An undercover reporter for the trashy British tabloid News of the World went to Ibiza to visit with the uncle of Kate Middleton, Prince William's fiancee, Gary Goldsmith, who's apparently a huge cocaine dealer. Sweet! And the reporter got all sorts of juicy stuff, including a drug transaction, on tape. In the video Goldsmith brags about how his sister's daughter will be heir to the thrown and how he'll be named "Duke of Slough," among other things.

Goldsmith was out to impress and eagerly played on his royal connections - detailing how Kate was his niece and bragging of a return trip by her and Prince William to his villa next month. Telling how the couple stayed with him in 2006 - a visit reported in the British press at the time - he described the prince as "lovely" before adding: "Yeah, so they all turn up with their M16 to guard them.

"My first words to Prince William were, 'Oi, you f***er! Did you break my glass pyramids?' He and a pal had been throwing balls around and broke all these ornamenal pyramids I had - loads of them."

"My friends were here teaching William how to mix (music on DJ decks). Yeah, it was brilliant. And they told him he needs a shout, 'The King's in da house!' He's a very friendly guy."

Antonia claimed that she and Goldsmith were due to meet the couple for lunch this week in London. She mused: "Yeah. We're going . . . to see their little romance blossoming."

Oops. Well, so much for all that. That bitchy Queen will probably force young Kate and her family to cut all ties with Goldsmith, lest they forbid Prince William from marrying a "common."

Here's the video from News of the World:

Long live the trashy British tabloids!

Kate Middleton Uncle Drug and Vice Shock [News of the World]
via Transracial

Sorry, we meant "the Queen." It was more fun than meeting "the Queen." She didn't explicitly say this, of course. Michelle said, of taping a Sesame Street segment: "I think it's probably the best thing I've done so far in the White House. " So Britain's Daily Mail reminds its readers that this woman met Her Majesty!

Dear Britain: your dumb Queen did not raise three generations of American children! Elizabeth had nothing to do with teaching American children the joy of puns, parody, and creaky vaudeville humor! (And the alphabet maybe? There was some alphabet stuff involved.)

Who the hell wouldn't be more excited for Big Bird than Queen Elizabeth? No one we'd want as first lady.

In conclusion:

Photo: (c) 2009 Sesame Workshop. All Rights Reserved. Photo Credit: Richard Termine

The prime minister of Britain, Gordon Ramsay, visited Barack Obama a while back. As usual, he brought a bunch of really fancy symbolic crap, because that's always what Europe gets America (here, take this desk made out of a big ship that got blown up! take this giant statue of our lady goddess of liberty!). It was a big scandal when Barack Obama, in return, gave the prime minister some Marley & Me Facebook Gifts.

Well, it became a big scandal once this one guy at the Telegraph in the UK declared it an outrage, and said it was all because Obama was way in over his head and not qualified to be president, because he didn't give their precious PM a nail file forged from the steel of the USS Shaw. Then, this hack's article got on the Drudge, and then it got on the American TV, and so on, etc.

The Telegraph certainly hopes lightning strikes over and over and over and over again, so they jumped right on this latest gaffe: Barack Obama gave the Queen of England an iPod, but she already has an iPod!

Well, she has a 6GB Mini she got in 2005. We don't know the details of which iPod Obama got for the queen, but it has video of her visit to the US in 2007, so it's probably a bit of an upgrade from the one she has! It's not a sentimental gift, but Obama doesn't know this old bat! And what, exactly, did she get our President?

In return, the Queen gave the President a silver framed photograph of herself - apparently a standard present for visiting dignitaries.

Oh, wonderful. A framed picture of you. How thoughtful. Thanks so much, your majesty.

· Overseas audiences prove surprisingly tolerant of Chuck and Larry. We suppose that fun promotional website with the dancing and cake force-feeding really paid off. [Variety]
· Desperate Housewives (apparently not only still on the air, but fairly popular to boot) helps ABC win Sunday night with its season debut, though the show's ratings were off 23 percent from last year's premiere. [THR]
· The Queen screenwriter Peter Morgan is working on a sequel to the Oscar-nominated film which will explore Tony Blair's relationship with Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The story makes no mention of Helen Mirren's involvement, leaving us to wonder if a lesser actress will be tapped to smolder underneath Elizabeth's sensible hunting outfits. [Variety]

Dear Fenton

As a result of the BBC/RDF Queen misrepresentation, myself and a number of other Execs are having to contact all our suppliers over the past 3 years to review our output. To sum up, this is to see if they may have in any way misled the viewer with anything that has been broadcast by the BBC.

If you feel there is anything you wish to discuss, please feel free to call me. It will not in any way be held against you, but we've been asked to make these calls to everyone, just to be on the safe side.

Sorry for having to send this out, and please do not take it any way personally.

Let that be a lesson to anyone else who might be harboring similar plans to use an Avid bay to paint a caricature of an ill-tempered and humorless Queen of England: Not only will you have to repeatedly and publicly apologize for the trickery, but the gesture will so incense Her Majesty, she'll order a massive audit of every hour of TV broadcast by your network for the past three years, in order to assure that similar factual discrepancies might not have also deceived a gullible public.

• Knickers in a Twist [The WOW Report]

The BBC has apologised to the Queen for wrongly implying she walked out of a portrait session with photographer Annie Leibovitz during a documentary.

The BBC said in a statement: "This was not the case and the actual sequence of events was misrepresented." [...]

The BBC said the clips for the trailer were "not intended to provide a full picture of what actually happened or of what will be shown in the final programme".

