Fat Controller Has Heart Attack, And Other Shocking News

Children's Television, the Gossip Column

FAT CONTROLLER MAY NEED TO GO ON A DIET News from England - the beloved Fat Controller who works with Thomas the Tank Engine and all his loveable friends has been rushed to hospital following a heart attack! Looks like he's going to have to lay off those chips and flake now! And seems while the fat guy's away, the trains will play, because news from several media outlets has it that Thomas and Gordon have been having it off with one another in a set of saucy sexcapades. Says Gordon from an interview with Who magazine two weeks ago: "I don't see anything morally wrong with two old buffers coupling with one another. I mean, there's nothing more simple or natural than two powerful steam engines shunting together along the tracks. Happens all the time!" Yowsers! Keep it in the train closet, boys!

DOUBLE RUBBLE TROUBLE! This news just out of Bedrock - Wilma Flinstone has been photographed at the Prehistoric Prenatal Clinic. Is toddler Pebbles about to have a little bro' or sis'? One thing's for sure: Fred's not going to like this news! According to our secret source, he and Wilma haven't been on speaking terms for months, every since a one-night stand with Barney Rubbles - that turned into a one-year-and-counting fling! But we can't help wondering, if Wilma really is pregnant, how does she keep that wonderful figure?

PASHING IN THE TRASH CAN! Sesame Street seductress Gina, fresh from her flirtation with Tony Soprano, is now apparently sleeping with none other than Oscar the Grouch! Despite the so-not-rightness of this couple, we think that it might have something to do with Gina still having feelings for Tony and wanting to get back at him! By all accounts, Oscar is chuffed! "Hey, the most I usually have to look forward to is having some puppeteer shove his hand up my bleeper," said Oscar to reporters the other day. "Now RACK OFF!"

ARE THE BOOH-BAHS THE NEW BRAT PACK? Unlikely television success story the Booh-Bahs, spies tell us, have hit the town hard! For the past four nights, the Booh-Bahs have been touring through America with their companions The Hoobs, and rumours abound that they've been taking LSD, cocaine, heroin, and every other drug, from hard to soft! Seems all that money they spent on a luxury celebrity recovery clinic on the Rhine River in Germany have come to nothing! But personally, it's not the Booh-Bahs we're worrying about; it's The Wiggles. Why is Jeff never able to wake up? And why the heck do they wiggle so much, anyway? We think we can smell a waccy-baccy story in our next gossip column!

BANANAS IN PYJAMAS ARE SCHTUMMING DOWN THE STAIRS ... But did we say Bananas in Pyjamas? We meant Bananas OUT of Pyjamas! Apparently the increasingly weird ABC children's stars have joined a mysterious nudist cult operating out of Australia's Northern Territory. We always knew they wanted to get those pyjamas off!

SMARTY PARTY Spotted at parties this week: Red Smarty, Gwyneth Paltrow, and the Koala Brothers at a nightclub in New York; Ronald McDonald, Hamburgler, and Hungry Jack at the opening of an exclusive Chicago restaurant; and 1990s television star Linka, from long-running series Captain Planet, accompanied by a mysterious stranger, outside a theatre in London. Obviously she's got over her on-again off-again affair with Captain Planet!

NEXT WEEK! Find out what Fifi REALLY gets up to with those Flowertots, and we reveal the SHOCKING SECRET that Big Ted has been hiding from Little Ted all these years!