still calls Australia home, but said England was her "adopted" country.

"I feel deeply touched to be acknowledged by the UK, my adopted home, in this way," she said earlier this year, adding the honour was a surprise.

"This last year I have felt so much love and support from everyone as I took greater steps back into the public domain."

Awww, my icy heart is melting as I type. How will Kylie celebrate such a momentous occasion in her life? My money's on a bender with Natalie Imbruglia if the past is anything to go by.

Not only is the all-American cast of I Survived A Japanese Game Show required to insert themselves weekly into a variety of life-sized pachinko machines, but the premise of the show is such that they are deprived of the familiar comforts of their homeland. That leads to all manner of East-West culture-shocks—the kinds that until now could only be adequately captured by a Sofia Coppola movie—and proverbial hilarity ensues. In the clip above, chaperone Mama San prepares a Japanese breakfast feast for her fabulous-cash-and-prizes-loving houseguests. Trussville native Justin dives into the adventurous culinary proceedings as if it were a bonus-round Velcro wall; sometimes, however, even the most open-minded and -stomached of intentions can be sidelined by the garnish byproduct of a carp's Brazilian.

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Up until the point where filming began on Planet Terror, Robert Rodriguez's career was flying. Long considered one of Hollywood's more prolific directors (11 directorial credits between 1995 and 2005), the auteur specialised in churning out FX heavy (yet, comparatively speaking, low-budget) B-films that ended up being very profitable for both himself and the studios that released his pictures. But Rodriguez's life and career began to fall apart as he began an on-set relationship with his lead actress in Planet Terror, Rose McGowan, a relationship that not only ended up costing him his marriage but also one that seriously derailed his career. Most recently, he had been pushing to get studios interested in his $70 million remake of Barbarella which, natch, would star his new soul-draining harpy love interest. However, nary a studio in the world was willing to take a risk on a movie with that budget that had Rose McGowan as a lead (nor would they touch Red Sonja or Women In Chains!, two other projects he tried to secure financing for with his flame in the lead). Now, it appears that the friction between Rodriguez's personal and professional lives landed the pair an all-expenses paid trip on the Splitsville Express. According to Page Six:

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I'll admit it, I thought Hancock looked pretty cool. It's got a fun premise, a great trailer, good effects, Will Smith in full-on superstar mode, and even Jason Bateman. In short, it seemed like the perfect summer entertainment. Then, a few weeks ago that Variety review came out, and all was not well. Todd McCarthy said "this odd and perplexing aspiring tentpole will provide a real test of Smith's box office invincibility." Suddenly Hancock seemed a little shaky. If Hollywood's hometown paper didn't love it, who would? Well, opening day has finally arrived, the rest of the critics have weighed in, and it seems that Hancock is not just bad, but a big steaming pile of shit. It managed to scare up a scant 34% at Rotten Tomatoes and that's only slightly better than Drillbit Taylor! Stick around after the jump to read a collection of the prickliest critical barbs.

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If you've been longing for a re-pairing of rival NASCAR champions Ricky Bobby and Jean Girard, only this time in something a little more fog-enshrouded, well, then, hold on to your pipes: It was announced today that Sacha Baron Cohen and Will Ferrell will star in the working-titled Sherlock: Elementary Deductions For Solving Puzzling Murders Throughout Queen Victoria's London in a Deerslayer Hat—an updating of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic mysteries. From Variety.com:

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You know what the best part about dating Kate Hudson is? Not the fun beachside lunches with a jolly Goldie Hawn and doting "unidentified males." Not the late-night games of Pin The Tail On The Boob with 9-year old Ryder. Nor is it collecting your winnings from that bet you made with Owen Wilson about who could land the ebuillient blonde. No, the most enjoyable benefit to following Hudson around town and forcing grin after grin is the dynamite opportunity to finally get photographed dutifully wearing clothes coincidentally fashioned by your lifestyle-sustaining sponsor!

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Brett Ratner gets a lot of shit here at Defamer. We've called him "annoying," "a hack," even... gasp... "a bad director." But one thing we won't do is say the guy doesn't appreciate fine literature. Why, according to Page Six, Ratner was the biggest star at an LA book signing the other night. Of course, that book was The Big Penis Book. And Taschen, the publisher, says it's "profusely illustrated with over 400 historic photos of spectacular male endowments."

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You could slog, like we did, through Variety's mind-numbing accounting of which actors sided with the AFTRA agreement reached several weeks ago, which are aligning themselves with the cantankerously unbending SAG, and why. But wouldn't it be easier just to look at their accompanying Venn diagram, and get some instant bearings on where your favourite stars' guild loyalties lie? To spice things up, you can also pit the two sides in a variety of competitive scenarios far sexier than squabbling over pension and health contributions and terms. Which side would win a beach volleyball tournament? A kill-or-be-killed island survival week? A dance-off? A bathing-suit pageant? (George Clooney can either be applied to both teams, or neither. Peter Bart can only participate inasmuch as he likens any particularly satisfying victories to famous U.S. wartime battles.) Have fun!

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Is it possible that one of Hollywood's biggest comedic stars — who has had handlers and publicists coddling him with tales of his own greatness for years — has actually developed some self-awareness? Shocking as it may seem, it sounds like that's what's going on with Eddie Murphy. For example, why is he making a fourth Beverly Hills Cop movie? Not because of something so crass as money, but because "the third Beverly Hills Cop was horrible! I didn't want to leave it like that. The first two were cool and the third one was shitty. [Let's] get the franchise fixed again, clean up this old mess and do a good movie."

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There are at least 140,796,667 lessons to be taken from the recent Sex and the City movie phenomenon, starting with the one about how an obsessively beloved TV series revolving around a tight group of Manhattan-based besties could make the successful transition to the big screen four years after leaving the airwaves. Now, reports U.K.-based Hollywood-scoop-service the Daily Mail, the varyingly employable stars of NBC's behemoth hit Friends are prepared to take their hanging-out-in-a-fake-looking-coffee-house adventures to the next level:

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Judd Apatow is the first to admit that he makes "dick movies with heart," and his latest project is no exception. It's a relationship saga set in the world of stand-up comedy, and as he explains, "It's not a big high-concept movie. It's hopefully going to be a very, very funny drama."

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Twice now, we've dangled before you the magnificent prospect of Angelina Jolie delivering two more blob-angels to her growing lineage. Both stories turned out to be wrong—the last of which left us so disappointed, we found ourselves tormented by anxiety nightmares on the topic. (One particularly harrowing scenario involved the Wanted star in stirrups as she shot out two genetically flawless newborns, who somehow managed to curve around a suspended pig carcass and land gently in adjoining cribs on the far side of the room.) In any case, it appears we are inching towards some perfect-baby-making resolution here:

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