Modern Family is such a cute, funny show; it was only a matter of time before it insulted an entire nationality. The word is Peruvians are angry with Modern Family’s Sofia Vergara for a joke that had Peru as the punchline…and they want an explanation. The joke came in response to the character Jay (Ed O’Neill) gearing up to riff on Columbia, his wife’s homeland. Vergara’s character Sofia rants, “Ah, here we go. Because, in Colombia, we trip over goats and we kill people in the street. Do you know how offensive that is? Like we’re Peruvians!” Hoo boy, that is…not family friendly. In response to the slur, Beatriz Merino, head of the People’s Defender’s Office in Peru, wants a response from the U.S. Ambassador, saying “No country should have to be offended.” Agrees Milagros Lizarraga, founder of Peruvian social network Peru USA Southern Ca, “It’s incredible that in a country where everything is politically correct, ABC would have a line of this sort.” Everything is PC? Watch Glee and that idea will disappear before the first commercial break, believe us. But it’s Vergara, not Modern Family’s writers, that is bearing the brunt of their anger. Said Lizarraga, “Many Peruvians think this is no coincidence, that she knew what she was saying, because an actress has the power to say, ‘No, I can’t say this because it would hurt my image. Unless she agrees with what she said.” Again, we have to say, we don’t think that’s how show biz works, at least if the musical Fame is any indication. Vergara tweeted in response to several of her detractors, pointing out that it was her character who said the offending line, not her and, well, saying people’s ignorance made her laugh: “la ignorancia de creer que una actriz es el personaje que representa ,que ternurita,dan mucha risa jajaja.” While this isn’t a hard and fast rule, celebrities, keep in mind: using Twitter to address an international crisis? Rarely a good idea. [Photo: WENN]
After she confirmed yesterday that she does in fact have a bun in the oven, we immediately started fantasizing about the plunging necklines and clinging fabrics of Mariah Carey’s inevitably fabulous maternity wear. Husband Nick Cannon, however, dreams only of getting Mariah out of heels and into flats. At first, we didn’t approve of the idea. Would you paint a rainbow a sensible beige? Would you have a peacock put on a conservative blazer? Then why make Mariah Carey walk on the ground with the rest of us mortals when she should be 4-to-6 inches higher than everyone else? But then we realized…if Nick doesn’t intervene early, Mariah will be nine months pregnant and still teetering precariously on 5-inch Jimmy Choos. So we’re willing to consider it. Explained Cannon on his radio show with Mariah as a call-in guest, “I go into the closet searching for some flats for my wife … She got a lot of damn shoes — it’s like a frickin’ Macy’s. [And] Mariah Carey does not own one pair of flat shoes.” Mariah sensibly pointed out, “To be fair, I had some boots from Aspen, some Dior boots.” But Nick wasn’t going to let Carey get away with seeming like less of a diva than she really is: “Ski boots!”, he exclaimed. This story is confirming every fabulous, insane thing we always suspected about Mariah…and we could not be happier. Admitted Carey, “And then we did find some flats and then they were a regular ballet slipper, like a beige, and I was like, ‘I don’t think so.’” Why not just put a garbage bag on your foot at that point, we’d argue. Nick was pretty pleased with himself for helping with the wardrobe transformation: “Basically, I got Mariah Carey, the high-heel queen, to put on some flats. And this is amazing. I’m going shoe shopping today, needless to say, to buy you some flat shoes.” We wouldn’t get too cocky, Nick. God only help you if Mariah finds out they make heels for babies now. [Photo: Splash News Online]
Capri Anderson is getting ready to drop a legal bomb on Charlie Sheen -- TMZ has learned the porn star is planning to sue Charlie for the events that went down during his hotel meltdown in NYC.
Sources close to Anderson tell TMZ ... she believes Charlie was acting so crazy in his hotel room at The Plaza Hotel on Tuesday morning -- that she felt her life was in danger ... and she also felt like she was being held in the room against her will.
