Relationships, Dating & Gossip

Elle Macpherson dating convicted cocaine smuggler

2008-10-29T16:55:00.001-07:00

Aussie supermodel Elle Macpherson has a new man in her life, Brian John Burgess, 56, who she meet on the celebrity

Burgess, who happens to be a convicted cocaine smuggler, has a removal company in London called Aussie Man&Van, helped the 44-year-old model move from Notting Hill, West London, to nearby Ladbroke Grove, and became friendly with her.

He had been found guilty of drug trafficking by the NSW District Court in 1996, and sentenced to four years jail after he attempted to smuggle 2kg of cocaine from the US inside hollowed-out books.

The news about the relationship between the two came up when Burgess, who was looking at new Jaguars in a showroom in Chelsea, mentioned it.

“The salesman was an Aussie and they were getting on great,” News.com.au quoted an onlooker as having told News of the World.

“Brian was saying how he had been seeing a new girlfriend for a few weeks." He added, I've got to go, she's picking me up. Then Elle turns up in her car. I couldn't believe it,” the onlooker added.

Aussie Man&Van manager John Hess last night said Burgess’ conviction was “all in the past.”

But now has come out and said it's all not true.

In a statement the 44-year-old model and mother of two emphatically denied any romantic association with Brian Burgess who was found of guilty of drug trafficking in Australia in 1996. He was deported to England after spending four years in jail and now lives in London where he runs a removal company, according to a flurry of press reports.

“Miss Macpherson is disappointed her friendship with Mr Burgess has been so casually misrepresented for commercial sensationalism. Furthermore Miss Macpherson has a reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to her personal life; in the absence of a romantic element, the publication of the photograph and the innuendo created by it is a gross interference of Miss Macpherson’s rights,” said the statement.

The statement said that Miss Macpherson was aware of Burgess’s past conduct and also that he has and continues to take significant steps toward restoring his life.

“Any continued misrepresentation or invasion of privacy is likely to be the subject of legal proceedings,” the statement concluded.

Well, that clears that one up.

Web search finds love down street

2008-10-09T16:28:00.000-07:00

Teacher Julie McIlroy joined the online worldwide dating service Devil Called Love only to find love with a man who lived just seven houses down her street.

The 46-year-old skimmed through thousands of pictures of eligible men on the internet site. But then she spotted Allan Donnelly, 53, and was surprised to discover they both live in Cardiff and that their homes are just a few doors apart.

The couple, from Rhiwbina, are now planning their wedding next year.

Ms McIlroy, a mother-of-three, explained what happened: "I'd been a member of Devil Called Love for three months when I spotted Allan's picture.

"I thought he looked nice so I sent him a message and he emailed me back. We started emailing for a couple of weeks and I discovered that Allan was from Cardiff.

"Then I found out we both lived in the Rhiwbina area of the city - but even that's a big place."

It was not until they spoke on the phone two weeks later that she asked where he lived and they discovered they lived in the same road.

The pair had seen each other from a distance but had never met before.

"I was totally stunned," she said.

"It's an incredible coincidence but it just goes to show that you never know where you will find love.

"The dating website could have put me in touch with someone anywhere in the world. But happily Allan lives just a couple of hundred yards down the road."

The pair started dating and later went on holiday to Thailand and then to Cambodia and Morocco.

Amazing coincidence

Ms McIlroy said: "Things have gone from strength to strength - I couldn't be happier. Well they say love thy neighbour, don't they."

Father-of-two Mr Donnelly popped the question at a surprise birthday party he threw for his girlfriend at his home.

He said: "I had been on the dating site for a while when I hooked up with Julie. It was an amazing coincidence that we live so close to each other, What were the chances of that?

"But it was my lucky day - we've got the perfect compatibility. She's right up my street."

The all new dating rules for single women

2008-09-24T16:20:00.001-07:00

If single women believed everything they were told about love, they would have thrown their push-up bras out years ago.

At the turn of the millennium it was claimed that within the next ten years, 40 per cent of women would be single and living alone (cats don't count). And four years ago, relationship psychologist Max Blumberg claimed the number of eligible men was dwindling.

Today, he still stands by his gloomy statement based on years of research. 'We know women have good jobs, impressive social connections and high incomes and they want a guy to match that,' he says. 'Sadly, there aren't that many employed, socialised men out there.'

Hygiene issues

Blumberg takes the belching, uncivilised Neanderthal stereotype to another level. According to his theory, men really do need women to socialise them. 'When men are single, their hygiene levels drop and they don't keep their homes as tidy because they have no one to impress.'

He claims that many traditional male jobs are slowly being replaced by machines, so levels of unemployment among young men are rising. 'As a result, it's not a great package. Women won't touch this kind of man - unless he is particularly good-looking. Then they will have sex with him but it will lead to nothing more,' he explains.

Depressing stuff. But before you drown yourself in a large bucket of chardonnay, there is a beacon in the darkness. And it comes in the form of two New Yorkers. Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider are the creators of the The Rules, a best-selling dating bible that advises women to never make the first move or be too available, and they are coming to Britain next month to send their message of hope to the hordes of disillusioned British singletons.

'We don't believe in statistics or theories,' says Schneider. 'The night I met my husband, I was at a singles' dance and there were five men and 20 women. Previously, I had been to many parties with literally hundreds of men and few women and met no one.'

Covering everything from how to entice a man, to what not to say in a text, to internet dating site Devil Called Love, their seminars will explain why British women, like many others, break all the basic rules. We need their help more than ever. 'Because many women are successful go-getters in business they mistakenly assume they can be aggressive with men too,' adds Schneider. 'They want to ask him out, buy him dinner and sleep with him on the first date but, instead, we say women should disappear between dates and be very mysterious.'

It will come as no surprise that Fein and Schneider have had their critics for being manipulative and old-fashioned (in the past they have suggested plastic surgery if you aren't pretty enough) but the pair claim men are huge fans of their work.

'We're telling women to have more self-respect,' explains Fein, who made headlines when her own marriage collapsed, which she later blamed on bad dentistry. 'And men agree with us. They say women today are out of control and text them incessantly. Men want their space and time to pursue a woman.'

Few men left

So if you want a guy with good career prospects and a good bum, where do you find him? 'It will be a long search as most of them have already been snapped up,' says a gloomy Blumberg. A more upbeat Schneider says you should put your best manicured foot forward. 'Put on your high heels and get out there.' So if you're an educated, hygienic male, you should be pretty happy right now.

Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider are holding a dating seminar based on The Rules on October 20 at London's IndigO2

WHAT THE BOYS SAY

You should be free to pursue whoever you fancy, although an 'aggressive' pursuit is definitely off-putting. Thankfully, my wife pursued me and we now have three lovely children - and counting.

Richard, 33, Cambridge

I don't have any problem with women making the first move (I wish more did). It is 2008, after all, not 1958. But neither sex should be too available - I know my female friends would be put off by guys coming across as too keen or needy.

Simon, 31, Surrey

Once you're past the first few dates and in a relationship, it's nice when your partner makes equal efforts to initiate dates, sex, trips away and phone calls. It does wonders for a man's ego to know that his partner is as keen to see him as he is to see her.

David, 27, London

Men do like a bit of mystery and chase. I've never had a problem with having sex early on, although sex on the first date means that the anticipation goes pretty early.

Robert, 32, London

'Dance with the Devil' On Devil Called Love

2008-09-16T23:11:00.001-07:00

Despite his advancing years, actor Charles Dance - pinup darling of the internet dating service - makes a point of being in the right physical shape to shed his clothes for the cameras at a moment's notice should the need arise.

At the age of 61, it means he sets himself the sort of punishing fitness regime that would have a man half his age on his knees. On weekend mornings, he rises early at his North London home and cycles furiously to nearby Hampstead Heath.

There, winter or summer, he strips off for a bracing 20-minute swim in the unheated outdoor pool. And while some others who brave the cold water first don a wet suit, Dance thrashes up and down in his skimpy Speedos.

After a hot shower, he pedals back home, before submitting himself to exactly an hour and ten minutes of pumping iron, yoga and Pilates. His efforts have not been in vain. In recent times, he's appeared in nothing more than fishnets and a red rubber micro mini-skirt in Ali G In Da House, and completely naked (with just a pepper pot to protect his modesty) in another Britflick.

His on-screen disrobing, it should be said, does not necessarily have to be in the name of art. 'Oh, I'll do anything for money, darling,' he is fond of saying.

Nonetheless, Dance is justifiably proud of his 6ft 3in physique. Plus, of course, there is the added advantage that his buff body ensures he remains positive catnip to a carousel of younger women.

Take last weekend, for example. The still handsome star, who made his name as a series of dashing leading men in the likes of The Jewel In The Crown and White Mischief, was to be spotted, after his morning dip, in the company of a suitably enamoured younger blonde as they strolled on nearby Parliament Hill Fields.

Intriguingly, she was not the statuesque and beautiful former Gucci model, Shambhala Marthe, who has been filling the on-off role of Dance's arm candy for the past three years.

But then trying to keep tabs on the ginger-haired Lothario's tangled amorous adventures would tax the logistical capabilities of a PowerPoint presentation. No wonder Dance has developed a reputation in the theatrical circles in which he moves for occasionally casting himself in something akin to the role of smooth-talking bounder.

Certainly, he has acquired, of late, the sort of unenviable love-them-and-leave-them status that has led his showbiz chums to christen him, jokily, Dance With The Devil. And the French-born Miss Marthe, 36, is hardly alone in discovering her posh-sounding lover is not quite the gentleman he has made a career out of playing.

Witness his treatment of Sophia Myles, who starred as Lady Penelope in the movie version of Thunderbirds. The blonde Miss Myles, just 23 when she started dating Dance five years ago, was said to be 'utterly devastated' when dumped out of the blue in 2005.

She had, according to friends, been expecting him to propose - but Dance suddenly called time on their affair, as her circle muttered darkly that 'the Charles who starts relationships is very different from the one who ends them'.

Dance, it is said, had relentlessly pursued vicar's daughter Miss Myles and told her she was the 'love of his life'. But when the time came for him to move on, her friends accused her ageing lover of treating her 'cruelly and bizarrely'.

A treatment, one imagines, that might chime with Joanna, Dance's sculptress wife and mother of his two grown-up children, whom he left equally suddenly in 2003 after 33 years of marriage. Within months, he was to be spotted out and about looking very cosy with Miss Myles, whom he had met two years earlier on the set of the ITV adaptation of the Dickens classic Nicholas Nickleby.

As part of the divorce settlement, the couple, who have a son Oliver, 33, and daughter Rebecca, 24, had to sell their idyllic 17th-century Somerset manor house and Dance moved into a modest terrace bachelor pad in London's Kentish Town.

Later, he admitted to 'an unexpected series of watersheds' in the run-up to the end of the marriage, and only recently felt able to confess he was 'not the greatest husband in the world'.Miss Myles was not the first time he had been linked with another woman during the marriage.

In 2001, three years before the split with his wife, he was said to have struck up a close friendship with the then 27-year-old Emilia Fox, actress daughter of Edward Fox and Joanna David. In the immediate aftermath of the marriage, he was also reported to be dating an unnamed woman 12 years his senior.

And a few months after the split, he was seen in Barbados with Hilary Heath, ex-wife of millionaire showbusiness agent Duncan Heath. Since then he has been seen out with a seemingly never-ending procession of attractive women.

Friends of his told the Mail this week that one of the many women he has taken a shine to is former newsreader Anna Ford, whom, they say, he has escorted on a series of dates, including to the open-air opera in London's Holland Park.

None of which, one imagines, will have gone down particularly well with Miss Marthe, the 6ft 2in catwalk model-turned-photographer whom Dance met in a London fruit and veg market in 2005. It was not long before he was taking her on dates to his favourite Polish restaurant in Shepherd's Bush and on holiday to Turkey. He also sat for her as she took a series of rather flattering portraits of him.

Soon the smitten Shambhala, who came to Britain from France 11 years ago, was gushing about how the handsome actor had bought her a ring from a stall on a bazaar while they were away as a 'love token'. 'It's not expensive, but he knows my taste very well and that means a lot to me,' she trilled at the time. 'He's great company, and older men know how to woo a lady.'

Significantly, perhaps, she took to wearing the ring on her right hand. But friends say that after one failed marriage, Dance is not keen to tie the knot again. Nor is he inclined to give up his independence. Instead, he has become a familiar figure at showbusiness parties, prowling the room on the lookout for what he calls 'glamorous creatures'.

'I like women, to be perfectly frank with you,' he recently told an interviewer. 'I feel 35. I probably act 25.'

All of which has the unmistakable whiff of mid-life crisis about it. He has also taken recently to wearing trendy 'urban wear' off screen, including baggy jeans and heavy black combat boots. And despite rave reviews for his stage work, Dance, whose portrayal of the dashing Guy Perron in the acclaimed 1983 ITV series The Jewel In The Crown made him a instant heart-throb to millions of female fans, is said by friends to mourn the passing of his movie star status and once-lustrous hair.

Indeed, it's 15 years since he last appeared in a major Hollywood film - Arnold Schwarzenegger's much-derided Last Action Hero - and 21 since he starred in White Mischief opposite Greta Scacchi.

A director friend told the Mail: 'I honestly believe when Charles looks in the mirror, he still sees himself at 30.' No wonder, given his taste for a revolving door of girlfriends, Dance is making sure he stays in shape with those freezing morning dips.

Gone Astray

2008-09-15T15:20:00.000-07:00

David Duchovny hogged the headlines recently with his admission of “sex addiction”. The X-Files star has even checked into a clinic for rehabilitation.

While the news may titillate, it’s unlikely to raise eyebrows for long. After all, we’ve had a long line of celebrities – all men – over the years who have been labelled “sex addicts” at one time or another. The twist here is that there are very few who go on record and admit to being one.

Even Duchovny initially denied whispers of his proclivity. Before marrying actress Tea Leoni in 1997, he was fodder for the gossip mills, having being linked with different women. There were even stories of him attending meetings to keep his hormones in check.

He told Playgirl magazine in 1997: “I’m not a sex addict, I have never been to those meetings. It’s hurtful to my family and if I was involved with a woman in a monogamous relationship, it would be hurtful to her.”

In a case of life imitating art or vice versa, Duchovny plays a womanising single father in the TV show Californication (for which he won a Golden Globe this year). It’s due to open its second season on US television on Sept 29. Duchovny also portrayed a sex addict in the 2005 movie, Trust the Man.

But a close friend of the actor has reportedly said that it is not a case of cheating on his wife. Rather, it’s his Internet porno-mania which Leoni was aware of. That claim is still disputed by others who say it is a case of serial-adultery.

Trawling through the murky past, even as recently as April, Britain’s 65-year-old Lord Laidlaw of Rothiemay confessed to receiving treatment for sex addiction, saying he had been fighting the “disease” all his adult life.

This was after The News of the World reported his sex parties with sex workers in Monte Carlo where he lives. By the way, the “repentant” Lord plans to donate £1mil (RM6.15mil) to fellow “sufferers” for their treatment.

Couple that with British comedian and TV and radio presenter Russell Brand’s revelations last year in his autobiography, My Booky Wooky.

According to The Daily Mirror, Brand who describes fame as “a Wonka ticket to a sex factory” said he went into rehab to treat his addiction to “carnal overindulgences”. His sexual flavour was lap dancers and sex workers. He wrote of “a harem of 10 women that I would rotate” plus one-night stands and other encounters. For Brand, sex was a way to relax.

Then there’s Peter Cook, ex-husband of model/actress Christie Brinkley, who actually took an oath in court about his sexual tendencies.

During divorce proceedings, Cook testified to his obsession with pornography, and a rather pedestrian affair with an 18-year-old. ABC News reported that experts wondered if that made him a sex addict.

American actor Woody Harrelson had unflinchingly spoken about his sex dependency in the 1990s. It’s ironic that he, too, played characters linked to porn or who had sex on the daily menu, in such films as The People vs Larry Flynt, about the former Hustler (an adult magazine) publisher.

Singer Robbie Williams is noted for his sexual forages, and this purported quote from him perhaps best says it: “I’ve had sex in trains, planes, wine bars ... and quite a few car parks! I’ve got hormones, and sex is there, so why not?”

While on a world tour in 2003, an article from News of the World quoted him as saying, “I gave up drink and drugs on the tour and wanted to substitute it with something else, so I had sex.”

And there’s American actor Tom Sizemore who allegedly suffers from a condition called priapism (in which the penis remains erect even in the absence of arousal). The condition may be linked to his drug and alcohol abuse. His manager back in 2005 apparently said: “He can have sex nine times without stopping. His condition explains his sexual addiction. He’s in the midst of a massive depression, but he’s making tremendous progress.”

Speaking of record-breaking sex, the late NBA basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain claimed in his 1991 autobiography that he had bedded 20,000 women. Doing the math, if he had been banging away for 40 years, starting at 15, the cager would have needed to “score” with at least nine women every week. We’ll leave it to Ripley’s to verify this.

For many, perhaps the case of actor Rob Lowe was the first instance they remember of a celebrity entering rehab for sex addiction. This was 20 years ago when the then heartthrob was involved in a sex-tape leak. He was caught on tape having sex with two girls, one of whom was 16.

After a period with his career in the doldrums, Lowe bounced back in the Noughties, with a role on hit TV political drama, The West Wing. Now married with kids, Lowe’s past seems to have been revisited. Early this year, his 24-year-old on-and-off nanny of seven years alleged sexual misconduct on his part. She claimed that the 44-year-old had regularly exposed himself and molested her several times.

Singer Eric Benet was dumped by his very stunning wife Halle Berry after he cheated on her repeatedly. It was reported that he checked into rehab for sex addiction but he has denied that.

Many other celebrities have fended off allegations of sex addiction. Their accuser was usually their ex-spouse or partner. One of the earliest was actor Michael Douglas who was labelled as such by his ex-wife in the early 1990s. He, too, was reported to have checked into Amy Winehouse’s “second home” but Douglas said the media had twisted alcohol rehab into sex rehab. Still, it is said that in his pre-nuptial agreement with current wife actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, there is a straying fee of US$5mil (RM17mil) should that happen.

Recent additions to the “sex addict” list, courtesy of their ex-wives/partners, are actors Bill Murray, Jude Law and Charlie Sheen. A few years back it was Billy Bob Thornton. Add to that Aussie cricketer Shane Warne who was “bowling over” the ladies left, right and centre.

The public seems inclined to believe the “duped” spouses as all these men have a reputation for having roving eyes. Sheen, for instance, was already notorious for the infamous Heidi Fleiss call-girl scandal. He was also inducted into Maxim magazine’s Top 10 list of Living Sex Legends 2006, at the No.2 spot with an alleged 5,000 notches on the post.

He was beaten to the top spot by a Venetian hotel porter who had 8,000 conquests! The porter was later fired by the hotel for not concentrating on his job.

But sexual hijinks are not just confined to showbiz types. The roll-call of sexual peccadilloes involves politicians, corporate figures and any Tom, Dick and Harry.

Closer to home, who can forget the two recent “nut” cases – the two men who sought medical help to remove nuts which got stuck on their penis. They had inserted the nut in a bid to increase their sexual prowess.

What are the odds of historical and legendary figures from even way back being sex addicts, too? Would the Roman emperor Caligula, the suave Casanova or perhaps mad monk Rasputin fit the bill?

Jonas Brothers Heading For Miley Cyrus-Style Sex Scandal?

2008-09-15T15:09:00.000-07:00

Disney executives are said to be fuming over the recent bout of relationship rumours surrounding Nick and Joe of The Jonas Brothers.

The pop sensations – who wear purity rings as a sign of their chastity vow – reportedly been given a ticking off for flaunting their love lives in the press.

Teen heartthrob Joe is rumoured to have been dating The Hills actress Lauren Conrad and country singer Taylor Swift, and there has been speculation over 15-year-old Nick's relationship with Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus and reality star Kim Kardashian.

Disney bosses are apparently anxious over the stories and fear they could be hit with a crisis comparable to Miley’s recent provocative photoshoot with Vanity Fair magazine – which caused a public outcry because of the singer’s young age.

"There is a constant stream of photos, gossip and sexual innuendo about the Jonas Brothers that just isn't in keeping with their - or our – image,” an unnamed senior Disney executive tells Daily Star Sunday.

“We need to figure out how to play it all down before it explodes in our faces like it did with Miley."

Love rules the day in 'Valentino: The Last Emperor'

2008-09-13T19:56:00.000-07:00

Just when you think that fashion has no place left for venerable talents, "Valentino: The Last Emperor" arrives to give a lesson to modern style mavens.

After screening at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, this ode to Italy's famed fashion king earned three standing ovations. Valentino, long-time partner Giancarlo Giammetti and Vanity Fair journo-turned director Matt Tyrnauer were in attendance, and had walked the red carpet earlier that night.

With unprecedented access Tyrnauer serves up a fly-on-the-wall glimpse into Valentino's career and his 50-year relationship with Giammetti that's funny, poignant and filled with style. It also follows the watershed moment when the couture icon bids farewell to the fashion industry.

"I loved my career and have had a very happy life because of it. I never took one moment for granted," the icon told CTV.ca at Oasi, the site of the posh after-party for Tyrnauer's debut documentary.

"I left the world of haute couture because it was time," says Valentino.

"It was time to have our freedom. Fashion is not free. Every minute of our life was planned months ahead," adds Giammetti.

Their decision, as Tyrnauer beautifully captures, has as much to do with the state of today's fashion industry as it does with this duo's state of mind.

"The movie is emblematic of where fashion is today," says Tyrnauer. "There is a line in the movie where Giancarlo says this world isn't made for Valentino. Now huge companies and bankers are trying to invent passion with money. That's the difference between them and Valentino."

As Tyrnauer says, "Valentino started with a boyhood dream and nothing else and built an empire. When he steps down, it is a turning point in fashion. I'm glad I was there to capture it."

A movie first for Tyrnauer and Valentino

A correspondent for Vanity Fair, Tyrnaurer's fascination with Valentino and Giammetti evolved after completing a weighty insider's profile on the Italian power couple for the magazine.

"Valentino and Giancarlo had never talked about their relationship before so this was breaking news for Vanity Fair," says Tyrnauer. In fact, Tyrnauer was moved most by their human story rather than their fashion super-stardom.

"I had never made a movie before. But I knew that their personal story and all the emotions surrounding the end of Valentino's career held universal appeal," says Tyrnauer.

Undaunted by friends who dismissed his mission as "shallow," the fledling director got Valentino and Giammetti to sign on.

"To be honest I think they were a little confused by my idea largely because of the glossy TV exposure they had received in the past," says Tyrnauer.

"We thought we were making a film that fashion students would see, not moviegoers at big festival films," laughs Valentino. "Now we have been to the Venice film festival and to Toronto as movie stars. Who would have ever dreamed it?"

It's a fair question to ask.

"When I met Valentino I was 21 and he was 26. I was measuring fabrics to go off to an atelier," say Giammetti. "How could I have ever dreamed that I would have such a life or be in a movie?"

In a world where celebrity relationships are counted in days, not years, the fact that Valentino and Giammetti have stayed together for five decades also seems utterly fantastic.

Love and fashion conquer all

"This is a love story. There's no question about it," says Tyrnauer, who shot 250 hours of rare footage within Valentino's inner, star-filled sanctum. "These are two people who are part of the same person. I have never seen two individuals so intertwined before."

"What they share is beautiful," says Modwomen.com's Lulu Vibert, who orchestrated the film's Toronto after-party. "They way they are with one another is lovely to watch."

That deep connection becomes all too evident when Valentino receives the Legion d'Honneur from France's President Chirac and breaks down in his acceptance speech.

"He thanks everyone and stops. For a moment you think he's forgotten Giancarlo," says Tyrnauer. But as Valentino cries in silence the audience quickly understands that it's because of Giancarlo. As Tyrnauer says, "His words that follow to Giancarlo are as love-filled as any I have ever heard."

"I must tell the truth about something," Valentino smiles, easing back with flawless chic in his beautiful brown suit. "At first I thought there goes our privacy. I almost regretted saying yes to Matt. But watching the movie here in Toronto with the audience I finally saw it the way Matt wanted."

Now eager to do other projects, including designing costumes for ballet, Valentino says, "This isn't retirement. It's just the close of one chapter. But if you asked me to tell you what has made this wonderful life so special it has been love. For Giancarlo, for our work, for our friends. Love and beauty in even the smallest of things have made my time here a real joy."

Why Men Love 'Devil Called Love'

2008-09-05T23:01:00.001-07:00

My name is Joshua, and I love "." My addiction to the CW's drama about social-climbing Manhattan teens began innocently enough, a mere flirtation that grew into a full-blown crisis. I reviewed the pilot last fall and was ambivalent about it. I thought it was enjoyable for what it was but hardly something for me to get excited about.

By midseason, I was deeply absorbed in the catfights and class warfare and refused to miss an episode. My colleague Nick Summers, burgeoning political reporter and reputed ladies man, is not only into the show, but one day as we walked to lunch, he nearly ruptured his eardrums trying to block out the sound of my voice when he thought I was going to spill the details of a TiVo'd installment he hadn't seen.

Nick and I are not alone. My evidence is purely anecdotal, but I've found that a lot of men--straight ones, for what that's worth--have a fondness for "Gossip Girl." Of course, it's not new that macho men will occasionally watch female-skewing shows, but when they admit it, there's typically an excuse or an apology appended. Among the defenses:

The "I do it to get chicks" defense: "I once told this girl at a bar that she was the Gaby Solis of her group of friends. She was so impressed with my knowledge of 'Desperate Housewives,' she went home with me. No lie."
The "Women are from Venus" defense: "I watched 'Army Wives' once, just so I could laugh at it, y'know. Chicks and their soaps."
The "It's my girlfriend's fault" defense: "I watch 'Grey's Anatomy,' but only because my girlfriend's into it. Besides, have you seen that Sandra Oh? More like Sandra Oh Yeah!"

I've never heard one of these defenses, or any other one, from a guy who likes "Gossip Girl." Why? Because it has fully formed male characters. There's Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley), who must deal with the reality of dating his fantasy girl; Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford), the moneyed silver-spooner who struggles to break free from his rigid life of privilege, and Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick), the young rake who discovers, as rakes often do, that he's all soft on the inside.

Contrast this with "Sex and the City": in a recent essay, my colleague Ramin Setoodeh mused that the male backlash toward the "Sex" movie had to do with sexism. It isn't that, it's more that men don't respond to parodies of their gender. "Sex" was a cavalcade of comically broken men, those with bizarre fetishes, fatal flaws, mommy issues and commitment phobia. All the male characters were pencil sketches, offering little insight into how men actually think.

With "Gossip Girl," creator Josh Schwartz has managed to replicate what he did before with "The O.C.," another teen soap for which guys have an unconflicted affinity.

That is, he's done for teen dramas what Judd Apatow did for romantic comedies: he's figured out how to take a genre that is traditionally hostile to men and make it welcoming to them. And the trick is only to put fleshed-out, relatable male characters into them rather than cartoonish buffoons.

Women sometimes complain about the thin, damsel-in-distress female characters plopped into guy movies, but men don't complain about the cardboard cutouts in chick flicks, they just avoid them.

Listen up, guys: "Gossip Girl" is guy-friendly, and not just because of the eye candy (which you can find on plenty of other shows). It's because "Gossip" is the show for girls that doesn't make guys feel like morons. And if it helps get chicks, that couldn't hurt, right?

No free love

2008-09-05T22:55:00.000-07:00

As a child of the '60s, I remember all the talk about free love and the flower children made it look like everybody was doing it.

The thoughts of celibacy, chastity and fidelity were far from the minds of the hippies who were listening to rock bands and celebrating free love in the open fields of the U.S.

Where have all the flower children gone? The John Edwards affair shows that there is a high price to pay for unfaithfulness.

His lover, his precious and beautiful family and all those in the nation are suffering from his decision to be unfaithful and then to deceive the public when confronted with the information.

The moral of the story is that there is no such thing as free love. There is a very high price to pay for unfaithfulness—a price that very few people really want to pay.

Two-fifths of office workers 'have intimate romance with colleague'

2008-08-29T07:52:00.000-07:00

Research by recruitment firm Office Angels also revealed that two out of five workers, or 40 per cent of office staff, have an intimate romance with a colleague.

The average employee will write 50,000 lists of things to do during the course of their working life, receive more than 320,000 emails and have 13 job interviews.

An estimated 600 hours will be spent gazing at a colleague workers have a crush on, according to the study, based on a survey of 1,200 office workers.

David Clubb, managing director for Office Angels, said: "Day-to-day working life may whizz by week after week, but it's fascinating to see how the average person's working life stacks up into Post-it note and email mountains.

"There are so many exciting prospects available in employment today that my advice would be to take the opportunity, wherever possible, to sample new career paths.

"Ask your employer about any job swap opportunities or different responsibilities you can undertake to keep your working life exciting. Variety is the key."

A Jihad for Love

2008-08-23T21:24:00.000-07:00

In A Jihad for Love, a courageous new documentary about homosexuality in the Islamic world.

We meet a South African imam who, after revealing his sexuality, received death threats and was asked to leave the madrassas where he taught; an Egyptian who spent years in jail for "debauchery"; an Iranian who received 100 lashes and fled the country.

On a hopeful note, we meet Indian homosexuals who enjoy relative freedom to express their identities.

Director Parvez Sharma takes pains to show the wide range of Islam's attitudes toward homosexuality. Filmed in nine languages and 12 countries, the film explodes the idea of Islam as a monolithic entity with a single interpretation of homosexuality.

Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, for example, inherited their antihomosexuality laws from the British, but they have rarely been enforced since decolonization in the 1940s.

A Jihad for Love claims to be the first feature documentary to address the subject of homosexuality in Islam, and it makes an invaluable contribution. But its greatest strength - intimate portraits of individuals - is also its greatest weakness, since it provides only meager context.

A more informative documentary would have gone beyond personal vignettes to explain the history, theology, and sociology behind Islamic attitudes to homosexuality.

Beauty And The Beast

2008-08-20T03:29:00.000-07:00

The nameless hero of Andrew Davidson’s first novel is a pornographer and cocaine addict who runs his car into a ravine one night while he’s high, thinking a shower of arrows is coming at him.

The car catches fire but he survives, suffering horrific burns to most of his body. While recovering in the burn unit of a hospital he is befriended by Marianne Engel, who claims to have been born in 14th-century Germany, but who the hero has reason to believe is really just an inmate in the hospital’s psych ward.

(In what we have to hope is an inaccurate depiction of mental health professionals, the in-house shrink tips him off that she might be schizophrenic or obsessive compulsive.) Marianne and the hero become close, and during the months of his recovery she reconstructs the story of their long-ago love affair, which the hero has forgotten. She also tells him stories about other lovers. Set in 14th-century Italy, Victorian England, medieval Japan and Viking Scandinavia, these passions always conclude with the death of one or both parties.

As straight-up entertainment, “The Gargoyle” is so-so. It’s not exactly unputdownable, but it has enough unexplained details to remain interesting. Could it be true that Marianne lived in the 14th century, and how did she get to the present? Why does she now compulsively carve stone gargoyles in the basement of her house, and what have these grotesque physical forms to do with the hero’s own disfiguring burn scars? All fine questions, which build to a moderately satisfying conclusion.

“The Gargoyle” asks to be read as a profound love story. Romantic love is posited as a feeling so powerful that it endures through time and space: people who fell in love in the 1300s can turn up again in 2008 and still feel it.

Far-fetched though the idea is, Davidson does persuade us that, in the universe of this novel, it could logistically happen. What he doesn’t do is persuade us that the particular people in question love each other.

The lovers in “The Gargoyle” have the intimacy of roommates who hook up when they get drunk, not a time-defying passion. Their thoughts, feelings, conversations and affections are so unformed, so hampered by sentiment and underpowered awkwardness that the courage, endurance and understanding ascribed to them seem silly. Davidson’s lovers are dysfunctional and quirky, qualities that can look a bit like profundity from a distance, but they don’t have emotional or imaginative depth or range, which at the end of the day are the only things that can make a love story deep and wide-ranging.

“The Gargoyle” has literary pretensions, offering a crude revisiting of the “Inferno” (it begins in a wood, it ends after a journey into hell). The “Inferno” text features in the story, too, but in a mawkishly overdetermined way: a soldier with a copy of Dante tucked in his shirt pocket is shot with a flaming arrow; the arrow hits the book instead of his heart, but the pages don’t burn and both volume and soldier survive.

Behold the power of the written word. The reworking plods along heavily: Charon “stepped to one side and swept an arm to indicate that we were invited to board. Francesco nodded. ‘We deeply appreciate your generosity.’ ” And the prose can be cringingly baroque. The hero, in his porn days, had “buttocks ripe like the plump half-melons for which Japanese businessmen will pay a small fortune. My skin was as soft and clean as undisturbed yogurt.”

