British music superstar Elton John has revealed that he and his partner have chosen pop diva Lady Gaga to be their baby boy’s godmother, as he spoke of his joy at being a father.
“Yes, yes she is,” John told ABC’s Babara Walters when she asked him if the outlandish singer was the godmother of his son, Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John, in an interview broadcast late Friday.
“When you get to the real person underneath, there’s a very simple New York girl who loves her parents. I love her to death and a lot of people said, ‘oh, you know, that’s crazy,’ but they don’t know her and we do.”
Photo: AFP
Zachary was born Dec. 25 to a surrogate for John, 64, and his partner 48-year-old Canadian filmmaker David Furnish, and the couple told ABC of their delight in having a son, and their determination not to spoil him.
“I knew I’d feel joy but it was the most relaxing thing that’s ever happened to me,” John said.
“We change him, we bath him, we feed him and we read him a story every night,” said John of the couple’s routine. “And we take him to lunch.”
But the millionaire singer said he was determined his four-month-old would learn about values, even though he was being brought up in the lap of luxury.
“The worst thing you can do to a child, and I’ve seen it happen so many times, is the silver spoon,” John said. “Being the child of a famous person is very difficult and we’re very well aware of the pitfalls of that.”
It was confirmed on Saturday that John and Furnish will attend the wedding on Friday of Prince William and Kate Middleton in Westminster Abbey.
John sang the hit Candle in the Wind at the funeral of William’s mother Princess Diana in the abbey after her death in a car crash in Paris.
In court news, American starlet Lindsay Lohan was released after spending less than five hours in jail when she posted US$75,000 in bail, officials said Saturday.
The 24-year-old was sentenced late Friday to 120 days in jail for violating her probation and ordered to complete community service at the Los Angeles County morgue and a women’s center.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Stephanie Sautner ruled she had violated her probation for a 2007 drug and drunk driving offense when she allegedly stole a US$2,500 necklace from a jewelry store in the Los Angeles seafront neighborhood of Venice Beach.
It was the fourth time that Lohan — once the promising child star of
hit Disney movies The Parent Trap
and Freaky Friday — got a taste of
life behind bars as her career hits
the skids.
Once again she had to don an orange prison uniform when she was taken around 5pm to a women’s detention center in Los Angeles.
She was released a few hours later after paying the bail of US$75,000, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office said.
But Lohan did score one legal victory when Sautner reduced her charge for stealing the necklace from a felony to a misdemeanor, which could cut the amount of prison time she faces if convicted.
A pre-trial hearing is set for May 11, with the trial due to open on June 3.
Earlier this week Lohan secured a role in an upcoming film about New York mobster John Gotti. But it was not clear how she would fit filming around possible prolonged spells locked up.
The entertainment industry lost two members to cancer over the past week.
Critically acclaimed rock band TV On the Radio said Friday that its bass player Gerard Smith has died of cancer at the age of 36.
“We are very sad to announce the death of our beloved friend and bandmate, Gerard Smith, following a courageous fight against lung cancer,” the band said on its Web site. “Gerard passed away the morning of April 20th, 2011. We will miss him terribly.”
The group, which plays a variety of styles including art rock, said it would cancel five planned upcoming concerts.
British actress Elisabeth Sladen, best known for her role in cult science fiction television series Doctor Who, died Tuesday aged 63 after a battle with cancer.
Liverpool-born Sladen first appeared on the BBC show in 1973, playing the Doctor’s assistant, Sarah Jane Smith.
Sladen, who was married to actor Brian Miller, went on to star in her own spin-off children’s show, The Sarah Jane Adventures, the latest series of which was aired late last year.
“She was funny and cheeky and clever and just simply wonderful,” former Doctor Who writer Russell T. Davies said.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
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