SamboraBlog

HER propensity to resemble high-class skank does Heather Locklear no favours. This week, in the rabid annals of gossip baloney, the former Melrose Place star is a woman betrayed. A woman mocked. A woman who should really stop wearing white cowboy hats, sheer leopard-print blouses and microscopic, pube-grazing tracksuit pants at every photo opportunity.

In a story that clogs all six of the weekly organs, painstaking details of Locklear's estranged husband, the Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora, locking lips with Locklear's best friend, Denise Richards, have emerged. Richards recently filed for divorce from the actor Charlie Sheen, and Locklear was her "shoulder to cry on" New Weekly says.

Picture after picture of Richards and Sambora grappling on hotel balconies, writhing on beaches and strolling past hedges is shown in Who Weekly. Gaunt and bewildered on the cover of Star Enquirer, Locklear cries, "I've been stabbed in the back" while on the front of NW she grumpily declares, "You're dead to me now". New Idea makes its point by publishing an image of Locklear screaming like a startled zombie. Woman's Day and NW attempt to lather things up even further by reminding us that Locklear and Richards "even shared an on-screen kiss" in an episode of the American sitcom Spin City, which also starred Sheen.

What everyone fails to canvass in all this is why anyone would find Sambora sexy. Here is a 46-year-old man sporting a feathered mullet. An "ageing rocker" who wears frilled shirts open to the navel and ill-fitting cowboy hats and litters his hairless chest with chunky silver jewellery. Must be his musical talent.

Meanwhile the hysterical saga that is Tom Cruise and his worldwide tour of baby delirium drags on. Cruise's former wife, Nicole Kidman, has denied reports she sent two dozen red roses and a congratulatory statement to Cruise and Katie Holmes after the birth of their daughter, Suri. Kidman has been too busy, as Woman's Day reports, "struggling with jealousy and regret over her own baby heartache". To illuminate this claim, WD quotes "a close friend" of Kidman offering the penetrating observation that the actor "knows she's not getting any younger".

Extraordinarily, WD trumps itself with another beautiful example of over-inflated gossip reportage. After alarming readers with the cover headline, "Prince Frederik's boozy boys' night: shock photos", the truth is one doozy of a letdown. Inside is a single photo of our Frederik at a "recent bucks night" where he is shown having a drink on a couch beside another man who is also having a drink. And that's it. According to "an onlooker", Frederik's debauchery extended to a night of "tall tales and silly games" at the "strictly guys-only celebrations". He needs to swot up on Sambora's bacchanalia style quick smart.

Lenny Ann Low