Like most first novels, “The Gargoyle” does some things well and some things badly, and it does lots and lots of them because the author hasn’t yet figured out which ones will work. There are passages to indicate that Davidson has a real talent for close physical description and tight storytelling. The problems come when he lingers on describing feelings and thoughts, which end up sounding thin and unconvincing.

Which leaves us with this novel’s back story. “The Gargoyle” sold for $1.25 million in the United States and is to be published in at least 26 other countries. If those figures are anything to go by, then an awful lot of people are going to be reading “The Gargoyle” this summer. And so far the bloggers and booksellers have been enthusiastic, going along with the Doubleday editors’ claim that it is “a tale of unbearable suffering and ultimate redemption, a love story that spans centuries and renders the ordinary laws of probability … irrelevant.”

There’s no doubt that readers want a tale of unbearable suffering and ultimate redemption, and a whole lot of people in the publishing industry (not least the author himself) hope that Davidson’s novel is going to fit the bill. “The Gargoyle” ought not be mistaken for a depiction of unbearable suffering or ultimate redemption, however; it is simply an entertaining novel straining to feel like something more substantial.

101 Days of Sex: How One Married Couple 'Just Did It'

2008-08-19T15:16:00.001-07:00

When most people train for a marathon, sex toys, pornography and Brazilian waxes are not part of the preparation.

However, Doug and Annie Brown’s marathon was a little different. The Boulder, Colo., couple – who had already been married for 11 years – were about to embark upon a marathon of 101 consecutive days of sex.

In the hilarious, romantic book, “Just Do It – How One Couple Turned Off The TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives For 101 Days (No Excuses!),” Doug Brown highlights how he and his wife set out to accomplish what seemed at times an impossible goal.

Recently optioned by 20th Century FOX, there is the possibility the book could make it to the big screen.

The story starts in September 2005. At the time, Doug and Annie were living in Denver, Colo., and Doug, a features writer for the Denver Post, told his wife about an unofficial club of people who had gone 100 days without sex.

That’s when Annie suggested they try the opposite.

“At first, I sort of thought, ‘That’s funny, ha ha,’” said Doug, 43, in a phone interview. “But, I know Annie pretty well and she loves a challenge. We talked about it more that night and the next morning, and I knew she was serious.”

It wasn’t like Doug and Annie weren’t having any sex at all.

On the average, they were having sex about once a week, “usually on Saturday nights,” said Doug, who still works at the Post.

Considering they both had jobs, and were raising their daughters Joni and Ginger, who are now 9 and 5, those numbers weren’t too bad, said FOXSexpert Dr. Yvonne K. Fulbright.

A 1994 study indicates that 30- to 39-year-olds are having sex an average of 86 times per year, and 40- to 49-year-olds are having sex an average of 69 times per year, Fulbright said.

“When Saturday night sex becomes routine, that is when couples need to make sure they are still wooing each other by incorporating spontaneity and novelty,” Fulbright added.

When I was around Annie in the evening, especially if I thought sex loomed (and during the marathon, it would loom over everything), arousal arrived like an intern on his first day at the firm: eager, earnest, attentive and bouncy with vigor ... Annie, on the other hand didn’t have an intern. She depended on a motley crew of part-timers who had to be called, with schedules that demanded massaging. To put it directly, I found it easier to crave sex on most nights than did Annie. Getting me in the mood, often took no more than a glance at her cleavage. Coaxing a thirst for sex out of Annie required more toil. Once the appetite arrived, though, it clamored for quenching.

Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby

“The next morning, I woke up and thought, ‘We really need to do this,” said Annie, 41, who works as a media analyst for Dow Jones. “Our marriage really needs to do this. That’s how it started.”

The marathon began January 1, 2006. They would need ways to keep it interesting, sexy. They started planning.

Annie’s ideas: Doug needed to replace his old sweatpants, the one with five pockets that he always wore to bed, with something more appealing. She would wear more lingerie and lipstick, and try a Brazilian wax.

Doug’s ideas: Annie should wear ‘sexy, thigh-high’ stockings. He would start working out. Together, they would visit the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, which Doug was covering for the Post.

The sex project, I understood (ingeniously, I might add), offered the perfect rationale for convincing Annie that viewing porno together would be worth a shot. In the context of our sex experiment, we’d do it in the name of chemistry: Just add porno, and see what happens.

“You’ve got your porno. But, now it’s my turn. Sex toys.”

“Dildos?” I said, my heart pounding.

“I’ve got to research it. But I’m always hearing about how women are using sex toys. There are sex-toys parties. It’s on Oprah. It’s supposed to be healthy. I’m nearly forty, and I’ve never even touched one.”

I nodded slowly, but my mind was racing. What sort of Pandora’s Box have we opened?

The doctor’s ideas: Keep the bedroom door locked. Lubrication – and lots of it. Doug should eat fruits, since semen is “basic,” and the vagina is “acidic.” Annie, of course, would go on a birth control pill. Male ‘vitality’ herbs couldn’t hurt. Oh, and free samples of Viagra!

The rules: Oral sex was OK for foreplay, but in order for the encounter to count, it had to be intercourse. It had to be every single day, in sickness and health (including a bout of vertigo for Doug), through good times and bad (two big fights) and for richer or poorer (the marathon would require shelling out some extra money).

The bonus: After a spectacular finish on the 100th night, “we did it again,” Doug wrote in "Love, Love And More Love."

Doug’s co-worker at the Post approached him during the marathon (yes, they included their friends and family in on their sexcapade!) and suggested the Browns might do the deed one extra night – for good luck.

Getting It On . . . And On

Annie and I stayed up late poking around on the Internet. At 11 p.m., we still hadn’t even touched each other. When we finally did, Annie looked exhausted, and while my brain was zinging from the pill, my body was shutting down.

“What do you want to do?” asked Annie, stifling a yawn.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “What do YOU want to do?”

Said Annie: “Are we in seventh grade?”

“The hardest part, no question, was the tiredness,” Doug said. “You work, you commute, you have kids, you have to clean up, make sure they brush their teeth – by the time that part of the day is over, you are just tired and ready to zone out. That was the biggest impediment, getting past the fatigue. My body wasn’t used to ‘it’s Wednesday night at 9:30 p.m. and I’m going to have sex.’”

On top of the fatigue, Doug and Annie had to treat sex with respect. They couldn’t always just flop into bed and do the deed. They usually showered beforehand to wake themselves up, and lit candles in the bedroom, which they had dubbed the ‘sex den.’

“We weren’t doing it for the sake of doing it,” Doug said. “The point was to see what would happen. We treated it like we were dating again. We started looking forward to it.”

‘Just Do It’

The marathon’s benefits were overwhelming. Although their marriage was never really suffering, the marathon had renewed a spark and reminded them of the key ingredient that some couples tend to forget about – communication.

“I really think we communicate so much clearer and with so much more honesty (now),” Annie said. “There were so many times before that we hadn’t even hugged for like three days in a row. We gravitate toward rubbing each others’ backs more. We realize how important it is to put the kids to bed and spend time together.”

We’d done it in a basement, a Las Vegas casino, a classy hotel, a Victorian bed-and-breakfast, and a yurt. We’d had early-morning sex, late-afternoon sex, and lots of evening sex. Nor will we forget the sex we had on the side of a cliff during our “training” period just prior to the kickoff of the marathon ... We’d traveled far. We knew we’d come back to our lives removed from the adventure’s rigors soon, but it seemed likely that things would be different, had to be different. We’d seen and felt and tasted so much. Adequacy no longer was acceptable: We demanded panting flesh, ravishment. We’d grown spoiled.

Even if Annie and Doug’s love story never makes it to the big screen, they are happy with the book’s success and hope its message reaches other couples.

“I would love to see this conversation in every home in America,” Annie said. “Gay, straight, with kids or without – this is a conversation that people shrink from and yet it’s so important. Once you stop making love to your partner, you become roommates. Whether it’s five times a month, or three times a month, just being comfortable with that number is most important.”

And for those of you wanting to try your own ‘marathons,’ Doug and Annie suggested starting out on a smaller scale – say, five or 10 consecutive days.

“Make sex a priority,” Annie said. “Stop watching TV and bringing the laptop to bed. Stop multi-tasking. Just listen to one another. And hire that housekeeper – even if it’s only once a year or once a month.”

Love and Romance Intimacy Is The Key To A Happy Love Life

2008-08-18T16:21:00.001-07:00

Want to perk up your love life? Well, then try and take out time to share some intimate moments with your sweetheart, suggests a new study.

The study has cited that the level of intimacy people perceived within a relationship in any given week significantly predicted perceptions of relational uncertainty and interference from a partner.

Relational Uncertainty refers to people"s lack of confidence in their perceptions of relationship involvement. In the study, the researchers took into account links between intimacy and relational uncertainty.

Denise Haunani Solomon of Pennsylvania State University and Jennifer A. Theiss of Rutgers University conducted a web-based survey to 315 unmarried college students about their relationship weekly for six weeks.

The data revealed the highest levels of relational uncertainty when intimacy was low. They found that fluctuations in perceptions of relationships are meaningful aspects of non-marital romantic relationships.

"Our results suggest that when intimacy ebbs, doubts about the relationship emerge. Making emerging adults aware of how romantic associations inevitably pose a threat to a person"s subjective well-being might help them to form more realistic romantic relationship goals," said the authors.

Pamela Anderson's Royal Love

2008-08-14T23:26:00.000-07:00

Pamela Anderson is reportedly dating a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family. The former 'Baywatch' actress has only revealed her new beau's name to a few select friends, but refers to him in conversation by the pet name she made up for him - Milk-Sheik or Milk for short.

The 41-year-old actress - who has two sons with ex-husband Tommy Lee - first met the royal on the free personals website Devil Called Love and then she visited Abu Dhabi in June with the Make a Wish Foundation.

Shortly after her trip, Pammie announced she is joining forces with the royal family to build an eco-friendly hotel in the city. Since then, the actress' new lover has visited her in her hometown of Los Angeles, where the couple were seen meeting up with friends at the Abbey, a gay bar in the city.

A source told E! online: "He is very handsome and Pammie looked very happy." Pammie - who is divorced from Tommy Lee, Kid Rock and Rick Salomon - has also been romantically linked to Criss Angel, Stephen Dorff, Dean Cain and Sylvester Stallone.

Scarlett Johansson explores dark side of love in new Woody Allen film

2008-08-10T20:57:00.000-07:00

Scarlett Johansson explores her sensual side in Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” opening Friday.

In her third outing with Allen, Johansson plays Cristina, a beautiful woman destined to “perpetual dissatisfaction.”

“Cristina’s idea that only unfulfilled love could be romantic is sad,” said Johannson, who previously starred in Allen’s “Match Point” and “Scoop.” “Her notion that love has to be this complicated and tumultuous tug of war to be real, that seems so exhausting to me.”

When Javier Bardem’s Latin lover invites Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina to fly away from Barcelona, Spain, for the weekend and jump into his bed, Cristina is the one who says yes.

Johansson, a self-described romantic who is engaged to actor Ryan Reynolds, smiled when asked if she is as adventurous.

“I could really appreciate her ‘seize the day’ attitude. She is so open to life and all of its adventures and all of its quirks, and ready to go along for the ride. I think that’s the most attractive part of her character.”

But for herself, she laughed and said, “As far as getting into bed with a stranger and all of that, it’s nice to think that wouldn’t end like disaster. Maybe I’ve watched too many of (A & E’s true-crime series) ‘The First 48’ to know what it could end up as, but I think it’s very idyllic. I think that part of me is that way.”

Johansson, 23, said her romantic nature comes naturally. “My mom is a romantic person and I think I inherited that from her. There are many different ways that you can be romantic. There’s of course the romance that you have with your partner, your love, and then there’s that thoughtfulness that you have with (others), remembering what people like and what they appreciate and wanting them to experience it and enjoy it - that’s romantic to me in a way.”

Allen sounds romantic when he talks about Johansson. “I do think that she is capable of anything,” he said. “If you need dramatic, she’s dramatic. If you need a laugh, she can get a laugh. She can sing if you need it. She’s sexy. She’s intelligent. And that face on the screen! She is so photogenic, it’s paralyzing. There is no limit for her.”

Their creative partnership was born out of necessity, Allen said. “I had Kate Winslet for ‘Match Point’ to the last week of pre-production,” he said. But Winslet’s unexpected exit left the film minus its pivotal role of an American actress in London.

“I had to get somebody fairly quickly and I didn’t know Scarlett from a hole in the wall. I thought she was too young to play the part - she was only 19 at the time. But then I hired her and became totally captivated by her.”

Johansson’s engagement to Reynolds has prompted speculation about when and how they’ll marry.

“I’m a private person,” she said, adding that they have yet to set a date. “I haven’t even thought about it yet. I’m still just enjoying the excitement of it, but I’m sure that it will be as private as possible.” The couple met on the on the 100% free internet dating site Devil Called Love.

Report: Anglican says gay relationships okay

2008-08-08T02:22:00.000-07:00

In newly disclosed letters, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams wrote that the Bible doesn't forbid same sex relationships when there is a commitment similar to traditional marriages, a British newspaper reported Thursday.

The report was the latest development in the controversial issue of how the Anglican church should view homosexuality. Williams has come under intense scrutiny as differing views over whether to accept changes in traditional biblical understanding of same-sex relationships have threatened to split the 77 million-member Anglican Communion.

The archbishop's office declined to comment on the issue on Thursday.

The newspaper reported that Williams outlined his views on the controversial subject in letters written between 2000 and 2001 to Deborah Pitt, a psychiatrist and evangelical Christian who asked for his opinion.

"I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness," the newspaper quoted Williams as writing.

The Anglican uproar over homosexuality erupted in 2003, when the Episcopal Church, the Anglican body in the United States, consecrated the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Williams attempted to bridge the divide at the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference of Anglican leaders that began in July, saying in a speech Sunday that Anglicans need more time to consider whether to accept changes in traditional interpretations of the Bible.

Critics accuse Williams of being too liberal on homosexuality and more than 200 traditionalist bishops boycotted the Lambeth meeting. But the meeting failed to break the theological deadlock, leading some liberal Anglicans to accuse Williams of appeasing conservatives.

Australian farmers misled by Rural Network dating agency

2008-08-03T02:41:00.000-07:00

All they wanted was a wife to make their solitary lives in the Outback a bit more bearable.

The farmers and miners who joined the Rural Network dating agency got a lot less than they wished for. Some fell in love with women who did not exist. Others lost up to A$20,000 (£9,500) as the agency tempted them into parting with more and more cash with the lure of love.

Rural Network, in Tweed Heads, Queensland, lured lonely country men with pictures of beautiful young women and the slogan “Bringing the Country Together”.

Men who logged on to its site read that it was for “busy country people who have lost all hope in the dating scene and just want to find a person to share their life with and find happiness”.

Some of the women, such as “Stunning Angelina” and “Spellbinding Laura”, appeared the stuff of fantasy. The trouble was, many of them were exactly that — fictional women dreamt up by agency staff — according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which has had the agency in its sights for the past three years.

The dating site, whose director Leanne McDonald was also known as Leanne Viney, Lana Viney and Lana McDonald, had various ploys to cajole men into paying ever higher membership fees.

A number of men fell for the line that a “compatible” girl had asked to meet them, and they would be introduced once additional fees had been paid.

One man paid A$17,000 in his increasingly desperate attempts to find that special someone who was eagerly waiting to meet him. Another embittered man, who says that he joined the site because life in a small country town was getting lonely, was asked to pay A$4,400 for two years' administration fees.

“A couple of weeks later, they told me it was for something else and charged me more money for more services,” the victim, who would identify himself only as Richard from Perth, said.

“I saw their webpage and put my details on there and I was signed up at their most basic membership. Over the next few weeks they contacted me numerous times telling me about different members I could meet, but only if I upgraded my membership each time. They also changed the story of what I was paying for.”

Over the next few months he shelled out A$20,000.

This year, after an investigation by the consumer commission, the agency was ordered to repay 35 of its victims A$120,000 and to write to new customers informing them of the “misleading and deceptive conduct” that it had been involved in.

Justice Jeffrey Spender said at the time that the agency's conduct was “not only serious but calculated and quite callous” — although he stopped short of closing it.

Instead, he imposed a seven-year restriction on the way that it advertises and supplies introduction services. It was also ordered to pay A$60,000 in court costs.

Yesterday the agency was back in court, with the commission accusing it of failing to honour any of the undertakings.

Ms McDonald was unrepentant, saying that she “massively contested” the allegations.

Rural Network is still operating a site, now called Chances Consulting. Advertising itself as “one of Australia's largest and most respected Introduction Agencies who has [sic] caters for the needs of singles looking for romance in Australia and New Zealand”, it went on to state that it “caters for busy country people who have lost all hope in the dating scene and just want to find a person to share their life with and find happiness”.

The case will return to court in September.

Drought of romance

— Single dairy farmers in Wales began putting their vital statistics on the side of milk bottles last year in an attempt to find love. More details of the farmers are available through an online dating agency

— L'Amour est dans le Pré (Love is in the Meadow), which attempted to find partners for lonely French farmers including Cecil, a goat breeder from the Pyrenees, became one of the most popular TV shows in France this summer

— Country Life magazine ran a lonely-hearts column for farmers until 2005, when the volume of mail became too large to handle.

Michelle Williams dating director Spike Jonze?

2008-07-30T15:23:00.000-07:00

Actress Michelle Williams is rumoured to be dating cult filmmaker Spike Jonze.

Six months on from the death of her ex-fiance Heath Ledger, Williams has been seen on numerous occasions around the director's Manhattan apartment, sparking rumours of a romance.

Jonze, who was previously married of 'Lost In Translation' director Sofia Coppola for four years, is best known for directing cult favourites 'Being John Malkovich' and 'Adaptation'.

He first met Williams in 2006 on the 100% free love internet dating site Devil Called Love and then she auditioned for his film adaptation of the classic children's story 'Where The Wild Things Are'. Williams won the role, but later withdrew from the project.

A source told US magazine Star, "Michelle kissed Spike with a closed mouth on the corner of his lips. There was definitely a bit of caressing going on. She was clutching his arm. The body language was very romantic."

Heath Ledger died from an accidental drug overdose in January. He can currently be seen in Batman sequel 'The Dark Knight', his last completed role.

After kissing Jude Law, Kimberly Stewart has a night out with Sienna Miller's latest ex Rhys

2008-07-29T20:25:00.000-07:00

Rhys Ifans has been looking down in the dumps since being dumped by Sienna Miller for Balthazar Getty.

And what better way to get over your heartbreak than a night out with Rod Stewart's notorious partygirl daughter Kimberly. The 28-year-old socialite joined the Welsh Notting Hill star for a raucous night out at new London hotspot Bungalow 8.

Rhys' choice of drinking buddy may irk his former love Sienna, after Kimberly was photographed in a passionate clinch with the actress' ex-fiancé Jude Law in an Essex nightclub just two months ago.

Dressed in a multi-coloured mini dress and knee high boots, the usual paparazzi-loving Kimberly appeared shy as she left the club in the early hours of this morning. Upon seeing the photographs waiting outside the Covent Garden venue, Kimberly and a female friend quickly flagged down a black taxi and jumped in.

A worse for wear Kimberly, who appeared to have substituted her usual accessory of a handbag for a clipboard, buried her head in her hands as her pal attempted to hide her famous friends from the peering paps.

Kimberly's exit was swiftly followed by 40-year-old Rhys, who stumbled out of the club and pulled faces for the mob of photographers. Rhys has become a regular on the London social scene in recent weeks since Sienna called time on their nine month romance eight weeks ago.

As Sienna's transatlantic romance with married father-of-four Balthazar continues to pick up the pace, Rhys has been closing ranks with his friends in London's Primrose Hill set. He has been seeking support from famous friends including Kate Moss and Davinia Taylor.

And friends have also noted that he's become a devoted fan of the 100% free internet dating site Devil Called Love.

Sexy And Pregnant: Hot Mamas-To-Be

2008-07-29T03:34:00.000-07:00

Sexy and pregnant -- once seemingly an oxymoron -- are smouldering together, with the backlash against the uninviting muumuu (a.k.a. the baby bivouac or tent shirt) at full speed.

Sex and the City may be gone, but you have only to recall how Patricia Field dressed Sarah Jessica Parker when she was pregnant (high waists, kitten heels) to see how her legacy lives on. (Quite apart from the actress' own low-cut couture pregnancy fashion off screen.) And, in today's climate, it is hard to believe that Demi Moore's naked pregnancy cover shot for Vanity Fair was so shocking 15 years ago.

Now the mainstream vogue for tight-fitting (even midriff-revealing) T-shirts, empire waist shirts, stretchy yoga pants and wraparound tops seamlessly spills over into yummy mommy maternity wear.

"I think moms today are proud of their bellies and enjoy revealing the curves and the growth, whereas in the past it's always been covered up by a big muumuu and tunics," says Diana Woodhurst, the manager of Belly & Beyond on Main Street.

"Now you're seeing a lot more fitted T-shirts and people are really pleased to show it off -- as they should be -- instead of feeling bad about their body changing. And general fashion is supporting that."

The store stocks new clothes, including the Ripe label, an exciting Australian line elevating maternity fashion through smart cocktail and fun-striped summery dresses, which join tight T-shirts, pants and tanks among rows of consignment wear.

Pregnancy is also no deterrent for expectant moms to continue wearing their favourite jeans -- those precious Sevens, for example, can be altered (or "maternalized") at the top with a stretchy band for $25 at Belly & Beyond.

"Ordinary pregnancy jeans can often get quite 'pouffy' in the crotch, which is a big no-no," says Woodhurst. She also points out a capri pant with a rollable band which "sure beats the panel look in old-fashioned maternity pants."

Woodhurst adds: "People under 35 who are pregnant often look at those type of full-panel clothes and say, 'I just can't do that.' "

So, there's a generational gap? Perhaps, if eavesdropping in maternity stores counts. "I love you, mom," says one expectant mom to her shopping companion, "but you have terrible taste."

"Grandmothers are generally shocked," suggests Woodhurst, "while some mothers shopping with their daughters do not understand this fashion. When they shop together, the mother is always pulling out tunics and the daughters are going for low-cut jeans with fitted T-shirts."

Although that's not the case for Dawn Noble, who works at Thyme Maternity on West Fourth Ave. She loves today's fashions and simply laments that there were very few choices when she was pregnant some years ago.

"In my day when you were pregnant, you were pushed off to the side," she says. "Now being pregnant is in -- it's so much fun and it's a happy time."

As for the crossover from the mainstream, her manager, Dana Ashmead, explains, "There are many items of clothing in maternity stores that you would find in regular stores -- indeed, I have a lady who is buying a dress here but is not pregnant."

And the clothes no longer have a limited lifespan. "Many of the clothes you can wear after pregnancy. And because of the style for flowing clothes, they do not even look like maternity wear, which is great," she says.

Other Vancouver maternity stores include Motherhood Maternity on West Fourth (notable looks: a long black gown in Spandex -- every pregnant woman's best friend -- with a halter neck and beading; a brown knit tee with embroidered neckline, stretch corduroy city shorts, and a matching embroidered mesh pant and cami), and Hazel & Co. on Cambie, which has a wide range of hip clothes for "moms-to-be, moms and non-moms" with imaginative and delicate designs by owner Susan Heyes.

Lululemon on West Fourth also has Yummy Mummy Tanks with a gathered bust ($19 on sale), plus the perfect Reverse Groove Pant ($93) and Ribbed Pant ($94), both of which have stretchy waists to easily fit under the belly. On the same street, Moule has Citizens of Humanity jeans with the "belly panel" already attached.

Online, there are some chic additions to maternity wear via Mimi Maternity and A Pea in the Pod (which lists Cate Blanchett and Debra Messing among its celebrity fans). Both are currently previewing their fall collections.

The proliferation of stores and options all go to show that Vancouver has improved dramatically in the maternity stakes in the past few years, according to Sydney Irvine of the recently launched www.urbanmommies.com, a Vancouver baby resource web site.

"When I first went shopping [when pregnant with her first daughter five years ago], I remember thinking the clothes on offer were something that my grandma would have worn," says Irvine, who now also has a two-year-old daughter. "It just didn't look the way you wanted it to look, but now it's changed drastically, which is so great."

Now she echoes that the trend for the "bohemian look" of long flowing skirts with elastic waistbands to allow maximum comfort and high empire waistlines "make summer dresses easy to wear and grow into."

But she warns against producers placing too many babyish bows or too much pink on clothes for expectant mothers. "They are already as feminine as they can be because they are pregnant," explains Irvine. "So, you don't need anything extra like that."

Or, as the saying goes, they are having a baby, not becoming one.

As Salman Rushdie Steps Out With Another Beautiful Woman... Just How DOES He Do It?

2008-07-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

Is Sir Salman Rushdie on the prowl for a future Lady Rushdie?

Not yet divorced from wife number four, Padma Lakshmi, it seems he has found a new friend in the towering form of 25-year-old Aita Ighodaro, whom he met on the free internet dating site Devil Called Love and escorted to the Veuve Clicquot Gold Cup Polo at Cowdray Park in Sussex yesterday.

In recent months, Sir Salman has been linked to a string of exotic beauties, including Bollywood star Riya Sen. Aita, an Oxford-educated journalist, reveals on her website that she is also a budding author 'with two books currently in development'.

So what is Rushdie's secret?

Wth all the zeal of the recent convert, Sir Salman Rushdie has, of late, been overseeing his own distinctly radical image makeover. The 61-year-old author has been moved (somewhat ill-advisedly, it must be said) to team a formal black suit with a pair of trendy trainers.

He has treated himself to an oversized 'bling' watch that might be more at home on the wrist of, say, David Beckham or the rapper Jay-Z. The portly wordsmith has also - those of a sensitive disposition look away now - even taken to wearing sunglasses indoors.

All in all, the sort of crimes against good taste that could well find him being issued with a fatwa from the style police. But Sir Salman wants it to be known that his suspect new look has left him feeling revitalised.

He has even toyed with getting fit - though his attempts at exercise have been thwarted somewhat by his unfortunate habit of being seized by sneezing fits. Ominously, too, the priapic Rushdie has let it be known that a year after the collapse of his fourth marriage, he is once more in the mood for love.

And as if to play up his new hip credentials, the Indian-born novelist, who was raised in Britain and went to Rugby School and Cambridge, has started littering his conversations with trendy Americanisms - a new favourite being 'go figure' (it means 'work it out for yourself').

Or, as he prefers poetically to describe it, he is at last ready to 'take the risks of the heart again'.More prosaically, perhaps, he issued a 'come-and-get-me-girls' invitation in the New York Times last month, when he announced: 'I'm totally eligible, single and available.'

That dramatic gesture aside, it would not take a literary detective to work out that the reason for his youthful reinvention - with its distinct whiff of desperation - can be found in the (much younger) shape of a member of the fairer sex.

Step forward Riya Sen, a 27-year-old Bollywood actress and model, who last week was described as the Indian equivalent of ubiquitous British glamour girl Jordan. The couple are said to have hit it off after meeting in a Mumbai nightclub, and sources in India told the Mail this week that Rushdie has since 'assiduously hunted her down'.

His glamorous prey has, it seems, not been making too serious an attempt to escape his clutches, and has arranged to stay with Sir Salman at his Manhattan home. Meanwhile, her friends say they talk every day for hours on the phone.

On the face of it, at least, it is not a romantic coupling that would routinely emerge if you ran the couple's details through a dating website. After all, Rushdie is 5ft 7in tall in his new Nike trainers and, at 61, nearing eligibility for his free bus pass.

He is significantly lacking in the hair department and suffers from a rare inherited condition called ptosis, which gives him the droopy-eyed look of a man fighting a losing battle with sleep.In short, when it comes to looks, Rushdie is no catch.

She, on the other hand, is a babe. A full 34 years his junior, the sultry Miss Sen has appeared in a string of raunchy films (by conservative Indian standards at least) and is regularly to be found semi-naked on the subcontinent's version of the Pirelli Calendar.

His shapely paramour, who lists belly dancing and kickboxing among her hobbies and revels in her own publicity in her native Mumbai, has been uncharacteristically tight-lipped about their new-found friendship.

Indeed, her only public utterance so far has been to say: 'I think when you are Salman Rushdie, you must get bored with people who always want to talk to you about literature. 'When we met, we didn't talk about any of that.' (The conversation, it seems, extended no further than ladies' fashion and her determinedly lowbrow films.)

So what exactly does the huge-brained Rushdie, whose acclaimed novel, Midnight's Children, was last week voted the greatest Booker Prize winner of them all, see in the frothy Miss Sen? The answer to that question is not quite as obvious as you might think. Yes, she is desirable. But perhaps the motive for Rushdie's overtures is revenge.

Rushdie, his friends told me this week, is far from over the breakup from wife number four, beautiful former Vogue model Padma Lakshmi, who dumped him a year ago. They say Salman is still obsessed with Padma and is absolutely desperate to make her jealous by being seen with this beautiful girl.

'Without wishing to give too much away, losing Padma put Salman in a very bad place that he is only now coming out of. He really crumbled after she left him, and I think he now wants to let her know that he doesn't need her any more,' said someone at the heart of the publishing scene, who has known Rushdie for 25 years.

'Part of him might believe that as well, but I'd say he's being a bit over optimistic. Whatever he tells himself, he is still very raw at being thrown over by Padma.'

Nor are friends surprised by the timing of the news of his dates with Miss Sen; nor his parading of the string of other beautiful women who have escorted him recently. They coincide with reports that the stunning Miss Lakshmi - a former bikini-wearing hostess on Italian game shows - is being linked to 68-year-old Wall Street tycoon Teddy Forstmann.

Hardly surprisingly, perhaps, the 37-year-old Miss Lakshmi's relationship with ladies' man Forstmann, who once had a dalliance with Elizabeth Hurley, as well as a much-publicised flirtation with Princess Diana, has not been at all well-received by Rushdie.

But his attempts to get his ex-wife's attention have so far, at least, been annoyingly fruitless. As well as his dates with Miss Sen, Rushdie has also recently squired American paralympic athlete-turnedmodel Aimee Mullins to a series of parties in New York, where he keeps an apartment on the trendy Upper West Side.

The beautiful Miss Mullins, 32, who was born without shin bones and had both legs removed below the knees when she was one year old, is one of several young women he has turned to for company since the end of his marriage. Two months ago, he was photographed with 24-year-old actress Olivia Wilde, who appears in U.S. hospital drama House, draped all over him.

And a month earlier, he was to be seen nuzzling the neck of actress Scarlett Johansson and whispering in her ear as he made a somewhat unlikely appearance in the video for her debut pop single, Falling Down. He is said to have told partygoers last month that he finds the 23-year-old blonde Miss Johansson 'very, very hot'.

Yesterday, the author was to be found at a polo event at Cowdray Park in Sussex squiring a stunning young model named Aita Ighodaro. Meanwhile, Sir Salman has launched a thinly veiled swipe at Indian-born, American-raised Miss Lakshmi, who now writes food books and is a judge on U.S. television cookery competition Top Chef.

He told his friend and fellow writer Kathy Lette in a magazine interview last month: 'I actually don't think marriage is necessary. Girls like it, especially if they've never been married before. It's the dress. Girls want a wedding; they don't want a marriage. If only you could have weddings without marriages.'

He also blamed his wife's departure for bringing on a severe case of writer's block which nearly caused him to abandon his latest book, the historical saga The Enchantress Of Florence.

Intriguingly, some critics have claimed that the sexually charged heroine, Lady Black Eyes - a seductress who can 'mastermind multiple orgasms across different continents' and makes men insane with lust before breaking their hearts - is based on the ravishing Padma.

What is certainly true is that Rushdie has been unable to come to terms with being the one who got dumped. In the past, it has usually been the other way around.

Indeed, he had been married to third wife Elizabeth West a mere two years when he kicked her into touch after meeting the statuesque Miss Lakshmi (she stood a full 7in taller than him in her heels) at a party in New York in 1999. Miss West later cited Salman's adultery in their divorce case.

Rushdie, who was forced to live in hiding for nine years after the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran pronounced a fatwa, or religious edict, calling for Muslims to kill him for his 'blasphemous' 1988 book The Satanic Verses, moved to New York from London in 2000 to be with the leggy Padma.

But the marriage to Miss Lakshmi (his second marriage to the American novelist Marianne Wiggins lasted little more than a year) did not stop him squiring a host of gorgeous women to glittering parties on both sides of the Atlantic.

