The dead boy in Anita Pallenberg's bed

We saw the photos of Anita Pallenberg in the Daily Mail, held up at 65 as some kind of Dorian Gray portrait of the Rolling Stones, filed in the Marianne Faithfull bin of wreckage left on the side of the Mick and Keith's fastlane. Anita will be remembered for Barbarella, her three-in-a-tub scene with Jagger in Performance, and Brian Jones. We tend to remember her as Keith Richards' piggish Elvis-bloated hausfrau in South Salem, New York around the time her alleged teenage lover wound up dead in her and Keith's bed, shot through the head in what was never proven to be a game of Russian Roulette. We were working for the area's weekly newspaper chain, chasing down stories of Satanic activity in the area. A cop had claimed he'd been beaten down by a gang of guys in hooded cloaks; we found evidence of cult meetings on the grounds of a local convent; our attempts to connect it all to the crime scene inside the beautiful white country house with the mailbox painted in rasta colours got us and the story into Rolling Stone magazine, courtesy of a Random Notes writer named Kurt Loder.


It was July 20, 1979. The victim was a 17-year-old kid named Scott Cantrell. He was working as a handyman at the Richards estate and fell in love with Pallenberg, Richards' common-law wife, at at 37 well past her prime and fattened by excess in the Rolling Stones' most debauched disco days. In late June, he'd moved into the house with Pallenberg and her and Richards' 10-year-old son, Marlon. Richards was away recording an album in France on the night of July 20th.

According to People magazine:

"...On the night of July 20 Scott wasn't working. He was with Anita under the covers of her bed but fully dressed and watching a TV commemoration of the first moon landing. Richards' factotum Jeffrey Sessler came upstairs with sandwiches. 'They were drinking wine and laughing,' he recalls. 'They were feeling good. He was not in a depression.' When Sessler left, Anita told police, she got up to tidy the room. She heard a click—then a shot. Spinning around, she saw Scott bleeding from the head, gagging. She turned him over to help him breathe, she said, and found a .38-caliber Smith and Wesson, which she carried to a nearby bureau top. Two hours later Scott died at Northern Westchester Hospital."


In the end, the death was ruled a suicide, but the family never bought it. Anita Pallenberg was charged with having handguns without a permit and possessing a stolen gun -- the death weapon had disappeared from a Fort Lauderdale sheriff's office.

That was 1979. Keith Richards met Patti Hansen at Studio 54 that year. They were married in 1983.

Everybody's naked in the Daily Mail

It's a banner morning for the Daily Mail. The paper's website is filled not only with paparazzi photos of celebrities in bikinis, but naked shots of all sorts of women we've never heard of. What's up with that, Sadie Frost, Hannah Waterman, Lisa Scott-Lee and Tara Lynn?

Plus Kate Moss:

Gareth Daffyd Thomas: Now that's funny!

Ever since the admission by Welsh rugby star Gareth Thomas that he's a pillow-biting shirtlifter (You got a problem with that? We didn't think so.) was first reported in a homophobic agony aunt feature in The Daily Mail, we've awaited the other snigering schoolboy headlines from the real down-and-dirty tabs.

But the hedder in The Sun? Fackin' sublime.


For those who aren't fans of Little Britain, the Sun headline refers to the comedy series' character Daffyd Thomas, who lives in the Welsh mining village of Llanddewi Brefi, is a self-proclaimed gay man who dresses in a vast variety of tight PVC and latex rubber clothing and proudly proclaims that he is "the only gay in the village," when in fact, there is a huge gay community in his village and the surrounding area that he utterly refuses to associate with-- a background that could be a hint that The Sun was also commenting on Gareth Thomas' rugby colleagues.

Rugby star comes out, journos giggle

The UK Daily Mail has always been a middle-of-the-road tabloid and a primary source for gossip and entertainment news, sho it's a little surprising today to see the old school homophobia popping up in its exclusive report that a rugby star has announced that he's gay.

Yes, British Lions legend Gareth Thomas is a poof. And what are you going to do about it?

The Daily Mail will report the news about the 35-year-old former Wales and Lions captain, uh... straight-faced:

"...he has one of the fiercest reputations on the field, and a row of missing front teeth to prove it.

"At 6ft 3in and 16st of pure muscle, his masculinity has always been an absolute given."


The notion that masculinity and athletic prowess are somehow at odds with same-sex preference is quaint to say the least, but the old-school double standards rears its head there, but it's the punning that follows that belongs back at boarding school where the older boys-- you get the picture:

"...But, as he admits in the Daily Mail today, it was all a pretence, a fragile artifice - and one which came crashing down around his ears on November 4, 2006, following a Wales game in Cardiff...

"Breaking down in tears in the changing rooms of the Millennium Stadium, Gareth finally realised he could not go on living a lie. Keeping his true sexuality a secret was destroying him."

Really? A 'fragile artifice'? 'Crashing down around his ears'? (as in 'arse'?) The big macho rugger weeping like a ninny? Really?


Three cheers for Gareth Thomas.

Give him a hand. It must be hard for him. No pun intended.

Good morning? Not for these divas.

Look what we woke up to in the Daily Mail. Mariah Carey, Lady GaGa, Britney Spears and Diana Ross. The fact that they represent four generations of female pop superstar and the sheer volume of tragedy make it worth pointing out.

Tommy Cooper's image appears on pie

We talk about miracles, but some are undeniable. The Daily Mail reports that an image of late comedian Tommy Cooper has appeared on the bottom of a steak pie-- in his hometown!

