Scarred for life

Whitney Houston, singer and star of the hit film Bodyguard, in which she starred opposite Hollywood hunk Kevin Costner, may be scarred for life due to injuries suffered during a sailing holiday with her husband, singer Bobby Brown, off the island of Capri. While Houston claimed she suffered the two-inch deep cut on her face by hitting a rock while swimming, a member of the crew insisted the cut had taken place on board the boat.

The couple have had a tempestuous relationship with tales of rapper Brown's violence, womanising and drinking. While in Honolulu last year, witnesses stated that he had slapped her around, but Houston had refused to cooperate with a police inquiry. In 1995, Brown and two companions were charged for beating up a man in a nightclub brawl and he and his bodyguards were also charged with assault at another nightclub in 1992. On both occasions, the victims declined to press charges.And after the recent incident, Houston is likely to be left with a permanent scar. According to Keith Davenport, a consultant plastic surgeon: ``There is likely to be a permanent scar if it is on her cheek. She has coloured skin so it could be quite a dark scar.''

Wedding bells for Melissan

Martin Bell, the former television reporter-turned-politician, received more from the last elections than just a seat in the House of Commons. During his campaign, his 24-year-old daughter, Melissa, arrived in his constituency of Tatton, aiming to help her father win the seat from the disgraced Conservative MP, Neil Hamilton. But as she canvassed for her father in the Cheshire constituency, she fell in love with a fellow campaigner, 37-year-old Peter Brecken, a former Army officer. And wedding bells are in the offing as the two are planning a summer wedding in Tatton next year.

Winning back the crownn

Antonia Balint, the Hungarian beauty queen who was disqualified from the Miss Hungary title six years ago for posing naked, was re-awarded her crown recently after winning a court case against the organisers of the pageant. Balint and second-placed Timea Raba were both disqualified after the 1991 pageant when Hungarian newspapers printed photographs that had previously appeared in the men's magazine Lui and other publications. Erich Reil, who wrote the rules for Miss World, had asked Balint to hand back her prize money. The local organisers, Multimedia, then reclaimed the two contestants' prize money, naming third-placed Orsolya Michna the new Miss Hungary and sent her to the finals in London.``I felt it was a huge injustice at the time because there was nothing in the contract I signed which said that I'd done anything wrong,'' she says. In fact, she refused to hand over her sceptre and crown and locked them away in her parents' home for six years. Though she was also supposed to receive a Renault Clio, she never saw it.According to the recent court ruling, Multimedia had misled Balint at the time, and she has been awarded damages plus the price of a Renault car, plus interest, estimated at a total of $30,000 -- allowing her to take her crown and sceptre out of cold storage at last.

A new battle

Kate Prichard, a Labour councillor in London's Wands-worth Council, is fighting a battle of a different kind these days. At a recent council meeting, instead of the usual debates on housing and education, a furious debate broke out on whether her eight-month-old baby, Owen, should also be in attendance, fast asleep beside her. The new Conservative mayor, Tina Thompson, has rather old-fashioned ideas, and mother and baby were asked to leave. ``It's a rowdy and noisy place,'' declared the mayor, a mother of two herself. ``He should have been tucked up in bed. I'm sorry but I'm old-fashioned.'' And she has little sympathy for Prichard's desire to breastfeed the baby in the chamber. ``Mealtimes,'' she says, ``should not take place on a battleground.''Prichard, obviously, does not agree. Describing the mayor's ideas as ``Victorian'' and ``absolutely atrocious'' she says: ``The idea that babies should somehow be put away and be brought out only to look at them as pretty things is so out of date.''

Europe's top tenn

Winston Churchill, the wartime British prime minister, heads the list of top 10 Europeans of the century, according to a poll conducted by Europe Quarterly, a new publication based in Scotland. He is followed by Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, James Watson and Sigmund Freud. Also on the list were Pope John Paul II, Pablo Picasso and Andrei Sakharov, with Mikhail Gorbachev and the most controversial of the list -- the Viennese-British philosopher Karl Popper, whose work consisted of the demolition of so many grand theories, bringing up the rear.The list is proving somewhat controversial. No women figure in it -- Margaret Thatcher comes in at number 40, while no other woman was deemed worthy of inclusion -- and no French candidate, not even Charles de Gaulle, made the list. But what seems to be perturbing European intellectuals the most is the predominance of Dead White European Males on the list, barring a couple of persons. The question being asked is -- are there no ``great Europeans'' left?

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.