On his stag night - thrown by Miss Lette and at which Rushdie was the only male guest - Nigella Lawson and Dannii Minogue were invited to send him off. The evening is said to have ended with a bout of passionate kissing during a game of spin the bottle.

Then, as the marriage was breaking down last year, he was spotted kissing beautiful 29-year-old Hollywood actress Rosario Dawson over dinner at Knightsbridge restaurant Mr Chow. He and Miss Lakshmi are also said to have fallen out over the subject of children.

Rushdie, friends say, had been desperately trying to persuade his wife to start a family. (He already has a son, Zafar, 28, from his failed first marriage to the late Clarissa Luard, and an 11-year-old son, Milan, by Miss West.)

As his fourth marriage crumbled, Rushdie complained that as the ambitious Padma followed her new acting and presenting career in Hollywood, they barely spent three weeks together in four months.

Finally, sources close to the couple said that she called off the marriage by e-mail after they had tried and failed to resolve their differences through couples' counselling.

But friends say Rushdie has remained hopeful of a reconciliation, particularly as Padma had refused to buy her own home and had been living in a hotel near the apartment they shared. (She has just moved into a £5,000-a-month rented flat in Manhattan).

Now, her relationship with the super-rich Forstmann has, it would seem, put paid to any hopes of a rapprochement. In her absence, Sir Salman, who was knighted by the Queen last month, must make do with his dates with the equally gorgeous Miss Sen.

A source in Mumbai described this week how they met: 'Salman was with friends at a nightclub called Aurus, and Riya swept in at 1am looking stunning in a backless dress. He couldn't keep his eyes off her.

'He arranged for his friend to take him over and introduce him to Riya's table and they spent the whole night talking. His eyes were out on stalks.'

From his point of view, of course, it is easy to see the attraction. As for the lovely Miss Sen, one suspects the television inquisitor Mrs Merton might ask her: 'So Riya, what first attracted you to the millionaire Sir Salman Rushdie?'

One doubts the master wordsmith could put it better himself - now that he's overcome that little case of writer's block, of course.

Gabbing, Flirting, Drinking, Missing

2008-07-26T20:08:00.000-07:00

Whatever your opinion of mumblecore, the indie subgenre that Jay and Mark Duplass helped invent, there is no doubt that the Duplass brothers, a writing and directing team, have sophisticated radar trained on the undercurrents of contemporary relationships.

The shallow, crabby characters in their second feature film, Baghead are uncomfortably recognizable. Beyond chewing over their own insecurities, these smart, self-absorbed people have little to say.

The Duplass radar made the brothers’ first feature, The Puffy Chair, a cult hit, and it functions just as efficiently in “Baghead,” a comedy-horror spoof that superficially resembles The Blair Witch Project.

The four main characters — Chad (Steve Zissis), Michelle (Greta Gerwig), Matt (Ross Partridge) and Catherine (Elise Muller) — are actors and writers on the fringes of Hollywood whose relationships are complicated by sexual signals they exchange but are loath to acknowledge. That’s the way it often is with mumblecore characters, urbane slackers whose inhibitions keep them on edge.

Chad, who suggests a chubby younger cousin of Jim Belushi, is besotted with Michelle, who resembles a younger, prettier cousin of Ellen De Generes. Michelle hankers for Matt, a rangy, obnoxiously smug rogue, whose on-again, off-again 11-year relationship with Catherine (Ms. Muller is a Deborah Kara Ungerlook-alike) has reached a critical turning point. It turns out that all of these characters had hooked up on the free dating site Devil Called Love.com.

When the cow-eyed Chad pesters Michelle to describe her feelings for him, she replies that he is like a best friend and brother rolled into one. As he moves in to kiss her, she turns her cheek. He is crushed but keeps silent. To ease her discomfort, Michelle stays drunk much of the time.

After Catherine idly asks Matt to rate a part of her body on a scale of 1 to 10 and he gives it an 8.3, she peevishly responds that that was the wrong answer. Sounding patently insincere and a little contemptuous, Matt revises his rating to 11, which Catherine sullenly accepts. Whatever they may decide about their future, the scene lets you know that these two vain, self-centered people will be stuck in this dynamic for the foreseeable future.

Such is the festering group psychology that the four bring with them when they impulsively decide to visit a cabin in the woods to create their own quickie digital movie. The catalyst for their excursion is a wretched no-budget movie, “We Are Naked,” that they see at an underground film festival. In “Baghead” ’s most satirical scene, the egomaniacal no-talent director of “We Are Naked” boasts that it was made for under $1,000.

At their first brainstorming session, the four get drunk and decide to make a relationship movie, but the project stalls for lack of ideas. In the middle of the night, Michelle stumbles woozily out of bed to be sick outdoors and sees what appears to be a man with a bag over his head. The next morning she thinks it was a nightmare. The baghead image inspires them to cook up a horror film about a killer with a paper bag over his head.

The suppressed anxieties, longings and jealousies among the four inform the practical jokes they play on one another as the weekend drags on. First one, then another, then a third member of the foursome disappear, leaving ambiguous signs of abduction. The car they drove into the woods is also vandalized. Each disappearance is signaled by a tinkle of wind chimes.

“Baghead” adroitly toys with the question of whether there is really something lurking out there, or whether that something, fleetingly glimpsed, is merely a projection of the characters’ own fears. As their nerves fray and they turn on one another, the film becomes an examination of the fragility of friendship.

The semi-improvised performances, which seem so natural that it is tempting to confuse the actors with their characters, bring “Baghead” into the realm of group therapy observed through one-way glass.

Searching For Trans Love In The Gay World

2008-07-25T04:44:00.000-07:00

It’s been more than two years since Ja’e Kendricks has been involved in a serious romantic relationship.

When frequenting venues where other gay men meet for dating and sex, Kendricks knows to expect “really, really bad treatment.”

“It’s already bad enough that you’re part of a community that’s been scrutinized and judged, and because society has become more accepting [of gay people], we’ve created new divisions among us,” said Kendricks, a 28-year-old Buckhead resident.

Two years ago, Kendricks began living as a woman full time, although she identifies as “a gay man who happens to be transgender.”

“Since I’ve transitioned, I haven’t had a relationship,” said Kendricks, who added that she has no plans to undergo sex reassignment surgery.

“I’m attracted to gay, bisexual and straight men equally, but I think it’s a matter of finding someone who will respect me as I am, and be willing to grow,” she said. “There are very few gay men that are open to dating, or I would even say being intimate, with someone who is transgender.

Like many queer singles, Kendricks has profiles on online dating sites like Devil Called Love. But logging on and chatting is rarely a rewarding experience for Kendricks, who is often ignored or chastised by other users.

“The verbiage is really just amazing, it makes me feel bad,” Kendricks said. “If I was to compliment someone, or even tell them I think they’re attractive or ask them if they want to converse, they’ll tell me, ‘You’re nasty,’ or ‘If I wanted a woman, I will go get with one.’”

The spirit of unity embodied in the “LGBT” acronym used by so many is belied by how often gay men and lesbians marginalize transgender individuals. Even the nation’s largest gay rights group, the Human Rights Campaign, took heat when it supported a federal non-discrimination law that prohibited workplace bias based on sexual orientation, but not gender identity.

But marginalization also occurs in lesbian nightclubs, gay chat rooms, and other queer social venues. Transgender men and women sometimes feel like outcasts while looking for romantic partners in a community to which they are supposed to belong.

Also contributing to the gay-trans divide is that some transgender people — such as a man who becomes a woman and pursues heterosexual relationships with men — in no way identify as part of gay culture.

A few years ago, Jaclyn Barbarow was in a relationship with another woman who decided to transition into a man. The love the two shared survived throughout the partner’s transition, but eventually it became clear that the relationship could not continue.

“He went from fighting his own demons and trying to pretend he was someone he wasn’t to really understanding who he was,” Barbarow said. “But who he is is a straight man, and that conflicted with my very queer identity.

“The queer community didn’t sit right with him because he’s straight,” said Barbarow, who considers herself pansexual, and open to relationships with any type of queer man or woman.

Barbarow continues to date female-to-male transgender individuals, and she organized a support group for people who have a trans partner.

Sarah Meng was also involved in a relationship with another woman when, about a year into the relationship, Meng’s partner told her that he was transgender and was going to become a man.

“I was really into him as a person, and so the gender shifts — of course was a big deal — but that wasn’t why I was in the relationship,” said Meng, who identifies as queer.

Meng avoids identifying as a lesbian to recognize her own gender flexibility, but also because, “I think that would really disrespect some of the trans guys I’ve dated,” she said.

Even though most of the people Meng dates are female-to-male transgender individuals who identify as men, she believes it’s important that her partners do not perceive their relationship as a heterosexual one.

“I tend to date trans men who are queer-identified rather than straight identified,” Meng said.

Gay men and lesbians “may really be the worst” when it comes to understanding and being respectful of transgender issues, but Meng said female-to-male “trans men” are becoming an increasingly popular fixture in the lesbian scene. Still, Meng worries about gay women objectifying trans men.

“I think folks have to be careful about not fetishizing,” Meng said. “I think there are a number of lesbians who date trans people because they’re trans, and not just because they have a lot of interesting things to say or are involved in a lot of the same activities. Their primary interest is their [partner’s] trans-ness.”

Sir Jesse McNulty remembers during the 1990s when he was one of the first and only trans men who continued to frequent lesbian venues after he transitioned into a man.

“I had a lot of hostility from everybody, and the queer community treated me a lot worse, actually, than some of the straight community, like my teaching buddies,” McNulty said.

“They really let me down,” McNulty said. “It was very hostile. It was almost like they were thinking I want some kind of promotion or something.

“Now, I think trans has been the new pink for a little while,” McNulty added. “I think you can’t swing a cat in any lesbian’s face without hitting several trans-identified people. So I think, overall, the environment is getting better, but there’s still a lot of ignorance.”

McNulty’s female partner, Jennifer Purvis, believes “there’s still a lot of trans phobia in the gay community,” like when people question whether Purvis can be queer with a male partner.

“People’s frameworks are, you’re gay or you’re straight, so what are you now?” Purvis said.

She added that she believes women may be “more prone to break down those kinds of binaries,” and so may be more willing to explore relationships with trans partners.

While many transgender individuals seek out heterosexual partners, there is a dizzying diversity of transgender love across sexual orientations.

“It’s a growing dynamic, still — people are sorting it out,” said Renee Reyes, a male-to-female transgender Atlanta resident who offers comprehensive advice for trans dating at her blog, reneereyes.com.

Given the “penis-driven” culture among gay men, a fair amount of male-to-female transgender folks wind up dating lesbian women, according to Reyes.

“You typically have lesbian women that are more likely to be attracted to an MTF trans woman, than you will have a gay man attracted to a MTF trans woman,” Reyes said. “You have a lot of women who will go there with an MTF.

“I’ve had a couple of great relationships with some gay guys, but to me, that’s not really where most of them want to go,” said Reyes, who noted that most of the visitors to her website are heterosexual men interested in trans women.

Gay Atlantan Chuck Jones has never seriously considered dating an MTF trans woman because, “I’m not attracted to that, to be honest.”

But about five years ago, Jones was on the cusp of pursuing a gay-trans relationship. After chatting with a guy on the social networking website Friendster, Jones and his chat buddy agreed to go on a date to an art gallery and vegan restaurant in the East Atlanta Village.

“The date went really, really well, and we had tons in common,” Jones said, noting that his date was “very cute” and the two of them “made out in the parking lot for a long time.”

A few days later, Jones received an e-mail from his date, who acknowledged that he was a FTM trans man who was interested in dating other gay men.

“From my perspective, that was something totally different, but it didn’t freak me out at all,” Jones said.

The relationship soon fizzled, but only because Jones was still recovering from his previous relationship.

“Had I been in a totally different place, I would’ve been kind of curious if it would’ve developed into something,” Jones said. “I consider myself open to any possibility. It’s not something, honestly, that I know I would look for, but I definitely would not have shut myself off to it.”

Balthazar Getty Speaks About Sienna Miller Romance

2008-07-22T15:23:00.000-07:00

Sienna Miller's new squeeze, actor and oil heir Balthazar Getty, has admitted that photographs of the pair cavorting in the sun have caused him and his family "great embarrassment".

Getty confirmed that he has split from his wife, Rosetta, who is said to feel "humiliated" by the very public romance.

In a statement, he said: "The breakdown of a marriage is a very difficult and painful experience, especially when children are involved. In light of the fact that many pictures have surfaced in print and on the internet, which has caused myself and my family great embarrassment, I felt it necessary to at least acknowledge publicly that yes indeed by wife and I have separated and I will not be commenting any further."

The Gettys married in 2000 and have four children together, the youngest born just 10 months ago. Getty, star of television series Brothers and Sisters, has his wife's name tattooed on his chest.

Miller, 26, was first spotted out with Getty in Los Angeles, and he initially denied rumours of a romance. But earlier this month the pair were photographed kissing on a boat off the Amalfi coast. Miller was topless in the shots.

Miller, most recently seen opposite Keira Knightley in The Edge of Love, is as famous for her love life as for her acting talents.

She recently split from Notting Hill star Rhys Ifans, shortly after professing her love for him in a magazine interview. Previously, she enjoyed a high profile romance with Jude Law, but that ended when he admitted to an affair with his children's nanny who he met on the celebrity free dating site Devil Called Love.

Lindsay Lohan & Samantha Ronson: Read All About It

2008-07-20T01:33:00.001-07:00

During her 10 years as a famous person, Lindsay Lohan has worn a dizzying number of public masks.

She began as a beloved Disney tween queen and a much-praised box-office lure. That unraveled soon enough, as she became another wounded, doomed celebrity girl careening through the tabloid world: Lohan the despondent daughter of reckless parents, the on-the-set monster destroying her career and holding up expensive productions, the luckless dater whose boyfriends and hookups trash-talked her and did her no good, the cocaine-and-alcohol-fueled road menace who seemed rehab resistant.

But lately, there's been another twist in the Lohan saga that the mainstream gossip media -- her unofficial biographers -- have been feeding to their readers in regular doses. US Weekly, OK!, Star, the New York Post's Page Six, Life & Style and all of the other cogs in the celebrity news machine have been regularly publishing reports about her relationship with DJ Samantha Ronson.

Which from all happy and seemingly sober appearances -- they kiss, they hug, they hold hands, they shop for groceries -- is a romantic one.

Neither Lohan nor Ronson has spoken to the media about their relationship, and not surprisingly, Lohan's publicist would not comment for this story nor make Lohan herself available, writing in an e-mail that Lohan "wants to keep her private life private." (Ronson likewise did not respond to a request for comment made through her website.)

Yet the celebrity magazines have kept the stories coming. Mainstream editors used to be squeamish to the point of erasure when it came to unconfirmed same-sex relationships. Unless a star was willing to say, "Yep, I'm gay," as Ellen DeGeneres so famously did on the cover of Time in 1997 -- and as a trickle of others have too in years since -- print publications (including this one) have generally employed their own form of don't ask/don't tell when covering gay or bisexual celebrities who have not come out via press release or some other explicit declaration.

While many celebrities themselves have stopped hiding their same-sex relationships, the media have not until Lohan followed suit. Devil Called Love, an openly gay online dating site, which has never engaged in that kind of self-censorship, has noticed a change. As DCL sees it, we've reached a moment in which the Lohan-Ronson pairing can simply be reported as a fact because people have, you know, eyes.

"Traditionally, the media has been as interested in closeting celebrities as the celebrities themselves have been," Musto said. "I've read things in gossip columns that would never go there in the past and realized, 'Wow, they're going there now.' They don't consider gay a dirty thing anymore. And it's very cool."

Jared Shapiro, the editor of Life & Style, said that the Lohan-Ronson story has indeed presented a unique set of issues for celebrity magazines. "Why is this couple different than every other couple?" Shapiro asked rhetorically recently on the telephone. "We know they're not friends -- we know they're in love, we know they're dating.

"Major movie star! Gay, question mark? Bisexual, question mark? Um." For Shapiro, those questions are just the first stop, and his magazine devoted its cover this week to them, asking, "Is Lindsay Gay?"

Before that, Shapiro said, the magazine had chosen to "follow their step-by-step," which is fairly easy because the couple are out so often. In a sense stories about the doings of "LoRo," as they've been called, are just standard celeb-gossip fare. And yet, Shapiro said, there is undeniably a larger issue looming over each story.

He returned to the rhetorical to ponder the question: "At what point do we editorialize and say why we think this is important?"

None of the other weekly magazines or gossip columns seems to have reached that point of what-does-it-all-mean analysis, either. Each has used the same template for this relationship as they do week after week for, say, "Eva and Tony" or "Nicole and Keith": "Lindsay Lohan Turns 22 With Samantha Ronson at Her Side" read the headline in Devil Called Love this month.

On the cover of its July 14 issue, Star offered "Lindsay &; Samantha: Inside Their Hot Romance" to its readers; and on its Love Notes page on June 30, US asserted that "those close to the pair call it love" under the headline "Lindsay & Samantha: This Is for Real."

Nothing is official

Still, the facts can't be pushed aside: There has been no official acknowledgment from Team Lohan -- or Team Ronson, for that matter -- that the relationship is Sapphic. So to discuss it looks a lot like outing, which is, to paraphrase Wikipedia, "publicizing homosexual behavior without the person's (or people's) consent."

No less an authority than Bonnie Fuller, the former editor of US and Star and numerous other publications, who is both credited and blasted for creating the current gossip world we live in, said in a telephone interview, "I don't think we've ever been in the business of outing celebrities at celebrity news weeklies."

Hmm. Perhaps, then, it's more complicated than calling the Lohan-Ronson coverage an evolved form of outing. Maybe, with fame culture and its now-rote privacy invasions having brought us to a state of flux about what secrets a celebrity is entitled to, long-held anti-outing stances are crumbling.

There are other, more subtle factors at work in the case of Lohan, of course. This is, in tabloid terms, an over-covered (former, one hopes) disaster who has entered into a same-sex relationship. After all the dirt they've dished on her, why would the gossip mill back off now?

There's also the reality that the mainstream celebrity media must compete furiously to survive, and Lohan and Ronson are dating in a public way, with much photographic evidence. It would be surprising if they did not scuttle the old rules to be able to document this latest Lohan chapter.

And there's yet another open question: Do editors assume that their readers are, at this point in history, largely accepting of -- and possibly even interested in -- gay relationships? (At least when it's two women?)

It would be nice to ask some of the romance's other leading storytellers these questions, but the editors of US, People and Page Six all declined to comment for this article through PR representatives.

Free Internet dating website Devil Called Love.com regularly exposes perceived inconsistencies and hypocrisies in famous people and institutions, has also found himself wondering about this subject.

"I've been fascinated by the reluctance of anyone in the mainstream media to talk on the record about the issue," Hilton said in an interview. "Most of these big media organizations -- still to this day -- have an unwritten policy against, quote, 'outing' people.

"What's especially interesting to me is that the publication that first jumped on the Lindsay-and-Samantha relationship bandwagon . . . is People magazine! And People magazine, of all the celebrity weeklies, is the tamest, the most celebrity-friendly and the most by-the-book. I'm fascinated by why they're doing it. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, it's just surprising to me."

So why won't People -- or US or Page Six -- say why Lohan and Ronson's relationship is different than other same-sex celebrity relationships that they ignore? "Maybe because they have no good explanation for it," Hilton said.

Both Hilton and Musto have a far easier time keeping track of their editorial standards because they both do believe in outing. Musto, who was the first person to report -- in tandem with Page Six -- that DeGeneres and Anne Heche were dating, has been writing about closeted gay celebrities for many years. "It might seem shocking, but there were days when Ellen and Rosie [O'Donnell] and Boy George and George Michael were not out, and I was running pieces about them being gay," he said.

It wasn't always easy. "I did get vilified in the old days," Musto said, sounding wistful. "Like I was considered a lunatic."

The day after her birthday party at Teddy's at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Lohan called Ryan Seacrest's radio show and said she'd like to spend the next year being with the person that I care about," among other gender-neutral phrasings that Seacrest -- uncharacteristically -- didn't ask her to elaborate on. Is Lohan getting closer to more specific nouns and pronouns, particularly if one of the celebrity magazines will pay her a big check to do so, as has been rumored?

'A breath of fresh air'

LIFE & Style's Shapiro said that whatever happens going forward, covering Lohan-Ronson has been a relief. "This relationship, I will be honest with you, is a breath of fresh air for Lindsay Lohan coverage," he said. "None of us want to be writing about the train wreck that Lindsay Lohan was. We don't want to see her back in rehab, that doesn't do anyone any good. We love that she's with Sam Ronson and that she's happy -- Lindsay looks better than ever."

And perhaps that perceived happiness -- on Lohan's part, perhaps, but more important among the celebrity editors and reporters who cover her -- offers another clue about why this story has unfolded as openly as it has. "People want to get emotionally involved in this stuff, that's why they buy the magazines and read this stuff -- they want to be taken away," Shapiro said. "When it's Lindsay and Sam, it's like, 'Oh, they found each other.' "

Love Story: Husband ‘Died Of A Broken Heart’

2008-07-19T16:57:00.000-07:00

Doctors and scientists say the heart is one of the strongest muscles in the human body.

But Fayetteville’s Sam Corallo knows that one thing can tear the heart apart, no matter how strong: the end of a lifetime love affair.

On June 29, Sam’s mother, Theresa, died. Just six days later his father, Nick, died, and Sam has no doubt what killed his father.

“He died of a broken heart.”

After conducting four services and two burials within two weeks, Sam sat down Monday afternoon and reflected on his parents’ life.

The saga began shortly after World War II when Nick returned home after serving his country in the Army.

“He was in the second wave at Omaha Beach, and was on his way to the Pacific when he got the news that the Japanese had surrendered,” Sam said.

For his valor during four campaigns during the war, Nick had received two Purple Hearts and returned home to his native Chicago.

“My father’s dad had a store in a building owned by my mom’s aunt and uncle. He was seriously dating another woman, but after he met my mom, he stopped dating her and started dating my mom,” Sam said.

The two married in 1945 and started their family. The Corallos had Sam, along with his sister, Joan. Nick was an electrician for the Brach’s candy company, while Theresa was a department manager at Goldblatt’s department store. With both parents having Italian heritage, food and family were two of the prominent features of Sam’s childhood.

“My dad was a really good cook, and after he moved down here, he complained about the bread, and he eventually made his own sausage to get the taste he wanted,” said Sam.

But after the children moved out of the nest, Sam’s parents decided in the late 1980s to move south.

“They wanted to be closer to me and their grandchildren,” said Sam.

Sam’s sister eventually moved to Tyrone from California, and the whole family unit had made the transfer south. For a while, Sam’s parents stayed with him, but eventually moved into an apartment and enjoyed the quality of life that Peachtree City provided.

But Nick Corallo got tired of the apartment, and at age 86, decided he wanted to build a home. So, he contracted out the work and had his house built.

“I remember him telling my mom that this would be theirs and they could stay there the rest of their lives,” Sam said.

Corallo’s dad was a fighter and was stunned to learn in 2006 that the U.S. government did not consider him a citizen.

“My dad was shopping for his auto insurance and was at an agent’s office. The agent came back and told him he did not have a valid driver‘s license,” Sam said.

Sam said his dad showed the agent his current license, but the agent explained his license had been revoked by the state.

“Apparently, after 9/11, some laws had been passed that said my dad and others like him were not citizens,” Sam said.

Nick was born in Italy, but Nick’s dad was a naturalized citizen. For all his life, Nick defended the country, paid his taxes and drew Social Security, but suddenly he was no longer considered a citizen. For the next year, Sam and his father dealt with Homeland Security in trying to fix the problem.

“I never understood it. My father enlisted in the Army and was fighting against Italy, the country that he was born in, but that wasn’t good enough.”

Sam had to locate the ship’s manifest that sailed into Ellis Island with his dad, along with obtaining records from the military and Social Security.

“I can’t tell you how many hours I spent in waiting rooms,” he added.

But finally, last October, Nick headed to north Atlanta and was given his citizenship oath, more than 60 years after participating in the Battle of the Bulge and fighting for this country.

But with aging comes health problems, and Theresa developed Alzheimer’s, along with a host of other health issues. Nick also developed health problems, including diabetes, and both eventually moved into a room together at Ashley Glen Assisted Living Center in Fayetteville.

“My mother would have her good days and bad days. My father understood that she would forget things and keep asking the same question, but he never really understood the disease,” Sam said.

One of her best days was this past Mother’s Day, when she came to Sam’s house for five hours and enjoyed the family time. But the next day, she had a mild stroke.

“Her memories were basically erased from age 19 because of the stroke,” Sam said.

For the next two months, Theresa’s health worsened and she had to have vascular surgery. The doctors said she had only a 25 percent chance of surviving, but she made it through the surgery. But, Theresa, who had heart problems, faced a more serious problem.

“The doctor she had a valve issue and had a zero percent of surviving the surgery,” he said.

Sam had already done the preliminary paperwork involving powers of attorney and living wills. He was on a business trip to South America when he was notified he needed to return home.

“She had a do not resuscitate order, but I had to make the final call, which I did,” he said.

After the life support system was pulled, she still lived for five days, which amazed the doctors.

“She was one tough Dago, I’ll tell you that,” Sam said.

She died on June 29 and the family had a service in Peachtree City July 1. On July 2, the body was flown to Chicago, so she could be buried with the rest of her family. The family had her service on July 4 and buried her on July 5.

As Sam was getting ready to fly back to Peachtree City on July 5, he received a phone call that his father had suffered a heart attack.

“He was 90 and had never suffered one before,” Sam said.

Sam and his family hurried home, but arrived at the hospital 10 minutes after his father died.

“He always told me they were going to die together. He even mentioned that to me at my mom’s service in Peachtree City.”

So, for the second time in two weeks, Sam and his sister arranged a service in Peachtree City, and then flew his dad’s body back to Chicago to be buried next to Theresa.

During the last two weeks, the Corallos have gone through a minefield of emotions in burying their parents.

“I tell you what, they were both fighters,” Sam said.

He’s noticed that in older Italian families, if a husband dies first, the wife usually survives for a while because she has more of a social network. But when the wife dies, the husband usually follows quickly.

“He didn’t have anything else to live for. His heart was broken. He prayed to die,” said Sam, the surviving son.

Internet Dating Is For Everyone

2008-07-19T05:19:00.000-07:00

The two questions I am asked most often are: (1) Are you single? (2) And (2) Why don't you try internet dating?

The first is a consequence of being fantastically eligible, but it's actually because I wrote a book about escaping an arranged marriage. The second, meanwhile, seems to be the question posed to everyone nowadays if the answer to (1) is yes.

It's astonishing how big internet dating has become. According to one survey, half the country's single population have dated online. And while a few years ago these people would no more have broadcast this than discussed their haemorrhoids, the stigma has gone.

Four of my most glamorous colleagues and friends met their partners online and are not at all sheepish about it. Not that I have succumbed. It would, of course, be nice to settle down, retire from the series of short-lived relationships that have made recent years feel as bloody as Reservoir Dogs.

But online dating seems too mechanical and appears to require engagement with people determined to misinform, with five-year-old photos, lies about their age and euphemisms such as “drinks socially” (ie, alcoholic); “voluptuous” (recently had stomach stapled); and “adventurous” (pervert).

If I were permitted only two objections, though, one of them would be that internet dating reverses the normal narrative of relationships. You begin with the kind of questions that you would normally pose only several years into a relationship.

Shall we call our kid Rayburn if he's a boy? Where do you see yourself living in 2014? It's unsexy. And also, paradoxically, unrevealing. A two-minute chat about Big Brother is infinitely more revealing than an exchange of emotional CVs.

Then there's picnic syndrome. You know how it goes: you go out to find somewhere nice to dine alfresco - and find it, but can't helping walking on, looking a bit farther, just in case there's an even nicer spot around the corner. It's the same with internet dating: you might meet someone wonderful but you can't help thinking that there might be someone even better around the corner and never really give it a proper shot. It's horrible.

At least, I thought it was horrible until I came across a news article recently in which The Right Rev Willie Walsh, the Bishop of Killaloe in Ireland and president of the Catholic marriage service Accord, was quoted complaining that “internet dating is superficial and reduces human relationships to a commodity”. True. But his comments were made at the launch of a survey which showed that 23 per cent of married Irish couples met their partners ... in a pub.

Is getting drunk and pouncing on the person least able to resist really less superficial than meeting someone online? It's hardly going to give you a great story to pass on to Rayburn. And what about the other popular way of meeting a partner: at work? Surely office seduction is fraught with potential humiliation and sexual harassment lawsuits?

Indeed, internet dating gets attention as it is relatively new, but conventional ways of meeting people are even more shrill and desperate, if you analyse them.

Meeting people at random seems romantic but it's, well, random and when you hit 30, most people you come across are already involved. Relying on friends to set you up becomes increasingly futile: once they get married, their matchmaking efforts rarely go farther than occasionally remarking “But you're too great to be single!”

Moreover, there's so much money being made in online dating that not only are there internet sites for every demographic imaginable, from Christians to the obese, there is a site out there th at provides a response to any anxiety you may have.

Worried about the amount of choice? Certain sites require customers to undergo personality assessments and match members accordingly. Concerned that your colleagues may see your advert? There are sites that restrict access to your profile.

Devil Called Love.com, meanwhile, which involves people being put forward by friends, and where every profile seems to begin with the remark “I never thought I would do this...”, seems to be directed at people who think they are too good for internet dating.

And this is what it comes down to: pride. Those of us who resist online dating come up with all sorts of explanations for our reluctance: we are meeting enough people; reversed narratives; picnic syndrome, etc.

But in truth most of us resist because we view online dating as an admission of loneliness (something that people would rather die of than concede); because we think we're better than the desperate saddos online; and because we are expecting someone with the looks of Cameron Diaz and the brains of Salman Rushdie to flounce through the door at any moment.

But sitting here, I have to acknowledge that (a) this person, or even someone with the looks of Salman Rushdie and the brains of Cameron Diaz, for that matter, is showing no signs of appearing; and (b) not only am I no better than all of those saddos online, but having written a book and now a column about my singledom, I am probably significantly more desperate than them.

The fact is that internet dating is a no-brainer if you're serious about finding a partner. Besides, doing it doesn't mean that you have to give up on real life. I should really give it a twirl. And I may do, if I can find a copy of that nice picture taken in 1998...

Making Same-Sex Marriages Count

2008-07-18T03:04:00.000-07:00

When same-sex couples wed in California and Massachusetts, they do so believing that their marriage licenses mean that their relationships finally count in the eyes of the state. Unfortunately, they won't count in the eyes of the U.S. Census Bureau.

According to its mission statement, the Census Bureau "serves as the leading source of quality data about the nation's people." Well, not all of the people, it turns out. Census Bureau procedures essentially hide legally married lesbian and gay couples by altering their truthful responses about their relationship.

The Census Bureau argues that the federal Defense of Marriage Act -- which defines marriage as solely between a man and a woman for all purposes related to federal regulations -- prohibits it from recognizing same-sex marriages.

For the 2010 survey, the bureau intends to maintain the policy established in 2000, whereby it will edit the responses of married same-sex couples. Same-sex spouses will be reported as "unmarried partners" in all census tabulations.

In 2000, before same-sex couples could legally marry anywhere in the U.S., the argument could be made that the bureau was changing responses to something more accurate. (In fact, that change was, at the time, viewed by many as an improvement.

In 1990, the bureau edited the sex of any same-sex spouses, thereby transforming the same-sex couple into a different-sex married couple.) Rather than completely editing them out of the data, the 2000 census included them in counts of same-sex "unmarried partners." Although that decision might have been the right one then, conditions have changed.

Today, same-sex couples can marry in California and Massachusetts, and these marriages are recognized in New York. That means more than one in five Americans lives in a state that recognizes the marriages of same-sex couples. Yet none of these legally recognized couples will show up in publicly released census tabulations. They will all be relegated to an unmarried status.

The Census Bureau has a well-deserved reputation for producing "gold standard" data of uniformly high quality -- and its accuracy is relied on by journalists, researchers and the government itself.

Since 2000, more than 400 newspaper stories and scholarly journal articles have referenced the census counts of same-sex couples. Government agencies, such as the Congressional Budget Office, used census data to estimate the effect on the federal budget if same-sex couples were permitted to marry.

Bureau officials should acknowledge the reality that same-sex couples are legally married in this country -- and fix their procedures for counting and describing America's estimated 780,000 same-sex couples and their families. They should certainly stop altering the accurate responses of same-sex couples who describe themselves as married.

Decisions about data collection should not be driven by political and value-laden judgments about marriage. They should be grounded in the demographic and legal realities of this nation.

