People - Here, There and Everywhere
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Spector looks for new defence team for retrial
A WEEK AFTER Phil Spector's first murder hearing ended in mistrial - the jury deadlocked 10-2, with the majority favouring conviction - prosecutor Alan Jackson has formally confirmed that the LA district attorney's office will call a retrial. Spector, the legendary music producer, has begun an intensive search for a new legal team.
Attorney Roger Rosen, who headed the often-fractured defense team during the long trial, asked Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler to relieve him and attorney Bradley Brunon from further representing Spector. The 
judge agreed and said he had also been informed that New York lawyer Linda Kenney-Baden was leaving the case.
Rosen confirmed it was Spector's decision to seek new counsel.
"I have fulfilled my obligations to represent Phillip and I support his decision to get new counsel. Sometimes when you have new sets of eyes and ears they see the case differently," he said.
Spector, 67, is accused of murdering actress Lana Clarkson, who died at about 5am on February 3 2003 from a gunshot fired into her mouth as she sat in the foyer of Spector's Alhambra mansion in the suburbs of Los Angeles.
Poetry is a hard graft, says winning poet O'Brien
POET Sean O'Brien may have won the prestigious £10,000 Forward Poetry Prize for a third time this week, but 
he regards his calling as "an affliction". O'Brien, 55, is the only person in the prize's history - previous winners include Ted Hughes and Carol Ann Duffy - to have been recognised three times, on this occasion for his latest work, The Drowned Book.
But the Hull-born poet doesn't find his profession easy. "I don't think of poetry as a career," he said. "It's more of an affliction. It's very uncertain and not a very well rewarded thing to do. But if it's a vocation, you are stuck with it."
Some were surprised the top prize didn't go to the more political Daljit Nagra, a 40-year-old snapping at O'Brien's heels. As consolation, Nagra, British-born son of Punjabi immigrants, won the best first collection prize with Look We Have Coming to Dover.
October 7: Dame Helen Mirren, Germaine Greer, Alastair Campbell, Nick Hornby, Tony Benn, Ian Hislop, Russell Brand and Douglas Coupland are set to make an appearance at the Cheltenham Literature Festival.
October 11-14: Jay Jopling, Tim and Lady Helen Taylor (above) are among those attending and exhibiting at Frieze Art Fair, Regent's Park, London
October 15: Morgan Freeman, Thandie Newton and Kelly Holmes will attend the Screen Nation Film and Television Awards at Old Billingsgate, London.
Richard Prince rules supreme
ART COLLECTORS and dealers preparing for the upcoming Frieze art fair in London - it opens next Thursday in Regent's Park - should know there is little point criticising one of the featured artists, Richard Prince (above). The American has a very thick skin.
Art critic Charlie Finch attended (continued below ad)
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(continued from above ad) Prince's just-opened retrospective at the Guggenheim in New York and wrote on ArtNet.com this week: "I grinned wanly at the general crapulence of his creative mojo."
The artist immediately emailed ArtNet: "Now that's what I call a review... Just like the old days.... Finally someone who hates the work... I was kind of getting sick of being the best."
Prince, 58, has taken the appropriation of pop culture further than even Andy Warhol. The Guggenheim show - Richard Prince: Spiritual America - includes sexy nurses, virile Marlboro men out on the range, naked girls on outlaw motorbikes, and autographed head-shots of Hollywood stars like Pamela Anderson. The retrospective also includes the first photograph ever to break the $1m barrier at auction (in 2005), an image of a cowboy.
At Frieze, Prince will show a 1970 Dodge Challenger, remade with modern parts to be so powerful and perfect that it ceases to be a car exactly, more a savagely fast, street-legal sculpture. Prince calls his acts of artistic piracy "practicing without a license". And he doesn't care who knows it - art critics included.
Anthony Haden-Guest previews the Frieze art fair 
New Pavarotti will left out Nicoletta
THE BATTLE over the estate of Luciano Pavarotti took a remarkable twist yesterday, after it emerged he left a handwritten will which appeared to disinherit his 
second wife. The will, the third to come to light but the only one written by hand, left the bulk of the singer's £250m estate to his three adult daughters from his first marriage.
While it was not his final will, and therefore not legally binding, the three women claim it is evidence of Pavarotti's true feelings.
Friends have claimed that his second marriage to Nicoletta Mantovani (below) was falling apart, that she treated him badly and was 'obsessed' with his money. This handwritten will would leave her the bare minimum she is due under Italian law: aholiday home in Pesaro and a share in two companies they jointly owned.
The sisters, from his first marriage to Adua Veroni, intend to use the handwritten will to contest a later testament in which Pavarotti left the vast majority of his fortune to Nicoletta.
After a show bursting with bows, ruffles, polka dots - and, of course, sweeping gowns in his signature red - Valentino walked the pret-a-porter catwalk for the final time yesterday. The Roman couturier, 75, ended his 45 years in the business with a collection including puffball cocktail dresses and 1950s tea dresses. Alessandra Facchinetti will take over as creative direction of Valentino woman's wear.
He may only be a year younger at 74, but Karl Lagerfeld, shows no signs of
retiring: the Chanel and Fendi designer yesterday showed his eponymous label, apparently inspired by the 1980s club scene. He presented a collection of angular tailored jackets and tight one-shouldered mini-dresses in bright colors against a backdrop of a neon rainbow. Models wore chunky Lucite accessories and spiked headbands.
GUESTS ENJOYED a burlesque floor show at the launch of Agent Provocateur's Maitresse Gold Edition at London's Cafe Royal last night. The label's owner Serena Rees was there with her old friend Sadie Frost (pictured above), as well as actress Samantha Morton, model Daisy Lowe and ubiquitous party goer, interior designer Nicky Haslam.
Lilies, oxygen and cricket: the Stones' tour essentials
THERE WAS ONCE a time when they were known for booze, broads, and bad behaviour. A glimpse backstage at the Rolling Stones' tour these days 
reveals a far tamer affair.
A leaked list of demands made by the band for their latest tour includes the stipulation that Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood have flowers waiting in their dressing rooms, specifically a "medium-white Casablanca lily arrangement with weeping eucalyptus". Each arrangement must cost no more than £22.50.
Sir Mick Jagger has no flowers, but his room - aka The Work Out Room - must have a work-out area and a high-speed internet connection. He also has his own oxygen tank to perk up his energy levels. Richard's room is known as Camp X Ray and Wood's is nicknamed the Recovery Room, doubtless in reference to his hard-living past.
The absolute imperative listed on their tour 'rider', which comes from all four Stones, is that each of their dressing rooms has a TV on which they can watch the cricket.
'People's Princess' Diana (below) was on the contraceptive pill at the time of her death... Comedian Russell Brand is set to miss the Cheltenham Literary Festival as he hasn't 
finished his book in time... Maternity expert and star of Bringing Up Baby, Claire Verity, has been asked to stay away from a conference after a deluge of protests attacking her methods as "cruel"... Literary agency Peters, Fraser and Dunlop is reported to have been hit by 21 resignations... Former MP Oona King (above) says she is worried there are too many references to her "non-functioning ovaries" in her newly-published diaries: "You don't get that with Alan Clark"... Dennis the Menace is back after a decade in the doghouse for a new CBBC cartoon...
