Saturday, December 16, 2006
At the age of 73,
Joan Collins says she's finally too old for Playboy.
Collins posed for Playboy when she was 49 to show women they could still be beautiful as they grew older.
But when asked if she'd do it again to make the same case for 70-somethings, Collins replied: "No, no no."
Collins is still proud of her body and works hard to stay in shape.
But there are two features she doesn't like no matter what she does - her knees and her elbows.
She says "they're the most unattractive parts of a woman's body."
Collins is out with a book called The Art of Living Well: Looking Good, Feeling Great.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Emap, the British media group, is to shut down its FHM "lads' mag" in the US, following a disastrous downturn in advertising revenue and a shift in consumer behaviour towards spending leisure time surfing the internet.
FHM, which offers a monthly diet of scantily-clad women, comprised most of Emap's remaining US interests. Paul Keenan, head of Emap's consumer magazine division, said: "Trading conditions in the US market have deteriorated over the past 12 months and we do not expect an improvement in the near term."
Earlier this year, Emap was forced to close Sneak, a magazine for young girls in the UK, after it found its customers were glued to their computers instead. The company sold its French magazine unit in August after profit slumped.
FHM will continue to be published in its 30 other markets, including Australia, New Zealand and the UK, where it has long been the market leader. The FHM website in the US, which has two million users, will continue.
It is thought the FHM US edition made a loss of L2 million ($5.6 million) in the first half, on turnover of some L10 million. The magazine is the number two player in the market, after Dennis Publishing's Maxim, with a monthly circulation of 1.25 million.
However, the US market is heavily dependent on ad revenues, rather than cover price sales, and advertising has been in decline - the UK market is skewed the other way around.
Emap chief executive officer Tom Moloney said last month the company was "not prepared to tolerate long-term loss makers," and had hired Boston Consulting Group to conduct an "efficiency review" of its magazines unit.
If successful this would be rolled out across the group, he said.
After the sale of Emap's French magazines unit to Arnoldo Mondadori Editore SpA, the publisher controlled by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, for ?545 million ($1.037 billion), the company returned L237 million to shareholders.
Emap had a five-fold increase in net income to L285 million for the fiscal first half, including a gain on the sale of the French unit.
Friday, December 15, 2006
A top plastic surgeon has come forward to save
Jennifer Aniston's blushes after the Friends star appeared to be walking along an unknown beach topless in an
Internet video.
The stunning eight-second clip has been whizzing around cyberspace for the past week - and even Aniston's most fervent fans have been asking, `What was she thinking?' But wholesome Aniston's good-girl image remains intact - top doctor Anthony Youn has come forward to declare the topless woman is not the actress, but a very good lookalike.
Youn tells American publication In Touch, "Their faces have an uncanny resemblance. Their noses and lips are very similar, but (the real) Jennifer has a slightly smaller chin." Youn also tells the publication that, upon scrutiny, the doppelganger just doesn't have Aniston's proportions - and appears to be much thinner than the actress. He adds, "They're just different."
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Mariah Carey has always been a bit of a fruit loop – and her unique way of celebrating Christmas only reinforces that view.
The ditzy diva says she loves nothing more than stripping off and rolling around in the snow on December 25.
And she claims it’s all part of the festive traditions in Aspen in the States.
“I like to get out of the hot tub and roll in the snow,” she told Aspen magazine.
“Somebody told me that it was a tradition in Aspen, but maybe they were lying to me.”
The star has spent Christmas at the star-studded US ski resort since 1997.
She continued: “It’s a tradition for us to have Santa Claus-looking bikinis, jump in the hot tub, and roll in the fresh snow.”
Each to their own I suppose…
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Jade Goody and boyfriend Jack Tweedy photographed each other frolicking naked in the snow.
The reality TV star, who took her two sons Bobby and Freddy to Lapland to meet Father Christmas, got up to some naughty nude fun with Jack when her children had gone to bed.
Jade, 25, told OK magazine: "We had a run around in the snow naked. The boys were in bed, so Jack nicked some candles, got the fire going and opened a bottle of wine.
"Then I went outside because it was hot and joked, 'I'm going to strip off!'
"At first Jack said, 'No you're not!' And I was like: 'I am, I am'.
"And then we both just stripped off and ran around in the snow and took pictures of each other."
Her toyboy lover Jack bragged that he still looked well-endowed even in the freezing temperatures.
Jack said: "I'm too big down there already, I'm bigger than the average so the cold didn't make any difference!"
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Pamela Anderson is once again on the cover of the
Playboy magazine.
All of you who expected to see some new nude pictures of Pamela Anderson will probably be slightly disappointed by the latest pictorial. Editors of Playboy magazine decided to publish a set of unpublished Playboy photos from an older photoshoot Pamela did for Playboy magazine five years ago.
Photos were taken by photographer
Sante D'Orazio and were already on display as a part of the Stellan Holm Gallery exhibition titled
“Pam: American Icon" in January 2005. Later some of the pictures were published in Italian GQ, and French Photo magazines.
