People - Here, There and Everywhere
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'Child porn' in Elton's collection
A PHOTOGRAPH from Sir Elton John's private collection has been seized from a British art gallery by police on suspicion it may have breached child pornography laws.
The work, by the American photographer Nan Goldin, shows two young girls, one of whom is shown sitting with her legs apart. It was due to be shown at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead as part of a series called Thanksgiving, described by the gallery as a "micro-retrospective of Goldin's career".
But the day before the exhibition was due to open to 
the public, police removed the image. They had been contacted by management at the gallery, who were concerned about showing it.
Goldin, 54, is best known for documenting America's gay, transvestite and post-punk subcultures. Sir Elton, a major collector of modern photography, has long been an admirer of her work and is also a close friend. He was not available for comment.
How Prez-I-Dent Bush reads a speech
HE MAY BE leader of the Free World, but he still needs help reading aloud. It turns out that George W Bush has his scripts marked with phonetic spellings so that 
he is able to pronounce names correctly.
When White House staff showed journalists a draft of the speech Bush gave yesterday to the UN General Assembly, they mistakenly handed out the marked up version, revealing such helpful tips as: the President of France [sar-KO-zee]; the President of Zimbabwe [moo-GA-bee]; the capital of Venezuela [kah-RAH-kus]; and that tricky nation in West Africa [moor-EH-tain-ee-a].
September 29: Sophie Ellis-Bextor will perform at the CWAC fundraising event at the Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, London.
October 2: Sara Cox and Natasha Bedingfield will attend the BT Digital Music Awards at the Roundhouse, Camden, London.
October 7: Dame Helen Mirren (above) is set to make an appearance at the Cheltenham Literature Festival.
Perot's Magna Carta up for sale
THE LAST surviving 13th-Century copy of the Magna Carta in private hands is to be put up for auction at Sotheby's, New York in December. It is currently owned by Ross Perot, the Texan billionaire and former independent US presidential 
candidate, who is selling it to raise money for his charitable family foundation.
The Magna Carta, one of Britain's greatest historical documents, was originally issued in 1215 by the chancery of King John limiting the monarch's powers, and binding him to the rule of law.
Perot's manuscript is one of only seventeen 13th Century copies known to exist, and is likely to stir huge interest from both private and public collections. Comprising 2,500 Latin words on a single piece of vellum, it has a reserve price of £15m.
How Spielberg lost the plot with an Indiana Jones extra
AN EXTRA working on the fourth Indiana Jones film has done the unthinkable: he has blurted out details of the plot - a state secret in Hollywood - to his local paper in Oklahoma. As a result, director Steven Spielberg and producer George Lucas are furious and the 24-year-old extra, Tyler Nelson (inset above), looks like having a very (continued below ad)
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(continued from above ad) short movie career. A Spielberg spokesman said: "Who knows whether that particular person will ever work in this town again?"
Spielberg and Lucas had made the entire cast and crew of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sign non-disclosure agreements. But Nelson - cast as a "dancing Russian soldier" - gave an interview to the Edmond Sun in Oklahoma, in which he revealed that:
Indy, played once again by Harrison Ford, and the Soviet army are both searching for a priceless skull made of crystal in the jungles of South America;
The Russians take Indy hostage and then blackmail him by threatening to kill his ex-girlfriend and mother of his son, played by Karen Allen;
Cate Blanchett plays an evil Russian who grills Indy. "I saw Harrison Ford strapped to a chair and being interrogated," Nelson told the paper.
Nelson's own big scene - in which he celebrates Indy's capture by dancing to balalaika folk music - will apparently never be seen: an angry Spielberg has already cut it.
Talent agents throw star tantrum
THE BATTLE for control of one of Britain's top literary and talent agencies, PFD, is about to get nasty.
Ten days after Caroline Michel (below) was parachuted in as the new chief executive, a number of dissident agents who objected to her arrival have still not left and are showing no signs of loyalty to the new boss - despite her charm offensive.
Michel, married to former Faber publisher Lord (Matthew) Evans, is expected to sack them shortly.
Two prominent agents, Pat Kavanagh and Caroline Dawnay, have already quit, and others including Dallas Smith are apparently set to go before 
they are pushed. But about a dozen are likely to be asked to leave the agency's Bloomsbury HQ immediately.
A friend of Michel's told the Daily Mail: "Caroline has been doing everything she can to keep people, but it has come to the point where she is going to say bugger off.
"How can you not sack people who have their own official spokesman talking about moving to new premises and taking their clients with them?" Watch this space.
Prada meets Freud at Milan show
Miuccia Prada showed a collection including everything from stretchy woollen bellbottoms to pyjama-shaped tunics patterned with images from fairy tales, and the odd gilded ballerina dress. Models were made up with pale faces and dark eyes; their shoe heels were carved like trees from a toy farm. As Suzy Menkes, fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune, put it: "With a strange wall fresco of weird and wonderful nature scribbles, Prada opened a show that was eerily beautiful. But it needed Sigmund Freud to unravel the tortured dreams."
Elsewhere yesterday, Sienna Guillory and Rosario Dawson were perched in the front row at Moschino, watching quirky boucle jackets and silk boiler suits go by. Missoni showed flower-daubed silk tunics and mirrored minis; Etro featured funky knit dresses and Seventies prints; Bottega Veneta impressed with blow-backed gowns and deluxe day dresses. Heavy rain ruined the shoes of the fashion pack as they dashed off to the event of the evening, the launch of Martin Margiela's new boutique on the Via Spiga.
HAMILTONS gallery owner Tim Jeffries and his fiancee Malin Johansson (above) held a party last night to launch Helmut Newton: XL, an exhibition of the late photographer's rare large prints. Guests at the Mayfair gallery included Eddie Jordan, Naomi Campbell, David Walliams and Tamara Mellon.
Clinton uses Bill as a pawn with GQ
THE CAMPAIGN team for Hillary Clinton's presidential bid forced American magazine GQ to drop a negative story about her by threatening to cut off 
the publication's access to the former President Bill Clinton.
GQ was due to run a picture of Bill Clinton on the cover of its December edition, accompanied by an article detailing in-fighting and tensions within Hillary's camp. The magazine was told, however, that unless the piece was pulled, Bill would no longer co-operate with it. Despite protests from within GQ, the item was dropped.
Editor Jim Nelson said: "We did kill a Hillary piece", but refused to elaborate.
It is another example of the hardball tactics used by Mrs Clinton's press team. On Sunday the Senator achieved the rare feat of appearing on all five Sunday-morning political talk shows, a privilege networks are unlikely to afford her rivals.
Former Conservative Minister Lord Tebbit has said that David Cameron was regarded as out of touch by ordinary people and that it was only natural that Gordon Brown should make himself the "heir to Thatcher"... Celebrity 
television chef Clarissa Dickson Wright and leading racehorse trainer Sir Mark Prescott are to face court charges relating to illegal hare coursing... Oscar-winner Halle Berry has hired security guards after racist threats to her unborn baby... Actor Kiefer Sutherland has been arrested on suspicion of drink driving after a sobriety test in Los Angeles... Jian Zemin, the former Communist Party general secretary and state leader fulfilled a lifetime ambition by singing the first aria at Beijing's new National Grand Theatre...
