Gossip / Rumors

Rumors of the Lachey/Burke affair began two years ago when the d-listers were partnered on "Dancing with the Stars" but have recently resurfaced. Cheryl Burke's rep denies the two danced the horizontal mambo.

According to a crazazy report by the New York Post, most of the Jackson clan isn't fairing too well financially -- some of the Jackson boys are even still living at home! Check out a rundown of the current state of events.

TMZ tried to get her to open up for Drew Lachey questions outside WeHo hotspot Foxtail, but his "Dancing"/rumored hook-up partner kept her mouth shut. For the record, her rep says it's all BS.

Bobby "Brokedown" Brown has hit a new low. Now he's stiffing the working man!

We hear Brown was in St. Louis for a concert a few weeks ago, and hired a chauffeur to transport him and his entourage from the airport to their hotel.

Sources say Bobby and crew enlisted in the help of a couple of airport skycaps to load his massive luggage. Bobby's brother, el cheapo Tommy, asks the chauffeur, "So, do you guys take care of the skycaps or what?" The shocked driver informed the Brown crew that it's not a part of his job description to pay for skycaps -- so we're told Bobby asked for a loan!

Our source says Brown asked, "Hey, man, do you have like ten or twenty dollars on you?" Evidently with all the people traveling with Bobby -- they didn't have enough cash to scrape up 20 bucks!

The driver loaned Brown the money, and dropped him off at his hotel -- but our source says Bobby never came back down to pay his debt!

Whitney must be laughing all the way to the ATM.

But no one would be surprised if Best, renowned on more than one continent for douchebaggery, was responsible for hawking a tape. What do you think?

BTW, It's a felony in California to surreptitiously record someone where there's a reasonable expectation of privacy.

UPDATE: A rep for Best tells Us it's not him,

Will Smith says just because he's a Friend of Tom doesn't mean he's a Scientologist ... not that there's anything wrong with that.

Smith tells Rush & Molloy, "You don't have to be Jewish to be a friend of Steven Spielberg. You don't have to be a Muslim to be a friend of Muhammad Ali. And you don't have to be a Scientologist to be a friend of Tom Cruise." So what is Smith, anyway? "I am a Christian. I am a student of all religions."

During a recent radio interview in Stockholm, urban diva Rihanna made it clear why she sticks to singing and not commenting on foreign policy -- and an umbrella doesn't cover up this one!

According to a Nordic TMZ source, the sultry songstress claims to love South American** and Thai food, but "doesn't like Mexican or Asian food."

Clearly Rihanna- anna- anna thrived more in her music classes than geography. Shut up and eat!

**Clearly we are aware that Mexico is not in South America.

Ivanka Trump came to TMZ to clear up a touchy little subject -- namely, a rumor that's been floating around that she makes her assistant touch up the nails on her wax figure every week at Madame Tussauds in NYC's Times Square.

One lit-tle, itsy-bitsy problem, she tells us: "I don't even have a wax figure! My mother and father have wax figures, but I don't." She tells us she hardly has time to get a real manicure and pedicure, with her various day jobs, much less trouble -- and, let's face it, totally demean -- her assistant with such a ridiculous task.

Lanky Jaslene Gonzalez, "America's Next Top Model" cycle 8 winner, was flat-out denied from Snoop Dogg's "Ego Trippin" album release party at Touch in NYC last night. The Covergirl tried to be easy, breezy, and beautiful - but after posing and strutting for paps, Miss "ANTM" was still not allowed past the velvet rope. Awkward!

Jermaine Dupri and Snoop Dogg both arrived after the incident, and pimps walked right into the club. Well ... it was the Doggfather's party.

When asked about the situation - Lizzie Grubman, Jaslene's publicist, told TMZ "Why wouldn't they let a beautiful supermodel in -- it's news to me!"

Is skunky Amanda Overmeyer's time in L.A. coming to an end? The "American Idol" contestant took a can of Aquanet to her blond weave hair, then went shopping on Melrose over the weekend.

Our spies saw the "singer" -- complete with spiked out bangs -- browsing for winter coats.

The glamazon laughed off the rumors while standing next to beau Djimon Hounsou, then asked, playfully, "Which girlfriend?" But -- just like that -- KLS seemed to turn diva anew, requesting the paps' business cards, before taking down our photog's phone number.

The hard-ass British chef who stars in Food Network's "Dinner: Impossible" is finding that spinning tall tales about one's background is no cakewalk -- and now the network says it's investigating his alleged misrepresentations. Oh, deah.

Robert Irvine has claimed all over the place that he'd helped design Prince Charles and Princess Di's wedding cake, among other things. But after an oddly thorough investigation by the St. Petersburg Times, Irvine admits he didn't really bake it -- or have anything to do with it ... and that's just the icing.

"It's unfortunate if Robert embellished the extent of his culinary experiences," said a Food Network rep. "We are investigating the matter and taking the necessary steps to ensure the accuracy of all representations of Robert on Food Network and foodnetwork.com."

There's a story going around that Eric Dane -- aka Dr. McSteamy on "Grey's Anatomy" -- may have sold the painful story of a skin lesion on his lip to OK! magazine.

But a source close to Dane tells TMZ that all that lip service -- painful though it was to recount -- was given freely, and that no money changed hands. Dane told OK! that the malignant lesion was frozen off by liquid nitrogen -- ouch -- and that he lost 10 pounds after the procedure, because it's difficult for him eat. Nurse!