Behind Big Brother announced it, the news outlets are running with the story, and we just received an insider email from a Big Brother connection confirming it as true - Big Brother has been cancelled by Channel Ten.

Were radio duo turned television hosts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O the kiss of death for the Big Brother franchise, or was the loss of Gretel Killeen more to blame? Did the downhill slide kick off after the debacle that was Turkeyslapgate? Or was it over and out for the Gold Coast based reality extravaganza when Lefty Tim was robbed by the Logans during the 2005 finale (no, I'm still not over it)?

Who knows. All we can be sure of is that the last few years of the program have felt like producers were going through the motions, and audiences were slowly but surely finding better things to do than stay in and watch sun-loving bogans party pashing in the spa and talking rather ignorantly about world affairs.

The show's ratings have been poor since radio jocks Kyle and Jackie O replaced previous host Gretel Killeen as the faces of this year's series.

Big Brother was even beaten in the ratings by Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan's Budget speech in May.

Ratings bounced back to more than 1.4 million this week with the appearance on Wednesday of former Playboy Bunny Pamela Anderson.

Look, Pamela's appearance on the show absolutely worked for me - she was great, charming, and funny - but it wasn't ever going to be enough to redeem the show in the eyes of the viewing public.

Rumours that the show will return in 2010 may thrill some fans (and chill the blood of Big Brother haters...) but whether a year's break will be enough to reinvigorate the program remains to be seen. That said, a hiatus was something I suggested earlier this month - relax, kittens, I'm not egotistical enough to think my daft memo to Big Brother producers was influential in any way - so fingers crossed my other suggestion (Charlotte Dawson as host! YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO!) is taken on board as well.

I suppose the big question is - how on earth are Channel Ten going to fill their schedule between April and July next year? M*A*S*H re-runs? They'd better not invest in local drama, or I may very well pass out in shock. I suggest buying up as many cheap reality shows featuring Jillian Michaels as you can get your paws on, dudes.

Vale, Big Brother. We knew you all too well.

Surely they must've seen this one coming - Pamela Anderson, in the country to film a stint in the Big Brother house, and apparently paid loads to do so - has continued her animal rights campaigning for PETA while down under, requesting meetings with Kevin Rudd to discuss live exports, and so on.

But, somewhat deliciously, her main target is KFC, otherwise known as one of Big Brother's major sponsors.

Suddenly BB are wishing they'd gone with Tara Reid.

Less than five hours after arriving in Australia yesterday, the 41-year-old ambassador for animal welfare group PETA announced that tomorrow she would deliver a letter protesting KFC's treatment of chickens to a Gold Coast KFC outlet.

The letter and accompanying video - addressed to Albert Baladi, the managing director of KFC's Australian parent company - claims the fast food chain's suppliers scald chickens to death in defeathering tanks.

The serial Playboy bunny admitted she had agreed to appear on Ten's reality TV show because she was being paid "a lot".

"Much more than I'm worth. I had to come. I can't believe it," she said. Asked if her pay cheque of was in excess of $500,000, she replied: "I don't want to say how much, but it was a lot."

After proving she had little to contribute to the film or starfucking industries, Jessica Simpson finally realised she should keep her pretty-but-pretty-dumb mouth shut for the time being and instead let her t-shirts do the talking, angering PETA in the process. Though the feisty baby seal saviors have their fair share of enemies, they've also impressively managed to get celebrity spokespeople like Alec Baldwin and Eva Mendes to embarrass themselves in public by demanding the public do drugs (Baldwin) or taking off their clothes in the name of fur (Mendes). So naturally, Simpson's public cry for attention irked PETA's most compassionate celebrity nudist, Pamela Anderson, who called her fellow talent-challenged blonde "a bitch and whore" on a radio show. But this is far from the first time Jessica has ruffled another starlet's feathers just by being Jessica. We took a look back at the many ways Simpson has made herself a household name not by selling records or movie tickets, but by starring in her own personal Catfights franchise.

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Pamela Anderson is planning yet another small-screen comeback, but this time she's throwing out the scripts and going the reality route. The E! network —where they hand out shows to just about anyone with a sextape (or that sleeps with the boss)— is set to debut the half-hour Pamela this summer. The tagline? "The real woman behind the famous breasts" [Ed. Note - We would've gone with "The real woman behind the fake breasts", but that's just us]. As loathsome as this sounds, it's admittedly preferable to watching Anderson attempt to act (remember Stacked?), especially if E!'s cameras where there to film Pammy's behavior at Hugh Hefner's 82nd birthday party the other night.

