Eminem's pop pops up!

British tabloid publishes letter from Slim Shady's dad. Plus: Madonna's childhood home on the block

Published August 27, 2001 7:00PM (EDT)

Dear Eminem: The father you haven't seen in decades is pleading for a meeting again.

"Hello, son. You won't remember me, though I held you in my arms when you were a baby," Marshall Mathers II writes in an open letter published in the London tabloid News of the World. "You think I dumped you and your mother and never came looking for you. You're convinced I'm a drunk who never answered any of your letters. Well, I want you to read this and realize you've been fed lies all your life. Now you'll hear the truth for the first time."

The truth, Eminem's pops says, is that Eminem's mother left him, that he searched high and low for his wife and child to no avail, that he never received any of his son's letters and that he is not an alcoholic or a drug abuser. The photo apparently circulating of him going into an Alcoholics Anonymous, he says, is not accurate. He was, he insists, "going into a DONUT shop" and says he "can prove it because the sign is in the background."

In his long, rambling note, Mathers II, a construction worker who now lives in California, reveals that Eminem has two half-siblings who have tried to contact their famous family member to no avail. "We didn't even get an acknowledgement as a reply," Mathers sniffs.

Oh sure. Mathers knows what you're thinking, but he insists that he's "not after any handout," but rather just wants to tell his son he cares. "The one ambition left in my life is to give you a hug and tell you I've always loved you," he says. "I'd get on a plane right now, this second, and go anywhere in the world if you'd meet with me. Please get in touch."

And while you're at it, if you could see fit to send him the plane ticket, arrange to have a limo meet him at the airport, put him up in a four-star hotel room, take him out for a fancy meal (or at least some donuts) and provide him with a few backstage passes, I'm sure he'd be grateful.

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Was she eating ... pie?

"She didn't see her drinking or doing any drugs. Tara was hungry, so she was eating in the kitchen most of the time."

-- "America Pie" star Tara Reid's lawyer, Roy Breslow, on how his client's appetite kept her from seeing troubled flack Lizzie Grubman do anything amiss the night Grubman allegedly mowed down a bunch of people outside a Hamptons, Long Island, nightclub.

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Tidnoc Yrag speaks!

If you thought Gary Condit didn't say anything worth listening to in last week's interview with Connie Chung, you might back it up a bit.

And replay it backward.

Jon Kelly, a "backward speech expert" from Vancouver, B.C., claims that, when you play the congressman's interview in reverse, he can be heard making the following confession: "I stink."

What's more, Kelly tells Wireless Flash News, Condit also reverse-declares, "She has tracks so they know they got to the one I killed" (whatever that means), as well as "The sex game made you vulnerable" and "Gotta win the lawsuit."

But no matter how much Chung tried, apparently, Condit refused to reverse-reveal that "Paul is dead." For the sake of his family and due to a specific request from the Levys, of course.

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Could you say that backward, Connie?

"It was very tense. I think you could feel the tension in the room."

-- Connie Chung on her interview with Condit, in USA Today.

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Going, going ...

Not yet gone: Madonna's childhood home in Rochester Hills, Mich.

The four-bedroom, two-bathroom colonial-style home that Madonna is said to have lived in with her father, stepmother and seven siblings, from the time she was in sixth grade until she left for college, is up for sale on eBay.

"Madonna's father and stepmother occupied the house until they sold it in July," the seller says. "No one else has lived in it since their departure. This house has been Madonna's stopping point when visiting her parents or when on tour in the area [and] has appeared recently on several television shows about Madonna, and in numerous biographies."

Although the 2,739-square-foot home, which sits on 1.3 leafy acres, is valued at $324,000, the bidding has reached $999,900, and will likely go higher in the 23 days of bidding that remain.

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Miss something? Read yesterday's Nothing Personal.


By Amy Reiter

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