Months after she was involved in a fatal auto crash, star actress and nominee for Africa Movie Academy Award’s best actress of the year, Stephanie Okereke, says it was by God’s intervention that she is alive.

Speaking with Daily Sun in a private hospital in Port Harcourt, where she is recuperating, Okereke narrated her close shave with death when the car she was travelling in had an accident and burst into flames. She believes God wanted to use the accident to draw her closer to Him.

Premonition
Peace- Anyiam Fiberesima had assured us that we would have a nice time in Yenagoa. And because I was nominated for the best actress award, I wanted to be there. Though I was shooting a film in Owerri and initially had difficulties in securing permission to travel, I was eager to make the trip.
However, I had misgivings about going to Yenagoa. One minute, I would be interested in going, the next minute I would cancel it. Usually, when I am not certain about something I don’t move or go anywhere. But I broke that rule in this trip.

The accident
We were moving smoothly when suddenly a tanker with a failed brake hit another car which swerved across the road and hit the car that was conveying me. The car went up in flames and there was fire everywhere. I managed to get out of the car and attempted to run but discovered that my leg was broken. I started screaming before people came to my aid and moved me to the other side of the road.
The accident was like a movie to me. I thought I would wake up and see that it was a film. But I realized that it was real. This prompted me to ask God if this was the end.

But God told me it was the beginning. This was when I had the strength. While writhing in pain a news headline, like “Stephanie Okereke in ghastly motor accident,” flew across my mind. I then screamed that I should be taken to the hospital. People at the scene of the accident recognized me, but they watched helplessly until those I called the three good Samaritans brought me to Port Harcourt.
At the hospital, I asked if my leg was going to be amputated. But God assured me that all was well, which gave me the encouragement that I would face whatever situation that was on the way.
Immediately I saw the reaction of doctors, I knew I would survive it.

Lessons of survival
I was not even thinking of my acting career. I was thinking of how to survive. What occupied my mind after the accident was to get to the hospital. I did not even ask God why it happened, because instantly I realized that anything could happen to anybody. There is no exception, no matter how highly placed you are, and we all face the same risks. I realized that God was with me and probably he was trying to tell me something. Maybe I had been neglecting him.

The accident has drawn me closer to God. I have learnt to take life easy and not to be too much in a hurry.
My survival was not because I am an actress it was God’s favour.

Goodwill
I am actually touched that people could respond to me this way. The number of people that have visited my bedside is enormous. I don’t even know which word to use to express my appreciation.
The people I was shooting film with came the night of the accident and told me that they would suspend production until I am well. I was touched that in Nigeria a producer can do that.
School children came here to see me. Workers and bankers came. Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha was also here. The other day, Pastor Chris Okotie called to know my state of health.

Career
I am not making money lying down on this bed. Therefore, I want to go back to work. But I am eager to get well. Unfortunately, the injury on my leg has to do with bone and it would take a while to heal. I want to take my time so that I don’t come back here. When I am fully recovered I will return to my career.
Message to fans
I want to tell them that I love them so much. They have been wonderful. But they should not be crying or mourning because of what some people have said. I just want to thank them for their prayers. I promise to be back soon.

In her first interview since announcing her upcoming trip to Africa, Paris Hilton, known for her party girl hijinks and reality television show, “The Simple Life,” reveals details about the trip, her plans to take her life in a different direction and perhaps another reality TV show.“Before, my life was about having fun, going to parties-it was a fantasy. But when I had time to reflect, I felt empty inside. I want to leave a mark on the world,” she told Associate Editor Ramin Setoodeh in the October 22 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, October 15).

One of her first steps in shedding her old persona, aside from cutting her hair and scaling down her time partying, will be to take a five-day-long trip to Rwanda. She will be visiting schools and health-care clinics and even staying in decidedly un-Hilton-like accommodations.

“I’m scared, yeah. I’ve heard it’s really dangerous,” she says. “I’ve never been on a trip like this before.” She says she’ll resort to eating candy bars if that’s what it takes to get her through any foreign-cuisine issues. She’ll be traveling with a little-known children’s charity called “Playing for Good.”

One familiar aspect of the trip will be the camera chronicling it all. “She’s using her celebrity and the cameras that follow her for the good of humanity,” says Scott Lazerson, the organization’s founder. Let’s not forget the good of Lazerson, and Hilton. Turns out that he’s filming the trip in hopes of selling it as a reality show called “The Philanthropist,” featuring various selfless celebrities who rescue the world’s poor.

Unlike other celebrities her age that have run into trouble with the law, Hilton has been smart about how she handled the situation, Setoodeh reports. When she wasn’t crying during her stint in jail this summer, she spent her time studying the script for “Repo!” “I was auditioning and practicing in my cell,” she says. “I had nothing else to do.”

In “Repo! The Genetic Opera!” Hilton plays an heiress with an addiction to plastic surgery. Perhaps in an attempt to distance herself from her character, she plays the role in a black wig and prosthetic, Nicole Kidman-like nose.

“You should have seen me yesterday,” she told Setoodeh, who was on the set. “I had a melted face all cut up with scars. I looked horrible. It was so embarrassing.” “Repo!” director Darren Lynn Bousman says he wouldn’t have it any other way. “I don’t want her to look like Paris Hilton, because I want people to know she got this role because she can act.”

