People - Here, There and Everywhere
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Russell Crowe saves Hollywood's neck - again
THANK GOD for Russell Crowe is the cry from Hollywood this morning. The opening weekend of his new film American Gangster, co-starring Denzel Washington, has put to rest concerns that big movie stars can't lure audiences to cinemas anymore.
In fact, ticket sales for the gritty crime drama were so strong - $43m - they mean that both Washington and Crowe (below) have scored the biggest premieres of their film careers (in Crowe's case, beating a previous Ridley Scott film, Gladiator, at £34.8m.)
This has been a year of flops for big name stars with 
strong box office records. Ben Stiller's The Heartbreak Kid was a big disappointment. Rendition with Meryl Streep, Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon fared poorly.
Neither Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth: The Golden Age) nor Brad
Pitt (The Assassination of Jesse James) could find wide audiences. George Clooney's Michael Clayton also got a slow start, but is holding its own, earning back its production costs and a bit of profit.
But Crowe is having a great year, having scored an earlier hit in September with the Western remake 3:10 to
Yuma, a film that had a lot of trouble getting made, but ended up being a
surprise success at the box office.
Huhne defends his City millions
LIB DEM leadership candidate Chris Huhne today defended the fortune he built up working in the City for five years as "nothing spectacular". The MP owns nine homes and his shares and property portfolio is estimated to be worth at least £3m.
In an interview with the London Evening Standard, Huhne (below) admitted he was "clearly comfortably off" but refused to put a figure on it. "Although I had very good pay, I am not in the mega-league," he said. "I'm proud of the fact that I made money in the City and I didn't inherit it."
Meanwhile Huhne's leadership rival Nick Clegg 
appears to have the backing of old money for his candidacy - the remnants of the party's Asquith dynasty.
Jane Bonham-Carter, great-granddaughter of Liberal prime minister Herbert Asquith, and a cousin of actress Helena, says Clegg has "star quality". The baroness, who is the Lib Dems' spokesman on broadcasting in the Lords, added: "He's got charisma, a ready wit and real experience of management... I think he's the future."
Prince falls foul of straight talking blonde bombshell
WHEN Chuck Prince, chairman and CEO of Citigroup, resigned yesterday - the most senior casualty so far of the subprime fall-out - he had a 37-year-old blonde to thank for his demise.
Meredith Whitney, a New York-based analyst for CIBC World Markets, and well known (continued below ad)
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(continued from above ad) as a regular guest on Fox News, wrote in a report last Wednesday that Citigroup needed to raise £30bn to restore its cash cushion for payments to investors.
Her call triggered a seven per cent plunge in Citgroup's stock price on Thursday, costing the banks shareholders $15bn. The damage proved contagious: the Dow Jones lost more than 360 points and the effects were felt on markets across the world.
Whitney - ranked the second-best stock picker in America by Forbes - claims she has received death threats since making her comments about Citigroup. "No one had the moxie to put in print what I put in print," she says. "In my 14 years as an analyst it was the most straightforward call that I've made."
Whitney is married to former professional wrestler John Layfield, whose ring names have included Death Mask and Vampiro Americano. Yet it's unclear who wears the trousers in the Layfield-Whitney household.
"Meredith came along at a time in my life when I really needed somebody badly," Layfield told an interviewer. "She took a country boy like me and kind of refined me. I know what fork to use now at the dinner table, and I drink my beer from a glass."
Queen foots it with la Moss as Vogue's most glam women
SHE IS KNOWN for her preference for sensible brogue shoes and tweed skirts. But according to Vogue, the Queen ranks alongside supermodels Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell, Bond star Rosamund Pike and model-writer Sophie Dahl and as one of the world's most glamorous women.
In its Top 50 Definitive List of Today's Glamorous Women Vogue praises the 81-year-old monarch for being as "glamorous in her brogues and headscarf in Balmoral as she is wearing the crown jewels".
Elizabeth II's penchant for Hermes and Barbour makes her as influential a trendsetter as Kate or Naomi - who famously left her final day of community service in New York wearing a silver floor-length gown. According to Vogue, even model du jour Agnes Deyn says of the Queen that "she's cool".
Yet Dame Helen Mirren was unimpressed with the royal wardrobe when she played the eponymous role in The Queen. In her recent autobiography, Mirren wrote of how the costumes she was expected to wear for the film made her cry. "I thought I'd never be able to understand this woman."
Happy ending for Radcliffe at New York finishing line
THE SCENE AT the end of yesterday's New York marathon, when Paula Radcliffe pulled off a remarkable victory over Ethiopian Gete Wami, could not have been more different to when the pair met at the 2001 World Athletics Championships.
At that fixture Wami pipped Radcliffe to bronze in the 10,000m by eight-hundredths of a second. The result prompted a now infamous on-track spat between husband and coach Gary Lough and Radcliffe over her tactics.
The couple rowed over why Radcliffe, the British women's team captain, had allowed herself to be outsprinted for the fourth championships in a row.
Yesterday the runner barely had time to catch her breath after a dramatic sprint to the finish line, before Lough had thrust nine-month-old baby Isla into her arms.
It was Radcliffe's first marathon in two years. She now has her sights set on Olympic gold in Beijing.
Gisele takes stand over plunging greenback
NOW THE AMERICAN dollar really is in trouble. Supermodel Gisele Bundchen has let it be known that she is refusing to be paid in the currency.
The Brazilian beauty is the world's richest model, estimated to have earned about $30m in the first half of 2007. Her sister Patricia - also her manager - told Bloomberg that the US dollar was a no-no in the Bundchen household after it hit an all-time low against the British pound, the Euro and the Canadian dollar.
Gisele is said to have already demanded payment in euros from two mega-clients - Proctor & Gamble, for a deal to represent Pantene hair products, and Dolce & Gabanna, for a deal to promote their fragrance, The One.
The supermodel is in good company. Jim Rogers, a former partner of George Soros, has said he is selling his home and all his possessions to buy the Chinese yuan.
Stella McCartney has taken revenge on her stepmother Heather Mills by creating a necklace that features a single leg. The £300 silver pendant is part of her first jewellery collection next season. Mills, who lost a leg in a road accident, attacked the designer in the press last week by accusing her of breaking up her marriage to Stella's father, Sir Paul McCartney.
Ozzy Osbourne was not amused when a local sheriff in North Dakota used his name in a sting to catch petty criminals. Sheriff Paul Laney invited fare evaders and court absconders to a 'VIP pre-concert party' before Osbourne played a local arena. More than 30 people turned up and were promptly arrested. Osbourne, who was not consulted over the plan, said: "It is insulting to me and to my audience."
Kylie Minogue has shelved her upcoming world tour following advice from her doctors that it could damage her health. The 39-year-old singer, who recently beat breast cancer, had reportedly planned to discuss tour dates with her stylist and adviser William Baker.
TV talk shows hosted by Jay Leno, David Letterman and Jon Stewart are likely to be the first casualties of the American screenwriters' strike, which started today. Leno quipped on Friday: "They call it the toughest time for comedy writing since those three weeks back in the 1990s when Bill Clinton stopped dating."