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Pam Anderson and husband Rick Salomon are due on our sunny shores any moment now, with the pair apparently deciding the couple that gambles together stays together. ("Not so!" - Ben Affleck & Jennifer Lopez). Actually, it would seem gambling is what ignited their love in the first place!

From news.com.au -

The on-again-off-again couple's people contacted Crown this week requesting a berth in the Aussie Millions Poker Championship be reserved for card shark Salomon.

Salomon is said to be a definite starter in the tournament, with an appearance fee being negotiated yesterday to bring Anderson out.

...

The tournament's main event starts on Monday, with many local and overseas stars including Michael Vartan, Jennifer Tilly, Shannon Elizabeth, Shane Warne, Mark Philippoussis and Joe Hachem forking out $10,000 for a shot at the $10 million prize pool.

Anderson said last year that she and Salomon - the ex-hubby of actor Shannen Doherty and Paris Hilton's sex tape co-star - took their 17-year friendship to the next level during a poker game.

"I left the table and my driver played in my place," she said.

Anderson said she returned to find herself more than $280,000 "in the hole to Rick".

(bites tongue)

"Rick, being the gentleman, said he would wipe my debt if I gave him a kiss, so I have to thank Vegas for our relationship switching gears," Anderson said.

The couple wed in the casino capital in October.

We look forward to hearing/making up delicious gossip regarding card shark celebs from Monday onwards. We dare say the odds of Shane Warne having a crack at Pammy are rather good.

It's the story no one saw coming: Pamela Anderson's marriage to Rick Salomon may have actually lasted for two whole months. The mésalliance between the erstwhile amateur pornographer and the erstwhile amateur pornographer with a career is (maybe) over. The couple came together trailing a combined four failed attempts at matrimony in October, and will be walking away with three each...unless they don't! Reports CelebTV.com:

Depsite her pending divorce petition, Pam seems to be waffling about whether Salomon will be included in her future.

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Never one to let a couple of butt-rocker mistakes in her past scare her away from true happiness, serial matrimonialist Pamela Anderson has again tied the knot, this time to longtime friend Rick Salomon - best known as the adventuresome protagonist of 1 Night in Paris - in a quickie reception Saturday night in Las Vegas:

The pair tied the knot Saturday night in Las Vegas at the Mirage Hotel before Anderson's children and members of her family, sources confirm to PEOPLE.

A conventional marriage it wasn't, as the nuptials actually took place in an hour-and-a-half between Anderson's two magic shows.

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· This is what you're missing out on if you ever make the mistake of changing the channel from QVC.
· Even in Bali, Mel Gibson can't get "sweaty" and "bleary-eyed" without somebody sticking a camera in his face. Will this man never know peace?
· Who could've guessed that astronomers would be Star Trek fans?
· It appears that Pam Anderson's relationship progressed at least as far as the drunken-marriage-license-filing stage.
· The Flight of the Concords on the best part of fame: "Jemaine went to the Viper Room the other night, got to the door and the woman said, '$10, please.' Then somebody turns to her [mimes whispering] and she goes, '$5, please.' That's my favourite experience. Not free, but celebrity discount - half-off entrance to a club."
· We knew we'd seen that Spector look somewhere before.

With Lindsay Lohan still in threehab exile in the mountains of Utah, Paris Hilton's publicists actively selling the idea that she's turned over her life to , image-rehabilitative, begrudging acts of charity, and Britney Spears likely tied up with court-ordered child-neglect-reduction classes, Page Six officially nominates Pam Anderson as its Great White Trainwreck Hope, betting that her "increasingly wild behaviour" will fill the void created by the Big Three's temporarily lower profiles.

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Even though the above video lacks conclusive evidence that Pamela Anderson's nipple was briefly visible on last night's episode of Conan, its Zapruder-like examination of the footage is amazingly effective in making us aware of how many precious seconds of our lives we were wasting trying to catch a split-second glimpse of a famous person's areola. We were especially ashamed about the state of our lives while expending a full three minutes trying to set the slider precisely on the :27 mark during our seventh viewing, a frustrating effort which still didn't produce the results we'd hoped for.

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