All that tantric sex stuff was one thing, but Sting is now ready to tell the world about another "beautiful thing." Showing your child his or her own birth.
The boundary-pushing rock star says that he and his wife, Trudie Styler, often plunk down in front of the telly to review footage of their eldest son, Jake, emerging from the birth canal. And when they invited Jake, now 16, to watch it, he was favorably impressed.
"When he watched it for the first time he said, 'Wow, I just saw myself being born on TV. Thanks very much,'" Sting told MTV Asia. "He seemed a little embarrassed and a little proud. He was born on celluloid and it doesn't seem to have done him any harm."
To not have shown Jake the video would have been "cheating," Sting said. "I'm not ashamed at having shown a beautiful thing such as new life coming into this world."
He'll always be king of painful oversharing.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Factor this
"Madonna called me up and told me not to worry about it."
-- Bill O'Reilly, cracking wise in response to Sean Penn's Talk magazine interview in which he compares the conservative TV talk show host to Osama bin Laden, Adolph Hitler and Joe McCarthy.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Penelope pours it on
Remember when Penelope Cruz refused to discuss the details of her relationship with Tom Cruise? Well, get ready to remember those days fondly, because now she's ready to spill -- and it's all ooky-gushy.
It was, Cruz tells the British magazine Heat, love at first sight for her when she encountered the very married actor on the set of "Vanilla Sky."
"I really believe that happens -- that you recognize that special person in an instant," she says. "I think it happens to everyone, although maybe some people don't want to recognize it, or they don't see it that way."
Which is not to say, she insists, that she acted on her initial attraction right away. She's still sticking to that "not until after he broke up with Nicole" story.
"We were two people working together as friends and we liked it very much," she says. "And then, over time, that turned into something deeper. But we only got involved later, in the summer."
Yeah, well, whatever.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
From the "What's he hiding?" files
"I don't care who's naked in anything I do as long as it's not me."
-- John Corbett, who plays Aidan Shaw on "Sex and the City," on his disinclination toward duds doffing.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Soul kiss-off
Look out. Hutch is bitter.
David Soul says he's seriously pissed that he and his "Starsky and Hutch" costar, Paul Michael Glaser, have not been asked to revisit their roles in the new film based on the '70s TV show.
"The proposed film says a lot about Hollywood today," Soul told the London Mail. "It's not about having a relationship with your audience at all. It's about 'How do we sell stuff?'"
He's particularly peeved that a popular actor like Ben Stiller is stepping into one of the roles.
"They chose Ben Stiller because he's a hot property," Soul gripes. "Paul Michael Glaser and I are a part of the 'Starsky and Hutch' legacy, but we're not flavor of the month."
Wait -- is he trying to tell us that Hollywood is shallow?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Miss something? Read yesterday's Nothing Personal.
Shares