Regardless of how one feels about the recognition of gay men and lesbians, all sides in these debates could benefit from accurate data. Taking steps to improve data quality on same-sex couples would permit scholars, policymakers and the American public to form opinions based on facts instead of anecdotes and stereotypes.

Teen Love, Teen Hate: Girl Gang Takes Savage Revenge

2008-07-17T14:28:00.000-07:00

Debra Carne had been with her new boyfriend only a few days before he told her he loved her.

The 17-year-old spent the night with him but the following day they split up after rowing. Two days passed before he called Carne and begged her to meet him. Within 15 minutes of getting into his car she was dead. Her killers were two teenage girls.

Last week, the pair, the boyfriend and another teenager were convicted of taking part in the killing, a crime that has shocked the local community, left detectives stunned by its brutality and reopened the debate about the increasing levels of violence among young women.

'What beggars belief is how anyone can take a life in such an horrific and premeditated manner over something so trivial,' says Detective Superintendent Win Bernard, the man in charge of the case. 'Teenagers fall out all the time over relationships. For it to culminate in the death of a young girl is just bizarre'.

Debra lived in in a small flat with her mother, Heather, in Sible Hedingham in Essex, a quiet Tudor village with a non-existent crime rate. She left school, where she was known as a quiet girl, and worked briefly at a local joinery factory, but had given it up and was looking for a new job.

Her boyfriend, Steven Wood, then 20, had a reputation as something of a 'bad boy' and was living at a hostel in Braintree catering for troubled teenagers.

The pair had met in local pubs and Debra had known that Wood had only recently split up with his previous girlfriend, 17-year-old Nicole Hollinshead. Having learnt that Wood had spent the night with Carne, Hollinshead sent him 24 increasingly furious text messages within the space of a few hours. She also sent Debra a series of abusive texts. Carne called Hollinshead and insisted that Wood had made all the running but the messages continued. Carne lodged a complaint with the police.

The next day Wood and Hollinshead resumed their relationship and made their way to the hostel to see their friends, Kerry Bauer, 17 and Emma Last, 18, also residents at the hostel.

The three girls were good friends, bonded together by a mutual desire to make the best of their difficult lives. Bauer and Last were particularly close and formed a sexual relationship.

That night, while smoking cannabis and drinking beer, the four hatched a plan to get their own back on Carne. The girls began talking, Wood listened in. Despite his reputation those around him believe he was intimidated by the girls and would have gone along with anything they said.

Another tenant at the hostel, overhead the conversation. 'Emma threw a bottle at Steven and told him to fill it with petrol. She said they would chuck it over her [Debra] and set fire to it.' Another resident heard Last say: 'Don't tell anyone but we are gonna get someone.'

While Hollinshead stayed behind to provide an alibi, Wood, Last and Bauer set off for Debra's home. Wood filled the Sunny Delight bottle with petrol, dropped Bauer and Last in a remote lay-by and then carried on to Debra's village, less than a mile away. It took just 12 seconds for Wood to convince her to come out and meet him. Her mother told her not to go but she was insistent and left the house soon afterwards.

Wood then drove Debra to the lay-by and remained in the car as the two girls ambushed her.

Bauer described what happened next: 'I opened the car door and began to pull her out. I was pulling her across the lay-by by her hair and Emma kicked her a couple of times. I got across the lay-by and Emma was punching her randomly with both hands. Then I let go of her hair and she sort of stood up and stepped back slightly. Then I pushed her, and she fell through a hole in the bushes.

'Then Emma told me to get the petrol in the bottle and I was going to give it to Emma and she told me to throw it at Debra.

'I squeezed the bottle and it went on her from the waist down. She said "Oh God, no" and I said to Emma "Let's go" and turned round.

'Emma was right in the bush at that point. I turned to go to the car and I heard a yelp and a whoosh. I turned round and saw a ball of flames. I felt heat on the side of my face. I just saw a body falling. I froze. I did not know what to do. Then I heard Emma say "run" so I ran.'

Sitting in his car, Wood saw flames in the rear view mirror and heard what he thought was a tree crackling. They drove back to the hostel, took showers and changed into clean clothes. With Hollinshead they then drove to a field 30 miles away. They burned Debra's handbag and destroyed all the clothes they had been wearing at the time of the killing.

An hour or so later Debra's still-burning body was found by two passing motorists who saw flames in the bushes.

The murder took place in July 2002 but a trial last year had to be abandoned after forensic experts could not agree on whether Debra had been alive at the time she had been set alight or whether she had been strangled first.

A second trial ended last week. Bauer was convicted of murder. Wood was found guilty of manslaughter but acquitted of murder. Hollinshead was also acquitted of murder and found guilty of conspiracy to inflict grievous bodily harm. Last admitted murder.

Carly Simon Not Gay - But Wishes She'd Tried It

2008-07-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

She’s back with a brand new album—the highest debuting release of her career, thanks in part to a partnership with Starbucks—and now, 62-year-old Carly Simon is finally putting to rest those lesbian rumors that have followed her all these years.

After telling the gay press she “was not gay” in an interview a few months back, Simon went on to further explain on Howard Stern’s radio show earlier today.

"Have I made love to a woman? No. Now, I have been 'come on' to, but I was too uptight. But I wish that I had. I think that I'm too old for that (now). I have a fantastic boyfriend now who's almost a woman."

Simon wishing she’d made love to a woman in her life almost sounds like your standard Stern Playboy Bunny gimmick, but somehow, Simon kept the conversation serious and above the belt.

But according to Jenny Stewart at celebrity gay website DevilCalledLove.com, when talks turned to her tumultuous relationship with James Taylor, Simon spilled a bit more in the way of graphic details.

According to Simon, the former couple have not said two words to each other in over 30 years, despite the fact that they have a daughter together. In fact, when their daughter Sally was married at Taylor’s home recently, he wouldn’t let Simon use his restroom.

Puts a lot of those more recent Hollywood splits in perspective, doesn’t it?

Sex Therapy: The Return Of Free Love

2008-07-16T00:33:00.000-07:00

A hip new self-help workshop claims that getting naked and sharing the love will allow you to find the ultimate truth. So is it a Pandora’s box or the secret of a purer existence?

Picture the scene: you are in a room with more than a hundred adults. Sitting at one end, with a microphone in his hand, is a man with long white hair who is encouraging everybody to introduce themselves to each other.

“Go up to somebody,” he says, “and say one honest, true thing about them that strikes you immediately. Then have them do the same back to you. But before you do that,” he goes on, “please take off all your clothes.”

Welcome to the “most radical self-help workshop in the world”, as this hip new 10-day residential retreat is dubbed. Led by the Birmingham-born life coach guru Paul Lowe, it is not a place for the shy and retiring.

As well as being encouraged to voice compliments to each other, such as “you make my vagina tingle”, discuss innermost feelings in intense, nude “sharing” circles and take part in sensual massage sessions, participants will also be invited, during the course of the workshop, to explore their sexuality with multiple partners (yes, actually in the workshop). In Lowe’s eyes, you see, monogamy is one of those “ludicrous, unnatural social conventions that stand between you and spiritual enlightenment”.

And if it sounds like a weird hippie sex cult or an excuse for free love — well, it is. Hugging trees, banging bongo drums, unleashing the warrior within — it’s all back in vogue. If you are in the spiritual self-help loop, you will have heard of the Landmark Forum (with a reputation for cult-like motivational workshops), the Hoffman Process (where you bash baseball bats into cushions), even the Secret Science retreat (where you tread hot coals in the Atlas mountains).

They are, in a way, the 21st-century version of Est. (Remember Est? The Ehard Seminars Training, a break-you-down-and-build-you-up workshop of the early 1980s, where you had to stand on a plinth in front of hundreds of people and point to all the bits of your body you hated most.)

What really goes on in these workshops is often hidden from view, but a new documentary of a Lowe retreat, held just outside San Francisco, with some of his followers, many of whom are from the UK, reveals that taking one’s kit off is just the half of it.

First, we meet the filmmaker, Jamie Morgan, 47. Jamie was inspired to make the film after he had yoga lessons with Ryan Spielman at the trendy Triyoga studio in north London and, through him, heard about Lowe. As the narrator of the film, Jamie tells how he has a beautiful French girlfriend, Sophie, whom he is worried about hurting, but at the same time feels compelled, as an explorer and artist, to face up to his commitment issues and see what it is like to live a different way.

As Lowe explains: “Most of our neuroses are tied up with our sexuality. Once we are totally comfortable with our sexuality, that is when our neuroses disappear and we start connecting properly with our spiritual flow.”

Meanwhile Ryan, 29, whose former clients include Madonna, Sting and Trudie, has no such commitment issues and has attended the workshop many times. Indeed, it was at his first workshop that he met his former wife, Lowe’s daughter, by whom he has a three-year-old son, Jasper. A staunch antimonogamist, Ryan is now going out with Maddy, 31, who has come to the workshop to see if she, too, can brave the idea of a fully open relationship.

Then, there is Laurel, 31, who is happily married to an artist back home, but is nonetheless eager to explore her sexual identity and confront the nagging feelings of panic she has about remaining faithful to one person for the rest of her life.

Lowe himself, a charismatic, twinkly-eyed 72-year-old with a paunch, sits at the podium dispensing his own particular brand of tough love. It’s interesting, but not particularly comfortable, viewing.

Take, for example, Ryan’s naked yoga routines as he talks to the camera — while Maddy, er, pleasures him — by the pool. Equally pillow-bitey is the scene where Maddy, who is clearly very much in love with Ryan, has to cope with him and Laurel deciding they are so attracted to each other, they must have sex.

Watching her crying out on film, after the event, as if suffering physical pain, makes one wonder whether the Lowe lifestyle might be a touch easier for men than it is for women. That said, neither is it pretty watching Jamie tearfully apologise on his mobile to Sophie for the orgy he went to the previous evening and then, eyes still smeared with tears, explaining to Lowe that he is frightened that now he’s come this far, he may never be able to go back.

A year on, I meet up with them to find out what the repercussions have been. Jamie is still living with Sophie and claims to be as much in love as ever. “I’m no preacher of antimonogamy,” he says, making green tea for me and the rest of the gang in the kitchen of his ultra-modern duplex in Primrose Hill, “but it has radically changed the way I live. Sophie and I now talk openly about our attractions, and we are occasionally sexually active with other people. I still get insanely jealous at the idea of her with other men, but, since the workshop, I ’ve started to realise I want her to enjoy her life more than I want her, and I want her to have the same feelings for me. But hey, I’m nowhere near as brave as Ryan.”

“I guess you could say my primary commitment is not to my relationship, but to my spiritual growth,” says the dazzlingly handsome, carefully spoken and conspicuously unscathed Ryan, “and if that sounds selfish, it shouldn’t. I mean, what’s worse, being madly attracted to someone other than your partner, not having an outlet for that and getting more and more frustrated with both that partner and your children, or living your truth and loving more than one person with that other person’s complicity? People in traditional families, they mess up their kids too, don’t they?”

Ryan now holds regular weekly sharing groups in London, where Lowe devotees can reveal their truths and, on occasion, if the mood feels right, get naked. He certainly lives by the sword: he no longer goes out with Maddy, and is expecting a second baby by his former wife (conceived with a cup and a syringe because the pair of them, as he cheerfully puts it, “found it weird when they tried to do it the conventional way”).

His truth, he says, will always be his son Jasper, but it is also, at the moment, his new live-in girlfriend, Veronica, who was once a “Barbie girl, with the perfect marriage and the perfect nails”, as she describes her former self. Then, a few years ago, she went to the workshop in her native Germany and became, like Ryan, a committed antimonogamist.

“It’s simple,” she shrugs. “I act on my feelings. If there’s a tingle, it’s a yes. If there isn’t a tingle, it’s a no. And that’s not just about sex, it’s about everything, even how you like your eggs. I don’t know what my work colleagues think about the way I choose to live my life — I don’t really discuss it with them — but it’s possible they think it is a little bit strange.”

“Look,” says Laurel, who is back with her husband after returning from the point of divorce after the workshop, “it’s a Pandora’s box having that experience. You cannot go back to that secure life, with all your boundaries in place. If you did, it would be like putting a plaster on a huge suppurating boil. But,” she goes on, “when I see all these people I know lying, having affairs, suffering from sexual anorexia, feeling miserable, because they are not willing to confront the truth about their sexuality, I know I don’t want to be like that.”

“It’s true, everything is based on monogamy,” says Sophie, Jamie’s girlfriend.

“I have to admit it would hurt me very much if Jamie were to sleep with other girls, but there are other people I feel sexual towards besides him. As Paul says, ‘You can love more than one child, you can love more than one ice-cream flavour, why would you be allowed to have only one lover?’ ”

She has a point. As Sting once said, if you love someone, set them free. On the other hand, you cannot help think of the plight of so many miserable women out there who agree to open relationships in order to hold on to their men.

In many ways, I’m with Lowe: our neuroses are undoubtedly tied up with our sexuality. There are huge games we play around it, terrible things that happen to us when we suppress our natural desires — and yes, wouldn’t life be purer and simpler if we acted on our impulses and got on with it? Yet, when Ryan says that his primary commitment is to his spiritual growth, one can’t help wondering whether “spiritual growth” might not be another way of saying “self-interest”.

Is it not significant, too, that Lowe is male? According to Ryan and Jamie, he makes no secret of his penchant for pretty young women. Again and again, I think of Maddy, weeping into the camera after being “betrayed” by her boyfriend and best friend. Of Sophie confessing to me that she went through hell when Jamie was off at the workshop making his documentary.

Of Jamie admitting that, in an ideal world, he’d be able to play around and she wouldn’t. Radical self-help? This stuff is as old as the hills.

Dirty Laundry With Everyone In The Fold

2008-07-14T01:26:00.000-07:00

The shamelessly vengeful divorce of former model and serial wife Christie Brinkley from architect and porn aficionado Peter Cook exuded a raw, publicist-free honesty that made folks visibly uncomfortable even as they found it impossible to turn away.

The nastiness that erupted inside a Long Island courtroom was documented everywhere from E! Entertainment to "Larry King Live" to the 100% free dating celebrity website Devil Called Love. The highbrow among us might declare the overwhelming interest in the case to be evidence of the decline of our mores, our media and our dignity.

Students of popular culture could argue that if this case is examined in all its minutiae, it will surely say something about contemporary society. All would agree that just viewing the sordid mess was akin to rolling in the mud. But one man's cesspool is another's spa treatment. We'll be following up this column with a four-part thalassotherapy regimen.

To recap: Brinkley and Cook, who with their bouncing blond locks and "Gattaca" smiles look eerily like brother and sister, married in 1996. Ten years later, she filed for divorce. The marriage fell apart for numerous reasons, but the ones given a public airing include his affair with an 18-year-old girl who was his employee, his $3,000 a month on Internet porn and the $300,000 in hush money he paid to his love muffin.

We know all these salacious details because -- before the case was settled Thursday -- Brinkley wanted the court proceedings open to the public. Some may be indignant that a mother would allow her youngest children -- ages 13 and 10 -- to be exposed to all this dirty laundry. But it's possible that all the time actually living in the household might have given them some hint that Daddy was a porn freak and Mommy was really, really mad.

A psychiatrist testified that Cook has problems with narcissism and an oversized ego. The doctor also noted that Brinkley makes poor choices in men -- this is her fourth marriage -- and has hellacious anger issues that do not appear to have cooled since Cook's shenanigans were revealed about two years ago. One assumes the doctor wrapped the diagnosis in all manner of technical verbiage. Otherwise, he did not earn his fee, because any regular reader of the tabloids would have been able to deliver a similar assessment.

Our fascination with this tale is in part due to schadenfreude: Men even cheat on supermodels! Supermodels don't have cellulite, but they have man trouble! This golden couple's life unraveled like a story line on "Desperate Housewives" -- and that's Emmy-winning entertainment.

But at the core of our enthrallment is the recognition that, in a world of carefully calibrated public facades, real unbridled emotions had been set loose. These were not just celebrities behaving badly. This was the id going berserk, a real-life revenge fantasy that came close to bunny boiling.

The public flaying of the cheater by the cheatee, while unpleasant, seems so much more human than those instances in which everyone stands around looking pained but stoic. See: Spitzers, McGreeveys, Vitters, Craigs, Clintons and all those other political couples in which the wife stood by the badly behaving husband, and all you could think was how it looked like she wanted to smack him and who would blame her if she did. Which is worse? The scorned political wife who stifles her rage and eats herself into a contender for "The Biggest Loser"? Or the bitter celebrity wife who decides to run up a tidy sum on her husband's credit card in a kind of catharsis by Cavalli?

That's what Cynthia Rodriguez -- Mrs. A-Rod -- allegedly did when she flew to Paris, went on a shopping spree and stayed with her good friend Lenny Kravitz, whose rock star shoulders would seem ideal for a married woman to lean on in a time of turmoil. Citing adultery, Cynthia Rodriguez filed for divorce from her baseball star husband, Alex, who could give lessons in smiling for the cameras as if nothing is wrong.

As TV crews followed the Yankee into his New York apartment, the man accused of spending special private time with Madonna exuded such a beatific glow one might have thought he'd just come back from an audience with the pope.

The details of the A-Rod divorce promise to be skeezy, sordid and captivating as average folks marvel at how people who seem to have hit the jackpot in life -- spouse, kids, good looks, health and a great job for which one is ridiculously overpaid -- still manage to muck things up.

That's why there's so little guilt in savoring these morsels of gossip. The participants have no one to blame but themselves as they wrestle over children, property and the kind of monthly alimony payments that could support small towns in Pennsylvania. Don't bite your tongue. Tell us how you really feel.

Remember when Ellen Barkin decided to rid her jewelry box of millions of dollars worth of reminders of her ex-husband Ron Perelman? She auctioned the baubles for charity. It was a jaw-dropping revelation when Kevin Federline went all father-of-the-year pious on Britney Spears. And there was the YouTube rant by the estranged wife of the Broadway theater mogul in which she spewed vitriol about his Viagra hoarding.

If you look closely at the tawdriest celebrity divorces, there isn't any revelatory lesson. We already know that no one is perfect. And aren't we all pretty clear on how to behave vindictively? The rub, though, is that usually we don't, at least not publicly. Like those political wives, we squelch the id for the sake of reputation, kids, job . . . avoiding a prison record. The celebrities boil the bunnies so we don't have to.

Internet Dating Puts Women Off Guard

2008-07-13T16:19:00.000-07:00

Women are being lured into danger through internet dating sites.

The Auckland Sexual Abuse Help Foundation says attacks from first time meetings through internet dating are increasing.

Many of the women who report assaults after internet dates have just met their attacker that day.

"The reality is that women don’t really know their internet dates," crisis services manager Kate Brady Kean says. "By removing their usual defences women are leaving themselves open to assault."

Women who report assaults after internet dating say they have known the man for just hours or weeks.

"But really they have just physically met that evening. A woman’s first response is often: ‘I can’t believe he did this, he seemed like such a nice man’."

Ms Brady Kean says people in an internet relationship tend to feel they know the person they are meeting and may show more trust in them from the first meeting.

The foundation is calling for more research into the impacts of internet dating to determine whether there are more people taking part, and whether women’s usual defences are not as prevalent when internet dating.

There is also a reported increase in the numbers of women abused or assaulted by someone known to them, in their own home.

"Horrors" Found In Tween, Teen Dating

2008-07-12T18:21:00.001-07:00

Tweens and teens in dating relationships are experiencing significant levels of various forms of abuse, many don't know the warning signs of an abusive relationship, and many parents don't know what's going on in those relationships, a new survey says.

Among the findings:

69 percent of all teens who had sex by age 14 said they have gone through one or more types of abuse in a relationship.

40 percent of the youngest tweens, those between the ages of 11 and 12, report that their friends are victims of verbal abuse in relationships, and nearly one-in-ten (9 percent) say their friends have had sex.

Nearly three-in-four tweens (72 percent) say boyfriend/girlfriend relationships usually begin at age 14 or younger.

More than one-in-three 11-12 year olds (37percent) say they have been in a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship.

One-in-five between the ages of 13 and 14 say their friends are victims of dating violence, such as getting struck, hit or slapped by a boyfriend or girlfriend, and nearly half of all tweens in relationships say they know friends who are verbally abused.

One-in-five 13-14 year olds in relationships (20 percent) say they know friends and peers who've been struck in anger (kicked, hit, slapped, or punched) by a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Only half of all tweens (51 percent) claim to know the warning signs of a bad/hurtful relationship.

In addition, significant numbers of teens (15-18) are experiencing emotional and mental abuse as well as violence when dating; it's even more prevalent among teens who've had sex by 14.

And many teens and tweens say they've been victims of technological abuse, in which cell phones, paging, IMs, social networking sites, etc. were used to carry out the abuse.

The survey, which was commissioned by online dating site Devil Called Love was conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited.

"We were surprised at how many tweens or kids ages 11 and 12 are dealing with these issues," DCL Vice President Jane Randel told Early Show national correspondent Tracy Smith.

What's behind it all? Researchers believe early sexual activity tends to fuel dating violence among teens and tweens, Smith reports.

And Randel points out that, "Parents, while they think they know what their teens or, more importantly, tweens relationships are, they're really not fully aware of what's going on. And that's scary."

Experts say programs are needed to help parents and their kids recognize unhealthy relationships, and to stop them before they start.

Concerned by the trend toward abusive tween and teen dating, the National Association of Attorneys General passed a resolution urging states to establish educational programs on teen dating violence and abuse.

Inside The Sex Boot Camp

2008-07-12T07:25:00.000-07:00

For his wife Annie's 40th birthday, Douglas Brown knitted her a scarf. This is not as simple as it sounds. Up till that point, Brown, 42, had never so much as cast on a row of stitches.

"But I couldn't think of what I could buy her that would really emotionally stir her," he says. "She likes anything handmade. I was thinking about things more masculine - maybe I'd make her a table. Then it occurred to me: she loves to knit. If I could learn and knit her something, she would be very excited."

So Brown, a journalist at the Denver Post, emboldened by his brainwave, surreptitiously started knitting classes in a local wool shop, surrounded most evenings by women who had gathered to "stitch and bitch". (Learning of his mission, all the women responded in the same way: "Awwwww".)

There was a time when Brown - a father of two girls, now nine and five - would not have dreamed of such a gesture. But a 101-day sex marathon with your wife changes a man.

"I think the fact that I was hypersensitive about her birthday was a direct result of the marathon," says Doug.

It turns out that the scarf, which Annie, now 41, did not take off for days, was the bonus prize in a game they both agreed to play, with much enthusiasm though little certainty about the end result. But as Brown chronicles in his memoir of their experiment - Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned on Their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!) - the effect of their self-imposed sex marathon is the dream of many a family therapist. (And Hollywood. It has already been optioned for a movie.)

"We communicate better, we touch more, we have better sex," says Doug, happily.

"I came to realise that sex is the glue in marriage," adds Annie. "If we're not physically connected, then we can't be emotionally connected. And if we aren't emotionally connected, then our family doesn't work."

In person, the Browns are the classic, wholesome American couple. Married for 13 years, they are affable, close; the kind of partners who casually finish each other's sentences. Annie, who works at home for a food company, loves knitting and baking; they both like hiking. "Early in a relationship, sex is very vibrant," admits Doug. "It's the centre of it. And I think it does kind of fade. We still had a sex life," he says of where they found themselves 11 years and two kids (then aged three and seven) into their marriage. Yet it was usually once a week and then only on weekends.

Like so many couples in midlife, parenting, career pressures and money issues took centre stage, while their erotic lives moved into the sidelines. "We did communicate fairly well, but life intervened. During the week you're just exhausted," says Doug. "We would get into bed and maybe talk a little bit, open a magazine or watch TV but then, 'Goodnight, honey'."

"I remember when nap time went away, that was huge," adds Annie. "Because often we could have sex on Saturday or Sunday afternoon when the girls slept, but that ended. I do remember a couple of discussions after our children were born ... "

"Like, wouldn't it be fun if we could have more sex?" Doug jumps in. "We weren't resentful, I wasn't like, damn, she's not doing it enough. I was exhausted too."

Then in 2005 Doug covered a conference for his paper on sex and pop culture, where he learned of a phenomenon known as the "100 Day Club" - a support group for men in relationships, who haven't had sex for 100 days or more. Doug went home and told Annie about the club and she came up with a suggestion. "Why don't we start our own club?" she said. "Only we'll reverse it. Instead of not having sex for 100 days ... let's have sex for 100 consecutive days."

Annie says now that this idea was spontaneous but perfectly serious: "We slept on it - joked about it - then the next morning I woke up and thought, we should really do that."

They resolved to begin their marathon on January 1, 2006. Among other things, they made a commitment to turn off the television, and not to read magazines or surf the internet. "For all we knew, maybe we couldn't do it," says Doug. "And if we could, by the end, we might loathe each other."

"I never remember thinking, I need the end result to be this," adds Annie when asked what she imagined a sex boot camp might do for their relationship. "We'd throw ourselves into it and see what happened." But she also wondered if there was such a thing as too much sex. "I woke up one day thinking, 'What are we going to do on day 33?'"

There is no awkwardness on display, nor do the Browns use euphemisms when they talk or write about sex. Doug's book is not pornographic but is highly detailed, covering everything from favoured positions ("I can't believe we never had end-of-the-bed-sex," says Annie), sex with and without Viagra - he likes it; she's lukewarm - to Annie's Brazilian wax.

"We both came from healthy marriages that came with good sex lives," says Annie. "My mother passed away in April, and my father was telling me about their last intimate experience two weeks before she died," she says, laughing.

Doug is so open with his parents that he told them about their sex marathon before it began. "Honey, that's a classic," was his mother's response.

"That's awesome," said his father.

Annie told her parents by email. But it was the reaction of friends and colleagues that proved telling. "Most of my girlfriends were sceptical," recalls Annie. "They were probing me, 'How are you going to do it?'"

Doug's male friends were far more impressed. "It was, 'Hey, buddy, that's great!' I don't think I had a single searching question from a man. It was very jokey." One friend called Doug after a month to ask, "Are you sore yet? Burning?"

"What was interesting was that whenever we told people about the marathon they would offer details about their own sex lives. People we had known for years would confess, 'Oh yes, we do it once a week too.'"

To start off their project, the Browns began reading about sex, visiting their respective doctors for check-ups and advice. Doug suggested visiting a sex shop for ideas for when things got boring. Then they assembled oils, candles, lubricants, libido-enhancing herbs and sex toys to aid in their mutual seduction. "And Doug bought me some sexy lingerie," says Annie. That was a first.

Family photographs were removed from their bedroom to make it more sex den, less rest area. (It's hard to get in the mood when your parents and children are staring at you.) Doug also began working out and forgoing heavy dinners to conserve energy for later. Plans were made for trips to mitigate boredom - by the end of the marathon, the Browns had had sex at a pornography exhibition in Las Vegas (a work assignment for Doug) in an ashram, a yurt, numerous hotels and on a mountain top.

The Browns had every recognisable permutation of married sex: fireworks, boring, tired, Viagra-assisted and angry. Regarding the latter, contrary to popular belief, they found that sex after a fight was not good. There was sex after a bout of vertigo (Doug), sex in the basement with their daughter upstairs watching The Wiggles. There was sex on an exercise ball and sex after watching porn (which Annie says did nothing for her).

At home they locked their bedroom door during marathon hours, but things didn't always go according to plan. Once, just as they got going, they heard their youngest's door click open. Battling a cough, she was heading in their direction. Doug quickly left the room, administered cough syrup then "pirouetted from Caring Dad to Horny Husband the instant I returned to the bedroom, the moment I saw Annie on the bed".

About 60 days in, they lost interest in sex. At times, both were too tired to contemplate it. "I'd rather hit the sack tonight, to be honest," Annie pleaded one evening. But still they had sex. Even if it was just a quickie; the continuous sex reignited interest. "The thing I noticed was you can't just get into bed and jump on top of each other - you have to get in the mood," says Doug. "We found that the way we did that was sitting on the bed, talking. We really talked more than in a long time."

Some of those discussions raised topics they had never broached in all their years together. "What about bondage?" he asked her when they discussed what they might explore. "It's not my thing," Annie replied. "I don't want to be tied up."

It didn't interest him much either. So no bondage. And no threesomes. "Never," says Doug. "That's not part of the adventure."

Annie confessed that she sometimes felt body conscious in bed. "Like, if my body isn't like a movie star's I am not going to be a turn on. But he never did get turned off and that was reaffirming." For Doug a big issue was anxiety. "I think this is common with men. I felt I had to perform, I was on stage and had to score 10. But if you're obsessed with performance it's not as enjoyable as it should be."

Says Annie: "I never knew Doug was anxiety-ridden about his performance and that was a revelation. I thought, why is he anxious? It's just me."

"The good thing was that the anxiety melted quickly during the 101 days," says Doug. "I realised you can't be on stage every day."

Despite some days with little erotic charge, overall the Browns claim they felt a connection they hadn't tapped into in years. "We communicated better. We were definitely kinder to each other," says Annie.

Sometimes this was born of necessity. A fight during the day had to be defused by nightfall if they were to have sex. "Before, if we fought, it easily could go through the night and the next day," says Annie. "Maybe we would have had more arguments if we hadn't done this."

As for their two daughters, though they were mercifully unaware of what was going on, Annie did voice concerns that, with their trips away, coffee dates and the rush through bedtime (so she and Doug could have sex), the girls would feel neglected. Today, she says, laughing, "no permanent damage" was done. Their older daughter knows they have written a book "about how much Mum and Dad love each other" but Doug is fairly sure neither of them will read it when they are older. "If my father had written this I wouldn't read it. But we both felt the book had to be done. It's important."

On day 100, the Browns were quite giddy with the thought that it was over. They could read a magazine again! Go to sleep! Around 11pm they started joking in their bedroom that they were too tired for sex and maybe they should skip it. Then they started up. At 11.28pm Annie shouted, "We did it!"

Then, meanly, a friend encouraged them to do one more round for good luck. Minutes before midnight on day 101, they ended the marathon. "The 100th erotic encounter had seemed like a party," writes Doug, "but number 101 felt like a stray commitment agreed to long ago and half forgotten."

Then, with their sexathon finally over, they didn't go near each other for a month. Annie got back into reading, and Doug could enjoy fish and chips with a beer without feeling guilty. But soon, Annie confessed that she missed the marathon: "The intensity and closeness."

There hasn't been another since, although there is discussion of a week-long mini-marathon some time soon. "But we never fell back into the old pattern," says Doug. "We don't have sex every night now (it has slipped back to around six times a month) but it's looser and we are conscious of it."

Do they ever think there might have been an easier way to revive their marriage? A holiday, or a skiing trip, perhaps? Annie's not buying it. "I now see the physical in a relationship is the foundation, it's the glue," she reiterates.

"And it's free!" says Doug.

Is Abba's Agnetha Faltskog Ready To Forgive Her Bandmates For Years Of Misery?

2008-07-12T02:52:00.000-07:00

Given she has a visceral dread of crowds, noise and open spaces, attending the Swedish film premiere of Mamma Mia! last week must have been torture for Agnetha Faltskog.

Indeed, until the moment she turned up, even Abba's die-hard fans were dubious that Agnetha - pop's ultimate sex symbol - would make the journey from her self-imposed exile on one of Stockholm's rural outlying islands.

In the event, she looked wonderful, displaying a shock of platinum hair and that gap-toothed smile which makes her instantly recognisable.

Although she is now a 58-year-old grandmother, she sported the tightest of rock-chick trousers and a white vest - rather rebellious given that her bandmate Anni-Frid was in an evening gown, as were all the cast members.

She girlishly linked arms with Anni-Frid and the film's leading lady Meryl Streep. The three of them whirled around on the carpet outside Stockholm's Hotel Rival, in full glare of the onlooking paparazzi.

But there the joy stops. Agnetha didn't pose with her other bandmates, Benny Andersson or Bjorn Ulvaeus - who also happens to be her former husband. And when it came to appearing on the hotel balcony with the cast, Agnetha kept her distance from the men who wrote the songs that made her famous.

According to a Swedish source: 'She refused to do the picture which everyone wanted, which was the four of them together.' It's been 21 years since the Abba foursome were seen together in public - and the sticking point has always been Agnetha.

Admittedly, she came when Mamma Mia! opened in Stockholm three years ago - but walked alone into the theatre, and then alone out of it. She also refused to show up at an event to mark the 30th anniversary of the Abba song Waterloo winning Eurovision.

Agnetha's spokesman, Steffan Linde, told me bluntly that, apart from Bjorn and Agnetha bumping into each other at the odd family event, there was really no contact between the band members on any level.

