Blonde Ambition: The Untold Story Behind Anna Nicole Smith's Death

Laura Demasi

Not even death can stop Anna Nicole Smith from dominating the headlines. The high priestess of the tabloid world has returned from the grave to haunt us with the bizarre details of her love life via a "tell-all" book - which, incidentally, is a superb antidote to writer's block for anyone in the business of penning scripts for the soaps.

The book, called Blonde Ambition: The Untold Story Behind Anna Nicole Smith's Death, has got the mags in a lather this week, with most of them bursting at the seams with its "sordid" and "shocking" revelations. Admittedly, it's compelling reading (if you're the kind of person who can't resist looking at car smashes) and far more outrageous and entertaining than the best episodes of The Bold and The Beautiful.

Turns out that Smith's apparently feuding leading men, Howard Stern, her "lawyer and companion", and Larry Birkhead, the father of her baby daughter, Dannielynn, were not just in love with Smith; they were - wait for it - in love with each other!

"Larry and Howard were lovers," announces NW, declaring that the "so-called enemies" were loving it up while they were both also having relationships with Smith. Not that she minded, according to the mag. On the contrary, Smith apparently delighted in the pairing, watching a sex tape (of course, this story wouldn't be complete without one) of the boys "over and over again" to get her own rocks off.

Either that or there was just nothing on the telly that day.

OK weighs in on the issue, claiming it was the first magazine to read the book. Stern and Birkhead "were in bed together in more ways than one", the mag says, revealing a plan hatched by the men to control "the potential $600 million fortune that Dannielynn stands to inherit from the estate of Smith's late husband J. Howard Marshall". For those not in the know, Marshall was the geriatric billionaire Smith married for 10 minutes when he was already half dead because she, um, really loved him, OK?

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Actually, this saga is too good for the soaps. Aspiring novelists take note - change the names to Harriet, Antony and Winston, set the story in Cambridge, make them all academics with priceless art collections and you've got yourself Booker Prize-winning stuff.

If it all goes wrong for Stern and Birkhead they could try seducing the world's newest heiress, Trouble Helmsley. It doesn't really matter that Trouble is a dog - a white Maltese - she is cashed up right now and anyone's as long they have a pocket full of mince.

Who reports that Trouble came into her $14.5 million fortune when her mum, the billionaire hotelier and notorious crankypants Leona Helmsley, died last month aged 87. According to Helmsley's will, the money is for the "estimated upkeep" of the dog, who is accustomed to a rather lavish culinary lifestyle that includes "cream cheese, vegetables, grilled chicken and fish, always served by hand".

Perhaps Trouble could share some of her dinner with Keira Knightley, who, NW says, is greatly in need of a few chicken legs herself.

"Why does Keira keep flaunting her bones?" the magazine asks of no one in particular. "Just a week after Keira revealed her bony shoulders and collarbone at the Venice Film Festival fans didn't believe it was possible for the star to get any thinner," the mag says. "By choosing a dress that showed off her gaunt chest and hollow stomach, she appeared to be actively flaunting her worryingly prominent bones." Best keep Knightley away from Trouble right now. All that talk of bones is bound to make her hungry.