SALON

Wednesday, Feb 5, 2003 9:00 PM UTC

Uncle Mike’s bedtime stories

Jacko: Kids love to sleep with me! Kylie: Get a shrink! Jude Law: Nicole's no home wrecker. Plus: Ethan and Uma, Jacuzzi floozies?

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Topics: Michael Jackson, Jude Law,

The rest of us may be horrified at — if not particularly surprised by — Michael Jackson’s recent admission, in a British TV documentary set to air in the U.S. Thursday on ABC, that he has “slept in a bed with many children” not his own, including both Macaulay and Kieran Culkin. Kids “always just want to stay with me. They say, ‘Can I stay with you tonight?’ So I go, ‘If it’s OK with your parents, then yes, you can,’” he shares.

We may be amused at his claim that he has had no plastic surgery whatsoever, except for maybe a couple of nose operations to correct his breathing so he “can hit higher notes.”

We may be incredulous at his refusal to acknowledge that dangling his newborn son (by a surrogate mother Jackson “never met”) over a fourth-story balcony rail was rather a bad idea; “He enjoyed it. He started to respond by going, ‘Eeeeee,’” Jackson insists.

Critics may be calling Jackson “disturbed,” charities may be labeling his behavior “inappropriate” and potentially severely damaging to the kids in question, but Kylie Minogue, for one, would like to defend her musical predecessor.

“I think he deserves some sympathy, definitely,” the Australian singer told Britain’s ITV News, which aired “Living With Michael Jackson” earlier this week.

“I thought it was fascinating,” she said of the special. “There were things I was surprised by in a kind of pleasant way — and other things where it all fell apart.”

Mostly, she thinks the peculiar pop star needs our understanding, and OK, maybe a little professional help.

“I really feel for the guy, I really do,” she said. “The question I ended up having was whether he’d really ever had any psychological help.”

If he has, his taste in psychologists is just as stellar as his taste in plastic surgeons.

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You gotta be Kidman him …

“There is absolutely no third party involved in our marriage. To suggest otherwise is malicious, hurtful and libelous.”

– Jude Law on widely circulated rumors that he and his wife, Sadie Frost, may be splitting up because he’s having an affair with Nicole Kidman, with whom he insists he is just buddies, in a statement to the press.

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Parents, you can dress ‘em up …

Also under fire for their quirkier parenting choices: Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke?

A Jane magazine Hollywood correspondent who goes by the name “SpyGirl” shares in an upcoming issue that her own parents were recently so alarmed by the scruffy appearance of the acting husband and wife and their two children that they actually called security.

“I was feeling glamorous, so I booked a room at the chichi Santa Monica hotel Shutters on the Beach for my parents,” SpyGirl writes in her monthly column, due out next week. “I thought they would enjoy it. Not so! My father called security to report a young ‘homeless looking’ couple with two small kids. They changed by the pool and then took their kids into the Jacuzzi with no underpants on.”

Turns out, the bedraggled couple with the naked kiddies were Uma and Ethan.

“Needless to say,” SpyGirl writes, “security would rather throw out my folks.”

And rightly so. Who dresses their kids in underpants to go into a Jacuzzi, anyway? Swimsuits, maybe …

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Let them eat cake

“Catherine Eater Jones.”

– The headline over an unflattering, unauthorized photo of Catherine Zeta-Jones scarfing down a highly frosted slice of cake at her wedding to Michael Douglas that ran in Britain’s Hello! magazine. The couple is suing the magazine for infringing on their privacy and running hideous photos that are potentially “damaging to their professional careers.”

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Parenthood redux?

Madonna preggers yet again?

We’ve certainly been through this before, but Peoplenews.com is speculating that the perpetual pop star is a full five months with child at age 44.

The (not entirely convincing) evidence? Baggy clothes, a visit to the London hospital where Kate Moss and Sadie Frost recently had their children, plus her recent transition to brunettehood.

“Pregnant women are advised not to bleach their hair,” the Web site points out.

Yawn. Wake me when it’s time for her C-section.

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Miss something? Read yesterday’s Nothing Personal.

More Amy Reiter.

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