Just call him Ms. Jackson.
Staffers at a posh London hotel are buzzing about what a diva Michael Jackson has been during a recent stay there — and how he went incognito by registering as a woman.
“Jacko would certainly give J. Lo a good run for her money on the diva stakes by bringing a team of 10 security guards to look after him and his two kids — Prince, 10, and 9-year-old Paris Michael — on their whistle-stop visit to London,” reports the London Evening Standard, which says Jackson has placed two “scary bouncers” by the elevator doors on the floor he’s booked for him and his entourage to make sure that no one can get any access to him. No word on the whereabouts of little Blanket.
“We have many big stars staying here, but Michael is very fussy,” the paper quoted a staffer at the Jumeirah Carlton Tower, where the presidential suite goes for $5,800 a night. “He has a massive group with him and they are taking up the whole top floor of the place and making our jobs difficult ... because it is all top secret and we have to make sure that nobody knows he is here.”
Perhaps the point that really sparks the staff’s ire is that Jackson has been tight with the tips. “Madonna always gives us money,” gripped one. “Jacko hasn’t yet.”
Duvall’s ‘shooting blanks’There’s a simple reason Robert Duvall hasn’t had children.
“I guess I’m shooting blanks,” the “Lonesome Dove” star says in the upcoming issue of Details. “(I’ve tried) with a lot of different women, in and out of marriage. I thought of adoption, but (my wife and I) haven’t yet.”
The 76-year-old Duvall, who’s married to a woman 40 years younger than him, is older than his wife’s father. “When I met (my wife’s) father,” he said, “I don’t know whether to call you ‘father’ or ‘son’!” he says in the interview, which also appears on Details.com
Duvall concedes the reputation he has for being difficult might be earned. “A lot of people say I’m a prick,” he says, “but you have to fight for things.”
Notes from all overSome religious leaders in Trinidad and Tobago don’t want Elton John to perform in their country because they’re worried he’ll turn the audience gay. “The artiste is one of God’s children, and while his lifestyle is questionable he needs to be ministered unto,” Archdeacon of Trinidad and Tobago, the Venerable Philip Isaac, told the Jamaica Gleaner. “His visit to the island can open the country to be tempted towards pursuing his lifestyle.” ... Some are accusing Sting’s wife Trudie Styler of being a hypocrite because the eco-activist took a helicopter ride to an event rather than suffer though an 80-mile train ride ... George Clooney struggled with German for “The Good German.” “It was brutal,” Clooney told Australia’s Herald Sun. “We had a dialect coach on the set who apparently didn’t speak any German. We didn’t know. He would say, ‘That was good.’ ” But when the film was shown to German speakers, they couldn’t understand a word of what Clooney said. Director Mike Nichols, who was born in Germany and speaks the language, was called onto the set to help out. “So, for dubbing, Mike was my dialect coach,” Clooney explained. “He would say, ‘OK, say this.’ Every word of it was from Mike Nichols.”
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