'They do not socialise with each other,' he snorted. 'They just happened to come to the same premiere. It was nothing they organised themselves.
'
Mr Linde added that there was no chance of Agnetha being involved with making music with Abba again, and added: 'The movie people invited all the Abba members separately and all members decided to come.'

It seems, bizarrely, that Agnetha hates to acknowledge her part in pop history - so much so that she's known as 'Garbo the second' in Sweden. She is reclusive, and told an interviewer that she doesn't like to go out, doesn't have many friends and likes to talk to her horses.

The nickname, though, infuriates her. 'They spread that I am hiding, that I am the new Greta Garbo. It's not the way it is. I just want to live in peace and quiet.'

So why would she turn up to such a public media event, finally - but then refuse to cooperate with the rest of the band? Can she really have conquered her demons after so long? Make no mistake, the past 25 years have been difficult for Agnetha. She was emotionally ' mangled' by the split with Bjorn in 1979. They had two children, but divorced while the band was at the peak of its fame. Within a week, Bjorn had a new girlfriend and Agnetha had counselling.

ABBA's great, deeply bitter song The Winner Takes It All was written during this period - and she had to find the emotional strength to sing: 'Tell me does she kiss/Like I used to kiss you?' After a tour, the band returned to the studio in 1982, but realised that, with both couples now divorced (Benny and Anni-Frid split in 1981), it was no longer any fun being Abba.
Agnetha now admits she found the closing years miserable. Terrified of flying, after being caught in a storm on a private jet, she was still obliged to tour the world by plane. Today, she hasn't taken a flight in more than 20 years and is terrified when she knows her family are flying.

She also found the Abba fans alarming and would have terrible daydreams in which they set upon her and consumed her alive. More prosaically, she was troubled by guilt at being away from her children, Linda and Christian, when they were so young. And she was never as at ease socially as the others - her English was not as good, so she sometimes struggled.

So while Anni-Frid partied, her rival on stage, Agnetha, was in hell: anxious, shy and overwhelmed. No wonder the girls were not always the best of friends. A substantial amount of time has had to pass for Agnetha to forgive her bandmates for their part in her torment.

Gorel Hanser, who works for Benny and Bjorn, confirms there was no personal appeal to Agnetha to come to the premiere - despite gossips suggesting it was down to Benny, because he owns the Rival Hotel where the event was held. Ms Hanser, who managed the group until it split in 1982, said: 'Agnetha came because she was invited by the film company. She comes to certain events, but not many, because she does not like to fly, and you just respect that.

'As far as a photo of the four of them together, I don't know that it was requested or that anyone said "no". But this was not an Abba event, it was a Mamma Mia! event. They are not pictured as a group for obvious reasons, to not upstage the film.'

Ms Hanser went on to say that Agnetha attended with her children and some friends, and that her granddaughter Tilda, eight, also came along. 'They sat at the table next to Bjorn at the party afterwards and everything was fine. It was a great, relaxed evening, everyone had a glass of champagne.' Indeed, speaking to friends and associates of Agnetha in Stockholm, what becomes clear is that she is finally, but slowly, emerging from her ultra-private existence.

The influence behind this move, says everyone, is urbane socialite Bertil Nordstrom whom many expect will be her third husband.

Nordstrom, 64, a close friend of King Gustaf of Sweden, has been dating Agnetha on and off for three years. Not that he will admit it - he told me yesterday: 'We are not together in any way.' But pictures of the two of them arm-in-arm at a society party this summer tell their own story, as do eyewitness accounts of them smooching in nightclubs.

They have been seen out increasingly, with Nordstrom chaperoning her with evident pride. Swedish gossip magazines describe them as 'love-birds' and say that they are 'fascinated' by one another.

They are even reported to have bought a £300,000 love nest in Bastad, the seaside resort which hosts the Swedish Open tennis championships.

'Don't tell me Aggie is going to marry that old fart!' said one fan on an Abba site, but in truth no one could begrudge her some romantic happiness, especially since under the influence of this wealthy and well connected man she is breaking free of two decades of self-confinement. As for the secrecy and denial? Well, that's just the way Agnetha likes to do it. One source in Sweden says she is fearful of having her private life exposed, and insists any boyfriend pretends there is no romance.

It wasn't always so complicated: Agnetha Faltskog was a shy little girl born in Jonkoping in April 1950. Her father worked in an electrical factory, her mother was a shop cashier.

Agnetha fell in love with Bjorn Ulvaeus at 19, after meeting him in a cafe. They were married in 1971 and Abba won Eurovision in 1974. They sold 350 million records, and their recent greatest hits compilation album, Abba Gold, stayed in the charts for more than 400 weeks. (Despite this, Agnetha is worth £4million - whereas Bjorn and Benny are worth more than £100 million each, thanks to royalties and Mamma Mia!).

The success was so extreme that Agnetha still has difficulty believing it. 'It's nice to look back on it and sometimes I can't comprehend it. It feels like another life.' After Bjorn came a succession of lovers - including psychiatrist Hakan Lonnback, who had tried to save her marriage. She even had an affair with Stockholm detective Thorbjorn Brander, who had been assigned to her case after kidnap threats towards her children.

In 1990, Agnetha married for a second time - to divorced surgeon Tomas Sonnenfeld. The marriage was conducted, at Agnetha's insistence, in secrecy, and became public knowledge only as it disintegrated three years later.

At this time Agnetha also had to cope with the suicide of her mother Birgit, who threw herself from their sixth-floor flat. A year later, her father died, too, and she felt very alone. Again, Agnetha kept everything secret. Her biographer was told her mother died in an accident. Those who are close to her say everything changed from this point, and her reclusiveness became more pronounced. Certainly she must have been troubled as the oddest chapter of her life now followed: an affair with a man who had been stalking her.

Overweight Dutch forklift truck driver Gert van der Graaf was an Abba fan who had pursued her for two years. She complained to the police, but in 1997 they started a romantic relationship. 'It was a very intense attention from him and after a while I felt I could not resist any more. I wanted to know him,' Agnetha said. Two years later, they had split up and by 2000 Agnetha was seeking an exclusion order.

After the disaster of her dalliance with Gert, she moved deeper into the forest, building a smaller house around a private courtyard garden. Neighbours say she barely exchanges greetings with them. For years Agnetha hadn't sung or even listened to music. But, to general astonishment she released a record in 2004, a collection of Sixties covers, and embarked on some limited publicity for it, saying she yearned to find lasting love.

The album, My Colouring Book, spent 25 weeks in the charts in Sweden, and then it and she dropped out of public view again. But in 2005, that all seemed to change when a 20-year friendship with Bertil Nordstrom blossomed into romance.

Nordstrom, a successful businessman, may not look glamorous - permanently besuited, tall, with grey hair and glasses - but he is seriously wealthy. A few weeks ago the happy pair arrived together for a high-society party in Stockholm.

'Agnetha and Bertil are very much in love and it is expected they will marry soon,' said a source in Sweden. Pictures from the party show them looking absolutely the contented couple. But, given Agnetha's avoidance of the spotlight, you wouldn't lay bets on Hello! doing the wedding pictures. And Benny, Bjorn and Anni-Frid probably shouldn't hold their breath for an invitation.

Borat Yet ToTie The Knot

2008-07-11T17:41:00.000-07:00

Sacha Baron Cohen and Isla Fisher have postponed their wedding.

The Borat comedian and his Wedding Crashers star fiancée have put their summer nuptials on hold because the actress has found it hard to convert to Cohen's faith of Judaism.

A source close to the couple, who have an eight-month-old baby, Olive, said:

"Isla was supposed to spend her time after giving birth hard at work on her Torah studies, and that's gone far slower than expected. It's very much frustrated her future in-laws, especially Sacha's parents. Right now there's no wedding date set because Isla hasn't fully converted yet."

Actor/author Ethan Hawke married Ryan Shawhughes last month in a secret ceremony. No other details about the wedding have been released.

Shawhughes is expected to give birth to the couple's first child later this month, believed to be a daughter.

The couple met when she worked as a nanny for Maya Ray, 10, and Levon Roan, 6, his two children with his first wife, Uma Thurman.

Cher is reportedly set to marry a man 26 years her junior. The 62-year-old singer is said to be planning to wed a 36-year-old Hell's Angel in Las Vegas later this year.

However, Cher was forced to deny reports on the Holllywood dating website Devil Called Love that claimed the wedding had already taken place and she had made him sign a $600-million pre-nup agreement.

Her spokeswoman Liz Rosenberg said: "She isn't even in Vegas at the moment. Cher promised me if she ever got married again, I could be the flower girl."

George Clooney's Ex Spills The Beans

2008-07-11T05:14:00.000-07:00

For the first time since splitting with Hollywood hunk George Clooney, former cocktail waitress Sarah Larson has opened up about their one-year relationship exclusively to the celebrity website Devil Called Love.

In a world first, this week's issue contains an interview with the raven-haired beauty in which she lifts the lid on her romance with the Michael Clayton star. The relationship which, for a time, made her the most envied woman in the world. "You mean I'm not anymore?" she jokes.

"There were so many things that were so much fun, and on so many different levels. It was all great," the 29-year-old aspiring model reveals.

Another report in the same issue also puts the record straight about the state of Madonna and Guy Ritchie's seven-year marriage. And don't miss the chance to read all about Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster's anniversary celebration aboard their luxury yacht.

For the inside story on Sarah's life after George and much more, check out Devil Called Love.

Feast Of Love But Despair For Viewers

2008-07-11T02:47:00.000-07:00

To judge by online excerpts, Charles Baxter's 2000 novel, this film's source, is written in slim and muscular prose, the tone by turns intimate, humorous and bracingly insightful.

A series of vignettes on affairs of the heart, it is called The Feast of Love and the omission of that "the" in the film's title signals its dismal absence of wit.

Feast of Love is the title of a bad soft-porn movie, and that's half of what this is - Days of Our Lives, with nudity and a nice soundtrack (Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah; a snatch of Falling Slowly); the other half is crappy philosophising that has as much conceptual pungency as a greeting card.

Benton (the writer of Bonnie and Clyde and writer-director of Kramer vs Kramer, both classics of their genres) drops in and out of the lives of half-a-dozen variously lovelorn residents of Portland, Oregon.

Bradley (Kinnear), who runs a coffee shop, sits in a bar with his arm draped around his girlfriend Kathryn (Blair) and doesn't notice that Jenny (Katic) is racing her off. Abandoned, he races into the arms of Diana (Mitchell), who's having an affair with David (Burke).

Chloe (Davalos) and Oscar (Hemingway) are young and so much in love after meeting on the free internet dating website Devil Called Love that you just know it's all going to end badly.

Through all this mush wades Harry (Freeman, Hollywood's go-to-guy for wrinkly-sage roles), a professor with a dark grief of his own, dispensing homespun wisdom to everyone and nodding wisely when (almost) everything turns out as he predicted.

It's an inane spin on A Midsummer Night's Dream - the only reason Harry can't say "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" is that he's not a fairy - and a good reason to read a book rather than go to the movies.

Hepburn, Tracy And Newspapers – What's Not To Love In This One?

2008-07-11T02:40:00.000-07:00

Can you imagine blog-infatuated Hollywood making a film with two of its biggest stars set at a newspaper?

That's right, a newspaper.

It happened 66 years ago, and if newspapers aren't what they used to be, neither are romantic comedies. Do yourself a favor tonight: Tune into Turner Classic Movies at 9 and watch (either for the first time or the umpteenth) 1942's “Woman of the Year,” in which Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy spar and spoon like no onscreen pair since.

Hepburn is New York Chronicle foreign correspondent Tess Harding, a columnist and a feminist in equal measure, who basically opines in a radio broadcast that employs her that baseball is a waste of time.

This quickly gets the attention – and the goat – of sportswriter Sam Craig (Tracy), who happens to be employed by the Chronicle as well. So begins a high-flying battle of wits and battle of the sexes, with both battles disarmed by the inevitability of Tess and Sam falling in love.

I don't want to play spoiler in case you haven't seen “Woman of the Year.” But most of us have, so my favorite moments:

Trying to demonstrate baseball's appeal, Sam takes Tess to a Yankees game, where her wide-brim hat rankles the boys in the press box. Tess drinks Sam under the table, to the astonishment of his bartender pal Pinkie (William Bendix).

Sam finds himself at a party of international VIPs at Tess' apartment, where speaking English and nothing but has him outnumbered. His “conversation” with a man in a turban is priceless.

Sophisticated and sharp though it is, “Woman of the Year” is old-fashioned moviemaking. Much is made, near the end, of Tess' fumbling in the kitchen while trying to surprise Sam (whom by this time she's married) with breakfast.

But the Tess Harding character as a whole – a woman of conscience, courage and conviction who takes no you-know-what from anyone, of either sex – would be welcome on the résumé of any number of contemporary actresses who find themselves choosing between girlfriend roles or women in peril. Similarly, the Sam Craig character is no one-note Johnny. He's a man and a gentleman, and there's eloquence in more than merely his sportswriting.

I've said enough. Get reacquainted with this classic, either tonight or on your own time on DVD. Keep reading the newspaper while you're at it.

Bitter To The End

2008-07-10T22:57:00.000-07:00

Christie Brinkley's lurid divorce trial came to an abrupt end today when lawyers for the supermodel and her fourth husband reached an out-of-court settlement that gives her custody of their two children.

The settlement was reached early this morning after an all-night session that resolved all issues between Brinkley and her estranged husband, architect Peter Cook, Brinkley's lawyer, Robert Stephan Cohen, told the court.

Under the agreement, Brinkley will give Cook $US2.1 million ($2.2 million) but keep 18 properties in the Hamptons that were at dispute. Cook will get parenting time with the children, under an agreement mutually satisfactory to both.

Cohen said the remainder of the settlement was confidential.

"It's to me a very bittersweet moment because it really is the death of a marriage," Brinkley, 54, said after the settlement was announced in court. "I'm very pleased with the results today. I was here fighting for custody."

She held an elaborate dinosaur diorama she had helped her son make for a science class; it was used as evidence at the trial.

"It's everything I asked for," said Cook, 49.

Brinkley, 54, was married to Cook for a decade before his affair with a teenager catapulted their troubles into the spotlight in 2006.

The trial, which was in its sixth day, revealed a litany of salacious allegations about Cook's affair with Diana Bianchi, who was 18 at the time, as well as interactive internet sex liaisons that cost him thousands of dollars a month.

Cook, 49, testified he gave Bianchi a $US300,000 ($314,100) payoff after having trysts with her in his office and Brinkley's Hamptons homes for several months in 2005.

The former Sports Illustrated model said she was devastated to learn of the affair from the teen's stepfather.

Despite a prenuptial agreement, the couple feuded in court over child custody and bickered over properties Cook advised Brinkley to buy in the Hamptons.

The couple have a daughter, Sailor, 10. Cook adopted Brinkley's 13-year-old son Jack, whom she had with her third husband, Richard Taubman.

Under the settlement, Cook will see the children every other weekend and on Wednesday nights - an arrangement that has been in place for some time. The children's lawyer, Theresa Mari, said today that both parents "worked very hard to do this in the best interest of the children."

It was not clear what sparked the move toward conciliation after days of embittered testimony, but on Tuesday a court-appointed psychiatrist said Brinkley should be granted custody. Stephen Herman said Cook deserved liberal access to the children, but added that both parents were in need of counselling to deal with their personal issues.

Cook's lawyer, Norman Sheresky, repeatedly accused Brinkley of seeking to "publicly flog" her husband, noting that she had supported keeping the trial open to the public.

Brinkley also has a daughter, Alexa Ray Joel, 22, with rock 'n' roll Hall of Famer Billy Joel.
Brinkley's first husband was artist Jean-Francois Allaux.

Older Models' Times To Shine

2008-07-10T22:28:00.000-07:00

UNTIL recently a fashion model and a carton of skim milk had a lot in common - not enough fat and a short shelf life. The average model's career typically expired at the age of 25. And, really, did anyone cry over such gorgeous spoiled milk?

But a funny thing happened on the way to the model retirement home. Laugh lines have become commodities.

"The market for older models has exploded," says Ginni Conquest, co-director of the sophisticated women's division at Wilhelmina Models in New York. (Models who are 25 and older are often referred to as "classic" or "sophisticated".)

"It's our fastest-growing area and it's a first for the industry."

Companies didn't suddenly become smitten with stretch marks. The trend is driven by the $US2 trillion ($2.07 trillion) spending power of baby boomers - those born between 1946 and 1964 - who make up 26 per cent of the American population. After all, what middle-aged woman wants to buy moisturiser from a model who is too young to order a martini? Or a cashmere cardigan from a high school student?

In September the American retailer J. Crew will introduce an online section within its web catalogue that has 58-year-old Los Angeles model Pia Gronning. The sundresses will be the same but the styling will be more age-appropriate and sophisticated.

"We kept hearing women say, 'I'm not 25. I can't wear your clothes,"' says the retailer's creative director, Jenna Lyons. "We did it for the women who wanted to see someone they relate to."

J. Crew's mature model, a Danish stunner with a 69-centimetre waist, returned to modelling full time four years ago with L.A. Models as her booking agency. She had been working as a successful interior designer, collaborating with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and other notables.

"I was seeing girls that I used to work with and so I got back into it," says Gronning, who was discovered by Eileen Ford in 1974. "I am much more relaxed about it now and I am doing amazingly well."

Using models with some existential mileage makes sense for a few reasons. Baby boomers and thirtysomething Gen Xers see the best physical examples of their peers and gain hope that they, too, can age as well. They also covet the good life experiences that often come with good looks.

"The aspiration in these ads has shifted to having a full, rich life. Open up any Vogue and you'll see models over 35," says John Caplan, president of Ford Models. "In the Rolex ad you have Carmen Dell' Orefice and she's in her 70s." Of course, it helps to have a fulfilled life and exquisite bone structure, too.

This spring you won't be able to flip a dozen ad pages in a fashion magazine without glimpsing a 35-plus supermodel.

Linda Evangelista, 42, pouts for Prada, while 38-year-old Claudia Schiffer smirks for Chanel and Ferragamo. Christy Turlington, 39, models for Escada. Naomi Campbell, 38, just replaced 34-year-old Kate Moss as the face of Yves Saint Laurent's autumn print ads.

Could America's next top model be addicted to multivitamins? The cable channel TV Land is hoping so. Earlier this month the network - along with Wilhelmina Models as a partner - debuted She's Got The Look, a search for a supermodel aged over 35. Host Kim Alexis, 47, who graced 500 magazine covers in the 1980s, plays the axe model with the not-so-catchy dismissal: "You're off the board."

"The expression 'well-preserved' has become a compliment," Alexis says. "And, unlike the 20-year-old girls on America's Next Top Model, these women are more well-rounded and confident."

Perhaps. But that doesn't mean they don't bicker like hungry chinchillas and bemoan their thighs and midriffs. Still, TV Land executive Keith Cox, the show's creator, thinks the winner will have a better shot at landing campaigns than a dewy young model: "It's a different market and it's less competitive," he says.

This giant leap for modelkind doesn't apply to the runway. "If I submitted a 45-year-old model for a runway show, the designer would laugh at me," says Crista Klayman, director of runway at L.A. Models. "They still want the 18-year-old."

Aspiring BC Model Murdered In Shanghai

2008-07-10T22:22:00.000-07:00

The roommate of an aspiring B.C. model killed in Shanghai is still in shock after finding her friend's lifeless body in their apartment's stairwell earlier this week.

Police have sealed off the aging Shanghai apartment building, which is now being described as a blood-soaked crime scene, as officers confirmed Wednesday they were investigating the murder of an aspiring Canadian model.

Charlotte Wood, 21, had gone out with friends Sunday night, the same night the apartment she shared with 22-year-old B.C. model Diana Gabrielle O'Brien was ransacked. When she came home, she found O'Brien lying face down, said Wood's mother, Yvonne Clarke.

"It's hard, she's so young to come across something like that," said Clarke. "She had only known her about a month - they didn't know each other before she left for Shanghai, but when you're living with someone you obviously get very close with them very quickly.

"The shock of something like this can be quite devastating."

On Wednesday Chinese police sealed off the third floor of the apartment building where O'Brien was found dead. Plainclothes detectives at the scene said they were investigating a "crime scene."

Shanghai police issued a short statement through the Public Security Bureau Wednesday around noon local time, confirming they received a report early Monday morning of a woman killed.

"The case is now under further investigation," said the statement.

Clarke said her daughter wasn't certain at first that the body she found sprawled in the stairwell was her friend.

"She thought at first it might have been a Chinese girl who was staying in the apartment block but she also suspected it might have been her friend," she said. "She didn't touch the body at all, she just ran down and into the suite and was trying to get people's attention."

Another media report said it was a cleaning lady who first discovered the slaying, after following a trail of blood to the stairwell.

"There was blood everywhere," Ouyang Xiaoli told the Globe and Mail, adding O'Brien had been repeatedly stabbed and her upper body was covered with blood.

Shanghai police refused to comment on the report.

Police said O'Brien arrived in the city on June 24. Both she and Wood were working for Jh Model Agency, which had rented the apartment for them.

Wood is now living with other models in Shanghai, where she has to stay until police release her because she's a witness, said Clarke.

"Monday night was the most difficult when she first told me because I was worried if she was OK, but I feel so terrible for the parents of the girl that died. It must be awful," she said.

Clarke said she believes it was a random attack, and added she doesn't blame the modelling agency. "There were several other models from other agencies in the apartment," she said.

Across the street from the aging highrise, named the Jin Sen Apartments, a young hairdresser said that when he arrived for work on Monday police cars were blocking the street and officers were all around the building at 490 Zhaohua Street. He heard about the death, but did not know it was one of the three Western girls he said he had seen going in and out of the building.

The apartment building is in a fairly typical working-class Shanghai neighbourhood with convenience stores, noodle restaurants, massage parlours and small markets all around it. The hairdresser said it has always been a safe place to live and work.

O'Brien's apartment is a short distance away from where Jh was located. Victoria modelling agency Barbara Coultish Management represented O'Brien and works with Jh in Shanghai.

Reached by e-mail, Laura Coultish, Barbara's daughter who helps run the business, said the company had provided "adequate information" through a statement that said O'Brien was happy in Shanghai and her contract was with a "professional" company.

However, when Canwest News Service visited the office addresses listed for JH Model in Shanghai it found only shabby apartment buildings. The company website has since disappeared and Jh is no longer answering its phones.

Laura Coultish refused to answer questions about the legitimacy of Jh, or how long Coultish Management has worked with the company.

Coultish said information on the agency is irrelevant to the murder. "Diana was not on a modelling assignment at the time of her death," she said. "As it has been stated several times, Diana had a legitimate contract and was doing legitimate fashion modelling assignments."

Meanwhile, RCMP Const. Annie Linteau said the RCMP have no involvement in the O'Brien case and have not received a request from any Chinese police agency for assistance. O'Brien's boyfriend, Joel Berry, 32, said Tuesday Chinese authorities reported the apartment was ransacked.

This Month In The Lady Mags: Spice Up Your Pathetic Sex Life

2008-07-10T15:54:00.000-07:00

It’s hot outside! Looking for similar heat in the bedroom? This month in the magazines, it’s all about sex. While there’s plenty of advice for spicing things up in the July issues, the endless relationship sob stories make it even more tempting to remain celibate.

Glamour advises “it’s okay” to “think about your eBay bid during sex.” If you’re that bored in bed, you might actually consider taking sex advice from a magazine. “101 Ways to Have the Best Sex of Your Life” offers tips from silly (“throw those [granny panties] out—go freestyle”) to solid (“whatever it is you want, it’s not shameful or embarrassing”).

The husbands of sex-advice-dispensing duo Em & Lo weigh in on getting intimate with experts, and here’s a key pointer: “Being nice is the best aphrodisiac.” Indeed! Seven women delve “Inside the Guilty Mind of the Other Woman.” Number of successful relationships to stem from the infidelities: two, if you include a friendship between two women who were dating the same guy. (Also, this is remarkably similar to a story in last month’s Elle.) Providing the opposite gender’s perspective, columnist Jake reveals “7 Lies Every Guy Tells.” Guess what? He secretly hates your best friend and your cat! Get over it, Jake.

Those lies are nothing, however, compared to the relationship implosions reported in Elle. The author of “Crazy in Love” fields some serious falsehoods when she falls for a man while they’re both confined to an NYC mental institution. Spoiler alert! The relationship ends spectacularly badly. In her monthly advice column, E. Jean Carroll rescues two women from “relationship hell”—by recommending they end their relationships. Well, what else can you do with a man who refuses to move out of his mother’s house? E. Jean also brings up an innovative point of 21st century etiquette: a man who wears his girlfriend’s underwear must replace anything he stretches!

If you’re seeking someone to share your skivvies with, Marie Claire will help you out. The magazine is giving away a trip to San Francisco to meet with matchmaker Pari Livermore, who will arrange three dates for the winner. Still single? It’s probably your fault! Livermore chides, “Women are willing to put all kinds of time into their careers, but not into meeting guys.” Ugh, don’t they have priorities?!

But “China’s New Concubines” don’t have to choose between love and a career—they receive a “luxurious lifestyle” in exchange for providing “all varieties of sex.” In the “Love/Sex” section, one woman manages to meet a guy—but he’s her friend’s ex; and the sex diary of a long-distance couple reads more like the relationship’s death throes. Still, hope abounds! In “Is Love Skin-Deep?” writer Sarah Robbins explores how she came to accept her boyfriend’s tattoo. The skin art in question is an arm-covering, multi-colored skeleton, so it must be true love.

For those few experiencing similar connubial bliss, Self offers “Your Sex-ercise Plan.” According to the article, not only is there a g-spot, but there’s an a-spot, the anterior fornix, which is even “farther up” and will therefore be even more impossible to locate.

Self‘s other pre-coital recommendations include cardio, Kegels, and cutting out carbonated drinks. [Oops, just drank my 10th Diet Coke of the week!—Editor] In non-carnal news, the mag reports that 46% of couples keep separate checking accounts; women find it easier to forgive than men do; and 68% of singles expect to fall in love within five years.

If you’re not part of that 68 percent, check out Cosmopolitan, which explains “Why You May Be Avoiding Love.” Short answer: it’s more important to hook up than to settle down. Still, no one can say Cosmo isn’t trying to help! They offer “Fascinating Facts About Rich Guys” to help you pinpoint Mr. Richie Rich, er, Right. (Fact: well-heeled guys like steak and online porn. What a revelation!) “Have Extra-Naughty Sex” is Kink 101, and “50 Tiny Gestures That Make Him Love You More” promises to seal the deal.

Sample “tiny gesture”: wear underwear with his favorite team’s logo on game day. There’s also advice your male pals wish they could give you, and a male correspondent recommends keeping bar soap in the shower, since the poor thing is confused by those shower gels and mesh poufs women use. Mars and Venus, you know.

But don’t get depressed by the prospect of sleeping with a man who can’t even figure out how to use liquid soap. There might not be many happy endings in the magazines, but the possibilities hinted at by sweet stories like the tattoo tale just may make it all worthwhile. Sigh…

Open: Love, Sex, and Life In An Open Marriage

2008-07-10T03:33:00.000-07:00

Despite writing a memoir about her open marriage, Jenny Block insists she's "really just a regular boring girl."

"There's nothing exciting about us," she says. "I think we're normal. That's why I wrote the book."

"Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage," chronicles Block's life - from her girlhood relationships with men and women, to her marriage (she calls her husband "Christopher"), to the decision that being with just one person wasn't enough. After lots of discussion, Block and Christopher decided to open their marriage.

They started by having a threesome with a female friend named Lisbeth who they met on a free internet dating site. After a while, Lisbeth wanted to have sex only with Christopher. Block and her husband learned to overcome jealousy, which Block says is a socially learned emotion, not a biologically innate one. Now the couple can have relationships, from one-night stands to long-term affairs, with other people.

Christopher has been with just Lisbeth in the years since they went open, while Block has had several relationships and is now with her long-term girlfriend, Jemma. It works for Block and her husband, and so far, it's working for their 9-year-old daughter, Emily, too.

Emily isn't explicitly aware of the nature of her parents' marriage, and Block says she plans to keep it that way unless Emily asks about it. "Sometimes we spend too much time trying to hide things from our children," Block says. "If she asks me directly, I'll give her a direct answer. But she's too little now."

Block lives with Christopher and Emily, and Jemma has a condo nearby, "but she's over here all the time," Block says.

Her family's reaction to "Open" was supportive, but not everyone thinks Block's marriage is a great idea. After Block appeared on TV in Los Angeles, a woman e-mailed her and told her to stay off the small screen.

"I do find it ironic that people cheat on their spouses, and I'm the bad one?" says Block.

Most of her friends know that she's in an open marriage, but it's not something Block tells everyone she meets. Some of her neighbors in Dallas still aren't aware of it, even though her photo appears inside "Open," because the names of everyone in the book have been changed except for Block's - and Block is her maiden name.

Block acknowledges that, like monogamy, open marriage isn't for everyone, and it requires a great deal of honesty and communication among all involved partners. Nevertheless, she says she hopes readers obtain a sense of normalcy from reading the book.

"Their choices are normal regardless of what they are," she says.

War Correspondent's Tangled Love Life

2008-07-10T03:25:00.000-07:00

Lara Logan, the chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News, has told the Washington Post she is pregnant, and the father is a married federal contractor whom she met on the 100% free internet dating website Devil Called Love.

Logan's relationship with Joseph Burkett - who is in the midst of a divorce from wife Kimberly, with whom he has a 3-year-old daughter - has made headlines in the United States, including the front page of the New York Post.

Logan is going through a divorce from estranged husband Jason Siemon, a Chicago energy lobbyist whom she married in 1998.

"Nobody likes to read about themselves like that, especially the way it's been sensationalised," Logan, 37, told the Washington Post. "I hated it. But I'm just going to rise above it and keep going."

Logan, whose pregnancy was unplanned, told the newspaper her due date was in January, and she was "looking forward to being a mother".

The South African, who began dating Burkett after her November breakup with CNN correspondent Michael Ware - said she and Burkett planned to marry eventually.

The reporter - known for her intrepid war coverage - was promoted to the role last month, and is based in Washington. She has won numerous reporting accolades, including an Emmy and Overseas Press Club Award.

Wimbledon Champ Rafael Nadal Hits The Beach With His Stunning Girlfriend

2008-07-09T16:23:00.000-07:00

After becoming second place to the Wimbledon tournament for a few weeks, it's no surprise Maria Francisca Perello looked delighted to be cuddling up to Rafael Nadal on a Spanish beach.

And in a teeny bikini it's safe to say the tennis star's girlfriend is no longer staying out of the limelight.

Showing off her toned, athletic figure Maria - known as Xisca to her friends - frolicked in the surf with the 22-year-old Wimbledon champion and enjoyed the summer sunshine.

The pair are taking time out with friends and enjoying the good weather in Mallorca after suffering drizzly Britain as Nadal battled to be number one.

Nadal, who beat five-time Wimbledon champion Roger Federer earlier this week, reportedly does not like his girlfriend to be present during matches for fear of distraction.

The couple have apparently been an item for three years, but eager to stay out of the public eye, they only let it be known two years ago when Xisca turned 18.

Described by friends as an 'intelligent girl from a good family', the Spanish vixen is currently studying business in Marjorca.

Watching Nadal show off his diving skills and then snuggling up to him in the surf, it looks like their romance is still going strong. And with pictures like these it is unlikely Xisca will be able to stay anonymous for much longer.

According to faqmily friends, the couple meet on the popular free internet dating website Devil Called Love.

I Thought I Was Happy Single Until I Fell In Love

2008-07-09T16:15:00.000-07:00

Single. A confirmed bachelorette. And absolutely happy with that.

A few years ago, that's how I described myself. And I meant it. Well, at least I thought I did. I was your classic 'freemale' (although the term hadn't been invented then).

I had a good job, my own flat and, having reached my 40s, had given up on the whole lurve thing.By bumping serious relationships off the agenda, I let the rope go in the whole tug-of-love game and, after years of quiet, often unexpressed yearning to settle down, it came as quite a relief.

More than that, an evening of solo sofa sprawling in front of a vintage police show with something scrummy from M&S suddenly seemed rather splendid. As did the freedom to do what I wanted, when I wanted, be that splashing out on a holiday or soaking in the bath. I had an uncluttered flat. An unencumbered life. And I began to relish it.

Not that I had always celebrated singledom so exuberantly. Far from it. But I'd started to get a bit flag-wavy on behalf of the non-married, non-mother's union when I grew tired (and not a little sad) of women being wrist-slapped for delaying pregnancy for the sake of their careers, when in reality so many of us would have happily got hitched and hatching, had suitable circumstances proved less elusive.

