When Raising Children, Uncle Sam Knows Best

Seems funny that a member of the Windsor family would be talking about child-rearing. Even if she is only a member by marriage.

Especially since the Windsor we’re talking about is the very one whose inter-marital affairs have been splashed - more than once - across the covers of the world’s newspapers.

But the Duchess of York (that was your guess, right?) wants her daughters with Prince Andrew, 7-year-old Beatrice and 5-year-old Eugenie, to be raised with American manners.

“You have to give children praise and listen to them,” Sarah Ferguson told TV Guide. “Americans are better than (the British) at seeing what a child can do and enhancing that potential.”

As for table manners, Fergie has a formula that ranges from “A” (“tea with Granny”) to “D” (“a tray in front of the television”).

Loose talk

Actress Teri Garr on her notion of justice (on America Online): “I would like to do a series with O.J. Simpson. Since my television shows go directly in the dumper, it could be my personal vendetta.”

Any day now he should start looking a little mossy

Bill Wyman turns 54 today.

Later, he changed the paper in the cage of her mind

This just in: “Copycat” Director Jon Amiel, lauding the talent of Holly Hunter, praised what he calls her “luminous, birdlike intellect.”

That, of course, beats screaming ‘No more wire hangars!’

Kate Capshaw, married to super-director Steven Spielberg, decided not long ago that “It was time to get back to work.” So she decided to take a role in the film “How to Make an American Quilt”. What was the overriding factor? “Steven would come home and I’d say, ‘Honey, what did you do today?’ And it would be like ‘I talked to Harrison and Tom and so on.’ And I would say, ‘Well, look what I did to the Saran Wrap drawer.”’

How many of the rest of us even know 450 people?

While Johnny Carson was expected to have a small celebration of his 70th birthday on Monday, Dennis Weaver and his wife Gerry held a huge bash on Saturday. The occasion? Their 50th-wedding anniversary. Some 450 of their intimate friends were invited to their Ridgway, Colo., home.

Perhaps he touched them with more than just his music

Louis Farrakhan is getting support for his criticism of the U.S. Park Service’s estimate that only 400,000 showed up for the much-publicized Million Man March. Farrakhan’s latest advocate: Stevie Wonder. “I’m not that blind,” Wonder said. “There were more than a million.”

He may not be sexy, but he can sure act sexy

So what does Gary Oldman think of being called “sexy” in People magazine. “I think if you say that, people will choke on their drinks,” he says. “Look at me. Look at this weak chin! Flip through most magazines and (if) it’s the Sexiest Person on the Planet, it’s Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Keanu Reeves. I’m on the other list with Ken Branagh. We’re ‘Those English Actors.”’

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Dan Webster