Women Affairs

There are three things guaranteed to sell a story in the world of celebrity gossip: birth, death and incarceration. This year's hot list of limelight hogs queued up to face arrest ( Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, Amy Winehouse), get knocked up or adopt ( Brangelina, Cate Blanchett) encounter the Grim Reaper (Anna Nicole Smith) or bounce back from a close brush ( Kylie Minogue). One thing that rarely sets tongues wagging are high achievers - with the exception of Blanchett, who reprised her queenly role in Elizabeth: The Golden Age and is now on the throne of the Sydney Theatre Company, and Big Brother reject Krystal Forscutt, now queen of the lads' mags. Any media studies textbook will tell you that tragedy sells, says University of Sydney media and communications lecturer Marc Brennan. "Additionally, it is often when tragedies impact on celebrities that they are perceived as being all the more human - more like us," he says. Measuring the...

Anna Nicole Smith's lawyer and companion, Howard Stern, filed a $US60 million libel lawsuit Tuesday against Rita Cosby and her publisher over a book she wrote that claims Stern and Smith's ex-boyfriend, Larry Birkhead, had a sexual encounter. The suit, filed in federal court in New York, seeks $10 million in compensatory damages and $50 million in punitive damages from Cosby - who wrote Blonde Ambition: The Untold Story Behind Anna Nicole Smith's Death - and Hachette Book Group USA Inc. The book, which hit stores in September, claims that besides the alleged sexual encounter, Birkhead and Stern both worked together after Smith's death to manipulate the media and maximise profits. The suit says that the book falsely accuses Stern of, among other things, criminal lewd acts, homosexual acts, illegal possession and use of cocaine, conspiring to commit murder and kidnapping for ransom. "Defendants have exploited Ms Smith's life and death by publishing false and defa...

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...

A LOS Angeles judge has blocked the release of a 1994 video of a breast augmentation operation on Anna Nicole Smith. Superior Court Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff granted the temporary injunction last Friday at the request of Smith's former attorney, boyfriend and executor of her will, Howard K. Stern. In court documents, first obtained by CelebTV.com, Mr Stern accused the Texas doctor who performed the surgery of sending a tape showing the procedure to Thomas Riccio, a Los Angeles-based memorabilia dealer. Mr Stern said the surgery was taped without the former model's consent. Smith died of an accidental drug overdose in Florida in February at the age of 39. The surgeon, Surgeon Gerald Wayne Johnson, said he routinely recorded surgeries with the patient's permission and promised to keep the video confidential "during the patient's lifetime". Dr Johnson said he gave Mr Riccio permission to use the video after Smith died. Mr Stern claimed Dr Johns...