April 6, 1999 | Is Ed Koch sampling Janet Jackson lyrics? The former New York mayor and current "People's Court" presider is putting out a book poking at his prickly successor, NYC Bully in Chief Rudy Giuliani. The title of the collection of Koch-penned newspaper columns: "Giuliani, Nasty Man."

Koch boasted to the New York Times that he picked the name himself. "Nasty means what it says," he told the paper. "You try to disembowel people. That's what he tries to do." Koch says he sees his book as "almost a Greek tragedy ... [Giuliani's] nastiness is causing his self-destruction."

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Well, we can't help noticing that in rushing the book to press for a June release -- in hope of influencing the outcome of a potential Rudy run for Senate -- Koch himself is keeping company with a questionable lot. The publisher, Barricade Books, is responsible for such gems as "The Anarchist Cookbook" and that Timothy McVeigh favorite, "Turner Diaries." In other words, successful or not, the company's put out some real bombs ...

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The death of Di mania?

Looks like Princess Diana may be resting in peace at last. Tickets to visit her ancestral home and final resting place have been moving slower than the Queen Mother at a polo match. In fact, just three months before the snazzy gates of the Althorp estate and its Diana-centric museum are scheduled to swing open to the public for a two-month commemoration, nearly half the tickets remain unsold.

Last year, tickets for the open house -- which ran for the two months leading up to the first anniversary of her tragic death -- sold out in a royal flash; 150,000 came to pay their respects to the wildly popular princess, filling the coffers of the Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Fund with more than $492,000.

But though some 70,000 tickets (priced between $8 and $15.50) remain available to this year's opening, a spokesman for Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, says the slow sales make sense given that "the princess's death has not dominated the news this year."

Alas, it seems that -- just like biographer Andrew Morton -- the press and public have transferred their obsession to another sort of princess. Maybe Elton John will sing her a special thong ... er, song ... too.

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