Hilton quits Billboard awards over jokes
From Peter David

LOS ANGELES—Paris Hilton won’t joke about her peeps. The hotel heiress cancelled an appearance at next week’s Billboard Music Awards because she didn’t like the jokes written for her, according to a spokesman.
“It is my understanding that some satirical references ridiculed some of her peers,” her spokesman, Elliot Mintz, said in a statement. “Paris did not want to say anything that could appear hurtful or embarrassing about people she knows.”
Mintz said Hilton received a script Friday that contained material she found “objectionable.” Representatives for Hilton and the awards show could not come to an agreement about the script’s content so she decided to scrap the appearance, he said.
A call to Billboard was not returned early Saturday.
The Billboard Awards will be handed out Monday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. The show is scheduled to air live on Fox.
Meanwhile, Paris Hilton can’t always get what she wants. A California appeals court has overturned a lower court’s ruling in favour of the Simple Life star’s request to investigate diamond heiress Zeta Graff’s psychiatric records in preparation for Graff’s $10 million defamation suit against the celebutante.
Graff, an ex-girlfriend of Hilton’s ex-fiancé Paris Latsis, sued her rival in summer 2005, alleging that the hotel heiress planted false items about Graff in the New York Post and complaining that she suffered severe emotional distress as a result of Hilton’s “vicious lies.”
The report in question claimed that Graff went “berserk” after encountering Hilton and Latsis at a London club and tried to rip a $4 million diamond necklace from Hilton’s throat.
“This is a woman who is older and losing her looks, and she’s alone. She’s very unhappy,” an anonymous source said of Graff in the item.
Hilton’s former publicist Rob Shuter later said in a deposition that he fed the paper a story he said was dictated by his client. For her part, Hilton admitted that the encounter was false, but denied that she was behind the Post story appearing in print.
Following Hilton’s November 2005 deposition, Graff amended her original complaint, alleging that Hilton had perjured herself repeatedly.
In return, Hilton’s attorneys asked to peruse Graff’s psychiatric records to seek proof of the emotional distress she claimed to have suffered. Graff’s attorneys objected, stating that they had no plans to claim she had suffered distress beyond “the normal pain and suffering, namely shame, mortification or hurt feelings, that traditionally accompanies a claim for defamation.”