As we previously reported, Charlie tore the room apart -- busting a chair and causing damage to several hotel items. Capri ended up locking herself in the bathroom and calling hotel security.
Capri claims Charlie also threatened her in the hotel room, although she made no mention of this to NYC cops when they interviewed her about the incident.
FYI -- law enforcement sources tell us officials have no plans to file charges against Charlie.
Madonna: singer, dancer, actor, author . . . and now gym entrepreneur. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features Expansionist news from Madonna, now, who this week announced that she is to open a global chain of gyms. Or, more accurately, "a one-of-a-kind experience merging fitness with entertainment". "Our goal is to create an environment inspired by Madonna's vision and high standards of what the ideal gym would be," trilled her business manager, who added that the first branch will open in Mexico City next month. "Hard Candy Fitness will be a reflection of Madonna's point of view and will reflect her input on every detail including music space, light and other design cues. Madonna's touch will be everywhere." Well, of course it will – after all, there is nothing to which this renaissance woman cannot turn her hand. It wasn't so long ago, you might remember, that Madonna was badgering the UK government for facetime, explaining that she was "working with a group of scientists" who had solved the problem of nuclear waste (apparently, they'd poured some £4-a-bottle Kabbalah water into a lake within the Chernobyl exclusion zone and it had neutralised all the radiation). Downing Street and Whitehall were too blinkered to see the light, of course – but we must wish milady luck with this subsequent project. Nuclear science's loss looks to have been aerobics's gain.
Derek Acorah: predicting the future for the celebrities.And so to television medium Derek Acorah, who has sweetly broken off from giving vulnerable people messages from their dead children to promote his live tour in OK!. Talking to the magazine, Derek has stuck that spotless reputation of his on the line with a series of predictions about the futures of various celebrities. Peter Andre "will marry in a white suit", hazards Derek, countering prevailing opinion that St Pete will pitch up to his next wedding in a classically understated morning coat, while "something major" will happen to Victoria Beckham. "She'll become revered, an almost Princess Di-like figure." But it is in contemplating Katie Price that our leading charlatan finds his most empathetic form. "Just after Christmas," he declares, "she'll lose it in public and need therapy at the deepest level." Mmm. Do you think Derek would care to put even 10 pence of this money where his mouth is? You see, my own sixth sense is that it doesn't look great when one's craft is being questioned by Kerry Katona – comfortably one of the most suggestible creatures in showbiz. "There wasn't much detail in there," sniffs Kerry of his prediction for her. "He basically just repeated what's in the press, to be honest . . ."
Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson, incensed by a planned conversion next door, have decided to sell their £36m Chelsea home. Photograph: Ikon Pictures/Rex Features What are you doing right now? If you're anything like me, you'll be huddling around a burning picture of George Osborne, eating Spam and crying. However, if you're razzle-dazzle Chelsea footballer Frank Lampard, you'll probably be drawing up outlandish plans to turn your basement into a swimming pool, cinema and gym, much to the annoyance of your well-to-do neighbours. Forget space tourism and blood diamonds – the latest way to flaunt your wealth is to build your very own underground Batcave. In London's Chelsea and Belgravia, where property is at such a premium that even Russian oligarchs struggle to make the rent, millionaires are going underground. After all, digging down to convert the basement is cheaper than buying more land, and provides space for their home IMAX theatres and Swarovski-encrusted velodromes. Snazzy basements are de rigueur. Actually, Andrew Lloyd Webber, the UK's most famous cellar dweller, has got two, which he's knocked together to make a gigantic super-fabulous luvvie bunker. He probably sits down there all day at the piano, picking his nose and humming Memory. Oh, how the other half live. The only drawback is that basement conversions are rather controversial, even among the 10 people in Britain who can afford them. Aside from the possibility of finding a forgotten Chilean miner while you're plumbing in the en suite, the neighbours