Brandy readies for first child -- a girl

Olympian news services

Originally published Wednesday, March 27, 2002

NEW YORK -- Brandy didn't want to wait nine months to find out whether she would have a boy or a girl.

The 23-year-old singer-actress, who's five months pregnant with her first child, is going to have a girl.

"I always wanted to know what it was, so I can get the names together, and so when I do the baby shower, we know what to have," Brandy told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "I'm planning a nursery, so now that I know that it's a female, I can plan it around the female energy and things like that."

Earlier this year, Brandy revealed that she married music producer Robert Smith in a private ceremony in 2001.

MENDENHALL, Miss. -- Former syndicated talk show host Gary Collins is free on bond after being arrested on suspicion of drunken driving, Simpson County authorities said.

Sheriff J.C. Dillon said Tuesday that Collins was arrested Sunday morning after a deputy stopped his vehicle on U.S. 49 north of Mendenhall. He refused a DUI test.

Collins, who gave his address as Beverly Hills, Calif., and his age as 64, could not be contacted Tuesday for comment.

The actor, who was the host of "Hour Magazine" in the 1980s and appeared in 2000's beauty pageant comedy "Beautiful," is married to 1959's Miss America, Mary Ann Mobley of Brandon.

Dillon said officers received a report that someone was driving erratically on the busy north-south highway that connects Jackson with the Gulf Coast.

Collins was taken to the Simpson County Jail and released on a $900 bond about an hour later, police records show.

LAS VEGAS -- John Wayne Bobbitt, who made national headlines after his then-wife Lorena Bobbitt was charged with cutting off his penis in 1993, remarried on his 35th birthday.

Bobbitt married Joanna Ferrell, 31, during a 30-minute ceremony at the Little Church of the West on the Las Vegas Strip, said chapel owner Greg Smith. Fewer than 10 guests attended the noon ceremony Saturday.

Bobbitt was thrust into the national spotlight in 1993 when his wife was charged with cutting off his penis while he slept. Lorena Bobbitt argued she had been the victim of an abusive husband. She was found innocent by reason of insanity.

After successful surgery to reattach his penis, Bobbitt made appearances on "The Howard Stern Show" and has made a number of adult films.

In 1997, Bobbitt moved to Nevada, where he has worked in a brothel and as a bartender and tow truck operator.

NEW YORK -- John Tesh seems like a mild-mannered musician -- until you ask him what he thinks about NBC Sports commentator Bob Costas.

"I think Bob Costas needs a spanking," the former newsman told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "I have nothing nasty to say about most people, but just the unbridled drubbing that he drummed up for me, it was just unnecessary. ... I'm not a big fan."

Tesh, 49, is still bitter about comments he said Costas made about his much-panned stint as a gymnastics commentator during the 1996 Summer Olympics on NBC.

"On 'The Tonight Show,' he said, 'As an Olympic commentator, John Tesh is a great piano player," Tesh recalled.

"He was a teammate. It would be like the catcher on the baseball team talking about what a jerk the pitcher was. It's just an unwritten rule that you don't do that."

Tesh said he got an apology from Costas, but he apparently didn't think much of it. When asked whether he watched Costas during the recent Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Tesh said: "I turn the sound down when he's on. ... I think he's a fine broadcaster, but he's a brat."

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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