It sounds like someone blew up
Talk show host Montel Williams is offering an on-air apology over an angry confrontation with a Savannah, Ga., newspaper intern.
Williams, a patient advocate since being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999, was in Savannah on Friday to promote a program giving free prescriptions to low-income people.
He got upset and ended an interview after Courtney Scott, a high school intern with the Savannah Morning News, asked him whether drug companies would cut back on research if their profits were reduced.
Later, Williams confronted Scott and two other reporters at another location after mistakenly believing they were following him, telling her: “I’m a big star, and I can look you up, find where you live and blow you up.”
“Regrettably I reacted childishly to the situation and for that I truly apologize to all concerned. I would like to invite Courtney and her family to appear on my show for a public apology,” Williams said in a later e-mail sent from his publicist’s address.
“I’ll accept, if he’s really going to do it,” Scott said. “I don’t really think it’s his statement. I think his people put it out.”
A real hurly-burly
Rapper Akon pleaded not guilty Monday to criminal charges for tossing a 15-year-old boy off the stage at a concert earlier this year.
Another fan said she suffered a concussion when the boy fell on her during the June 3 show in Fishkill, N.Y.
Audience members said a spectator threw something at Akon, and he asked the crowd to point out the culprit.
A security guard picked out the 15-year-old and sent him up to the stage, where Akon hoisted him onto his shoulders and flung him into the crowd.
His lawyer calls it “a spontaneous reaction during a live concert that Akon deeply regrets.”
Selling like wildfire
A series of concerts being given by Garth Brooks to raise money for victims of recent California wildfires sold out in less than an hour over the weekend.
The 85,677 tickets for five concerts went for about $45 each.
Stylin’ like Ozzie? Priceless
A weekend auction of items owned by rocker Ozzy Osbourne and his family brought in $800,000 for cancer research.
A coat with embroidered bats sold for $3,300, sneakers with skulls on them fetched $2,625 and a pair of the rocker’s trademark round glasses went for a whopping $5,250.
“We had Ozzy fans bidding against these sophisticated fine art buyers, which you don’t see every day,” said Darren Julien of Julien’s Auctions. “For the most part the metalheads were outbidding the art crowd.”
All proceeds from the sale go to The Sharon Osbourne Colon Cancer Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
The birthday bunch
Game show host Wink Martindale is 73. Actor-producer-director Max Baer Jr. (“The Beverly Hillbillies”) is 70. Actor Jeff Bridges is 58. Actress Patricia Wettig is 56. Actress Marisa Tomei is 43. Comedian Fred Armisen (“Saturday Night Live”) is 41. Rapper Jay-Z is 38. Actor Kevin Sussman (“Ugly Betty”) is 37. Model Tyra Banks is 34. Country singer Lila McCann is 26.