It seems even the Queen of England is susceptible to the nefarious methods of reality TV editors, who not only manipulated chronology for their sensationalist needs, but also had no problem with following that sequence with a long, static shot of high-pitched screams emanating from behind a medieval door, further misleading audiences into believing that the House of Windsor's supposedly abandoned, rack-based punitive methods are still very much in use for certain, extreme instances of royal-portraitist treason.

• BBC apologises over Queen clips [news.bbc.co.uk]

BBC apologises for 'misrepresenting' Queen [Guardian]

The Queen arrived in white fur stole, gold-embroidered evening dress, Order of the Garter robes and diamond tiara, as requested. But Leibovitz, a perfectionist who once persuaded Whoopi Goldberg to pose in a bath of milk, had a change of heart.

"I think it will look better without the crown," the film shows her informing the Queen. "Less dressy. The garter robe is so . . . extraordinary."

"Less dressy?" the Queen says in response to this display of lãse-majesté. "What do you think this is?"

The Queen is then shown walking angrily from the drawing room. "I'm not changing anything," she fumes at a flunky. "I've had enough of dressing like this, thank you very much."

Leibovitz's unorthodox requests might seem to traditionalists an outrageous breach of deference to the sovereign, who was left with no option but to drop her royal poker face and allow the documentary cameras to capture a rare glimpse of her legendary temper. Still, it's best the Queen didn't hold her tongue, as she might have ended up throwing up a far more dramatic fit later, when, after examining some unflattering test Polaroids, Leibovitz asked how she'd feel about "losing the robes completely and trying one in the altogether, maybe with Philip curled up against you in the royal bed or something?"

[Photo: BBC]

• 'I've had enough of this,' said Queen as she snubbed bossy photographer [entertainment.timesonline.co.uk]

"I was honoured to be invited to dinner at the Palace. This was a gracious gesture and very appreciated by me. It was therefore hard to have to decline. I was contracted on that date to be working in South Dakota, in a situation which was impossible to change.

I would have made every effort to attend if it had been humanly possible. I explained this to the Palace officials, and I believe they understood. I would never have the hubris or the rudeness to insult anyone who had the kindness to invite me to dinner. "

Another statement was included from the Book of Secrets production itself, like a parent's note proferred by a terror-stricken, recently absent child to a stern school headmistress.

"The "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" production company regrets that it was unable to release Ms. Mirren from her shooting schedule in order to accept the honor of dining with Queen Elizabeth last week. All attempts were made to accommodate Her Majesty's request but a very challenging and uncompromising production schedule in South Dakota, complicated further by poor weather conditions and locked-in locations, made this impossible. Ms. Mirren has only the greatest admiration and respect for the Queen, and is truly sorry that prior commitments to the production prevented her from accepting the Queen's kind and prestigious invitation."

Hopefully, that will be enough to get Mirren off the Windsor Shit List and offered a royal rain check. We can't help but foster a hope that the two women will eventually develop into BFFs, though our fantasy involving them bonding over a ceremonial stag-shooing on the grounds of Balmoral is admittedly far-fetched.

• Helen Mirren Sends Her Regrets to Palace [ABCNews.com]

U.S. guide to royal etiquette: Don't call the Queen Liz [Daily Mail]

· Please, we beg of you, don't watch the above piece of Mirrenporn with your speakers turned up if you work somewhere that's touchy about explicit lyrics.
· Lost film lost to airport X-ray damage. The Hanso Foundation is clearly behind this. Or, perhaps, the wily magic turtle in the top hat.
· The head of the Cartoon Network takes the fall for the Mooninite not-bomb incident. He really should've tried stonewalling with hair talk.
· Samples of the (disappointingly golden shower-free) Kim Kardashian sex tape have dribbled into the semicelebrity pornosphere.

· Our audiophiliac cousin Idolator will be liveblogging this Sunday's Grammys, where we encourage you to vent about your elation and/or disappointment over James Blunt's showing. [Idolator]
· Peter O'Toole fondly recalls the days Katherine Hepburn called him "Pig" and he'd call her "Old Nags." [The Envelope]
· Many very famous movie stars will be presenting Oscars. [GoldDerby]
· "Hollywood Stars Get Facelift For Oscars" Oh, cheeky AP, you got us once again! You just mean stars on the Walk of Fame. [AP]
· Noticed those Oscars posters and billboards around town featuring famous lines of dialogue? Now, Netflix features a page that allows you to click on the quote to find out all about where it came from. Yeah, it's crass marketing...but it's also kind of fun! [Netflix]

· What—no snub love for Alec Baldwin? (We were thinking The Departed, but we're sure he was snub-worthy for his work in Running with Scissors, too.) [Little Gold Men]
· Stephen Frears had a religious moment upon hearing of his nomination: "I think it proves the existence of God. A favorable wind got behind this film and has just blown it along. It has been extraordinary." God, who's been booked up for most of the day on back-to-back conference calls with Miramax marketing, could not be reached for comment. [The Carpetbagger]

· The Las Vegas Film Society gives The Departed top honors, with Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker once again grabbing the acting categories. The only real surprise is that Jason Reitman's Thank You For Smoking script won best screenplay—the white twentysomething dude's award of choice. [ContactMusic]
· The Southeastern Film Critics Association names The Departed the best film of the year. It remains to be seen if this regional critics' association's track record is as impressive as the Dallas Fort-Worth critics, however, who are batting 4 out of 5 in predicting the Best Picture Oscar. [TimesDispatch.com, The Envelope]