The Mega Book of Useless Information. Noel Botham
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• Destiny’s Child singer Kelly Rowland is so turned off by the cuisine whenever she’s in Britain that she will only eat at the country’s Caribbean restaurants and posh eatery Nobu.
• Notting Hill star Julia Roberts once had her own scent created for the Oscars. It cost £4,000 a litre.
• Friends star Jennifer Aniston ate the same lunch – consisting of lettuce, garbanzo beans, turkey and lemon dressing – for nine years.
• Hollywood actor Brad Pitt has topped a survey conducted by American condom makers Trojan as the celebrity women think is most well endowed. Despite his ladykiller reputation, *NSYNC Justin Timberlake didn’t make the list’s top ten.
• Legendary London nightspot Annabel’s welcomed British beauty Elizabeth Hurley onto its management committee in an effort to give the club a sleeker image and encourage younger members to join.
• Soul star-turned-Reverend Al Green was so worried about including words like ‘baby’ and ‘sugar’ in songs on his album I Can’t Stop that he asked for guidance from the congregation at his Tennessee church.
• The longest Oscars ceremony, in 2000, lasted a bum-numbing 256 minutes.
• Spanish crooner Julio Iglesias holds the record for selling more albums in more languages than any other singer.
• One Christmas, Friends stars Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt Leblanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer gave plasma TVs to crew members who’d worked on the show for less than five years – while those who’d passed the five-year mark received Mini Cooper cars.
• Rapper Ice Cube’s Navigator sports utility vehicle has six television screens in it.
• Before hitting acting success, Everybody Loves Raymond star Patricia Heaton worked in New York as a 6am room-service waitress at the Park Le Meridien hotel.
• Hollywood star Tom Cruise had attended 15 schools by the time he was 14.
• Alfred Hitchcock directed the first talking film ever made in England. It was called Blackmail and was made in 1931.
• Dynasty star Joan Collins’s late father once served as an agent for X Factor’s Sharon Osbourne’s dad Don Arden, who was a singer at the time.
• 24 star Kiefer Sutherland has his family’s Scottish crest tattooed on his back. It’s one of six tattoos the actor boasts.
• Patrick Swayze’s first crush was on a dancer his mother taught, called Ellen Smith. The young girl later changed her name to Jaclyn Smyth and became an original Charlie’s Angel.
• If you decide you don’t want your Oscar, you are supposed to sell it back to the academy for $1.
• Former Destiny’s Child singer Farrah Franklin’s middle name is Destiny.
• Armourers created 9,000 arrows and 3,000 swords for historical epic Alexander starring Colin Farrell.
• Late rapper Tupac Shakur – who was shot and killed at the age of 25 in 1996 – came up with his signature shaven hairstyle because he suffered from premature baldness.
• The red carpet at the 2004 Grammy Awards turned green because the event was sponsored by beer company Heineken.
• Singer Robbie Williams once posed as a beggar in New York’s Times Square and gave £55 to the first person who gave him money.
• The oldest Oscar winner was 81-year-old Jessica Tandy, for Driving Miss Daisy in 1989. Gloria Stuart is the oldest nominee ever, nominated in 1997 for Titanic. She was 87.
• Singer-turned-children’s author Madonna likes to sing ‘Truly Scrumptious’ from hit musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to her children Lourdes and Rocco.
• Hollywood star Tom Cruise insists on having his own stuntplane on standby whenever he’s on location filming so he can take off and relax high above the earth.
• Paycheck star Aaron Eckhart has a pet dog named Dirty.
• Wacky screenwriter and director Quentin Tarantino wrote a script called ‘Captain Peachfuzz and The Anchovy Bandit’ as a child.
• San Francisco-based Neil Diamond tribute group Super Diamond are the world’s top covers band – they charge £8,820 per show.
• Destiny’s Child star Beyonce Knowles’s hit single ‘Crazy In Love’ was the best-selling mobile-phone ring tone in Britain in 2003.
• Sugar Ray rocker Mark McGrath has such an intense fear of elevators that he insists on taking the stairs if he has to travel 40 floors or less.
• Judi Dench clocked up the shortest screen time for an Oscar winner. She won Best Supporting Actress in 1998 for less than eight minutes on screen in Shakespeare in Love.
• Hollywood star Bruce Willis holds the record for the biggest payout for voiceover work, after receiving £5.5 million for 1990’s Look Who’s Talking Too.
• A man in Dallas, Texas, spent his entire life savings – £22,105 – on 6,000 seats for people to see Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion Of The Christ, because he believes it will ‘change’ America.
• Scottish band Texas were named after the 1984 film Paris, Texas.
• Mel Gibson and Johnny Depp refused offers by bosses at the 2004 Oscars to present awards because they admitted they’d be far too nervous.
• Rockers U2 use a sound system on tour which weighs 30 tons.
• Hollywood is being hit by a new fad – bio-degradable pants. The two Hobbits Elijah Wood and Sean Astin are fans and hip-hop legend Missy Elliott is meant to be partial to the bizarre bio pants.
• Hit thriller Jaws 2 was originally going to be called ‘More Jaws’, but polling showed audiences assumed a film with that name would be a comic spoof.
• There are still two Oscar categories in which no women have ever won – Best Cinematography and the Best Sound.
• X-Men actor Hugh Jackman turned down a role in Australian soap opera Neighbours at the beginning of his career because he was auditioning for drama schools.
• Inspired by Mel Gibson’s controversial new movie The Passion Of The Christ, replicas of crucifixion nails are selling at select stores around America for £8.94.
• To mark young actor Tyler Hoechlin’s 16th birthday, Tom Hanks – who played his father in Road To Perdition – sent him $16 (£9).
• The Used singer Bert McCracken has a pet Chihuahua named David Bowie.
• Kate Winslet gave birth to baby son Joe with the music of Rufus Wainwright in the background.
• British heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles has launched his own range of shampoos and conditioners under his company Duchy Originals.
• US Rapper Fat Joe is building a specially designed wardrobe in his new Miami mansion to house his 5,000-plus pairs of running shoes.
• Kathy Richards Hilton, mother of hotel heiress Paris Hilton, went to school with pop singer Janet Jackson.
• Potential Oscar winners are told to keep acceptance speeches to 45 seconds – unlike Greer Garson, whose 1942 speech clocked in at seven minutes.
• British pop stars Busted helped cure a boy who was told he might never walk again. Seven-year-old Alex Harris had been wheelchair bound with a rare muscle-wasting disease, but tapped his toes after hearing the band for the first time – and now, four months on, he’s dancing again.
• Hollywood star Tom Hanks’s