Sounds like they had their Phil
Dr. Phil has left the building – and not a moment too soon for some of the people living near television’s Dr. Phil House.
Filming has wrapped up at the L.A. house where troubled guests lived together for a weekly segment on psychologist Phil McGraw‘s popular “Dr. Phil” TV show, following a chorus of complaints from neighbors.
Residents included a violence-plagued family, assorted addicts and a fat and thin man who despised each other.
“We could hear screaming, yelling and cursing over there at all hours,” said next-door neighbor Tom Griep.
Crews even hacked down a hedge on Griep’s property line to install a 10-foot-wide portable toilet for the 600-pound man, who couldn’t fit in the home’s indoor bathroom.
“Our neighborhood was taken away from us,” said Evalena Easter, 63. “He’s become a high-end Jerry Springer.”
Other Dr. Phil houses are planned, said a show spokesman who declined to give details.
Over his dead body
Anna Nicole Smith‘s lead attorney in the Bahamas has quit, citing disagreements over strategy and concerns about her conduct.
Michael Scott said he was unsettled by Smith’s decision to exchange informal wedding vows with her boyfriend and longtime lawyer Howard K. Stern even before she made funeral arrangements for her 20-year-old son.
A Nassau funeral home is still holding Daniel Smith‘s embalmed body while awaiting further instructions. He died Sept. 10 of an apparent accidental drug overdose while visiting his mother in a hospital where she had just given birth to a daughter, supposedly Stern’s.
He’ll be a material boy
Meanwhile, a man in Malawi claims Madonna has adopted his son.
The pop star’s reps have repeatedly denied that she planned to adopt during her trip to the impoverished African nation to work on several projects to help AIDS orphans.
Yohame Banda says Madonna has adopted 1-year-old David, whose mother died a month after childbirth.
“I am very, very happy, because as you can see there is poverty in this village, and I know he will be very well looked after in America.”
SpongeBob, meet Ziggy
Thanks to his daughter, rocker David Bowie has agreed to voice a cartoon character on an upcoming “SpongeBob SquarePants.”
Bowie says that his 6-year-old daughter is a huge fan and they watch the show together.
“We, the family, are thrilled,” he wrote in his blog. “Nothing else need happen this year – well, this week anyway.”
Ellen’s seal of approval
Talk host Ellen DeGeneres is lending her name to Dawn Saves Wildlife, a new Web-based program to educate visitors about how they can help save the environment and protect aquatic animals from pollution.
It includes an animated seal, named after DeGeneres, that promotes wildlife preservation as it shimmies along a cartoon seashore.
The birthday bunch
Comedian-activist Dick Gregory is 74. Opera singer Luciano Pavarotti is 71. News correspondent Chris Wallace is 59. Actor Hugh Jackman is 38. Fiddler Martie Maguire (the Dixie Chicks) is 37. Actor Kirk Cameron is 36.