Showbiz: Oprah buys home for $122m

Talk-show host Oprah Winfrey has bought a 17ha California estate for about $US50 million ($122 million), making it one of the most expensive private homes in the US.

The Montecito estate, south of Santa Barbara, includes a 2136 sqm main house and smaller guest and gate houses with ocean and mountain views. There are gardens, an orchard, two ponds and a lake.

The sellers bought the property in 1998 for $US14 million before embarking on an ambitious renovation. Winfrey reportedly fell in love with the Santa Barbara area in April while shooting photos for her magazine, O.

Winfrey, 47, who also owns a penthouse in Chicago and a farm in Indiana, is worth $US800 million according to Forbes magazine.

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A German website has offered Madonna fans a ticket for a sold-out concert in Berlin this week in exchange for having sex with one of its reporters. Thema1 online magazine publisher Bernd Heusinger said 22 readers had already applied for a chance to win the ticket to attend the Berlin concert as his guest.

Insisting there was nothing illegal about the offer because prostitution was not against the law in Germany, Heusinger said his staff and readers were taking part voluntarily.

"It's not an 'indecent proposal' even though it may be considered reprehensible."

The Madonna concerts in Berlin were sold out within minutes of going on sale in April and went for record prices of up to $260 each.

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Rose McGowan has signed up to fill Shannen Doherty's shoes on the Charmed TV series.

McGowan, whose film credits include Driven and Scream, will join original weird sisters Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs on the comedy when it begins a fourth season in a couple of months. She'll play a long-lost sister of the women.

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A man who sent hundreds of letters, e-mails and packages to Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow must remain in a mental ward, a judge has ruled.

Judge Robert O'Neill made the ruling after a lawyer for Dante Michael Soiu, 51, submitted a "progress" report. Soiu, who was not in court, was found insane and sent to the institution after being convicted in December on one count of stalking Paltrow.

Soiu was arrested on May 13 last year, which marked the fourth time he appeared outside the home of Paltrow's parents. He left a message saying he would return.

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Jimi Hendrix memorabilia, including one of his guitars, will go on sale this week in London, where the rock legend died more than 30 years ago of a sleeping pill overdose.

Auctioneers Bonhams & Brooks said the auction, organised by Hendrix's girlfriend, Kathy Etchingham, could fetch $350,000.

Hendrix, whose groundbreaking style continues to influence rock guitarists, still has the power to pull in major bids at auction.

Last September, a psychedelic jacket belonging to Hendrix was bought for $112,000 at a British sale.

And the international auction house Sotheby's, sold a Fender Stratocaster guitar Hendrix played at the 1969 Woodstock Festival for $634,620 more than 10 years ago. Its value tripled within five years and it was reported to have been bought later by a private collector for nearly $2.5 million.

The guitar which is now on sale is a Vintage Epiphone that Hendrix used for composing songs between 1967 and 1970.

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Dolly Parton reckons she fits her latest movie role perfectly - portraying the well-endowed Mae West. "I figure I'm as brassy as she was," said the actress and country singer.

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Here's a nice job perk: at the end of each season, the stars of Sex and the City can buy some of the outfits they've worn on the hit series. "We buy them at very discounted prices," said Kristin Davis, who plays Charlotte. "A lot of our clothes are samples from the designers so we have to give them back because they're one of a kind, but about half our wardrobe is left. Last year I got two big boxes of good stuff - a lot of Prada, a lot of leather and some cashmere sweaters."

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Christy Turlington doesn't want her wedding to actor Ed Burns to be a media spectacle. So what does the supermodel do? Sends her publicist out to tell the world just how private it's going to be.

"You won't see pictures in Hello," the model and activist says in the July issue of W magazine, in a dig at Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, who sold the British magazine exclusive rights to their wedding photos. "I want it to be a pure and perfect experience."

Turlington says she and Burns, 33, are ready to start a family. She thinks about having children "all the time now" and would like to have four children.

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Days after the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the CBS television network has bought rights to a book for a mini-series about the deadliest act of terrorism on American soil.

CBS will dramatise the book, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing, whose authors gained 75 hours of taped interviews with McVeigh and access to his family.

- NZPA