The Mega Book of Useless Information. Noel Botham
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Hollywood veterans Sophia Loren, Liz Taylor and Raquel Welch were all considered for the role of Dynasty TV bitch Alexis before Joan Collins landed the part.
• An English town is to name a street after The Darkness front man Justin Hawkins. The rock star’s home of Lowestoft, Suffolk is planning on a Hawkins Way or a Justin Avenue.
• Gleneagles Hotel, the original hotel that inspire John Cleese’s legendary sitcom Fawlty Towers, has been saved from demolition and is being turned into an official tourist landmark in Torquay, Devon, England.
• Cabaret star Liza Minnelli is the only Oscar winner with two Oscar-winning parents – her mum, Judy Garland, was a winner in 1939, and her dad, Vincente Minnelli, in 1958.
• Hotel heiress sisters Paris and Nicky Hilton are each expected to inherit £15.5 million.
• Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson promised two of his Oscars to his children, because they want to use them as bedside objects.
• Bosses at vacuum cleaner company Dyson have treated X Factor’s Sharon Osbourne to a brand new purple hoover, which they’ve created to pick up animal hair and excrement.
• US comedienne Ellen DeGeneres and singer Harry Connick Jr.’s fathers worked on a paper round together as children in their native New Orleans, Louisiana.
• Three generations of the Astin family have acted in director Peter Jackson’s films. Sean Astin played Samwise Gamgee in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy; his young daughter Ali played his child in The Return Of The King, and his dad John Astin appeared in Jackson’s 1996 movie The Frighteners.
• Action hero Harrison Ford was so in love with fiancée Calista Flockhart that he drank out of a cup decorated with their pictures and names.
• Patrick Presley, 31, a cousin of rock legend Elvis, hanged himself while in jail in Mississippi over a fatal car accident.
• Justin Timberlake’s 2003 Christmas show in Dublin, Ireland, sold out in 40 seconds.
• Around 5,800 people on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ panel vote for the Oscars.
• Playboy magnate Hugh Hefner auctioned off his address book containing the phone numbers of some of the most beautiful women in the world – along with memorabilia including portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Madonna and Brigitte Bardot – to mark the 50th anniversary of the men’s magazine.
• Justin Timberlake was so impressed by Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ as a child that he locked himself away in his bedroom for two days straight to listen to the track over and over again.
• Bridget Jones star Renee Zellweger carries two mobile phones around with her – one for calls from England and the other for American calls.
• US talk-show legend Oprah Winfrey sleeps on Frette bed sheets, which boast a very high thread count and sell for up to £1,500 a set.
• Troubled singer Michael Jackson once paid £14,705 to hire two private jets – one for him to travel in and another as a decoy to confuse the press when he travelled from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Santa Barbara, California.
• Funnyman Mike Myers’s wedding ring is his late father’s 1956 Encyclopaedia Britannica Salesman of The Year gift.
• Singer-turned-actress Cher refuses to watch hit movie Thelma & Louise – she turned down Geena Davis’s role.
• The original title of cult TV show Charlie’s Angels was ‘Alleycats’.
• Catwoman star Halle Berry’s stint on American satire show Saturday Night Live was so chaotic that she appeared for the final curtain call with her boots on the wrong feet.
• Supermodel Claudia Schiffer was paid an incredible £200,000 to make a one-minute cameo in Hugh Grant’s film Love Actually.
• Accident-prone Lord Of The Rings star Orlando Bloom has broken his skull three times, both legs, a finger, a toe, a rib, an arm, a wrist, his nose and his back.
• US movie star Billy Bob Thornton once spent 18 months working in a Los Angeles pizza parlour. He was so good he worked his way up to assistant manager.
• The gun that killed outlaw Jesse James sold at auction in Anaheim, California, for £218,750 on 10 November 2003. The winning bid is a new record for a Western history firearm.
• The first thing King Arthur star Keira Knightley bought with her first movie paycheque was a doll’s house.
• US rocker Pink has a ritual every time she releases a new album – she takes a bottle of champagne to New York’s Virgin Megastore and buys the first copy.
• Singer Madonna once worked as a coat-check girl at New York’s Russian Tea Room restaurant, but she was fired for wearing fishnet stockings.
• US singer and actress Jennifer Lopez stores her lavish pink diamond engagement ring in a safe when she’s filming.
• Hollywood star Denzel Washington and his wife Pauletta have a special trophy room in their California home to display all of their accolades. While Washington has won awards – including two Academy Awards – for his acting, his spouse has been honoured many times over as a concert pianist.
• Duran Duran frontman Simon Le Bon has historical controversy in his past – he can trace his family tree back to Europe’s Huguenots who were forced to find refuge in England after being chased out of France by the Catholics for their Protestant beliefs.
• Teenage rap sensation Bow Wow’s monthly allowance was £3,750.
• Roc-A-Fella hip-hop mogul Damon Dash – who owns more than 3,000 pairs of trainers – never wears the same clothes twice, and refuses to write in red ink because it signifies losing money.
• Charlie’s Angels star Cameron Diaz insists on being environmentally friendly even when she’s being ferried to awards shows and events – she uses Los Angeles’ Evo Limo Luxury Car Service, where all vehicles run on natural gases.
• US actress Brooke Shields can trace her heritage back to King Henry IV of France and Lucrezia Borgia.
• Legendary rocker Ozzy Osbourne and opera singer Sarah Brightman used to go to the same vocal coach in London.
• US diva Barbra Streisand insisted on spraying her black microphone white for her performance on the Oprah Winfrey Show so it matched her off-white outfit.
• Magician David Blaine opted to fast in a box above London’s River Thames for 44 days because the number correlates with his birthday, 4 April.
• US rapper Lil Kim’s manicurist charges up to £3,125 a day to wrap her nails in shredded $100 bills.
• Two of US actor Ashton Kutcher’s toes on his right foot are stuck together.
• America’s first reality-TV awards were scrapped because network bosses refused to offer clips to the organizers. Producer Don Mischer has cited lack of network co-operation for his decision to cancel the first Reality Awards.
• More than 2.2 million guests visited Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s theme park, in 1998, making the park the most visited attraction in the state of Tennessee after the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
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