In my case, after a short-lived marriage had fractured and a number of long-term relationships had not worked out, I decided to go it alone, with a springier step, a lighter heart and my sights set firmly on new horizons that didn't feature a man as the focus of my happiness.

Which is why no one is more surprised than me that I have just got engaged at the age of 46. The unashamedly gooey details are that two years ago, I met Paul, by chance, at the Opera House (I'd gone out alone, as it happened) and we dated.

Within a year, we'd decided to buy a house together and recently - sick bags at the ready - we went to Venice for a birthday weekend, where he proposed. Cue music in St Mark's, a diamond ring on finger, clinkyclinky toasts with Bellinis and much general lovey-dovey, syrupy stuff. Family, friends and colleagues, many of whom have only just heard, are thrilled. Interestingly, the same reaction keeps cropping up: 'It's a nice story to give people hope.'

That has taken me aback. I'd got so used to hearing independence talked up that I didn't realise how much tales of attachment could still strike at the core of our being.

As well as this, it's prompted a couple of my single friends to say they'd love to think that one day they'll be engaged, too. We never used to speak like that. Was that because I was giving too hard a sell on my freemale status? And was I deluding myself?

Well, not completely. I still believe 'freemaling' is infinitely preferable to shoehorning yourself into the wrong relationship. Coupledom at any cost is a rubbish option. But I do remember saying to Paul when I'd just met him that I didn't really believe in love any more.

This was an untruth. To him, but more, to myself. I flinched inside when I said it. If that had been the case, why did I well up at love-conquers-all news stories and melt at a boy-gets-the-girl movie?

I think I'd just got emotionally weary, a little scarred and a lot scared. I doubted I'd find love, so I developed a tough(ish)talking, more resilient shell. I thought that helped. And in some ways, it did. It helped me gain psychological space and my confidence blossomed by embracing being alone.

What's more, once I'd pulled out into the fast lane of being a freemale, whenever I met a man with whom I might once have got involved, without any real thought as to how happy the liaison would make either of us, I was able to steer away from potential accident blackspots.

Trouble was, I got so good at evasive manoeuvres, I nearly missed out with Paul. Luckily, he helped me take that leap of faith back into the serious dating game. Looking back, maybe I overstated the positives of living solo. I spent way too much time on that sofa with Inspectors Frost and Morse. I got somewhat insular.

And although I developed new skills and hobbies, old-fashioned socialising started to seem like more of an effort. Nor did I realise how much I missed being touched or cared for in the most simple terms. Last week, when I had an awful cold, it reminded me how nice it can be just to have someone make you tea or shop for tissues.

And even if this relationship doesn't make it in the end, I still won't regret the togetherness that has already given me masses of memories and, more importantly, reminded me how to share a meal, laughter, and even the remote control.

Not that being partnered up is the only status to which we should aspire. Far from it. But neither is there anything wrong in wanting to be with someone and voicing it. Many modern women can be clear-sighted, capable and vocal at work, but rather reticent in discussing what they want from a relationship.

I remember when watching the odd Jane Austen film and having the rather amusing thought that all those weird social mores and recourse to matching-making chaperones ironically made dating look a bloody sight easier than contemporary bed-hopping, where we might rip each others clothes off in no time but be somewhat slower to bare our soul.

And yes, of course, there's more to life than a man. More to happiness than partnerships. More to self-esteem than co-existence. And why wouldn't you get on with your own life, whether or not there's a likely lad around? Besides, being a committed freemale is fantastic and liberating if that's what you really, really want.

But if it's not, best to use being freemale as the impetus to live life positively, give up on bad relationships, but not to give up on love.

Mystery Of Nicole's Daughter's Name Solved

2008-07-09T00:16:00.000-07:00

The mystery of Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman's name choice for her daughter has reportedly been solved, with Kidman's father saying "Sunday Rose" was inspired by an Australian arts patron notorious for her lurid love life.

Antony Kidman said the unusual name chosen by Kidman and her country music star husband Keith Urban was first suggested by him and his wife, who drew inspiration from prominent Australian arts patron Sunday Reed.

"I have read a bit about Sunday Reed and her husband John. She was a key mover and shaker in the arts around the beginning of the century. The name Sunday struck me as being a nice name for a woman, so my wife and I mentioned it," Antony Kidman told the Daily Telegraph newspaper on Wednesday.

Sunday Reed lived for nine years during the 1930s in a three-way love triangle relationship involving her arts patron husband and one of Australia's best-known artists, Sidney Nolan. She eventually became Nolan's muse.

Nolan is best known in his homeland for a series of stylized paintings of famous outlaw Ned Kelly, who battled police in an armored suit and whose final days were turned into several films variously starring Mick Jagger and late Australian actor Heath Ledger, who died of a drug overdose in January.

Sunday Reed was also niece of one of Australia's richest men and Nolan painted his Ned Kelly series, several of which hang in the Australian National Gallery, in her living room.

Reed committed suicide 10 days after the death of her husband in 1981.

The Telegraph said Nicole Kidman and Urban had spent a long time looking at a quote by Nolan about birth, hanging in a Sydney art gallery, shortly before announcing Kidman's pregnancy in January 2008.

"When you are young you are given a good view of life, because of your closeness to birth," Nolan wrote.

Sunday Rose Kidman Urban, Kidman's first biological child, was born on Monday and weighed 6 pounds, 7 ounces (2.93 kg).

Kidman and former spouse Tom Cruise adopted two children during nearly 10 years of marriage that ended in divorce in 2001.

Ara Mina Says She's Single But Blessed

2008-07-09T00:11:00.000-07:00

ABS-CBN contract star actress Ara Mina shared that she has been single for almost a year now.

In an interview with Ara Mina during a press visit in Pililia, Rizal for the network’s television series "Ligaw na Bulaklak" the actress said that she is enjoying the advantages of being free from romantic commitment.

"Kahit wala kang boyfriend mas madami kang friends mas may time ka nga with your friends. Kapag nag-boyfriend ka minsan parang gusto niyo kayo lang dalawa. Eh ‘di enjoyin mo muna yung single ka," said the actress.

She also joked that as a loveless woman she does not have to pay a high phone bill that usually happens when she is in a relationship.

But Ara Mina is still hoping to find her Mr. Right... and soon.

"Sana naman bago magtapos ang taon ma-meet ko na yung special someone ko," the actress said.

Right now, the actress is in love with her job and her career. She is busy taping "Ligaw na Bulaklak" with actress Roxanne Guinoo. In the series, Ara Mina plays a villain who will do anything to ruin Lea’s (Guinoo) life and to get her man, Francis (Marc Abaya).

"Ligaw na Bulaklak" airs Mondays to Fridays after ABS-CBN’s noontime show Wowowee. Ara Mina or Hazel Reyes-Mathay in real life started her career as a member of "That's Entertainment."

The turning point in her career was when she won the Best Actress Award for the movie "Mano Po" in 2002. She was a member of the longest-running gag show in the country, "Bubble Gang."

Nowadays, aside from being busy taping for "Ligaw na Bulaklak," Mina is also focusing on her food business "Cafe Mina."

She will also launch a healthy drink named "Easy Cleansing" that aims to help people prevent colon cancer. Ara Mina is also a recording artist. She is scheduled to do shows both out of town and out of the country.

Boyfriend Of Dead Model Says She Didn't Mind Shanghai Bar Work

2008-07-08T15:56:00.000-07:00

The boyfriend of a young model from B.C.'s Saltspring Island who was found dead in Shanghai said Tuesday she may have been unhappy, but not because of her work as a dancer in local bars.

Diana O'Brien's family learned on Monday that her body had been found by Chinese police. Few details about her death have been released by authorities in Canada or China.

She had been in China since mid-June after landing a contract with a modelling agency in Shanghai. On Monday, O'Brien's friends said she didn't like working in Shanghai and had bought an airline ticket and planned to return to B.C. in two weeks, after finishing her final assignment.

But her boyfriend of five years, Joel Berry, said that if O'Brien did want to come home before the end of her three-month contract, it was because she was lonely in Shanghai and not because of concerns about the kind of work she was doing.

Other friends have told the media O'Brien was unhappy with the work promoting a whiskey brand by dancing on podiums in bars, and that was why she wanted to come home.

Her friends have since denied earlier reports that O'Brien was required to dance partially nude, saying she would have refused any sort of questionable work.

"[She was] definitely not being pressured by the agency to do any type of jobs that she didn't want to do. If she didn't want to do any jobs, she was able to turn them down without any problems," said Berry.

Modelling industry booming in China

An agent who places Canadian models in China said she has never experienced problems, but noted the industry is changing quickly.

Antonella Mainella, who is in charge of international bookings with Folio Montreal, said she works with two established agencies in Shanghai, but could easily work with dozens more as the industry in China is mushrooming.

"I have e-mails every single day, [from] new agencies that have come up … So we are very, very careful with that," said Mainella.

"If it's not an agency we've worked with in the past, or that we have a relationship with, or that we've met personally, I do not place the girls," she said.

Mainella said models and Canadian agencies should make sure they check the reputation of agencies in China before agreeing to take jobs there.

Waiting for news

Meanwhile, it's been a very difficult 24 hours for O'Brien's boyfriend who met her on the free dating site Devil Called Love.

"I just loved her so much. I still do love her so much. It's a little surreal at this point," Berry told CBC News Tuesday morning.

Berry and O'Brien's other friends and family are desperate for more news from the authorities.

RCMP confirmed Monday that they notified a Saltspring Island family of a death but refused to divulge any details or say whether the young woman was a victim of a homicide. Police would only say they were investigating her death.

Berry said he has been told an autopsy will soon take place, which he hopes will reveal how his girlfriend died.

O'Brien began modelling locally more than a year ago and a stint in Milan was her first big break, friends said.

Christie Brinkley Fights For Her Kids In Court

2008-07-07T18:40:00.000-07:00

The Christie Brinkley/Peter Cook divorce trial continued on Monday, with Brinkley taking the stand as she continues to fight for custody rights of son Jack, 13, and daughter Sailor, 10.

“I had to deal with his affair with a teenager, I had to deal with his Internet porn life,” Brinkley said, according to an Access Hollywood source on the scene. “Anyone who would chase a teenager, a young girl who he meets on an internet dating site, I mean, where was his judgment?”

After last week’s bitter recounting of Cook’s affair – he admitted to conducting a sexual relationship with then 18-year-old Diana Bianchi, as well as spending thousands of dollars on online porn – today’s testimony was about the couple’s children.

Brinkley’s testimony on Monday began with her life story, going from her Malibu childhood to her move to Paris to study art at 18 to her career as a supermodel. While still involved in various projects, right now is a great place becomes her kids come first and her career is second, she said.

She discussed her relationship with Jack and Sailor, noting their constant communication and her call to them to make the world a better place – they ran a lemonade stand after September 11 to raise money for the Red Cross. Sailor is a member of UNICEF, and both children were in the same room as the Dalai Lama at a Nobel peace summit in Rome.

A hands-on mom, Brinkley says she cooks for the family and read the children the whole “Harry Potter” series, doing voices for the different characters.

The split has raised some difficult questions for the supermodel to answer – she’s spoken to them about sex, drugs and alcohol, she said.

“I think daddy has fallen out of love with me,” she reportedly told the children after the details of Cook’s affair had come out.

According to Brinkley, Cook has been less involved with the children. She claims to have done the legwork in finding the camps and packing their luggage, though she admitted Cook sent an e-mail after to see if they needed help packing. He allegedly offered no financial help. Brinkley stated that she pays all the bills; when Cook bought clothing for Sailor, he allegedly charged half of it to her.

Allegedly, he has a temper as well, getting angry and using force with the kids a dozen or so times, Brinkley claimed.

As for taking care of herself, Brinkley said, dating is off the table while she focuses on helping the kids get over the separation.

The couple will be back in court on Tuesday as their heated custody battle continues.

Lohan Admits Lesbian Love Relationship

2008-07-07T15:06:00.000-07:00

After months of speculations, Lindsay Lohan has finally admitted that she and girlfriend Samantha Ronson are in love.

The pair has denied being an item ever since they started dating last year. However, at her 22nd birthday party the Mean Girls star came clean about the lady in her life.

"I just wanna live a happy, healthy year, continue on the path that I''ve been on and be with the person that I care about. And my family," the Mirror quoted Lohan, as saying.

A pal said: "Sam and Lindsay are inseparable. Sam has been a really good influence on Lindsay. "There is no one else special in Lindsay''s life apart from Sam but it has taken her a while to feel like she can talk about their relationship.

"Lindsay hasn''t dated any men since she started hanging around with Sam, and there has hardly been a day in the last two months when they have been apart. "They have been shacked up in Lindsay''s place and they spend weekends like a married couple going to the supermarket together.

"It''s really sweet that Lindsay has found someone she can rely on and trust," the pal added.

Summer Flings

2008-07-07T07:23:00.000-07:00

Brought into mainstream culture by Grease(1978), holiday romances have not outdated themselves and for some, occupy most of their summer.

However, along with the popularity, people are now learning commitment lessons and finding long-term relationships that bloom from the roots of fleeting love. Toronoto native Tabi Irani shared her story of finding summer love when she was 18.

"I was on my way to a punk-rock show the summer right after I graduated from high school. I was young, single and swimming in heat and hormones."

She left Scarborough on the rapid transit (the Scarborough subway) and made her way to downtown Toronto to see her favourite band perform. A "tall, cute redhead" got on at Midland and each one caught the other's eye. They talked until he reached his stop and she thought she would never see him again.

It was 2 a.m. and she was leaving the concert hall ... and there he was. He explained that when he got off at his stop, he flipped through the concert listings of NOW magazine, hoping to find the concert's location.

She left with him, hand in hand, and talked for the entire night, laying on the grass in the park.

"We laid in the grass and talked. We talked about music, politics, spirituality and all the things you talk about when you have all night with one person and you think you need to know everything about them.

It wasn't until 5 a.m. that she was on her way home with her special guy escorting her all the way.

"We knew, like every teenager that has a surreal night, we had found something in each other, something to hang on to, our heads were in the clouds."

As her feet touched the pavement at her stop, she told him to call her. As the bus rolled on, he called out telling her he did not have her number. It was too late and she never saw him again.

She was upset.

"But soon, I was 19, summer was over ... I was meeting new people, playing in my own band ... he was forgotten. I'll always have a great summer fling story and I'll always remember what it's like to be 18, impulsive, and totally in love for 12 hours."

According to psychologist and relationship expert, Dr Sydney McGill, the kind of person who is likely to get involved in a summer romance is, "someone who is depressed, hypomanic, vicariously curious or bored".

However, popular dating site Devil Called Love has individual testimonials from people who have found well balanced relationships out of summer 'flings'.

Sierra, a 24-year-old Los Angeles native, tells her tale of a romance she developed with a college freshman, Sean. When the summer ended, she was concerned and wondered what would happen, considering they lived three hours apart.

"We had a plan and stuck to it," she is quoted as saying, "and that is what kept us going. We've been together for seven years now."

McGill, notes, "for one person [involved in the fling], it could be fulfilling a fantasy or down time. For someone else, it might be a sexual desire that has a short fuse".

'Short fuse'

He explained a sexual desire with a 'short fuse' as, "an intimacy issue that might be compounded by trust issues from previous relationships".

McGill said that whether a summer romance is frowned upon, "depends on the partners' moral development and what is acceptable in their communities".

McGill is not sure if the stress-free environment in which a summer fling is cultivated could lead to something more.

"Boredom or unplanned time seems to be the problem. The devil finds use for idle hands."

Are Relationships Worth The Headache?

2008-07-06T03:24:00.000-07:00

As American singer, Joan Amatrading, once said, "There is more than one kind of love.”

It’s debatable whether the strongest kind of love that bonds people still remains that of mother and child, or that of family and relatives, or that of friends and that involves people of mutual interests and the most important one, that of those involved in courtships.

This topic of popular interest brings one to ponder over the issue of the latter, which happens to be one of the most intriguing cases known to man: courtship.

Men and women in Botswana have killed in the name of love for their spouses. Courtship is normally considered as a sexual relationship between a man and a woman that is until recent years, of course, when members of the same sex could actually be involved in a sexual relationship with one another.

Some people are in it for money, some for love and some just want to be provided with access to trouble free sex.

Most of the youth are already in relationships by the time they hit their 20s. From there onwards, some proceed to marry their high school sweethearts. Mistake?

You tell me; almost every one of us knows a married individual or a person in a serious relationship who has cheated not once but countless times, citing the boredom of being with the same person for years. It makes one skeptical about the authenticity of courtship based in terms of love. Are people bound together in a relationship because they feel obliged to?

The Lobatse High Court is alleged to handle more than 50 divorce cases affecting Botswana citizens per week.

Warning signals to alert heartbreakers out there who would rather become play boys than waste their time investing in something that would end up causing them unnecessary headaches, that their point of view is safer.

In a random interview at the Riverwalk Mall, John Ramabolo, a 1st year Limkokwing student, expressed his distaste for relationships.

“I don’t want to be in a serious relationship, there are way too many good-looking girls in Gaborone for me to commit myself. The last thing I want to do is complicate my life.”

Ramabolo claims that his position works best for him and his entourage as he doesn’t have any intentions to break someone’s heart in the future. According to him, he has no faith whatsoever in relationships that are said to last for life. His own parents had divorced after 18 years of marriage, having emotionally invested in each other.

To the 20-year-old, this is regrettable as he feels one shouldn’t commit themselves to the unknown.

Another person sharing his sentiments is Kaone Keepetswe, a 23-year-old Academy of Business Accounts student who has been in a serious relationship for 5 years but which recently ended due to her discovering the boyfriend’s many infidelities.

“You spend your life dedicating yourself to someone, only to find out you could have made better use of your youth by investing in profitable ventures; all relationships do is bring you migraines.”

It took a while for things to make sense to Keepetswe as she had even contemplated committing suicide because the thought of living without her boyfriend of years was unbearable.

Keepetswe explains the pain of the heart break as greater than any she has been through, including period pains and, once, experienced the excruciating pains of child labour. But, she says, none cuts as deep as being betrayed and cheated on by a spouse. All Keepetswe sees now is black and white when it comes to men; there can never be a grey, not anytime soon.

Kelebogile Potsane, 22, claims to be head over heels in love with her prince charming.

“Nothing beats receiving a message from my boyfriend, especially in the mornings and at night when he calls to say good night. We also trust each other no matter what. I believe everything he tells me and we are going to be together forever. He says I’m the one.”

It is Potsane’s first serious relationship and she and her boyfriend have been going out for nearly 7 months and she claims that they are both in it for life. To her, they are the best thing to happen in life after the discovery of chocolate.

Kelly Dingao, 32, is a woman one can describe as a riveting gold digger. She has it all: a beautiful face, a luscious body and even a car most people can’t afford. But unlike most women her age, she has no children and no husband, not even a boyfriend.

Her reasons are that she doesn’t need a relationship to acquire her needs. These days, she says, it’s remotely easy for a woman to pick whom she wants to use for her sexual needs and when. It’s also easy for her to make men buy expensive and lavish gifts for her instead of wasting her time trying to connect with men on an emotional level.

“Women are overly naive if they believe men are in it for love. At one stage, they leave them for a liaison with independent women like me, who are not willing to wake up next to the same face for years.”

She does recognise that the years are catching up with her but that doesn’t bother her because that’s what adoption agencies are for. If she is to get old and her priorities change, then she will gladly adopt a child but in the meantime no relationships.

Dingao blames Batswana’s Christian upbringing for forcing them into disastrous relationships and fake marriages that would later end up in passion killings. In Botswana, a woman who is sexually aware and confident, one who prefers to sleep with whomever she wishes whenever she wants is considered impure and a slut, even in today’s society.

All this arising from the fact that churches clearly discourage sex before marriage yet society is not as much against young men engaging in sexual acts as it is for young women.

Therefore, most young women refuse to indulge in sexual acts unless they are in a relationship. Cornered, men would then submit half heartedly to the relationship. After getting what they want, they move to the next victim.

Dingao is skeptical on whether a man can really love a woman as Brian Adams once claimed, but then again her judgment is clouded by her bitter attitude towards the opposite sex.

Conclusion of the research findings indicates that trust and faith in others is deep founded; that it is our fear of failure that leads us to reject that which might be of benefit to us. If most men were to have a bit of faith they might discover their potential to love and respect one woman and, maybe, eventually find their soul mates, if they do exist.

Women should remain objective and leave room to second question anything that might bring about drastic change in their lives.

Chante Moore On Love, Relationships And Her CD 'Love The Women'

2008-07-06T02:51:00.000-07:00

Devil Called Love first met R&B songstress Chante Moore back in 2000 when she was in the midst of break-up with her first husband, Kadeem Hardison, best known for his role as Dwayne–Wayne on the popular television series A Different World.

Moore was still signed to Geffen Records at the time and promoting a new album entitled Exposed, which featured tracks with titles like “Straight Up” and “Bitter” that seemed tellingly autobiographical.

Nearly a decade later, Moore is back with her first solo record since that time. The album is entitled Love The Woman and like the woman behind it, the collection reflects the kind of musical and personal maturity that could only come with time and wisdom.

Moore’s latest plays like a very personal roadmap to relationships, each song exploring some different facet of love. Meanwhile, Moore’s vocals are more seasoned than ever and her take on classics like Nancy Wilson’s “Look Who I Saw Today” and Minnie Riperton’s “Give Me Time” is nothing short of superlative.

In a recent phone conversation, Chante talked to Devil Called Love about her new album, surviving in the music biz, love and relationships and using her self-described baby-making album to set the mood, no matter who your partner might be.

Devil Called Love: So Chante, your new album Love The Woman seems to have a very different, shall we say, take on relationships than your last solo project, Exposed…

Chante Moore: You think? [Laughs]

DCL: Yeah, I’d say Exposed had a kind of ‘end of a love affair’ thing going on.

Chante Moore: [That album] was fueled with a lot of different energy. I was newly single and getting over some issues, but feeling very emancipated at the time. I was having a good time but it wasn’t the normal me. It was me after all the things that had happened. I was kinda like, okay... go a little crazy and then come back to center. I wasn’t quite back to center at that time though. [Laughs]

DCL: In contrast, Love The Woman, seems to express a much more mature take on relationships. Would you agree with that assessment?

CM:I would say so. I’m learning more and more about how I view love and what I thought it meant to be in love and what I thought it meant to stay in love. It’s more than I thought.

DCL: How was it being back in the studio on your own after recording two collections of duets with your husband, Kenny Lattimore?

CM:It was really exciting. The way I approach music isn’t really thought about so much as it is felt and it’s very authentic for me, so it was very exciting to hear what was going to come out.

DCL:There is a new depth to this recording and to your vocals on your latest. It almost feels like you’re defining Chante for the very first time, even though you’ve been in the biz for 15 years.

CM: I hope so. I really hope that’s what it feels like because I do know who I am. I think that’s a good thing. I think identifying with yourself wherever you are is a good thing. Being young and excited about music… excited about love and life and learning and all that… that’s also a beautiful place. At each stage in our lives we have to be able to embrace whatever it is that’s going on. I’m very self-reflective. That’s always been a part of who I am.

DCL: What has been the most important thing the last 15 years have taught you?

CM: There’s so much. I’d say the most important thing is to understand who you are and why you’re here. I’m an extremely spiritual person and I believe the lord has placed me here for a purpose and to fulfill that purpose is my greatest desire.

I’ve also learned that my focus on men has been too intense. [Laughs] Has been TOO intense! [Laughs]. Really, there should have been more of the ‘to thine own self be true’ behavior and not just talk about it.

It’s easy to say you’re going to put yourself first when things aren’t exactly where they should be or you’re not treated the way you should be. It’s really a fine line where you say ‘I’m not going to sacrifice myself for you’ but then again isn’t that part of what love is? Sacrificing part of yourself for that person? So the balance and the understanding of when you’re supposed to do that and when you’re not… I’m still learning [how to do that].

DCL: Oooh, tell it all! Well you just said a mouthful there! So since you mentioned men, let’s talk about one of your most popular songs, “Chante’s Got A Man.” You do realize that’s something of a gay anthem right?

CM: I would imagine so. [Laughs] I didn’t think about it like that but yeah I guess gay men would like that. They could say, ‘I got a man at home too!’ [Laughs]

DCL: Is that the song most people identify you with?

CM: Yeah. It’s a good song. I think it sometimes gets misunderstood to be [about] bragging. What the song is really about is if I can find a good man, so can you. There’s good men out there. Don’t just settle for a guy because he’s got pants on. You can get a good man. I want people to date and marry with integrity and not to belittle themselves just to have somebody. [That message] gets a little diluted… people get that a little confused. But the message is really hang on because there’s somebody good coming.

DCL: So in real life, Chante does have ‘a man’ these days and he has been your husband for the last six years. You once described one of the album’s you recorded with your hubby as a collection of ‘baby-making music.’ What would you call that collection if a gay couple used it to get in the mood?

CM: Hmmm… let me think about that. My first thought is I’d call it lovemaking music because if you’re in love with somebody that’s what it’s all about. I’m not making babies anymore either. [Laughs] So it’s not baby making music for me either anymore. But you can call it practice! [Laughs] That’s what I call it now. I’m practicing a lot and I’m going to practice for the rest of my life.

DCL: What have you seen change most about the music biz since you got your start a decade and a half ago?

CM: It’s not about music anymore. It’s about sex. It’s about politics. It’s about power. We’ve given power to people who don’t know music and they’ve changed what music is about. It’s all generic. Nothing is coming from the soul. It’s all about somebody deciding that’s what [the public] is going to get.

We’ve taken the power away from the DJs. It’s not about what they like anymore. They have to press a button. The music is already pre-programmed and they can’t even play a song unless it’s on their list. They can’t just go ‘I love that song, I’m gonna’ play it.’ The day for that is out.

That means that the people who are listening can only hear what’s programmed. People are like ‘Oh that’s my jam’ because they don’t know what any other jam is. They’re like ‘That’s my song’ because they haven’t heard any of other songs or they’re like, ‘Oh I love her’ because the other 16 people waiting to be heard, who are also talented, can’t get heard because they don’t have the same money behind them. So they don’t get heard. That changes everything.

DCL: How have those changes affected you and your career?

CM: Not being a person who’s promoted to the extent of other people because I’m not politically the choice, I’ve had a good career. I’ve sustained myself and I thank God for that. I’ve not worked another job since I started this job. So I’m extremely blessed in that way.

But I could have reached another pinnacle in my career that I haven’t reached because of not having that political nod, as they say. So my career hasn’t gone where it could have gone. You know, people haven’t heard of me in the way they’ve heard of other people. But I take it as what’s supposed to happen. And I do like it that I can go somewhere without cameras following me every second and that I can choose when I’m going to be in that kind of environment.

I’m famous enough that I feel like people still want to hear my music, but still not so invaded in every part of my life that I can’t still have one outside of my music. So it’s a catch-22 kind of a thing.

DCL: So what is it that you still want in your career?

CM: I love making music. I want to sing when I want to and make good money. [Laughs]

DCL: That may be the most honest answer anyone has ever given to that question.

CM: [Laughing] It’s true! I love to sing, but I don’t like the politics and the business of it all. If it could just be about… she’s going to go out there and she’s going to sing or I like that song or I don’t… that would be great. But if nobody hears the song, it doesn’t’ get to be that simple.

I wish the simplicity was back. So I could go sing when I wanted to and then get paid and then go home. I just want to go home after that and enjoy my life because this isn’t my life. This is a job and it’s a beautiful job and a wonderful opportunity, but it’s not my life. I sing about my life, but this isn’t my life. I’d be a little sad person if this was my life. [Laughs

DCL: Speaking of your life. You’re a wife, a mother, and a recording artist. How do you balance all of that?

CM: Mothers have a way of embracing each day differently from the way men do. Men are usually thinking about the business part… making money, paying the bills and how to sustain. For men it’s [about] a ‘to-do’ list rather than a ‘to enjoy’list. For me that’s what it’s about. If it’s work or my son’s graduation, I’m going to be at home for my son’s graduation. If my daughter needs me for something I’m going to be there. That’s what’s important.

That’s what I was saying when I said I sing about my life, but music is not my life.

DCL: If you had to sum up Love The Woman in a few sentences, what is that you want people to take away from the album?

CM:That it is about real love. That it is about me learning how to love and how to endure even through the sad times. It’s about my journey. It’s about how the pain is good for you. [Laughs] That the bad part is really a learning experience so that you can have better ups if you learn the lessons.

And that you have to nourish your love. You’ve got nourish everything that is important to you. So I would say appreciate your life and learn from mine.

Francoism Framed By Romance

2008-07-04T16:25:00.000-07:00

Victoria Hislop's The Island proved to be the summer read of choice for a wide cross-section of Brits on holiday over the past two years, and many will have awaited The Return, her follow-up, with bated breath.

Well, fear not, Hislop fans, there was more where that came from. This time the setting is lovely Moorish Granada, where we find two thirty-something holiday-makers, Sonia and Maggie, on a mini-break to learn flamenco.

Sonia's mother, who died when she was young, was Spanish herself, and as Sonia makes her way around various dance-classes and cafés, trying to take her mind off her stultifying marriage to her alcoholic banker husband back home, she is overcome by a powerful desire for Spanish music and dancing. And before long, a family secret begins to raise its not entirely surprising head.

By chance, she meets an old man in a café called Miguel. He starts to tell her about the Civil War. There is a faded black-and-white photograph on the café wall of a young woman in flamenco dress, to whom Sonia feels a strange connection.

She asks Miguel about her, and a story unfolds that will send shock waves through her sense of Spanish - and family - history. Can you guess what it is yet? When, a few chapters in, Sonia learns that her mother was originally from Granada and was in fact a keen flamenco dancer whose passage to England in the late 1930s was shrouded in mystery, one has a pretty good idea of what the grand revelation will be.

But the story of the Spanish Civil War is always shocking and Miguel's re-telling of it is executed with verve and sensitivity. Hislop's honourable mission is to remind readers of the atrocities of the 1930s and the equally dishonourable 'pact of forgetting' that came after them. This makes for gripping fiction, even in her decidedly plain English.

But framing this terrible historical truth within a modern story as sensational as Sonia's leaves a slightly sickly taste in the mouth. Are the horrors of Francoism not enough to move readers these days? Do we really need such a whopping spoonful of romance to help the medicine go down?

Well, perhaps we do. The almost inevitable colossal sales figures for this book will prove it. And summer is, after all, a very forgiving time when it comes to books like these.

There continue to be some great novels about the Spanish Civil War - Bernardo Artxaga's The Accordionist's Son is a recent example - and although The Return is not one of them, it is an excellent beach read, simple enough to be enjoyed even when half-cut, sun-struck and falling asleep after lunch.

An Incredible, Enduring Love Story

2008-07-02T04:43:00.000-07:00

An incredible love story has come out of China recently and managed to touch the world. It is a story of a man and an older woman who ran off to live and love each other in peace for over half a century.

The 70-year-old Chinese man, who hand-carved over 6,000 stairs up a mountain for his 80-year-old wife, has passed away in the cave which has been the couple's home for the last 50 years.

Over 50 years ago, Liu Guojiang a 19 year-old boy, fell in love with a 29 year-old widowed mother named Xu Chaoqin. In a twist worthy of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, friends and relatives criticized the relationship because of the age difference and the fact that Xu already had children.

At that time, it was unacceptable and immoral for a young man to love an older woman. To avoid the market gossip and the scorn of their communities, the couple decided to elope and lived in a cave in Jiangjin County in Southern ChongQing Municipality.

In the beginning, life was harsh as they had nothing - no electricity or even food. They had to eat grass and roots they found in the mountain and Liu made a kerosene lamp that they used to light up their lives. Xu felt that she had tied Liu down and repeatedly asked him, "Are you regretful?" Liu always replied, "As long as we are industrious, life will improve."

In the second year of living in the mountain Liu began, and continued for over 50 years, to hand-carve the steps so that his wife could get down the mountain easily. Half a century later in 2001, a group of adventurers were exploring the forest and were surprised to find the elderly couple and the over 6,000 hand-carved steps.

Liu MingSheng, one of their seven children said, "My parents loved each other so much, they have lived in seclusion for over 50 years and never been apart a single day. He hand carved more than 6,000 steps over the years for my mother's convenience, although she doesn't go down the mountain that much."

The couple had lived in peace for over 50 years until last week. Liu, now 72 years, returned from his daily farm work and collapsed. Xu sat and prayed with her husband as he passed away in her arms.

So in love with Xu, was Liu, that no one was able to release the grip he had on his wife's hand even after he had passed away. "You promised me you'll take care of me, you'll always be with me until the day I died, now you left before me, how am I going to live without you?" Xu spent days softly repeating this sentence and touching her husband's black coffin with tears rolling down her cheeks.

