People - Here, There and Everywhere
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Turn off the lights, Rupert’s coming!
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch (below, with wife Wendy Deng) threw his London summer party last night, taking over the Serpentine Gallery. "What with the burly chauffeurs huddling around the limos, and the tall black urns of white lillies lining the path up the gallery, I thought I'd arrived at a Mafia funeral," said one guest.
PM-in-waiting Gordon Brown, Home Secretary John Reid and his predecessor David Blunkett were among Labour pols invited to drink
champagne and eat sausages and fishcakes. The Tories were represented by William Hague and George Osbourne.
To save any embarrassment for either party, not to mention the host whose Fox News channel has been famously gung-ho for the Iraq war, the gallery's current light installation by artist Paul Chan - an 'ambient video essay' on life in Baghdad before the invasion - was turned off before guests arrived.
Sky News political correspondent Adam Boulton and former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie were among the Murdoch faithful attending. The boss moves on to his London board meeting today. (The First Post)
June 14: Giles Deacon, Leah Wood, Sadie Frost (above) and Erin O'Connor are due to attend the Visa Swap launch party, 5 Brompton Road, London
June 15: Simon Sebag Montefiore, Fay Weldon and Ronnie Corbett will join Earl Spencer at Althorp Literary Festival, Althorp, Northampton
The Beastie Boys headline the Gala Event at the Sonar 2007 music festival, Barcelona.
June 16: Pete Doherty, Jarvis Cocker and Bryan Ferry will perform at the Royal Festival Hall, London in a Disney Songbook tribute.
June 17: Peaches Geldof and Queenz of Noize will DJ at the aftershow party for the O2 Wireless Festival, 29 Old Burlington St, London.
Easy ride to St Petersburg
There is a new force to be reckoned with on the international art scene - in the shape of Russian property tycoon Janna Bullock (above right).
At a dinner last week during the Venice Biennale art fair, she was welcomed to the board of trustees of the Guggenheim Foundation. To celebrate, she (continued below ad)
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(continued from above ad) splashed out on three of Tracey Emin's much-criticised artworks at £325,000 a pop - adding to a collection of around 4,500 works.
Next up Janna, who started out as a babysitter and has made her fortune buying and selling Upper East Side townhouses, is to host an exhibition of photography taken by Easy Rider actor Dennis Hopper, at the Hermitage in St Petersburg. "They met at the Basel Miami Beach art fair," says a spokesman for Bullock. "She liked his work, and decided to sponsor his first exhibition in Russia."
When she is not in Moscow, where her husband Alexis lives and works, Janna, runs her property company from an environmentally-friendly Manhattan penthouse. The Hopper show at the Hermitage will be launched with a dinner on June 21. Jack Nicholson is among those expected to attend. (The First Post)
Hillary gets a dream backer
After toying with backing Barack Obama, Steven Spielberg has become the biggest Hollywood name so far to commit to supporting Hillary Clinton in her run for president.
"I've taken the time to familiarise myself with the impressive field of Democratic candidates and am convinced that Hillary Clinton is the most qualified,"
Spielberg said in a statement released by the Clinton campaign. "She will bring America back together, rebuild our prestige abroad and ensure our protection here at home."
Earlier this year, it seemed like the entertainment industry had caught Obama fever, with those who'd met him comparing him to Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
When Spielberg and his partners at DreamWorks, hosted a fundraiser in February for Obama, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg endorsed Obama - but Spielberg held off, saying he wanted to consider the field. (Variety)
Sleepwalk disaster for LaChap's chap
Glamour photographer and video director David LaChapelle, who has just filmed the video for Amy Winehouse's latest release and has snapped Lil Kim (above) in the past, nearly lost his long-term friend and assistant Fred Torres during the Venice Biennale - in a sleepwalking accident. Torres, who'd taken a sleeping pill, fell four floors from his bedroom window at the Ca' dei Conti Hotel. Art dealer Tony Shafrazi and model Naomi Campbell sprang for a medevac plane to get him to a hospital in Rome, where he's recovering from a broken pelvis, leg and arm...
Actor Nigel Havers flew to New York to marry wealthy divorcee Georgina Bronfman - the woman who comforted him through the death of his second wife Polly, from cancer... Senior judge Sir Stephen Richards has been cleared of 'flashing' on a train due to insufficient evidence... Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith 
(below) has quit as editor
of The Ecologist to focus on his political career... Peter O'Toole has reportedly taken up an offer to play Pope Paul III... Britpop veterans Ash say they will only release music as downloads from now on... The White Stripes played an exclusive gig to an audience of Chelsea Pensioners... Rick and Kathy Hilton, parents of Paris, jumped long queues to visit their jailed daughter... Kate Moss has banned Pete Doherty from talking about their wedding plans when he appears on Jonathan Ross's chat show next week...
A Mighty clanger
Angelina Jolie seems to have her ethics in a twist. Promoting her new film A Mighty Heart about press freedom - at an event organised by Reporters without Borders, no less - she did everything in her power to censor the journalists. She demanded they sign a draconian contract regulating what they could write. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised: last year, when Jolie went to Namibia, human rights organisations condemned the 'brutal tactics directed against journalists' trying to cover the birth of her daughter, Shiloh.
Chariots of ire
You can't please them all: Jacques Rogge president of the International Olympic Committee, gave the London 2012 bid team a boost yesterday by saying he liked the controversial logo, and that the city's preparations were the best in the history of the games.
But architect Richard Rogers (left), speaking to the Evening Standard, attacked the London process as being "defensive rather than visionary". Lord Rogers, 73, who, to make matters worse, is Mayor Ken Livingstone's chief advisor on architecture and urbanism, went on: "John Prescott said: 'Barcelona was the gold standard. We are going to be better.' Well we won't. We're not using the amazing ability that we have... The British always start on the back foot."
Down the Tube
Meanwhile, Livingstone's erstwhile tube consultant Bob Kiley - the man who confessed he was paid £3,200 a day to do 'not much' - has been admitted to hospital in the US for alcoholism. Still on a retainer to the mayor, Kiley has use of a £2m Belgravia house, and could be paid a salary of up to £750,000 a year with no obligation to work.
