The Daily Mail (London, England); 5/9/2005
WHO is the breakfast TV presenter so furious with staff for allegedly leaking to the media details of her pay negotiations that she is demanding a 'fresh team'?
* GROUND FORCE'S burly builder Tommy Walsh threatened to 'gouge out' a TV prankster's eyes when he was a victim of ITV1's Celebrity Stitch Up. Joker Ed Sayer said: 'I pretended to be Tommy's chauffeur then told him I had to collect my 85-year-old grandmother as it was on the way to where he was going. 'My "granny" confused Tommy with someone else so I threatened to throw her out of the car. Then Tommy showed his caring side by threatening to gouge out my eyeballs if I abandoned her on the mean streets of London. Thankfully, he did see the joke in the end.' * TINA BROWN has pulled the plug on her American TV interview show, saying she wants to concentrate on her [pounds sterling]1 million Princess Diana book for Doubleday. But the viewing figures suggest the former Tatler editor (right) jumped before she was pushed.
Says my CNBC insider: 'One episode with Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein as the main guest had only 20,000 viewers.' * NONE of the staff at Leiths restaurant in the Royal Albert Hall recognised opera singer Lesley Garrett when she turned up the other day to promote her presentation of The Classical Brit Awards later this month. Says my mole: 'Despite the fact the room was only one-third full, her agent was ordered to vacate a table and Lesley was told by a waitress:"We need all the tables.There's a Cream concert going on here tonight, you know." ' * ACTRESS Dervla Kirwan's 13-month-old daughter Florence co-stars with her in the forthcoming BBC1 drama 55 Degrees North.
Says the former Ballykissangel star: 'It's great that the writer has tapped into what's been happening in my life and transferred it to the screen.
It's nice to be utterly knackered and to play utterly knackered on screen as well. I didn't need makeup or anything to look like a worn out new mum, because that's exactly what I am.' * EX-DYNASTY star Stephanie Beacham says that she would resist any plans to turn her Bad Girls jailbird character Phyl Oswyn into a lesbian.
Stephanie, 58, who returns in the ITV1 drama on Tuesday, trills: 'I would absolutely loathe it if my character had to have a lesbian love affair - the idea would be ghastly.
'The only advantage is that at least you wouldn't suffer any razor burn from kissing!' * DON'T dial 999 if you happen to spot a hooded male figure shuffling towards you in the wee, small hours in North London. It's probably just Coldplay singer and husband of Gwyneth Patrow Chris Martin (right).
He explains: 'One thing I really like doing at the moment is walking around London late at night with my hood on. I look like a drug dealer.
People don't think you're a pop star, so they treat you like they treat other people.' * SO WHAT does former EastEnder Patsy Palmer, who played flame-haired Bianca in the soap, think of the show?
Er, she doesn't watch it. 'I'm addicted to Emmerdale,' she says. 'It's got wit, humour and lots of good drama, as well as some cracking good acting.' IT IS not only Shameless star Anne-Marie Duff's face that will have to age from youth to OAP when she plays Elizabeth I in the forthcoming BBC biography of the * MORRISSEY fans in the U.S. may, or may not, like the video being given away next month with copies of his DVD Who Put The 'M' In Manchester?
It's Meet Your Meat by the animal rights campaign group PETA, narrated by Alec Baldwin and showing gory footage of animals en route for slaughter. Says vegetarian Morrissey: 'Nobody can come up with a good argument for eating animals - nobody can.' So don't expect him to share the stage with Phoenix Nights funnyman Peter Kay, whose jokes include: 'If we're not supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?' * DAVID WARNER, who played bad guy Spicer Lovejoy in Titanic, bristles when fans assume he was paid a fortune to appear in the biggest-grossing film ever made. Says Warner, who appears in BBC2's new police drama Conviction: 'I got paid more for a day's work on something else than I did for six months working on Titanic.' To the lifeboats!
Virgin Queen. Says my mole in the makeup department: 'We've made a plaster cast model of her breasts which will accurately reflect the effect of gravity in the spinster monarch's winter years.'
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