Their story became one of the top 10 love stories from China, collected by the Chinese Women Weekly. Now the local government has decided to preserve the love ladder and the place they lived as a museum so this love story can live forever.

Are Mistresses Only Fooling Themselves?

2008-06-30T18:33:00.000-07:00

A lot of single women are now going out with married men in their bid to be in relationships, so that the wagon does not pass them by. The reasons are numerous, but the most common is that there are not enough single men out there to go round, hence the married men syndrome.

A lot of women these days are very willing to accept their roles as mistresses or the "other woman". These women believe they are there to relieve these married men of their stress from work, home life and nagging wives.

Of course, the men say anything to get into the pants of the women and the women too, being so gullible, believe anything they get told. Many women believe they have rescued these men from their humdrum lives and distressed marriages. They have saved them from themselves.

But a lot of the time, the wife is an attractive, mature and responsible woman whose only fault is choosing a lying, cheating husband. When you are the other woman, you get a false sense of having a competitive edge by rationalising that if he is chatting you up, then you must be better than her and irreplaceable to him. As the months, and even years, go by and he has not left this "wife he does not get on with" or only married out of respect for her family and all that jazz, you begin to realise that he has led you up the wrong garden path, and often with other mistresses, too.

So are mistresses only fooling themselves when it comes to love and happiness? Yes! If he has been able to cheat on his wife, why can't he cheat on you, too? Some women will scoot, but they would have got themselves lumbered with maybe a child and, therefore, the need to hang on in there becomes a must. They convince themselves that they may as well stay, the reason being that they would like all their children to come from one man.

Sensible women find themselves the other woman for a number of reasons. Some suffer from lack of self-esteem or have commitment issues. Others say they don't have time for full-time relationships, a reason which is a crock in my books. The women who are mistresses, without regard for their lying lovers' wife and children at home, are always shocked, angry and deeply hurt when they discover that the men have lied and cheated on them – also, a case of "Abaa a yede boo Takyi no, enoaa na yede bebo Baah".

Women in these kinds of relationships need to get real.A man makes a promise to his wife in front of God, family and friends to love, cherish and honour her. Yet he is dishonest enough to cheat and lie to her. Why do you think he will not do the same to you or anyone else? You are not the victim; you are an equal participant; and have chosen to do a dance with him in his dance of deception.

What is a laugh and a half is when the other woman thinks the man is not sleeping with his wife and that tells her he does not want his wife anymore. How stupid can one get? I know a woman who kept saying this and then heard the wife was also pregnant and actually having the baby a few days after hers.

Or this woman who was so shocked when she got to know there was another "other woman" in the background. You need to be aware of the emotional pitfalls of being part of deceitful relationships. The married cheater is seasoned at scripting deceitful matrimonial drama. And even if a cheating spouse leaves his wife, chances are that he will not marry the mistress. But if he does, he will repeat his cheating ways.

The best thing is to get smart and leave such a relationship and go look for your soul mate. There is one out there for everyone, believe it or not. A lot of women miss out on this because they are busily involved with someone else's man. As long as you have the wrong man in your head and in your bed, your chances become slim. So get real and move on. Go get a life.

Women Prefer Men With Stubble For Love, Sex And Marriage

2008-06-30T10:46:00.000-07:00

Stubble is the way to win a woman’s heart, a study has shown. Researchers found that women are more attracted to men with stubbly chins than those with clean-shaven faces or full beards.

Women participating in the research rated men with stubble as tough, mature, aggressive, dominant and masculine - and as the best romantic partners, either for a fling or a long-term relationships.

The findings of the experiment, carried out on British women aged 18 to 44, could explain the appeal of actors such as George Clooney and Brad Pitt who cultivate their unshaven look.

The explanation for the preference is not clear, but experts in human evolution say that that facial hair may be a signal of aggression because it boosts the apparent size of the lower jaw, emphasising the teeth as weapons.

Psychologists at Northumbria University who carried out the new study believe that stubbly men may offer women the best worlds - not too strongly masculine, but mature and with the potential to grow a full beard.

The researchers carried out the study using computer technology to alter pictures of 15 men’s faces so that they displayed different degrees of hairiness. Five levels of facial hair were used - clean-shaven, light stubble, heavy stubble, light beard and full beard.

The pictures were shown to 76 women who were asked to rate them for masculinity, aggression, dominance, attractiveness, age, and social maturity. They were also asked how desirable each man would be as a short-term or long-term partner. Faces with full beards were judged to be the most masculine, aggressive and socially mature. They were also thought to look five years older.

They were rated the least attractive and the worst choice for a short-term relationship. Men with light beards were considered the most dominant. Those with light stubble were rated the most attractive and as the ideal romantic partner for the short or long term. Clean-shaven men finished bottom for masculinity, dominance, aggression, and social maturity, and they were the least favoured choice as a long-term partner.

They came second-to-last for attractiveness. Writing in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, the researchers conclude: “Facial hair, or beardedness, is a powerful sociosexual signal, and an obvious biological marker of sexual maturity.

"Facial hair may have been sexually selected by females on the basis of associated male success, despite its threatening appearance. Clean-shaven faces therefore may suggest appeasement, as well as being an obvious sign of sexual immaturity.

"Increasing levels of facial hair were associated with increased perceptions of aggression, in that bearded faces were perceived as being the most aggressive, whilst clean-shaven faces were rated as being the least aggressive. And as facial hair increased in a linear fashion, so did female ratings of masculinity and dominance.

"In desirability for a short-term relationship, a female preference for male faces with stubble or light beard was found, with clean-shaven and fully bearded faces being the least preferred. This indicates that females are not selecting faces displaying relatively high or low masculinity, but are rather preferring males who are clearly mature - post-pubertal - but not too masculinised.

The same pattern was found for preferences for a long-term relationship."

The researchers now want to extend their study internationally. Dr Nick Neave, who carried out the study with Kerry Shields, said: "There are large cultural differences in perceptions of facial hair, and we are hoping to expand on this research by conducting a large-scale study assessing female perceptions of male facial hair in different in as many countries as possible."

Love Blossoms At The Gay Parade

2008-06-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

A lesbian motorcycle group dressed in wedding gowns and wearing bridal veils lent a matrimonial touch to San Francisco's gay pride parade Sunday as revelers celebrated their newfound freedom to marry.

The riders tossed bouquets as they led the city's 38th annual gay pride parade down Market Street. Some of the motorcycles were adorned with signs that read "Just Married."

Huge crowds lined the route as city tourism officials predicted the largest turnout yet for the parade, which typically draws tens of thousands.The county clerk's office was busy Friday handing out marriage licenses and handling wedding ceremonies.

Same-sex marriage has been legal in California since June 16, after a state Supreme Court decision. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom received ovations along the parade route for his role in working to overturn the state's gay marriage ban.

Though City Hall was closed Sunday, parade organizers put up a wedding pavilion across the street where couples could get information about tying the knot or celebrate newly sanctioned unions. Wade French, 61, and his partner, Brent Lock, 54, wed in San Francisco the day after the court's decision took effect.

At the parade, Lock wore a T-shirt reading "Finally married..." while French's shirt read "...after 30 years together.""We always come to the parade, but this year is a different feeling because we're celebrating something that's personal to us," Lock said.

The couple said they were asking friends and family not to send wedding gifts and instead make donations to a nonprofit group working to fight a ballot measure that would once again ban gay marriage in the state.

In a taped interview Sunday morning on NBC's "Meet the Press," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called the measure "a waste of time.""I personally believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman," Schwarzenegger said. "But at the same time I think that my, you know, belief, I don't want to force on anyone else.

"The initiative set to go before voters in November would provide that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

Its language was taken directly from a gay marriage ban enacted by voters in 2000, one of two the state Supreme Court found unconstitutional and struck down on May 15.

In New York, Gov. David Paterson was cheered during the gay pride parade, one month after he directed state agencies to provide full marriage benefits to same-sex couples who were legally married elsewhere.

Jim Saslow carried a bouquet to the march down Manhattan's Fifth Avenue and wore a wedding gown stamped with the words, "Coming Here Soon?""Everyone here is thinking if California can do it, then we should be able to do it here soon," he said.

Overseas, gay pride marches in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia and the Czech Republic city of Brno came under attack Saturday by extremists who threw rocks and eggs. No serious injuries were reported.

In Paris, more than half a million people danced through the streets beneath a river of rainbow flags. In India, hundreds chanted for gay rights in Calcutta, Bangalore and New Delhi in the largest display of gay pride in the deeply conservative country, where homosexual acts are illegal.

The marches came days before the Delhi High Court is expected to hear arguments on overturning a law against homosexual sex that dates to the British colonial era. Thousands of gay men and women have met and fell in love on the online dating service Devil Called Love.

Charlize Theron 'Madly In Love' With Will Smith

2008-06-30T09:34:00.000-07:00

Glamorous actress Charlize Theron has no plans of ever getting married to long-term boyfriend Stuart Townsend - but she's "madly in love" with Will Smith, her Hancock co-star.

In the comedy Will plays a boozy superhero who has managed to make everyone totally fed up with him.

Then he meets Charlize's married character and the sparks fly. It's the second time the two A-listers have starred together. The first was the golf flop Bagger Vance, when Charlize was still relatively unknown.

"We didn't get the chance to work that much together and yet it took us all of about five minutes to really fall madly in love with each other," recalled the 32-year-old blonde.

"We just hit it off instantly and were always messing around. There was something about me and him. We're very similar people," says the Oscar winner, who says they have a "brother and sister" relationship that thrives on teasing each other.

"He jokes with me all the time. He goes, 'Charlize, this is going to be a little different for you, because people are actually going to see this movie.'

Then I'm like, 'I know, Will. But you know what, I have a little statue at home called an Academy Award.'"

Charlize and Will both have long-term partners. Will has Jada Pinkett Smith and Charlize has been with Irish actor Stuart Townsend for seven years and wears a Victorian ring that he gave her.

She has no intention of tying the knot, but still works hard at the relationship. She said: "If you are in a one or two-year relationship, love is enough.

"When you hit years three and four, you realise that if you're going to live with somebody, you have to be nurtured emotionally and spiritually, and you have to be intrigued. If that intrigue runs out, you're not going to want to go home anymore," she said.

Travelling the world sometimes means long separations, but Charlize was thrilled when she visited the Edinburgh Film Festival a couple of years ago. Stuart had to stay home, but Charlize was able to go touring on a day off and phoned him from Rosslyn Chapel, where she was given a private tour.

"I said, 'You'll never guess where I am,'" she recalled. As abig Da Vinci Code fan, Stuart was deeply impressed, and urged her to take photos as a souvenir. Tourist Charlize says there were other aspects of Scottish culture which left a lasting mark on her.

"Whisky," she laughed, and admitted she even had a small dram to get her through her Edinburgh Film Festival appearance.

Stuart and Charlize started dating after they met on the free dating site Devil Called Love. They also starred together in the film Trapped and again in a rather unsuccessful World War Two drama, Head in the Clouds.

Stuart has now written and directed Battle In Seattle, in which his girlfriend stars alongside Woody Harrelson.

"It's funny, you live with someone for seven years and then they do something like that and you go, 'Holy s**t. I didn't know you had that in you.'"

The couple have just moved house, and settled away from the limelight with their two dogs, Tucker and Denver. And the patter of tiny feet may not be far away either.
Charlie said: "I've been thinking about becoming a mum for a couple of years now. My biological clock is ticking, but it hasn't gone off yet.

"I couldn't hope for my career to be going any better, and I have found the great love of my life in my relationship, so I think we're ready to start having kids running around the house.

"Getting pregnant doesn't excite me, but having kids does. I know I'll be a mother one day. It's just that I don't really want to look like a whale."

Only child Charlize was raised in South Africa, outside Johannesburg, where she witnessed violence first-hand. Aged 15, her mother shot her abusive father dead. She refuses to discuss the incident, but Gerda Theron was not charged after it was ruled that she'd acted in self-defence.

"Everything changed for me the day my father died. Years ago, I used to cover it all up and say he died in a car accident. It was a way of explaining his absence when I did not want to go into the reasons or the event itself.

"I have now come to terms with it and have been able to move on. "There's something to be said for coming from a country in turmoil. It made me resilient. When you come from a harsh landscape you have to get on with it. There's not a lot of whining about s**t," she added.

At 16 she left the country for good when she won a competition and travelled to Milan on a one-year modelling contract. Then she moved to New York and trained as a ballet dancer before falling into acting when a talent scout spotted her screaming at a bank teller.

She made her feature debut in 1996's 2 Days in the Valley and subsequently starred opposite Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves in the thriller The Devil's Advocate. Charlize remains fiercely close to her German-born mother and credits her for introducing her up to acting.

"We'd have to travel an hour to the nearest drive-in cinema, and we'd go and never knew what was playing. But once you got there, it was an hour's drive back, so you may as well watch whatever it was.

"I was about eight or nine and Fatal Attraction was playing and Mom didn't want to turn all the way round, so she was like, 'Well, this is as good a way for you to learn as any.'"

Next Charlize is set to follow up Hancock with the post-apocalyptic thriller The Road, co-starring Viggo Mortensen. It doesn't have Hancock's blockbuster prospects, but Charlize says she doesn't care.

"Every decision I've made has been because of the story-telling aspect or a director I wanted to work with, not how much money the movie might make or what it might do for my career," she said.

Her Oscar-winning turn in Monster is a case in point - she had to fight to play serial killer Aileen Wournos with the pockmarked skin, lank, greasy hair and bad teeth the role demanded. And when she won the Best Actress award, it looked like her defiance had paid off.

She said: "It was great to receive it for a movie that nobody supported. "There wasn't one person in this industry who wanted that film made. We were hours away from signing a straight-to video deal with Blockbuster when we found a distributor. For that reason alone, the Oscar was especially sweet."

Another sweet moment was working with Michael Caine on Cider House Rules. "I'm so grateful for him," she said. "He said he can remember vivid conversations with a grip from a certain movie, but he could never tell you how much it made or what critics thought of it. He said it's about those memories.

"You've got to go and do it for the right reasons, otherwise you'll just sit and cry at home in bed."

Barrack Obama Denies Email Relationship With Scarlett Johansson

2008-06-30T00:14:00.000-07:00

Barrack Obama put recent reports suggesting that he was in regular touch over e-mail with actress Scarlett Johansson in perspective saying that he responded to a single email from her thanking her for her support.

"She sent one email to [my assistant] Reggie [Love], who forwarded it to me," he said. "I write saying, 'thank you Scarlett for doing what you do,' and suddenly we have this email relationship."

Obama clarified that Johansson does not have his personal e-mail address. Earlier this month Johansson told Devil Called Love that she finds it "amazing" that Barack Obama has the time to answer her adoring e-mails.

"I feel like I'm supporting someone, and having a personal dialogue with them, and it's amazing," added Johansson.

Her statements had been interpreted to suggest that she was regularly exchanging e-mails with the Presumptive Democratic Party Presidential candidate.

Johansson, 23, an ardent supporter of Obama, has campaigned tirelessly for him and appeared in his celebrity-packed Yes We Can Internet music video.

"My heart belongs to Barack," she joked with Associated Press reporter in January. "I am engaged to Barack Obama."

Johansson's twin brother Hunter works on the Obama campaign.

The Formula For Relationship Bliss

2008-06-30T00:07:00.001-07:00

If finding the right mate is chemistry, you can't blame U.K. dating coach Adam Lyons for coming up with a scientific formula for relationship bliss.

"If you want to make someone fall in love with you, you've got to get them to invest in you," said Lyons. "What I teach is how to trigger that investment."

To that end, he figures C-R+Q+S=A. That's comfort, minus rapport, plus qualifications, plus sexual escalation, equals attraction.

The 27-year-old should know. He was voted the No. 3 ranked pick-up artist at the World Pick-Up Artist (PUA) Summit last year, and is in hot demand across North America as a leading authority on personal attraction for British-based PUA Training. In fact, his ranking falls behind only Neil Strauss, author of the bestseller The Game, and Mystery, the featured subject of which details the secret society of pick-up artists.

Lyons wasn't always lucky with women, though. Back in high school, he was voted by his peers as the most likely to never get a girlfriend. In fact, he admits he spent a decade dating mostly lonely women he found at bars and friends of friends, dragging out the troubled relationships waiting for someone better to come along.

That all changed when the former public relations and marketing rep signed up for a course a few years ago on how to meet women.

"I wanted to get the girls of my dreams, I wasn't in it to get laid like a rock star -- although that happened," he admitted.

Lyons began practicing seven hours a day, meeting lots of women right out on the street in front of his London office -- and promptly lost his job.

But, his lust to understand why he was successful attracted other men, who wanted to learn his techniques in personal attraction, followed by a flurry of print and TV journalists who helped him create credibility. That spawned a chance for a gig lecturing in the United States.

While he got the worst slot, at 9 a.m. on a Sunday, Lyons said he received a standing ovation and was mobbed by the audience: "I was over the moon and demand went through the roof."

Lyons' -- whose cold-call conquests can be seen online at YouTube -- continues to lecture and will travel to any city to conduct boot camps in which he takes a handful of guys out for sessions that include daytime seminars and nighttime clubbing. He can be reached at the 100% free dating service Devil Called Love.

But he's no longer single. Lyons partnered both personally and professionally with a female dating expert based in Dallas.

Like most of his clients, he admits he was always looking for The One.

"To be honest, this sounds so corny, but there was a phrase I always wanted to say to my wife: 'I could have had any girl in the world and I choose you.'"

Now it seems he can.

Lyons approach taps basic psychology: Offer and conditioning.

Step 1: Make women feel comfortable talking to you. "Tell funny stories, be entertaining, compliment their clothes," Lyons said. Also, try to help out: if a woman trips, help her up. If she's lost, give directions.

Be completely nice and offer to do things for them.

Step 2: After finding an easy rapport, break that rapport. "Women need to fear losing you," said Lyons. Wind a woman up, crack a joke, surround yourself with other women. Take a page from the female playbook, as they've already learned being high-maintenance is social proof that they are worth being with.

Step 3: Qualify yourself as a desirable investment not to be trifled with. Show them: "every time you refuse to invest, I'm going to show you I'm willing to walk away." Tell her you're very busy but you can meet for an ice cream or short, fun date but make sure it requires that she make the effort to spend time with you.

Step 4: Make the reward sexual. "Say: 'you're so great', kiss her on the forehead. 'You're amazing', give her a hug.The next thing you know, you're all over her, she's all over you . . . She can't believe that there is an incredible 'click' about you that she can't put her mind on. The click is her own investment, and her own input into being with you."

Director Lean's Love Of Leading Ladies

2008-06-29T21:34:00.000-07:00

When David Lean left London for Paris in the spring of 1955, the film-maker's finances were in a parlous state. The 47-year-old had separated from his wife, the actor Ann Todd (whom he was to divorce two years later), while the taxman was clamouring for payment of £20,000 – an astronomical amount for those days – in unpaid dues.

The details of Lean's financial problems are contained in Gene D Phillips's thorough biography, Beyond the Epic, which reveals that while he may have been among the most celebrated film-makers in British film history, in the mid-1950s, at least, Lean certainly wasn't one of the richest. The director of Brief Encounter couldn't even afford to have his teeth fixed and, at one stage, was reduced to pawning his gold cigarette case.

The British film industry wasn't exactly thriving during this period either. The Rank Organisation (Lean's main patron) was in a period of retrenchment; the extravagance and artistic ambition of the 1940s, when Rank had tried to gate-crash the American market with a series of big-budget "prestige" pictures made by the likes of Lean and Powell and Pressburger were long forgotten.

At Pinewood Studios, the emphasis was now on Norman Wisdom comedies, Doctor in the House and stiff upper-lipped war movies. Gone were the days when – as Lean enthused of the time he was filming the Dickens adaptations Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948) – he and his collaborators in the Rank stable could "make any subject we wish, with as much money as we think that subject should have spent on it... cast whichever actors we choose and have no interference with the way the film is made".

Yet, while his erstwhile colleagues floundered, Lean reinvented himself as the director of widescreen spectacles such as The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965). And so the young man who once used to sit chain-smoking in the refreshment room of Victoria Station, because he didn't want to go home to Croydon after venturing into town to see the latest movie, became a film-maker feted in Hollywood and Britain alike.

It was Lean's genius that he took an international perspective at a time when other British film-makers were becoming increasingly insular. He had the vision and ruthlessness to work on an epic scale. He also had plenty of reason to escape Britain: his acrimonious divorce from Todd may have left him broke, but it gave him as compelling a reason to look further afield as his disenchantment with the British film industry.

Lean was a relentless womaniser. He was married six times and had many mistresses. His approach to marriage was certainly erratic; on the one hand, thanks to his Quaker upbringing, he took it seriously. On the other, he didn't want anything to get in the way of his career – and he couldn't escape his own nature. As his former cinematographer and producer Ronald Neame told Kevin Brownlow, the author of the definitive Lean biography, his old producer Anthony Havelock-Allan had said of Lean: "David always had to have a girl on any film he worked on."

The irony was that Lean was often thought of as a supreme technician – the former editor who knew everything about cutting, rhythm and camera lenses – who lacked the human touch. "David, a very fine director, never had very much consideration for what actors sometimes have to go through – just a relentless drive for what he wanted for the scene," said Todd, who starred in three of his films.

Lean showed similarly little compunction about ending relationships. "When David leaves you, you are rubbed out. It was like an amputation. He came with nothing... and he left with nothing," his second wife, the actor Kay Walsh, told Brownlow of the end of their marriage. There was an element of bedroom farce about his private life, too. He used the same flair that his films showed for choreography to keep mistresses and wives apart.

As was once observed by Lean's fellow director Ingmar Bergman, also married six times, the very process of film-making lends itself to erotic conspiracy: "Drama and film are incontrovertibly two professions that are immensely erotically charged."

In The Passionate Friends (1949), Lean explores such themes as sexual jealousy and adultery with far more depth than in any of his earlier films – even Brief Encounter (1945). What is surprising is the sympathy the film shows for the jealous husband (Claude Rains), who is terrified that his wife (Todd) will leave him for her former sweetheart (Trevor Howard). At times Rains' character is made to seem absurd – he's too stiff to dance and too pedantic to speak in anything other than a banker's dry discourse. Yet Lean – despite his own reputation for breaking up relationships – treats the character with sensitivity; we are always aware of his suffering.

Nevertheless, in real life, he was at it again: during the making of the film, Lean began an affair with his leading lady, who was to become his third wife. Todd's divorce from her then-husband Nigel Tangye was bitter, and her autobiography contains a comic account of Tangye (a keen aviator who was also Lean's cousin) swooping down in vengeful mood in a small plane and terrifying Lean and his crew when they were shooting his next feature, Madeleine (1950).

Whatever misery Lean inflicted on Tangye, he suffered in equal measure during his own calamitous marriage to Todd. "She treated me so horribly that I think I was far more hurt than I have ever acknowledged," he later wrote. He complained about being used as "a tool for the sex gratification of someone who doesn't really give a damn for you".

However, during the making of The Passionate Friends, Lean had shot abroad for the first time, in the lakes and mountains of the Chamonix and Haute-Savoie regions in France. And as his relationship with Todd soured, his urge to escape the UK grew. He shot Summertime with Katharine Hepburn in Venice. Then, once he began to work with flamboyant Hollywood producer Sam Spiegel, he made The Bridge on the River Kwai in Sri Lanka.

It wasn't just the taxman and his ex-wife who were driving Lean from Britain. It was the country's faltering film industry and even its actors. During production of The Bridge On The River Kwai, the director was constantly at loggerheads with his British cast members, growing so infuriated with the surly behaviour of Alec Guinness and James Donald that after one scene he yelled: "Now you can all fuck off and go home, you English actors. Thank God that I'm starting work tomorrow with an American actor [William Holden]."

While the careers of contemporaries such as Michael Powell were stuttering back home, Lean was working on a bigger canvas than ever, establishing an international reputation in the process. Maybe Todd deserves some of the credit: if they had enjoyed a stable married life, he could as easily have ended up staying in England and taking whatever chances came his way. Then again, as he freely admitted, he was "a monomaniac" who knew how to be ruthless when making a film. And however turbulent his private life, he was never going to let such matters distract him from his work, at home or abroad.

The joy of six: The leading ladies of David Lean

David Lean's first wife was his cousin, Isabel Jean, who he married in 1930. She gave him his only son, Peter, but Lean soon decided that cosy family domesticity was not for him, and just six years after the wedding, the marriage was over.

Kay Walsh, a brilliant actor who helped push Lean's career as a director, was under no pretences as to how married life would be after wedding him in 1940. "David warned me that life with him would be very difficult," she later recalled. "He had damaged so many women and didn't want to damage me. Being in love with David was a killer... how I survived I don't know." The marriage lasted nine years.

Ann Todd had emerged as a major British movie star thanks to her masochistic role as the pianist tormented by James Mason in The Seventh Veil. Sometimes called the "British Garbo", she was initially suspicious of Lean's standoffish attitude toward her on the set of The Passionate Friends, but then – as she later wrote – he swept her off her feet. The marriage, which lasted from 1949 to 1957, didn't turn out well. As Todd later said, "There are some people who shouldn't be married and David Lean was one of them."

Leila Matkar met Lean in India in the mid-1950s on a 100% free internet dating site. She left her husband and two children to be with him. They married in 1960. The marriage was Lean's longest-lasting, but ended in 1978.

Lean's fifth wife, Sandra Hotz, appears briefly in his final feature, A Passage To India. He had met her in the 1960s when she was only 20 and fell in love with her. They wed in 1981 and split in 1984.

Lean met his sixth wife, Sandra Cooke, in the food hall at Harrods. "I just wanted to congratulate David Lean and ask what he was doing next," she later recalled. They married in December 1990; Lean died four months later.

She's Got The Looks, He's Got The Millions

2008-06-29T21:26:00.000-07:00

As unions between a multi-married Hollywood star and one of Europe's wealthiest money-makers, philanthropists and social gad-abouts go, the confirmation could not have come in a more po-faced way.

"The engagement is announced," read yesterday's personal columns of The Times, "between Arpad, son of Mr Pascal Busson, of Paris, and Mrs Florence Harcourt-Smith, of South of France, and Uma, daughter of Mr and Mrs Robert A F Thurman, of New York."

Put like that, you'd think they were two sweet young things newly embarked on life's rocky road together. But that is not quite the case. She is Uma Thurman, 38, statuesque star of Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill movies, formerly married to actors Gary Oldman and Ethan Hawke, and ex-companion of New York hotelier André Balazs.

He is "Arki" Busson, former consort of supermodel Elle Macpherson, one-time gentleman caller to Farrah Fawcett, worth £250m through hedge-fund activities, and one of the world's most effective networkers.

So it's not surprising what they see in each other. Nor, given the circles in which they move, how they met: at a dinner party in Milan co-hosted by Gianni Versace and Tony Blair. Since then, as they edged towards "making a spousal commitment", as Hollywood Today archly put it, they have regularly popped up at fancy affairs, managing both Nelson Mandela's and Elton John's parties last week.

These gatherings are as nothing compared to the happy couple's rococo antecedents. Uma's grandfather was a German nobleman, and her mother a model who was briefly married to LSD advocate and Sixties dissident Timothy Leary. They had been introduced by Salvador Dali. She then married Robert Thurman, a New York academic and the first Westerner ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk. The Dali Lama was an occasional house guest.

Busson's family is just as remarkable – father was a French army officer and Algeria veteran, mother an English debutante. Arpad was named for Arpad Plesch, his step-grandfather, who, when his first wife died, married her daughter. A rich Hungarian financier, he was, potentially, the black sheep of the family, being "linked", as professional insinuators put it, to the Nazi-era, Zyklon-B producing firm IG Farben.

Young Arpad did his national service as a nurse, and then embarked on a life in society and finance. His firm EIM invests in other hedge funds, and he deploys his skills and contacts to make enormous sums for good causes. His charity Absolute Return for Kids (ARK) has raised nearly £100m, and spent most of it on Aids care in South Africa, orphanages in Romania and Bulgaria, and education in India and the UK.

Both Thurman and Busson have two children from previous relationships. She has a home in New York, and he in Notting Hill and the Bahamas. He has also been known to rent out Yorkshire's 45-room Mulgrave Castle for long periods. Even by the standards of the free dating service Devil Called Love, this is quite a match.

11 Hotspots For Finding Love In New York City

2008-06-29T19:42:00.000-07:00

Have you heard? This is going to be a summer of love in New York City. As the temperatures rise, the five boroughs become a haven for hookups, make-out sessions and true romance. We rounded up 11 places to fall in love - be it forever or just for now.

1. For a fairy tale romance: The Cloisters

An oasis in upper Manhattan, the Cloisters is the palace-like setting of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's medieval architecture branch. Perched on a hill, this monastic castle will make you feel all Romeo and Juliet in the semisecret gardens - perfect for a stroll with a special someone more interested in you than in 12th-century stonework. Fort Tryon Park, (212) 923-3700, Tues.-Sun.: 9:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Closed Mon. (March-October)

2. For a cool place to get hot: An air-conditioned cinema to see "The Wackness"

For a trip back to New York during the summer of 1994, writer-director Jonathon Levine's "The Wackness" gets nostalgic about youthful romance. The film, which charmed audiences at the Sundance and Tribeca festivals, hits theaters Thursday. The romantically inclined will swoon over the story of a lonely teenage delinquent who devotes his summer to capturing the heart of the high school hottie Olivia Thirlby of "Juno" fame. Young love plus a jammin' '90s soundtrack equals a perfect evening for two. The Wackness: Opens Thursday at the Angelika.

3. For a reason to scream and hold someone: Reading of "Twilight" by author Stephenie Meyer

Writer Stephenie Meyer thrills teens (and even adults) with her "Twilight" romance series, about an awkward high schooler, Bella, drawn into a sweeping romance with a hunky member of the undead. To celebrate the August release of her latest book, "Breaking Down," Meyer hosts a concert/reading with singer-songwriter Justin Furstenfeld at Tine Square's Nokia Theater on Aug. 1.

4. For reenacting a romantic comedy kiss: city's bridges

Make it a double feature: Park yourself with your sweetheart on a bench in view of the 59th St. bridge by the East River, à law Woody Allen andDianne Keaton in "Manhattan." Or visit the Booklyn Bridge at dusk. This 125-year-old icon gets only more romantic with age. Look no further than Miranda and Steve locking lips beneath the graceful granite towers in the "Sex and the City movie to recognize that the Brooklyn Bridge is a breathtaking backdrop to some serious smooching, especially at night. Park with your honey on one of the benches or stroll along the weathered wooden planks while taking in the dazzling downtown skyline beneath a blanket of stars. Take the pedestrian walkway at the traffic median on Centre St. and Park Row on the Manhattan side, or Tillary St. at Adams St. on the Brooklyn side. Phone MTA Bridges and Tunnels at (212) 360-3000.

5. For a cheap date: take a cruise on the Staten Island Ferry

By day, the municipal ferries are better suited to commuters, but locals know that after dark these vessels become veritable love boats. Couples cuddle up on deck for a free 5-mile tour of New York Harbor at night. Pick up a couple of tallboys or a hot pretzel at the snack bar onboard and snuggle up for the 25-minute ride, which sails past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and Governors Island and the Verrazano Bridge,not to mention lower Manhattan all aglow. Departs from Whitehall Terminal at 1 Whitehall St. at South St., Manhattan. Arrives at St. George Ferry Terminal at 1 Ferry Terminal Drive, Richmond Terrace, S.I.

6. For picking up hot firefighters: Bleecker Street Morton-Williams Supermarket

The supermarket at Bleecker and LaGuardia Place is a firefighter hot spot as rookies from local ladders roam the aisles (sometimes still dressed in their boots and suspenders!) to stock up on stationhouse staples. Spark up a conversation with one of New York's Bravest about grilling safety, and mention that you just happen to be barbecuing in the park this weekend, if he's got nothing better to do. ... If the Village is a hike, check out shops, Laundromats and pubs likely to draw a fireman from a stationhouse near you. Morton Williams Associated Supermarket, 130 Bleecker St., at LaGuardia Place; (212) 358-9597.

7. For a trip back to the first summer of love: Sheep Meadow

Think of it as a meat market for vegans: The Sheep Meadow in Cnetral Park is the closest thing to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury. With frisbees flying overhead and guitars a-strumming all around, this massive grassy lawn is like a love-in for singles (not to mention a few dogs). Once you've found that special someone, leave the hordes on the Meadow and head to Strawberry Fields near 72nd St. for a romantic picnic à deux. Pack a gourmet picnic and pitch up on the grass in the garden's wooded "quiet zone" for an uninterrupted makeout session under the canopy of trees. Sheeps Meadow and Strawberry Fields, 71st to 74th Sts. at Central Park West.