Chip shop owner Crad Jones discovered the image while eating pie and chips in his shop in Caerphilly, South Wales. He said he called the piemaker, Peter's Pies, when he noticed the silhouette so they could document his find.

Tommy Cooper was a comic magician known for wearing a red fez and for collapsing from a heart attack and dying in front of millions of television viewers, midway through his act on the London Weekend Television variety show. After his death in April 1984, a bronze statue of him wearing the hat was erected in Caerphilly.

Greg Lott: "I was Farrah's secret lover!"

Farrah Fawcett's college sweetheart and website business partner has gone international with explosive revelations about what he claims was a torrid love affair that was reignited eleven years ago and ended only when Ryan O'Neal took over Farrah's affairs and refused to allow him to see her in her final weeks on earth.

Greg Lott, who dated Farrah at the University of Texas at Austin in the 1960s and did two terms in prison for drug trafficking before he and Farrah rekindled their relationship in the late Nineties, provides photos, love letters and intimate details to the Daily Mail-- including the revelation that he and Farrah took "intimate photos" on a Mexican holiday-- and "now believes Ryan found them just months before Farrah’s death."


Tabloid Baby brought Greg Lott's story forward exclusively in May after he contacted our offices to tell us that after years of unfettered access to his good friend Farrah, he'd been banned from seeing her by O'Neal and others who had gathered around her as her cancer worsened. Lott had come to Los Angeles from Lubbock, Texas and stayed, holding vigil in a nearby hotel, until Farah lost her cancer battle on June 25th.

We reported on the documented relationship that Farrah and Lott had resumed after she split with O'Neal in 1997, and included photos showing the pair together in later years. While Lott showed us evidence of his close relationship with Farrah, he stopped short of going public with the details of the romantic relationship.

Lott has gone farther with the Daily Mail, as these highlights show:

"In a series of startling revelations, Greg claims that O’Neal froze him out of Farrah’s life against her will and that she referred to O’Neal as the ‘Fat F*** from the beach’.

"...in 1996 when Farrah and Ryan’s romance came unstuck thanks to his volatile temper and infidelity, she called. ‘We arranged to meet in Texas. 'She was doing a fundraiser for battered women and invited me to the event at a hotel. She walked into the room and the electricity was there between us.’

"Farrah invited Greg to visit her at her home in Bel Air: ‘She flew me out to Los Angeles and we fell into each other’s arms.

"‘Farrah was always a very sensual woman. She never wore make-up at home and would shop at cheap stores like Walmart for her sweatpants. She had no airs and graces. That’s what I loved about her. She looked a million dollars without doing anything. In a letter written on one flight back to LA, a besotted Farrah reflected on a recent clandestine meeting:

"...'Thank you for making it so special. No stressure. Great food, great weather, great sex, great, great you!’ Greg explains: ‘Stressure was a Farrah-ism. Stress and pressure; that is what she was under with her health, her child, her parents and Ryan.’

"Greg says: ‘People close to us knew we were an item but I never wanted to be Mr Farrah Fawcett so we kept it low-key. I never wanted to go to high-profile Hollywood events.’

...The couple had holidayed in the resort of Maroma in early 2000. Greg says: ‘We’d been to Mexico once before, right at the start of our relationship at college. We went to Acapulco for Spring Break when we were madly in love.

"‘We went back at the start of 2000. It was this isolated hotel and Farrah said it was our honeymoon.’ While they were there, the couple took intimate Polaroid photos and Greg now believes Ryan found them just months before Farrah’s death..."

Read the entire Daily Mail article here.

Michael Jackson's missing nose makes news one month after we revealed that its tip was absent from Jacko death photo

Rolling Stone magazine is getting lots of play today for a story that was broken by Tabloid Baby within hours of Michael Jackson's death:

Michael Jackson died without his nose.

We alone among the world's journalist noticed and reported that the photo showing Jackson's lifeless corpse on the way into the UCLA Medical Center revealed that the tip of Jackson's cosmetic surgery-damaged schnozzola was missing:

"A study of the photo reveals one detail that's yet to be commented on: Michael Jackson is missing the tip of his nose.

"With his many plastic surgeries, Jacko did much damage to the cartilege in his nose and was rumoured to use putty or a prosthetic to replace the destroyed end...

"It appears that the tip was lost as paramedics worked valiantly to get his heart started, perhaps in a kiss of life."


In a detailed report of Jacko's final days and the hours after his demise, Rolling Stone reports that further attempts to pump some life back into the star had rubbed away the rest of the false appendage, revealing the horrific results of one nose job too many. The once-essential mag quotes a witness who claims to have seen Jacko's corpse on an autopsy table said there was simply a small hole where the singer's nose should have been:

"The prosthesis he normally attached to his damaged nose was missing, revealing bits of cartilage surrounding a small dark hole."

The Daily Mail reports the story today, adding confirmation from a former Jacko housekeeper who adds:

"In his closet he had a jar of fake noses and stage glue, which he told me he used for disguises. But some were similar to his real nose, just without the hole."

Most of the mainstream and tabloid Internet media have attributed the story to the Daily Mail. Only the most perceptive and cutting edge tabloid news sites, like Hollywood's Rumor Rat and the UK's Anorak, cited out story-- on Day One.

A good excuse to follow us on Twitter and receive Tabloid Baby updates. We notice things that others do not. That's what we do.