ITV chief eyes the only gay in LA

The BBC is set to foil a daring raid by Michael Grade, the ITV boss, to poach Matt Lucas and David Walliams, the Little Britain duo who have been absent from UK screens while they transfer their cast of grotesques to America.

Little Britain USA premieres next month on HBO, the cable channel that launched Ali G into the American comedy consciousness. The lure of the US means that Lucas and Walliams have not yet delivered a promised new series under their £6 million BBC deal. If ITV could snap up the HBO series, featuring new characters such as Phyllis, a barking-mad dog owner who hears voices from her pooch, it would set the scene for a £20 million offer to secure the duo as the next Ant and Dec.

Simon Fuller, the American Idol impresario who is guiding Little Britain USA, said: “There is a lot of UK interest but Matt and David feel a loyalty to the BBC.” The pair want the series to air here in October before the best clips drive millions of viewers to YouTube.

Storming up the Amazon presale list is A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud, available next month for a hefty £42. The surge is perhaps because the tome contains the Queen guitarist Brian May’s PhD in astrophysics and customers who made this investment also bought Freddie Mercury, a Life in His Own Words. The thesis documents the building of a pressure-scanned Fabry-Perot spectrometer, equipped with a photomultiplier and pulse-counting electronics. Another one bites the dust particle. Here’s looking at you, Kid . . .

The Face: Kid Rock

The Southern boogie of Sweet Home Alabama has become the unlikely soundtrack to the British summer after Kid Rock, the pin-up for blue-collar, beer-chugging, redneck rockers hit the No 1 spot.

A proud flier of the Confederate flag, the Detroit-born singer, 37, spotted a gap for an artist who lays down raps hymning the trailer-trash lifestyle over a Seventies rock and country backing.

Walking it like he talks it, Rock, born Robert Ritchie, enjoyed a whirlwind marriage to Pamela Anderson, prompting a brawl at the MTV Awards with Tommy Lee, her ex-husband. A dust-up in an Atlanta Waffle House forced Rock on to an anger management course.

A 23-million-selling star who visits the troops in Iraq, he has no interest in pushing musical boundaries but sincerely believes in the power of whiskey, a smoke and a good ol’ boys guitar riff.

Morrissey is a difficult chap to throw a birthday party for. Reminded by Israel’s Time Out that his 50th is approaching, the Pope of Mope was asked if he was planning to mark the occasion. “No, not especially,” he replied. Not even a night watching Leonard Cohen documentaries? “Maybe a party,” Morrissey concedes. “And who are you going to invite?” “Nobody.”

David Tennant, currently wowing them in the RSC’s new Hamlet, spots a Dalek voice helmet in the crowd. Fans have been told that Tennant will not sign any Doctor Who memorabilia during his Stratford-upon-Avon run. “It just turns into a sci-fi convention,” complains the Time Lord. An ominous vision of his future?

Postscript

Billy Bob Thornton, on learning that his co-stars in The Informers were Winona Ryder and Mickey Rourke, told Total Film magazine: “You gotta worry when I’m the sanest person on set.”

Santa Claus will be rocking up at Harrods today to unveil an eight-tonne sand sculpture while wearing only a Victorian bathing suit. Is he bored?

How many BBC staff completed an Olympics planning conference call last week? Only 472 - cutbacks, you see.

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