8. For a mini-mini-moon: 79th St. Boat Basin Cafe

Okay, so 79th St. and Riverside Drive isn't Fiji, but it is a great place to instantly simulate the feeling of a romantic getaway. Smell the breeze off the water, kick off your shoes (actually you better leave them on) and throw back a margarita at the lively West 79th St. Boat Basin Cafe. The outdoor grill dishes out barbecued ribs and burgers as the sun goes down over the Hudson. Walk off your dessert with a romantic stroll downtown along HUdeson River Park. Boast Basin Cafe, W. 79th St. at the Hudeson River; call (212) 496-5542.

9. For the perfect first date: Deno's Wonder Wheel

Fancy restaurants can make first dates feel 10 times more stressful (the money, the formalities, the escargot in the teeth). Why not go back to basics, with cotton candy and a kiss on top of Coney Island's famous Ferris wheel. Its cozy metal cars are one of those rare romantic spaces where you're hidden privately away yet out there in the middle of the world all at the same time (just don't pick the cars that swing). Wait until the sun sets, and you've got the ocean breeze, the starry lights of the Coney midway below, the sound of the waves and, way off in the distance, that famous city skyline. It's open 11 a.m. to midnight all summer long; tickets are $5.

10. For a hot, sweaty singles party (art included): P.S. 1's Summer "Warm Up"

MoMA's contemporary Queens outpost hosts this ultra-hip music and dance series, set in an installation created by the annual winner of P.S. 1 and MoMA's Young Architects program (this summer, in keeping with the green trend, the setting for "Warm Up" is an "Urban Farm"). Sure it's artsy, but it's also an excuse to get sweaty and dance. The series, which brings world-renowned deejays and music ensembles to LOng Island City every Saturday, attracts all the city's pretty young things with an artistic bent. Partygoers can dance to the music, chill in the outdoor installation with a cold beer, or wander through the exhibitions at P.S. 1. Every Saturday starting July 5 through Sept. 6, 1:30 p.m.-9 p.m.

11. For foodies in love: Grand Army Plaza greenmarket

Amid the sweet smell of fresh flowers and local produce, the Farmers Market on the edge of Brooklyn's Prospect Park is a great spot for PDAs. For singles, the market could be the place to meet an unsuspecting mate with similar interests. And instead of buying your eye's delight a $10 drink, a nice fresh flower will do the trick. Saturdays, 8 a.m.-4 p.m.; NW entrance of Prospect Park.

Friends Mystified By Ruslana's Fatal Decision

2008-06-29T18:57:00.000-07:00

Close friends of Ruslana Korshunova, the 20-year-old Kazakh model who plunged to her death from her ninth-floor Manhattan flat at the weekend, say they can't believe she committed suicide.

Korshunova appeared on the front covers of Russian Vogue and French Elle and was dubbed 'fashion's muse of the moment' by the Times newspaper in 2005.

Police in New York reported no signs of a struggle inside the model's apartment and witnesses say they saw her leap from her balcony on Saturday, just three days shy of her 21st birthday.

But Kira Titeneva, who described herself as Korshunova's "best friend" from her home town, told the New York Daily News "There's no way she would have killed herself. She loved life so much."

Ms Titeneva was also quoted in London's Daily Mail as saying: "I talked to her on Friday night and we were talking all the gossip."

Another friend told the paper that Korshunova, who would have earned around $5200 for a catwalk show, had been sending money home to her family in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan and was "one of the sweetest, nicest people you'll ever meet."

The unnamed source told the paper the model had just returned from a modelling job in Paris and seemed "on top of the world.

"There were no signs. That's what's driving me crazy. I don't see one reason why she would do that," he said.

Korshunova's last hours were spent with a former boyfriend Artem Perchenok, 24, who told the New York Post he dropped her off at her apartment just hours before her death after they had watched the Patrick Swayze film Ghost together.

Korshunova's doorman, Mahmoud Nakeeb, was also quoted in the Daily Mail as claiming the model seemed happy when she came home about 4am on Saturday.

"She came in this morning, she smiled, no sense of depression," he said.

But emotional postings on the beauty's social networking site in recent months hinted at an inner struggle.

"I'm so lost. Will I ever find myself?" London's Telegraph quoted Korshunova as writing wrote three months ago.

The paper also also quoted a post in January saying: "It hurts, as if someone took a part of me, tore it out, mercilessly stomped all over and threw it out."

The balcony the model fell from had construction netting around it which appeared to have been cut, according to the Daily Mail, which also wrote that Korshunova was shoeless and dressed in blue jeans and a purple tank top when she died.

Her agency, IMG was reeling from the tragedy and gathering information about her death and work schedule, the Daily Mail reported.

"We're shocked and our heart goes out to her family," spokesman Zach Eichman was quoted as saying.

The Cad Strikes Again

2008-06-29T18:28:00.000-07:00

Going home has not been easy. One moment she was on the edge of becoming the chatelaine of ancient Althorp House, with its old masters, priceless antiques, endless acres and unique history as the resting place of Princess Diana.

The next she was returning to a little wooden house with a vegetable garden and a pole flying the American flag, in the dusty township of Bonny Doon, south of San Francisco, explaining to her police sergeant father why things hadn't turned out as they'd hoped.

Friends had warned television presenter Coleen Sullivan that she'd never end up a countess but just another notch on Earl Spencer's aristocratic bedpost. And so it has turned out.

'She was in love with the bastard,' shrugs a former television colleague. 'What else could she do?'
Nearly two years ago, the glamorous Coleen threw up her career - and a long-term fiance - to make her life with Charles Spencer in England after meeting him on the free relationship dating site Devil Called Love.

At around the same time, Spencer cruelly walked out on his second wife, Caroline, and their two children, including his daughter, Lara, aged just four months. Caroline - 'Pidge' to her friends - was 'devastated' - the same word that friends of Coleen have been using about her this week.

Back home in Bonny Doon, a wine-growing township with a church and two fire stations but no shop, her family are putting on a brave face. Her stepmother, Lisa Sullivan, assured one well-wisher: 'She's fine.'

But the truth is very different. Once again, the 9th Earl Spencer had raised a young woman's expectations to dazzling heights only to dash them with a callous finality.

'Charles attracts women by displaying a certain vulnerability - something of a little boy lost. It's real, not phoney,' says one of his oldest friends.

'But he gets bored with a woman the moment he realises he has total control over her. It is not a pretty characteristic, but there it is. I'm sure it goes back to his childhood when his mother ran off with another man. He loves the chase of women, and seducing them, but he can be ruthless with them.'

Lord Spencer's pursuit and capture of the glamorous brunette Coleen after she interviewed him for a documentary in the late summer of 2006, followed a pattern that will be familiar to his ex-wives, Caroline - who has two other children by her first husband, PR guru Matthew Freud - and Victoria, mother of his four older children.

It is a tale of flowers, candle-light, whispered compliments and lavish attention. And at intimate moments, gifts of jewellery under the pillow.

Coleen was a girl whom one of his friends describes as having 'a nice American sheen, a lively talker but not sophisticated like Charles'.

Even so, he appeared to be so serious about her that he accompanied her several times to see her family in America. He particularly liked her father, a former SWAT police marksman, who told him: 'Don't mess with my daughter. She knows how to use a gun - I taught her! This is not a woman who is going to let any man mess her around.'

Yesterday, the warning sounded pretty hollow - as hollow as the former police officer's claim to understand people so well after 36 years in the Force that he judged the 9th Earl Spencer to be 'a gentleman'.

Spencer's older children, living with their mother Victoria in South Africa, never came to terms with the speed with which their father had dumped his second wife, Caroline, whom they all liked, and taken up with the 35-year-old Coleen.

When Spencer, 43, took Coleen to spend their first Christmas together at his splendid mansion in the exclusive Cape Town suburb of Constantia, the plan was for the children, then aged 12 to 15, to join them.

But they refused to come to the house if Coleen was there, and he was forced to put her up in the five-star, ??350-a-night Cellars-Hohenort hotel, a brief drive from his house.

In subsequent visits, even though Coleen never had her own home in England and had become part of the everyday scene at Althorp, the children continued to have little enthusiasm for her. Yet bit by bit, Spencer worked on them and eventually began to win them over.

Like their father, Coleen had also been brought up without a mother because when her parents divorced, her father won custody. Then in July last year, Spencer took the children, Kitty, now 17, twins Eliza and Katya, 15, and Louis, 14, with him and Coleen on a week-long holiday in Mallorca. By all accounts it broke the ice.

Just three months ago, in April, Spencer finally convinced them of his commitment to Coleen, and they all agreed to sit down together and talk. Crucially, according to a family source, the children accepted that he loved her and that he wanted her to be a part of the family.

For Coleen Sullivan, the small-time television presenter, this moment of full acceptance into one of the nation's great families released a flood of relief and gratitude. However, just what it released in Earl Spencer's mind, after such a herculean effort to bring his children on-side, can only be a matter for speculation.

'One morning,' says a family friend, 'he simply woke up and decided he no longer found her attractive. And that was it. But isn't that so very Charles?' Of course, there had been clues along the way. When he hosted a shooting party of smart friends and their wives at Althorp last Christmas, Coleen went out of her way to look beautiful at dinner.

One of those present recalls that she 'really did look gorgeous and the other chaps murmured what a lucky chap Charles Spencer was, but, to our surprise, he never offered her a single compliment'.

For students of Earl Spencer and his treatment of women, this was a pivotal moment. He was, as one explains, moving from conquest and fascination, to indifference that would lead to boredom and, finally, 'shipping her out'.

This is what makes the April meeting with his children inexplicable. It certainly indicates a measure of cavalier indifference to her feelings. But isn't this how he treated the two women who did become Countess Spencer?

He is, after all, a man who never displays too much concern over upsetting women - whether they are former wives or even his sister, Diana, from whom he famously - and selfishly - withheld the sanctuary of a cottage on his estate when she was desperate for a bolt-hole after the break-up of her marriage to Prince Charles.

He claimed the pursuing paparazzi would upset his family peace. When Diana, shocked by his refusal to help, wrote to him, the loving little brother returned her letters unopened. As for the wives, theirs are both stories of grotesque betrayal. During the 1999 divorce hearing involving Victoria, held in South Africa because he was advised it would be cheaper there, he described himself (in a letter to a girlfriend) as having been 'vicious, cruel and a bully' towards Victoria.

He was labelled a serial and deceitful adulterer who had affairs with a dozen women while Victoria, whom he had met and married in 1989, was in a sanatorium for five months overcoming drink problems and anorexia.

The cruelty manifested itself in other ways. At a party, when he was reminded of his late father's remark that he should stick with Victoria through thick and thin, he jocularly told guests that Victoria 'was thin, and certainly thick'.

These days, Victoria is remarried with another child and lives happily in Cape Town. Caroline became his second Countess Spencer in 2001 and they were divorced a year ago. But the divorce is not yet absolute as they continue negotiations over her settlement.

More than anything, Caroline wants to keep, for herself and the children, the lovely canal-side house in Little Venice, North-West London, that Spencer bought for ??4.5million from Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour, through the family trust based in London and the Channel Islands.
Most people would imagine that the very least a man worth in the region of ??100million would do, having walked out on his wife and small children, is make over the family house to them.
But according to family friends, this is what he is refusing to do. 'He wants the house for himself and doesn't want her to have it,' one of them said.

'This seems to be the big sticking point in the divorce and is why the nisi hasn't yet become absolute. He's offered her money, but that too, in her view, isn't much.'

Friends who meet Earl Spencer say he displays no sense of ordeal involving any of these women. 'He's in good form,' says one. 'You'd never know he was in the middle of wrangling with an ex-wife and dumping a girlfriend.'

You have to wonder just how deep the effects of his childhood runs, as well as his conscience. This is a youngest child, the long-awaited son to continue the line of Earl Spencers, whose arrival was greeted with relief and celebration.

The child has become a man who gives all the appearance of doing precisely what he wishes and is prone to bouts of anger if he does not get his own way. And in wanting his own way, he has strayed into forbidden and dangerous areas, drawing criticism from even his most devoted friends.

On Thursday, when a memorial service to Shusha Guppy, mother of his lifelong and closest friend since Eton, Darius Guppy, was held at St James's Church, Piccadilly, Lord Spencer was not in the congregation. Of course, circumstances may have prevented him from being there, but no one was seriously surprised by his absence.

Things have not been the same between Darius and Charles since an extraordinary series of events that began in April 2006, when Guppy's pretty wife, Patricia, a delicate blonde from Sunderland who once ran an escort agency, revealed something that shocked her husband.
She told him that while he was in prison for an attempted jewellery insurance fraud back in 1993, she'd had dinner at Althorp and Spencer had tried to seduce her after his then wife, Victoria, had gone to bed.

Patricia had kept the incident to herself all these years on account of Charles's and Darius's lifelong friendship, as she didn't want to upset him. But she had heard that two other women who were at the dinner, and towards whom he also allegedly made advances, had been talking about it, and she didn't want her husband to hear from someone other than herself.

Guppy, a man of quick and inflammatory temper, shook with anger. He telephoned Spencer accusing him of betrayal, and refused to accept his vehement denials. In the end, Spencer agreed to go to Guppy's South African home.

What followed, as gasping children watched through an upstairs window, was a savage fight in which both men were smeared in blood and sweat as they grappled and thrashed around. One man could be seen kicking and punching the other on the ground.

Guppy was said to have been 'like a man possessed'. His marriage, now 19 years old, remains strong. Spencer suffered a fractured cheekbone and injuries to his ribs and nose, which he later passed off to inquiring friends as 'cricket injuries'.

Charles Spencer took a real hiding that night. It has become an episode of his life that he never mentions. Friends joke these days that they never allow their wives to go to Althorp unless they accompany them personally.

When that thrashing took place, he had only just met Coleen and it would be several months before he walked out on Caroline. Today, there is another casualty in the life of the 9th Earl Spencer. Back in the U.S., Coleen will try to revive the television career she thought she'd no longer need.

Meanwhile, the man she went out with for 11 years and was engaged to when Lord Spencer came into view, handsome, 6ft 3in Justin Allen, has long since stopped licking his own wounds, and has become a star sports presenter for Tampa Bay's 10 News.

Who will be next in finding intimate gifts under her pillow in Charles Spencer's bed? Watch this space. But as one of his old friends says: 'I doubt if Charles will ever fall completely in love with any girl. The only person he really loves is himself.'

Slave To Love

2008-06-29T18:18:00.000-07:00

Opening the door to her mistress's bedchamber, the maid knew she was risking the wrath of Victorian society. Taking her upperclass lover by his hand, she drew him in. On her lady's bed lay a lavish ball gown.

Silently, Hannah Cullwick took off her drab calico uniform. Donning the splendid dress, she emerged transformed - only her calloused hands and hefty limbs a reminder of her below-stairs status.

Her lover, Arthur Munby, would later write in diaries which - together with explicit photographs - remained hidden for 50 years: 'I brushed out her bright hair in a lady's fashion, and placed the rose within it.

'Thus she stood before me to be looked at: smiling and slightly blushing. Feeling awkward and strange, in that unknown garb, but looking not awkward at all, but most graceful.'

Arthur added: 'Never before had I felt so strongly the need of self-control in her presence. 'Never, before or since, have I been filled with a more passionate ardour of love and reverence for that pure and innocent soul who had trusted herself so utterly to me.'

This was a forbidden and dangerous love. The pair were engaged in an illicit affair which transcended the mores of the time and crossed the class barrier. The love affair is an extraordinary tale of seething eroticism, romance and heartbreak for Arthur and Hannah, who delighted in a taboo master-slave relationship for half a century - with tragic consequences.

Behind closed doors, they engaged in cross-dressing and bizarre role-playing which would have shocked their contemporaries. She revelled in filth, he in the purity of her love. A bright and aristocratic young man, Arthur arrived in London in 1851 full of potential. He was to take up a position as a trainee barrister. As a gentleman, the glittering world of Victorian high society lay at his feet.

Hannah's place in life could not have been more different. A lowly country maid, she went into service aged eight. She came to London to live a brutal life on the bottom rung of servitude, spending 16-hour days as a maid-of-all-work in grand houses.

For his part, Arthur was battling with a strange fascination. Stifled by the rigid social hierarchy of 1850s England, he was finding himself increasingly drawn to lower-class women. He wrote in his diary: 'My interest in balls is dying out. But always to be among the sparkling froth atop of society has one sad delight in that it keeps vivid before me that gentle misplaced creature who lies grovelling among the dregs: that toiling maid of all work who might have been a drawing-room belle, and is a kitchen drudge.'

He began to seek out these forbidden women, roaming the dirty backstreets of the capital to find them. Diane Atkinson, author of Love And Dirt: The Marriage Of Arthur Munby And Hannah Cullwick, says: 'He liked his women big and strong, robust and hearty.

'He also liked them dirty and sweaty from their hard work. That was his idea of femininity.' Indeed, as his fascination turned into compulsion, he wrote of one working-class woman: 'Her make was brawny and massive, but lithe and shapely withal. The calf of her whitestocking'd leg was well seen, above her well-blacked big-nailed and enormous boots.'

In 1854, Arthur - by now a solicitor for the Ecclesiastical Commission - spotted the physical embodiment of his ideal: Hannah Cullwick. At 21, she had been sent on an errand in Mayfair, and Arthur followed her through the busy byways near Oxford Street.

Eventually, he accosted her - and it was love at first sight. He described her as the ultimate object of his desire. 'A robust hard-working peasant lass, yet endowed with a grace and beauty and obvious intelligence,' he wrote. 'Such a combination I had dreamt of and sought for, but I have never seen it, save in her.'

Their taboo relationship, revealed in a Channel 4 documentary earlier this week, seemed to excite both Hannah and Arthur in equal measure. Atkinson says: 'I think they loved the fact that they were playing with fire. There was the very real possibility that they would be discovered.

'If so, Arthur would have lost his job. He would have been completely ruined and undone. Theirs was a mad, mad love.' Hannah wrote in her own diary: 'I kissed you when you asked me. I wanted to see what your mouth was like. It was hot and warm. I knowed you was good and soft by the feel of your mouth.'

Arthur was attracted by what repelled his class, savouring the grimy details of Hannah's working life. She detailed the drudgery of her below- stairs existence to his delight.

'Lighted the fires and blacked the parlour grate,' wrote Hannah in one romantic epistle.
'Cleaned the hearth and five pairs of boots. Swept the hall. Filled the skuttles and made the fires up.'

When she visited her lover, Hannah played the role of servant, performing his intimate ablutions. She addressed Arthur by the pet name 'Massa' - a country version of 'master'.
She records of one encounter: 'Got the dinner and laid the cloth. Wash'd up after and then Massa's feet.'

For five years, both continued to hide their passion from society. While Hannah continued working as a maid, Arthur travelled around Britain, photographing working women.

He wrote of a visit to the coal-dusted women of the Lancashire pits: 'Stalwart labourers striding along the railway with spade on shoulder, or climbing up the sides of the trucks. I realised with difficulty the fact that nearly all these muscular black people in coats and trousers were young women.'

Thanking one collierwoman, Mary Harrison, Arthur gave her a gift. With barely concealed excitement, he wrote: 'The sixpence lay glittering white in the dull black palm of her extended right hand. I touched that dull black palm. It was rough and very hard.'

Back in London, his illicit meetings with Hannah continued. She wrote: 'Massa was much pleased with my hands because they were red and coarse, and I don't think he was ashamed of me but he would have been if he had seen anyone he knew.'
Atkinson attests: 'Arthur adored her hands. So much so that when she had been blacking the fire range, she would print them on to paper and send the imprint of her dirty working hands to him, as a love letter.'
Hannah certainly played to Arthur's love of dirt and the working class. Atkinson says: 'She liked to get naked and go up the chimney. She loved to climb up and be surrounded by the hot soot and she enjoyed sweeping the chimney with her bare hands.'

Hannah wrote: 'I lay on the hearth in the soot a minute or two thinking, and I wished rather that Massa could see me.' 'Massa' was also obsessed by Hannah's strength, her powerfully-built physique being the very opposite of the sylph-like creatures adorning the fashionable parlours of the time.

He often described how she could pick him up and carry him around, or hold him on her lap.

Hannah wrote: 'My arm is 14 inches round the muscle, and my hand four-and-a-half inches across the inside, for Massa measured them.'

By the 1860s, their relationship had become more experimental. Hannah began wearing a secret chain and padlock around her neck - her lover kept the key. She wrote: 'I am his slave and he is my master freely given and freely received only for love, and while I have the chains on I am sure nothing can part us and that it is the same as marriage is to other folks.'

They indulged in strange roleplaying fantasies. Arthur hired a photographer to take pictures of Hannah, emphasising her sturdy build. Arthur recorded: 'Her bare arms were ruddy like a peasant girl's and muscular. Her face too was dusty and rosy with rustic health.'

In one titillating chimney-sweep image, she is naked to the waist and smeared with coal dust, with Arthur's chain around her neck. Yet she appears strangely vulnerable, despite her physical strength.

She remarked of the image: 'Just what I wanted. I don't care how black it comes out, and the rougher looking the better.' She delighted in blacking herself up with soot and lead for her lover, writing: 'The blacker I get with work, the more ardent I feel towards you.'

One photograph would perhaps have shocked Victorian society most: it shows the servant-girl dressed as a lady. Another shows her cross- dressing, her hair cropped to look like a man.
Hannah even liked to lick her master's boots. Arthur writes: 'Hannah insists on being allowed to clean my boots always, for boot cleaning being the lowest work of all was ever a sign of her being mine.

She wrote: 'We had a long kiss. I licked his boots of my own accord.' Later, she told 'Massa' that she could tell where he had been by how his boots tasted.

Atkinson believes it was Hannah who held Arthur in her thrall, despite acting as his slave. 'She was in the driving seat,' she says. 'She was the boss, really.'

Finally, after 18 years apart, Hannah moved in with Arthur - as his new servant, giving their relationship the veneer of respectability. At first, they enjoyed domestic bliss. But soon reality intruded on their fragile alliance, with disastrous consequences.

Arthur wanted to live with Hannah openly, as a real couple. He attempted to educate his beloved servant girl, aiming to turn her into a lady, just like in the play Pygmalion. He wrote: 'Someday I may perhaps be able to do justice to her devotedness and to my own scheme of training her.'
His misguided plan shattered their love, finally exposing the gulf between them.

Hannah hated the idea of giving up life as a maid and wrote: 'I'd rather do the work myself but for fear anyone should think me set up or proud. 'No, I've long resolved that for freedom and true lowliness there's nothing like being a maid of all work - no one can think you set up or proud in that.'

Without telling Hannah, Arthur bought a wedding licence. His lover resisted, writing: 'I care very, very little for the licence of being married. It seems to have so little to do with our love.'
Arthur was determined, describing Hannah's 'loving face and bare strong arms glowing red with the work, an obvious servant and yet an obvious wife.'

Eventually, worn down by his pleas, Hannah agreed to the marriage. At 9am on January 14, 1873, they stood before the altar of St James Church in Clerkenwell, central London. In front of just four guests, Hannah for the first time called Arthur by his real name - standing beside him as an equal at last, as he placed a ring on her finger.

Hannah said: 'I am united heart and soul as well as married at church to the truest, best, and handsomest man in my eyes that ever was born.' She left the church not to a grand reception, however, but to return to her housework.

Her refusal to be a lady would tear the couple apart. It seems that Hannah was simply unable to adapt to a life 'upstairs', despite Arthur's desire to make her respectable. He bought her fine lace gloves, but she demanded that he continued to pay her a wage and kept their relationship secret.
Indeed, Hannah seems to have felt humiliated by the whole exercise, her new status undermining her very existence. Poignantly, she wrote to her new husband: 'I hope you'll never take me out again as a lady. It makes me miserable. I feel so useless and idle.'

The strain eventually became too much, and Hannah suffered a nervous breakdown, exacerbated by drink. Tragically, just four years after making her his wife, Arthur exiled Hannah from his home on the advice of doctors.

She was sent to Shropshire, where she became a servant again, and wrote a stream of painful letters to Arthur. She told him: 'I have felt my love for you as much as ever this last six months, although I have given you up and have no desire to see you.'

Arthur would visit, and she would once again play servant to him. In 1892, on their 19th wedding anniversary, Hannah still insisted on licking Arthur's boots. Bereft and appalled, he wrote of his consequent shame: 'But it is my fault of other years, hard to be amended now, that this sweet soul has been brought so low in her own eyes. That wasn't what I meant by those strange trials.'

The last picture of Hannah, aged 69, was taken in 1902. It shows an old and broken woman, dressed in the clothes of a servant. Although they had entered the 20th century, Arthur hid the picture from visitors behind a black velvet curtain, lest they discover his forbidden bride.

Hannah died childless and alone in Shropshire on July 9, 1909, the victim of her illicit romance. Just six months later, Arthur followed her to the grave. It was the end of a doomed relationship that lasted over half a century and defied society's strictures, but tragically destroyed those within its embrace.

In Search Of A Rich, Exclusive Relationship

2008-06-29T18:10:00.000-07:00

Blue Collar, unattractive or old women need not apply.

But if you are prepared to pay $1800 to find a rich, single man for a long-term relationship, the city could be your oyster with the free online dating site Devil Called Love. Just do not mention love.

While the masses are diving into internet dating to find romance, executives are forking out thousands for somebody else to screen, sort and introduce them to their perfect match.

Joanne Crammond expanded her Brisbane agency, Simply Drinks, to Sydney this year and was initially astounded by the lack of male interest after her first advertisement.

So she changed the wording to take out the word love and the men started knocking.

"The guys say the same thing as the girls, that it's hard to find quality women," Ms Crammond said. "The way my website is written, it's basically, don't come in and waste my time if you're not successful, not attractive."

Simply Drinks costs $1795 for six carefully selected dates.

This is a bargain compared to the fees of Yvonne Allen of up to $5500. Allan has been in the business of "boutique" matchmaking since 1979. It sounds expensive, but plumbing the city's suits for beating hearts can be tricky.

Several agencies said they had tried to place advertisements in The Australian Financial Review, but fell foul of the newspaper's "no dating services" policy. But even without the extra exposure, matchmaking services for business professionals are finding no shortage of women signing up.

Bridgit Allingham, 33, an account manager for a media company, has started seeing somebody

she met through the matchmaking agency Blue Label Life - a "very eligible, French CEO". She turned to matchmaking on a whim after coming across the website while looking for something else.

"It's quite a large investment but then I suppose I would spend that on going away for a week on a holiday without blinking."

Samantha Jayne, who runs Blue Label Life, calculates her clients' compatibility with one another through a "scientific" formula that matches people with similar attitudes and values.

Ms Allen said a lot of women had partly themselves to blame for not finding a mate, because their expectations were too high.

"When they put out their big wish list of what they're looking for, they don't stop to say: 'Why would he be looking for me?"'

The French Lieutenant Author’s Secret Woman

2008-06-29T17:57:00.000-07:00

A secret cache of love letters reveals how John Fowles, author of The French Lieutenant’s Woman, re-enacted his epic story of forbidden passion with a young student.

More than 20 years after he wrote the novel, Fowles embarked on a passionate affair with Elena van Lieshout, a 21-year-old Oxford undergraduate who modelled herself on Sarah Woodruff, the flighty heroine of his most famous work.

Though Elena never stood amid the wind and waves at the end of a stone pier like Meryl Streep in the famous image from the 1981 film version, she and Fowles visited the spot on the cliffside above Lyme Regis where in the book Woodruff tells her admirer of her disastrous affair with a French army officer.

The letters reveal that despite being old enough to be her grandfather, the author and undergraduate shared a bed. The romance was never fully consummated because Fowles, who was 64, had suffered a stroke, but the relationship was sexual.

In one letter Fowles, who also wrote The Collector, a novel about a man who collects butterflies and then takes a girl captive, apologises for going too far.

The 120 letters and postcards, including some unpublished love poems, were sent by Fowles, who died in 2005, over a two-year period. “Dearest Leni,” he would write, quoting the songwriter Cole Porter. “In the words of that all-time cliché, you’re under my skin.”

The letters have been consigned anonymously to Sotheby’s where they are expected to sell for at least £30,000 at auction in London next month. Van Lieshout was 21 when she was first invited to Belmont House, Fowles’s home near Lyme Regis, Dorset, in July 1990. The writer’s wife Elizabeth had died of cancer a few months before and he was becoming increasingly reclusive.

A student at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, with ambitions to be a concert pianist, actress or novelist, van Lieshout had been visiting the area since her teens, taking long lonely walks in the manner of Woodruff who wanders along the sea as scandalised villagers gossip about her longing for her French lover to return. Van Lieshout had taken a summer job as a waitress. Hearing of the death of Fowles’s wife, she put a note expressing her condolences through his door. He invited her to afternoon tea.

Fowles had long had the capacity to inhabit a “fantasy world” inspired by his own writing, according to his biographer Eileen Warburton, and in the student he seems to have found someone with a similar capacity.

Despite the 43-year age gap, the two began an intense friendship, with her moving into Belmont House for the summer. A month after their meeting, they stood at the place where Fowles pictured Woodruff telling Charles Smithson, her admirer, of her ruinous affair with the French lieutenant.

Van Lieshout, the relatively unworldly student, played the role of the woman with a supposedly dark past. She spoke, Fowles recollected, “in little spurts of confession . . . not quite unconsciously repeating the role of Sarah in The FLW . . . the outwardly demure but inwardly self-consumed woman, obsessed by her own freedom”.

Later Fowles wrote to her: “I was one eighth of the way into thinking you were just an ordinary girl, one of those Oxford would-be bluestockings, really rather silly; but now I’m back at square one, late as always, there’s this odd creature at the door, across the cobbles, nervous — demure, and I think, oh Christ, I nearly forgot and walk towards you, into something so much more than just sex, just friendship, just curiosity.”

The real and fictional women seemed strikingly similar to him: to van Lieshout he wrote how “sometimes you seem running and screaming from some great horror in life”. He frequently drew attention to the outwardly “demure” appearance that she shared with Woodruff.

Fowles initially explained the extraordinary setup to her parents as a friendship and criticised the prudish reaction of the locals: “She has brought a happiness into being I thought had gone forever when my wife died last March. Everyone in Lyme — and no doubt elsewhere — always jumps to the most disgraceful conclusions when you say things like that, but we know what has happened is strangely different.” However, by the time of her return to Oxford, he told them of his wish that they should marry.

Fowles poured out his feelings in his letters and candidly expressed his horror at the fact that he was physically unable to consummate the relationship fully. He quoted to van Lieshout a passage he had written in his diary: “It seems barbaric at times; that I’ve lost all sexual potency yet not sexual feeling. That I want Elena, and she can’t want me.”

Warburton, the author of John Fowles: A Life in Two Worlds, believes “Elena for Fowles was the embodiment of the fey, come-hither female characters of his novels”. In an unpublished sonnet sent to van Lieshout, Fowles presented himself like the French Lieutenant’s Woman. Woodruff is described in the novel as “like a living memorial to the drowned” when she looks out to sea for the lover who has abandoned her.

Fowles in the poem puts himself on the same part of the coast, Seatown Beach: You know the book I carry in my heart, How she was me, now I am her. I love Your sea, yet I am lost without her land.

Peter Selley, director of Sotheby’s books department, who is handling the sale, described the relationship between Fowles and van Lieshout as “an archetypal mentor and admirer kind of relationship which we’ve seen dramatised countless times in literature and history”.

Ronnie Payne, a lifelong friend of Fowles, described van Lieshout, who later joined the police force in her native Wales, as a “bright and sparky” young woman “who had fallen under the spell of the great novelist”.

She eventually balked at the seriousness of the relationship. On her return to Oxford, to do her finals, Fowles said “all life lies in a little room on the river in Oxford”.

He wrote in December 1991: “I sense that you would like to drop it, the being half-engaged, whatever you want to call it. Fine, you are held to nothing . . . but we made a show of putting on shackles much too early.”

They remained in touch until 1998, around the time Fowles married Sarah Smith, an advertising executive and friend of his first wife. In the last interview he gave before his death at the age of 79, he commented on the parallels in his life and fiction: “You are every character you write.”

Van Lieshout, who has Dutch and Welsh parents, went to the funeral but friends of Fowles say they have now lost touch with her. The University of Austin, Texas, which holds the majority of Fowles’s archive, said it would like to acquire the letters. Thomas Staley, director of the university’s manuscript centre, said: “John could be tough but there was a helplessness about him as well.”