There's also a book by
Sante D’Orazio containing this pictorial, titled
Pam: American Icon, priced at 55L. Sante D'Orazio, America’s most sought-after celebrity photographer, took
his pictures of Pamela Anderson in a one-day session in the fall of
2000 on the terrace of a mansion in Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Thirteen of Britain's most recognized topless models are posing in layers of heavy clothing for a charity calendar to aid breast cancer research.
"Calendar Girls Get Dressed for Breakthrough Breast Cancer" is a tongue-in-cheek response to other fundraising calendars depicting regular women, some of whom are not very glamorous, in various states of undress. Middle-aged women in Yorkshire, England, started that trend by taking off their clothes for a calendar to raise money for a local hospital in 1999.
Models for the "cover-all" calendar include women who gained recognition for posing topless for "Page 3" of The Sun newspaper in England. Outfits include thick wool jumpers, scarves, stockings, and coats. Poses show the models knitting, sewing, gardening and doing other domestic activities.
A spokesman for
lulu.com, North Carolina based publisher of the calendar, said on Tuesday images on many calendars were "starting to get out of hand."
Photographer Stuart White says it was a chance for glamour girls to make fun of themselves.
Models posing for the calendar are Danni Wells, Becky Rule, Mell Boorman, Peta,
Lauren Pope,
Nikkala Stott ,
Sophie Howard, Natalie Oxley, Louise Cliffe,
Michelle Marsh,
Lucy Pinder, Rihanna and Samantha Bond
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Bollywood stars
Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan are facing criticism in India regarding their recent on-screen kiss in the action film "Dhoom 2."
The Times of London reported that a criminal case has been filed against Rai and Roshan over the kiss.
Shailendra Dwivedi, a lawyer from Madhya Pradesh, filed the suit, accusing Rai and Roshen of lowering the quality of Indian women and encouraging obscenity among India's youth. Most Bollywood on-screen kisses, the Times reported, are sanitized pecks on the lips. Rai and Roshan's kiss was reportedly much more drawn out.
The Times reported that this latest incident comes on the heels of another public controversy involving a photograph of Vasundhara Raje, the woman chief minister of Rajasthan, air-kissing a woman at a World Economic Forum meeting.
Many in India are upset over what is being called the growing "Westernization" of Indian culture.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
The wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair posed naked for the British artist Euan Uglow when she was an unknown trainee barrister in her mid-20s.
For more than a year,
Cherie Blair earned pound stg. 5 an hour modelling for the 1.5m painting Striding Nude, Blue Dress, wearing a sleeveless dress open at the front.
She was required to stand still for up to an hour at a time in Uglow's freezing studios in South London. The artist later painted a second version with another model.
Will Darby, of the Browse and Darby gallery in Mayfair, who was Uglow's close friend and dealer for 25 years, said: "He wasn't pleased with the painting because it wasn't finished. We exhibited it in 1983 alongside the finished one, but after that he just didn't want to show it.
"He was friends with the Blairs and it was his wish that it would never be shown after they entered public life."
Ms Blair was introduced to Uglow by Derry Irvine, the future Lord Chancellor. She remained friends with the artist and is thought to have named her eldest son after him. As the Blairs' eminence in political circles grew, Uglow became ever more reluctant even to acknowledge the painting.
The portrait was stored at Browse and Darby until Uglow's death in 2000 at the age of 68. It was transferred to the care of the artist's estate, the executors of which include Lord Irvine, and is now held by the Marlborough Fine Art Trust.
Mr Darby said it was difficult to put a value on the work.
"I don't think anybody would want it because there is not enough of it there," he said. "Perhaps someone with an interest in politics might."
He confirmed that neither version of Striding Nude, Blue Dress would feature in a retrospective of Uglow's work in May.
No 10 Downing Street declined to comment yesterday.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Heather Mills should not be surprised if nude pictures of hers manage to find their way into the tabloids, for hundreds of family photos of her and estranged hubby Sir Paul McCartney, were found dumped in a bin recently.
The pictures, which were undoubtedly taken during happier times of the couple’s marriage, were discovered in bin bags on waste ground by British tabloid The Sun, which handed over the pics to the legendary ‘Beatles’ singer.
While one picture shows the 38-year old Mills in bed barely covered by a white sheet — with her artificial leg standing on a black stiletto shoe beside the divan, there are other in which she poses nude, showing off her bump while heavily pregnant.
There are also pictures that capture Macca’s special moments with his and Mills’ daughter Beatrice, with one set shows McCartney feeding her with a silver spoon, and another with the bare-chested cuddling his daughter, who is wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words: “My Daddy Rocks.”
The tabloid revealed that Macca was shocked when he found out about the discarded photos, and “very grateful” for their return.
“I’m very grateful to the Sun for getting these pictures back to me,” The Sun quoted Macca, as saying.