People - Here, There and Everywhere
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Barack the buppie goes down badly
PRESIDENTIAL hopeful Barack Obama (below, left) is finding it impossible to brush off a gaffe he made in July, addressing a group of farmers in Iowa.
Looking to empathise with impoverished white farmers in the town of Adel, Obama asked his audience: "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and seen what they charge for arugula?"
Unsurprisingly, the comment left a bitter taste. The chi-chi organics supermarket chain even has a branch in London now - but it does not have a single outlet in the entire state of Iowa, let alone in Adel. And few Iowans use arugula - or rocket - to dress their hot-dogs.
The story of the gaffe has resurfaced over the 
weekend. Why? "It's perfect Hillary Clinton material. It shows he's too middle-class for ordinary Americans," a seasoned campaign watcher told The First Post. "Obama's an encylopaedia illustration of a buppie - a black yuppie."
It turns out Obama is not the only clean-cut American to hold arugula in such high esteem. Supermodel Cindy Crawford (above, right) recently commented: "Arugula is how I define cities. I go to a grocery store, and either you can get arugula or you can't." Here's hoping she has no plans to visit Adel.
Farewell to Bond’s longest-serving girl
THE actress who played Miss Moneypenny in 14 Bond films, Lois Maxwell, has died at the age of 80.
She made her debut appearance as the boss's secretary secretly smitten with agent 007 in Dr No, the 
first-ever Bond movie in 1962. Moneypenny to Bond, played by the young Sean Connery (above): "Flattery will get you nowhere. But don't stop trying."
She continued in the role until 1985, when she played the role for the last time opposite Roger Moore in A View to a Kill.
Moore, who studied alongside her at RADA, and also appeared with her in episodes of The Saint, said yesterday: "I think it was a great disappointment to her that she had not been promoted to play M. She would have been a wonderful M."
October 2: Sara Cox and Natasha Bedingfield will attend the BT Digital Music Awards at the Roundhouse, Camden, London.
October 5: Sienna Miller (above) and Danni Minogue will attend The Pink Ice Ball at the Waldorf Hilton, Aldwych, London
October 7: Dame Helen Mirren is set to make an appearance at the Cheltenham Literature Festival.
Anguished Anne says goodbye to second husband
FAMOUS on both sides of the Atlantic for her curt dismissals on television's The Weakest Link, Anne Robinson has announced she is to divorce her husband John Penrose - but has sweetened the blow with a pledge to give him half of her estimated £60m fortune.
While they maintained a perfect front to the outside world, the pair have been growing apart (continued below ad)
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(continued from above ad) for some time, say friends. Six months ago Penrose left the Cotswold family home they shared, moving into a cottage five miles away.
Robinson, 63, has been spending more time visiting her daughter Emma - from an earlier marriage to former Times editor Charlie Wilson - in New York. Says a friend of the couple: "Both Anne and John are very sad. There has been plenty of soul-searching and anguish for both of them. It was a mutual decision."
They were married for 27 years after meeting as cub reporters at the North London News Agency, and then joining the Daily Mirror together. As her business affairs manager Penrose was the driving force behind her rise to stardom, hence the generous settlement.
Robinson is set to start filming a new series of The Weakest Link as part of a two-year contract with the BBC believed to be worth £9m.
Jack’s toughest situation yet
AS 24 junkies prepare for back-to-back all-night screenings of their favourite American TV series - the DVD set of Series Six goes on sale in Britain today - their hero Kiefer Sutherland is in a real-life mess he's going to be hard put to escape from.
Los Angeles city prosecutors have charged the actor, who plays agent Jack Bauer in the series, with two counts of drunk driving and accused him of violating parole in a 2004 'driving under the influence' (DUI) case. On October 16, he'll face the same judge who sent Paris Hilton to jail and, when the sheriff let her out early, sent her - sobbing and red-faced - right back.
In previous episodes, Sutherland has admitted 
three DUI offences - which means he faces a minimum of 96 hours in jail and a maximum of 18 months.
Kasparov makes his move
THE former world chess champion Garry Kasparov (below) was last night selected to be the candidate for Russia's beleaguered opposition 
coalition. Kasparov has been a driving force behind Other Russia, which has united liberals, leftists and nationalists in opposition to President Putin.
Putin himself is constitutionally barred from standing again in the next elections, to be held in March 2008. But commentators say that Kasparov is unlikely to pose a major challenge to whichever candidate the former KGB agent chooses as his successor.
Kasparov, who was arrested earlier this year for leading an anti-Putin demo in Moscow's Pushkin Square, said: "I will do everything possible for the ideas of Other Russia to win. This will work only if we stay united."
Pattie, you look wonderful - now get a move on
FEW women can rival the 1970s model Pattie Boyd (above) for the number of famous love songs they have inspired. George Harrison wrote Something (in the Way You Move) for her; Eric Clapton, who wooed her away from his friend George, wrote both Layla and Wonderful Tonight with Pattie in mind.
But in his autobiography, due to be published next week, Clapton confirms that the latter was composed not in a mood of romance but frustration - while he waited for her to get ready to go out.
Pattie - whom he nicknamed Nell - was taking so long to change that "eventually I got fed up and went upstairs to the bedroom where she was still deciding what to wear. I remember telling her, 'Look, you look wonderful, okay? Please don't change again. We must go or we'll be late'."
Clapton went downstairs, picked up his guitar and wrote the song in ten minutes flat. "It was just a ditty as far as I was concerned."
Soprano escapes to her Romeo
TONIGHT'S opening of La Boheme at Chicago's Lyric Opera will be missing its superstar soprano, Angela Gheorghiu (above).The Romanian singer, due to sing the part of Mimi, has been fired after skipping a rehearsal to go to New York to see her husband, tenor Roberto Alagna, in his opening night performance in Romeo et Juliette at the Met.
It was the last straw for William Mason, the Lyric's general director, who announced he had sacked Ms Gheorghui "with tremendous regret and sadness" after she missed a total of six out of ten rehearsals.
Angela and Roberto are known variously as opera's 'Bonnie and Clyde' or the 'Love Couple'. In a statement released by her publicist, Ms Gheorghiu said: "I needed to be by Roberto's side at this very important moment. I have sung La Boheme hundreds of times, and thought missing a few rehearsals wouldn't be a tragedy." She will be replaced by her understudy, Elaine Alvarez.
It is the first time the Lyric has taken such drastic action since 1989, when the late Luciano Pavarotti was banished for cancelling an engagement at short notice.
Amy Winehouse's (below, left) beehive hairdo has inspired a national trend, with salons being asked for copycat coiffure... Mariella Frostrup says she "just read out what was on the cards" after being criticised for her over-friendly Q&A with 
Gordon Brown at the Labour party conference... Pamela Anderson is to marry Paris Hilton's notorious former lover Rick Salomon... George Michael (above, right) has vowed to smoke less pot after "serving fajitas to homeless people" as part of his community service sentence... Bono has written an exclusive new song for the Spice Girls... The Charlatans are to give away their new album as a free download...
