The French do hate Americans. Just ask Oprah Winfrey.
Winfrey was turned away by a Hermés sales clerk and manager at a Paris store over the weekend. One report claimed staffers didn’t recognize Winfrey because they’d been “having a problem with north Africans lately.” A friend told the New York Daily News: “They knew exactly who she was. They specifically said, ‘We know who you are.”‘ Winfrey politely asked to buy a specific watch for Tina Turner, her dinner partner that evening, the source said.
Let’s hope Lindsay Lohan has an attorney on permanent retainer. An uncle of the 18-year-old actress was charged Tuesday with defrauding a federal loan program intended to help small businesses hurt by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the New York Daily News reported. Paul Sullivan, 47, was released on a $250,000 bond just a month after Lohan’s father Michael was jailed for drunken driving.
Leonardo DiCaprio filed a police report Monday over an attack at a Hollywood party that left him needing stitches. DiCaprio’s publicist said “a woman who was trespassing and had been repeatedly asked to leave the property” struck his client “before being restrained by witnesses.”
A housekeeper who worked for some of Manhattan’s rich and famous was charged with stealing diamond earrings and expensive clothing from clients and making purchases on at least one of their credit cards.
Lucyna Turyk-Wawrynowicz, 35, of Queens, allegedly stole from at least three clients the past four years. She was arraigned Tuesday on charges of grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, forgery and coercion. Published reports Wednesday said some of her victims were Candice Bergen, Isabella Rossellini, Robert De Niro and his wife, Grace Hightower.
Paris Hilton’s pet Chihuahua Tinkerbell bit a producer Tuesday backstage at NBC’s “Today Show,” the New York Post reported.
Hilton’s mother, Kathy, was appearing on “Today” to promote her new NBC reality series, “I Want to Be a Hilton.” An unidentified segment producer came in and said, “Oh! Tinkerbell!” The producer put her hand in the dog’s Louis Vuitton carrying case and “the dog bit her hand,” an insider told the Post. “She really bit in good. The producer had to shake the dog off – it was a nasty bite … Kathy is just sitting there doing nothing, murmuring, ‘Oh. Soooooorry.”
When dogs attack II: A Los Angeles woman has sued Michael Jackson after claiming an unleashed dog on the Jackson family’s Encino, Calif., property bit her.
The lawsuit, filed by Donna Kyman and uncovered by the website thesmokinggun.com, claims Flash, a husky owned by the singer’s brother Jermaine and his wife Alejandra, cornered her in her garage April 14.
– Compiled by Greg Henry from wire and Internet reports
