Bitch And Famous

August 28, 2008

She's (going to be) baaaack!

Yup, horror news reveals that Paris Hilton was entirely undeterred by her dire first album and plans to record another. You know, Paris — even though every club you go to (and you do go to a lot of them) probably plays one or more of your tracks each time you're there, that doesn't mean that those songs are actually popular.

It might just, perhaps, be that clubs are prepared to take the musical hit to make sure you keep coming back, which gets them loads of free publicity — not to mention the guaranteed patronage of whoever wants to see or be seen with you. So, no, don't record more music. Enough with that already.

I fear, though, gentle reader, that Hilton will not heed me. In fact, she's apparently roped her Good Charlotte-member boyf Benji Madden into trying to save the unsaveable.

"Well, actually, I have a studio at the house," says Paris of that source of so much misery. As for Benji, "He actually helped me write some of the songs for my new album, and for the 'BFF' show. He's a really amazing talent, songwriter and singer."

Ooh, could 'actually' be the Hilton buzz-word du jour?

The 'BFF' show is, of course, Paris' search in London for a, well, new BFF by means of a reality TV series. Because, hey, how could that fail to produce a true friend? What she's looking for, she tells us, is someone, "who is hot, who can keep up with me, and most of all, who is real and won't be a backstabber".

And the shocks just keep coming. Hilton is even threatening to perform a duet with her man Madden! Seriously? "Yes, definitely. When the show comes out," says the callous Paris.

But far more interesting than that plastinated parasite is former enfant terrible of my beloved 'Beverley Hills: 90210', Shannen Doherty. (Just one more month to wait till the new series comes out in the US! And hopefully SA won't be too far behind.)

Shannen wasn't exactly, um, popular with her cast-mates back on the original show in the '90s. In fact, fellow fomer '90210'-er Jenny Garth admitted at the time that the two of them would, "fight like cats and dogs". But now both Doherty and Garth are back working together on the new series — and perhaps recapturing a touch of those glory days on Aaron Spelling's finest teen soap shite, after the bleak decade-plus since then that they've spent watching their careers head south.

"There was almost a comfort in knowing that I was getting to work with somebody who had been on the original with me and gone through the same experiences," said an ebullient Doherty of working with Jenny, to the US's Radar mag.

"Like, 'Okay we've been through the war together already.' I never even gave any thought to it being awkward. I know how much I've grown up since then. I would assume that she's grown up the same amount."

If Shannen was super-ethusiastic, Jenny wasn't quite as blown away with joy. "It is what it is," was her laconic take on working with her former co-star again. "It's fine. No crazy drama's going on."

That might change, though, left to Doherty. When asked what the two of them talked about after not having spoken to each other in almost a decade and a half, Shannen revealed that the major topic of conversation had been the hit ballroom show 'Dancing with the Stars', which Garth recently took part in.

Things started off well: "I love that show," enthused Doherty. Then they took a turn for the worse: "I wouldn't be on it in a million years, but I wanted to see if she had fun doing it." Um, ja — not remotely insulting, that.

Also not ideal... blackmail.

But sometimes a parent has to resort to that kind of thing to get their child to eat all their veggies. Just ask Kate Moss — she's bribing her little Lila Grace with promises of designer clothes. "When she's 16 she will get my clothes," explains Kate. "All those Pucci numbers and things that I wore when I was 17 that I won't really wear — I'm saving them for her."

"That's my blackmail: 'Don't eat your dinner and you won't get my clothes. You won't grow and you won't get into my clothes.'" Uh, yeah, that's a worry — being too small for Kate Moss' clothes. I think she better enjoy using that one while Lila Grace is too young to realise she's being conned.

David Thewlis isn't conning anyone. He's very, very free with his thoughts on things. Don't know who he is? He's an actor who happened to have a little screen time with Sharon Stone, back in the 2006 sequel to 'Basic Instinct' — namely, 'Bastic Instinct 2' — a film just as clever and original as its title.

Seems Thewlis, who's British, doesn't really have much interest in working over the pond again — certainly not with Stone. No, I'm pretty sure his comments in a recent interview about that film and its star have burnt the hell out of his bridges.

"It was a pile of s..t, wasn't it?" remarks Thewlis, looking back on the movie. "I wanted to get a job in the can before my daughter was born. It was actually very pleasant for me. I didn't have much to do with Sharon Stone."

"And thank God, because I heard she was a f..king nightmare!"

Brilliant stuff. You certainly cannot accuse Mr Thewlis of being a star suck-up.

And, finally, I leave you with news that former 'Baywatch' beauty Carmen Electra now knows what's so hot about the profoundly useless Kim Kardashian (famous for being a former Paris BFF, now turned star of a reality show about herself and her sisters).

Carmen and Kim wrestle with each other for a scene in weak new flick 'Disaster Movie'. "I really got to know her in our wrestling scene," claims Carmen. "We get into some down and dirty positions, so it's a good thing we became friends. Kim is so cool, not to mention being hot."

As well as a meeting of the minds, there was also a fair amount of pain involved: "There's hair pulling and I hurt my back and got some burn marks," admitted Electra. "But it's also sexy."

"We're sort of playing with the idea that guys get turned on by girls wrestling." Um, ja, if by 'playing with' you mean 'playing directly and entirely uncritically into'.

More celebrity brainiacs speak — in next week's Bitch and Famous!