What is that smell?

The Toronto Sun ^ | August 1 2002 | Liz Braun

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(1) Celine Dion will launch a perfume with Coty.

(2) Britney gives fans the finger. Most attractive.

(3) Diane Sawyer's interview with one of the Pennsylvania coal miners for Good Morning America deeply annoyed Katie Couric (Today), who thought she was getting the interview. Come now, girls -- play nice.

According to USA Today, Sawyer's team may have won the all-important interview because a producer from the show spent many hours with the worried family of the lost miner who was eventually rescued and then interviewed. Spent many hours? Lining up a talk with the potential widow, too, maybe? If you were worried about the safety of a family member, would you want a morning show producer hanging around your house?

Is there something sick about this, or is it just us?

(4) Elvis: Still dead.

YOU SAID IT: (1) "I'd love to just disappear sometime. Not in a dramatic kind of way, but move to a quiet little town and open up a restaurant. That's always been what I'd really love to do. But then I think if I did that I'd go crazy because I love what I do so much."

Jennifer Aniston, obviously forgetting to ask husband Brad Pitt how he would feel about being a busboy, in Vogue.

(2) "Michael is pretty stable. I think it's his raising."

Katherine Jackson, mom of Michael, Janet, Jermaine, LaToya and all the rest of them and willing to admit it in public, makes a statement about her little boy.

(3) "This album reflects a new sense of what it's like to live with mortality -- after all, Springsteen, at 52, is no longer young."

Alan Light, keen to point out the obvious, reviews The Rising in the New Yorker. Nice.

(4) "My head would explode if I didn't get some of that stuff out." Dolly Parton, who has already got fairly explosive body parts, talks about songwriting in the New York Times.

CHEAP SMARM AND GOSSIP: (1) Large lesbian Rosie O'Donnell is said to be working on a broadway version of her book Find Me, but this must be somebody's idea of a joke.

(2) The following conversation took place between Britney Spears and concert-goers in Mexico:

Britney: "I'm sorry, Mexico, I love you, bye."

C.G.I.M: "Booooo."

(3) Paul McCartney and the hair-dye. Discuss.

(4) "A cow farts enough per week to fill a hot-air balloon. Not many people know that."

Geri Halliwell (aka Ginger Spice) attempts to educate the masses.

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Some humour from the celeb set.