absolutely hate them because of the endless noise, dust and displaced rats. It seems that no matter how rich and famous you are, basement conversions are a vulgar irritant – a posh version of Jack and Vera Duckworth's stone cladding. To get a sense of how emotive "basementing" has become, witness the effect it's had on Charles Saatchi. Charles and his wife, Nigella Lawson, are so incensed by a planned garden conversion next door that they've decided to sell their £36m Chelsea home. Already furious that scaffolding for another renovation project was obscuring his view of Nigella's Milky Bar and Potato Waffle cheesecake, Saatchi ordered some workmen to remove the eyesore, reportedly damaging £50,000 worth of marble tiles in the process. (In Eaton Square, chipping one's marble is worse than murdering one's puppy.) In fact, the fashion for basement conversions is getting so out of hand that earlier this month an overloaded skip in Belgravia sank into the Earth's core – an ominous symbol of this country's collapse if I ever saw one. Of course, if you were being frightfully generous, you could say that basement conversions are one of those "we're all in this together" money-saving compromises that the Tories are always on about. The rich forgo a few windows in their billiards room; we sleep rough in a supermarket trolley, using the Littlewoods catalogue as a blanket. It's all part of the "big society", with everyone working together to get through these difficult times. However, for most people with real jobs and mortgages, these subterranean displays of extreme wealth set a disturbing trend. If the super-rich are retreating like demented foxes into their underground lairs, expanding their palatial townhouses ever downwards, where does that leave the rest of us? The middle classes can hardly extend their mortgages, let alone convert the cupboard under the stairs into a boutique nightclub. For them, property aspiration came to standstill somewhere between Kirstie Allsopp becoming a Tory housing adviser and Sarah Beeny's seminal show Help Me, My House Is Minging! Add to that barely manageable debts, tumbling house prices and an extinct buy-to-let market, and the middle classes have had to give up their fetish for property. No more painting everything white for a quick sale or worrying about kerb appeal. Instead they've got to make the best of what they've got – frantically covering up the damp in the study with posters of Benedict Cumberbatch. Then there are poor people. Even if they wanted to add an attractive conservatory to their cardboard box, they wouldn't be able to afford the bulldog clips from Staples. They would have to borrow the money off a loan shark at 3,367% APR, and then their benefits will be cut anyway and their cardboard box recycled to become limited edition Smythson diaries. If the "Kosovo-style social cleansing" that London mayor Boris Johnson predicts actually happens, there will be nowhere for those affected by the caps on housing benefits to go. Like those displaced basement rats, impoverished Londoners will soon be fleeing into the streets in search of food and shelter. With thousands of people reduced to Baldrick-esque peasant status, a subsiding skip in Belgravia will become the most sought-after place to sleep in town. This will no doubt cause the rich to retreat and become virtually invisible, conducting their business strictly below stairs. Lawson will have gone to live in a £40m-Beatrix Potter rabbit hole in the country with Flopsy, Mopsy and Saatchi. Lloyd Webber will communicate with the world via furious letters to Transport for London, complaining that the vibrations from the District Line are disrupting tiffin. Above ground, the capital will be lawless, nothing but a smoking wreck of crumbling slums, potholes, closed libraries and desperate people chewing their own legs off. Happily, the solution is staring us in the face. If Lampard and Lloyd Webber's underground conversions are as roomy and fabulous as they sound, there should be plenty of space to accommodate every member the 17,000 London households who will be affected by benefit cuts. Just think – they could turn Christine Bleakley's teeth-whitening suite into a playroom for the children. Convert the reclining home cinema seats into beds for the elderly. Transform Lloyd Webber's walk-in trophy cabinet into a progressive, non-denominational school. It could be social utopia down there – rich and poor living as one, with everyone queuing up in the morning to use Lampard's gold toilet. Just as long as nobody tries to claim single person's housing benefit on a £750,000 basement conversion in Chelsea, it should all work out fine.
