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Monday, Mar 12, 2001 5:40 PM UTC

Sporty Spice, Ditching Spice

The Spice formerly known as Mel C. says she's leaving; Leif Garrett's wanted by the law; and Bj

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Topics: Celebrity, Spice Girls,

Now, now. Don’t go getting your hopes up just yet. Sporty Spice Melanie Chisholm (sometimes known as Not-Untalented Spice) may not be quitting the Spice Girls after all.

Although Chisholm, who has managed a certain amount of success as a solo act, told Reuters on Thursday that she doesn’t “intend to do any more work with the Spice Girls,” the band’s rep denies the split.

“Really, I’ve not been comfortable being in the Spice Girls for probably the last two years,” Chisholm said in what may have been a rare moment of unguarded honesty. “It doesn’t really feel that natural to me anymore. I’ve grown up and I just feel that I want to do things my own way and not compromise.”

The whole concept, she said, is kinda old news. “We were such a huge phenomenon and there’s not really anywhere else to go with that.”

That may sound reasonable to the rest of us. Even wise. But to the Spice Girls’ spokesman, it apparently sounds like heresy.

“Melanie C hasn’t left the Spice Girls. Everyone wants to say it’s over but it isn’t, the group have still got strong ties,” the Girls’ spokesman Alan Edwards insisted to the BBC. “What she said is that we’ve got no plans at the moment and it’s been exaggerated into the final split and it isn’t the final split … It ain’t over until it’s over and it ain’t over.”

But if ol’ Sporty can’t kill the now-ancient golden goose that laid her one way, she may just try to shock it to death.

Last week, she told the Toronto Sun that, while she’s concentrating on her solo career, she also has her heart set on a duet … with Eminem. This despite the fact that he recently called the Spice Girls “all fat and ugly now.”

“There are a lot of lyrics and ideas he has about a lot of things that I completely disagree with, but as a musician and artist, I think he’s fantastic,” she said, adding that she’d like Dr. Dre to produce. “I think it’d be a very interesting collaboration.”

Eminem … Angry Spice?

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The admiration is not mutual

“He’s a smug son of a bitch, and I wanted to be able on national TV to tell him he is wrong.”

– Ousted “Survivor” contestant Jeff Varner on Richard Hatch, who’d pegged him to win “Survivor: The Australian Outback,” on CBS’s “The Early Show.”

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Wanted: Leif Garrett

This won’t come as a complete surprise to “Behind the Music” fans, but ’70s teen idol Leif “Runaround Sue” Garrett has a warrant out for his arrest.

Yep, it’s a drug thing.

According to the Associated Press, a Los Angeles judge issued the warrant after Garrett, now 39, didn’t show up at a hearing to see how his drug rehab was progressing.

Garrett landed on the wrong side of the law in June 1999, when he was arrested with a bunch of other people in a police narcotics sting at an L.A. apartment building. The former tousle-haired Tiger Beat heartthrob pled guilty to possession of heroin and cocaine and agreed to a treatment program including drug testing, counseling and anti-drug classes.

Wait, does this mean I have to take down my poster of him?

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Björn to be wild

“Get to it! … F*** for the future.”

– Swedish tennis champ Björn Borg urging Europeans to have more sex and make more babies to “work and put up for our pensions” in an advertisement in Dagens Industri, Sweden’s biggest business daily.

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Juicy bits

Russell Crowe’s not exactly cowering in the corner now that the FBI has uncovered evidence of a possible plot to kidnap him. Thursday, at the ShoWest convention in Las Vegas, the gladiator reentered the public arena for the first time since news of the plot broke, the BBC reports. But he wasn’t too happy about it. “Quite frankly, I would rather not be here,” he told reporters. “It’s just one of those things that’s on the schedule at the moment.” Proof of life going on.

As the ex-world leader best known for falling down, former President Gerald R. Ford may not be the first person you’d pick to host a celebrity skifest benefiting the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation. That, however, is just what he’ll be doing at the CSFBdirect American Ski Classic, March 14-18 in Vail, Colo. Hitting the slopes with the ex-POTUS in the celebrity team giant slalom competition, the proceeds of which benefit spinal injury research: Buzz Aldrin, Billy Campbell, Cliff Robertson, Dan Fogelberg, Gloria Estefan, Kim Alexis and … Robert Kennedy Jr.

Is Jerry Springer the new Regis Philbin? So much for those political plans. The trashy talk-show host has signed on to become a trashy game-show host in England. (They love him over there.) The show, “Greed,” — a Chuck Woolery-hosted American version of which was launched and pulled by Fox last winter — will hit U.K. tellies this spring. Five contestants will compete each week for a top prize of $1.5 million. Wow, that kind of green’ll buy you a really big trailer.

For those of you who’ve spent long Saturday mornings wondering whether Fred from “Scooby-Doo” is gay or straight, Freddie Prinze Jr. is ready to clear things up. “Everybody makes jokes about him because he wears an ascot,” Prinze tells USA Today of the character he’s playing in the upcoming live-action movie based on the cartoon, “but he’s big into Daphne.” Right. Now that that’s cleared up, what about Ernie and Bert?

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Miss something? Read yesterday’s Nothing Personal.

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