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Pandora

Monday 31 May 1999 23:02 BST
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PRODUCT WARNING is the new party game in Poshopolis. "If people were products and came with statutory disclaimer labels, what would yours be?" (Pandora's is at the end of the column). The game's a spin-off from "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)", the Internet prank which somehow became a pop song, released this week, that's shaping up as the summer's surprise hit.

ANOTHER TRIUMPH for The Guardian. It promoted itself in The Observer with a competition to "Win tickets to all England's super-six games". Sponsors Scrumpy Jack must be particularly proud of the paper's prescience in declaring "We know they have qualified". The Guardian and England's cricket XI: well-matched or what?

ANNA MONTANARO (pictured), the new girl who's just assumed the lead role of Velma Kelly in Chicago, is half-Italian and half-German. Maybe that's why she's the first West End star to get paid in euros: 25 per cent of her pay packet, apparently. Is this a hedge? If so, it's currently not too smart. Oh, and in an unusual melange of politics and showbiz, negotiations continue with C4 to have Montanaro, along with Frederike Haas (who transferred with Anna from Chicago in Vienna), present coverage of the Euro elections on 10 June. The duo plan to sing "Ode to Joy" in a Chicago-style outfit made of euros. What's the competition? The well- offered Dimbleboys? Or the fresh West End girls? A real no-brainer.

TWO WORDS explain why Day Trading can't happen here (yet?): stamp duty.

GOOD NEWS and bad news for David Yelland, editor of The Sun. Yelland is a Manchester City supporter - an eagle-eyed reader spotted him in a brotherly embrace at Wembley as Edghill hit the City winner. The bad news? Jimmy Greaves's column in the Saturday edition of his paper. This bile- dripping, two-fingered salute to German football should merit not just red faces but red cards. Of Lothar Matthaus, the Bayern veteran, Greavesie comments: "I can't forget his posing strut after scoring that final penalty against England in Euro '96. What goes around comes around." What may be going around The Sun's sports desk is the realisation that it was not Matthaus who scored that final penalty - but Andreas Moller. Are you watching, Jimmy Greaves?

THE NUMBERS say that the odds that a legal anti-depressant will alleviate severe depression are one in two. The chance that a placebo will? One in three.

EWAN McGREGOR and road safety - are they on nodding terms? In the July issue of Superbike, the Scots star is pictured aboard a scooter clutching a pint of Guinness: not the clearest message about drinking and driving, is it? The brewery, incidentally, has hired five liveried black cabs with white roofs (representing the pint head) to roam London's streets from Wednesdays to Fridays between 5pm and 8pm. Passengers in these rare rides are surprised to be told that their trip is free. One group in Soho just managed to pip Chris Evans to one of these black-and-white buses. Hell, if that isn't a pretext to sink a pint, what is?

BILL WYMAN, the former Rolling Stone, says that he still sees the band's drummer, Charlie Watts. "I saw him three mornings ago, actually," Bill reveals in a recent interview. "He came knocking on my door for a cup of tea." You're a saint, Bill. Spare change?

HOLLY JOHNSON is a silly Wegg-Prosser. The petulant queen, a singer with the well-knackered has-beens Frankie Goes to Hollywood, threw a conniption because "he hadn't approved" John Stoddart's 1982 picture of the band - so he's refusing to attend the National Portrait Gallery's Icons of Pop party later this week. Johnson's loss is our toss: Bob Geldof, Suggs, Neil Tennant, Adam Faith and Bryan Ferry (all have RSVP'd) will be among those somehow picking up the shattered pieces of their lives and partying on.

PRODUCT WARNING: Pandora's? "Contains explosives. When not in use, store in a cool place."

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e-mail: pandora@ independent.co.uk

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