JAMES WIGNEY discovers that you only need look beyond the `drug called celebrity¿ to realise fame has never changed James Blunt.

JAMES Blunt has a drug problem. But despite living on the Spanish island of Ibiza, the clubbing capital of the world, it’s not the illegal powder and pills kind that troubles the British singersongwriter.

It’s ‘‘the curious drug called celebrity’’. Blunt’s story is well known — as well it may be given the number of times he has told it while promoting his smash debut album.

The former soldier with a demo tape and a dream hit the jackpot with Back to Bedlam which, championed by Elton John and superproducer Linda Perry, has become the biggest selling album of the new millennium, with an extraordinary 14 million albums sold.

While the trappings of his sudden celebrity have brought him wealth , awards and adulation, he is only too aware of the flip side to fame: loss of privacy and a swift, and sometimes vitriolic, backlash to his music.

He is almost as well known as a fixture at the world’s hottest nightspots, with a string of gorgeous women on his arm as he is for the rock/pop that made him a star.

His mega-hit You’re Beautiful was this year voted the most irritating song of all time and his last name became rhyming slang for a rude word.

His musings on the topic influence his album All the Lost Souls for release on Saturday.

As he sits in a luxury hotel not far from his island hideaway home, he speaks of his regular appearances on the gossip pages with a weary acceptance.

“I guess what is interesting is that now you see a picture and think that must be all new to me, but I was perfectly capable of a good party beforehand,” he says.

“It’s just that no one photographed me.

“In Los Angeles (in 2004 to record Back To Bedlam) I went to clubs every night, but no one photographed me then.

“In this past year when I recorded All the Lost Souls, I went out to a club almost every night.

“But now people say, ‘Wow, you have embraced your fame, you really go out a lot’, but life hasn’t really changed for me.”

Three years of talking about himself, coupled with a natural British reserve and rather charming line of deprecation, has made him a master of deflection.

Some of the famous faces he has been seen with include Lindsay Lohan, Czech model Petra Nemcova and his supposed current squeeze, holistic therapist Mika Simmons.

Just last week he performed a duet with Paris Hilton, supposedly another ex, at a party in Malibu.

But true to form, he’s not biting on any of that. “I’ve always been a private person and kept my relationships that way, be they friends or family or more,” he says.

“It’s not necessarily something I enjoy getting into that human construct of fame. If anyone should be celebrities it should be doctors and nurses and other people who do jobs that save people’s lives.”

Blunt’s first album connected with audiences throughout the world through the deeply personal lyrics of songs such as You’re Beautiful and Goodbye My Lover.

All his songs are written from his experience and relationships and there are plenty more examples on All the Lost Souls.

But it’s his observations on the maelstrom around him that make for the most compelling listening.

Songs such as One of the Brightest Stars, Give Me Some Love, Annie and I Can’t Hear the Music hint at his quest to stay grounded and his bemusement at the excesses and shallowness of the music industry.

“I really feel like it has been a social experiment rather than anything else,” he says.

“I’m a human being and I’m no greater than the next person. Yet, being thrust into a spotlight, I can see reality as it is and perceived reality — the one reported in the media. To see a shift in people’s responses to me the real person, after something they read about in the perceived reality, has been really interesting as an experiment.

“And I’ve written about that because a lot of our life is focused on that. We often define success in life through fame and money and wealth. I think fame has changed the way a lot of people respond to me.”

In the final song on the album, Blunt sings in the chorus, “If I can’t hear the music and the audience is gone, I will dance here on my own”.

It sums up his approach to making music, out of a need to do it rather than for commercial gain. As such, Blunt says it has been easy to divorce himself from the pressure of following up such a huge success as Back to Bedlam.

“I had to let go of that pressure for a moment and get back what I really do,” he says.

“And the core of that is not about impressing people, getting good reviews or selling any number of albums — the core of it is to be expressive through music and to enjoy and really have a passion for it as well.”

Nor is Blunt fazed by the critical backlash, which has seen him savaged particularly in the press of his homeland as being bland and middle of the road.

He accepts that music is subjective (“if you stick your head above the parapet, you are going to get shot at”) as well as the inevitable trade-off between credibility and commercial success.

“You sell 100 albums and you are underground, sell 100,000 albums and you are mainstream and some people don’t like mainstream,” he says.

“So it’s not necessarily the album that is mainstream, it’s just some people’s definition of how visible it is. There is nothing I could have done to expect that or necessarily change that so I am pretty relaxed in the way I approach it.”

Having a hit album and an established fan base allowed Blunt to trust his instincts and spread his wings while writing All the Lost Souls. But more so he credits his band, honed by 2½ years of touring, and return producer Tom Rothrock, for the sound of the CD, which he describes as “a ’70s rock album”, inspired by singersongwriters of the period such as Cat Stevens, Paul Simon, Elton John and Lou Reed.

“I wrote the first album on a piano and a guitar, thinking I would always play them on a piano and a guitar. Without the knowledge that I might have a band and without the knowledge that I might have an audience,” he says.

“It was really fun to write songs and know that I could mess around with a sense of freedom. Rather than just the one instrument I was thinking of I had five straight off.

“It’s five guys in a band playing songs that have a ’70s feel. We recorded it as best we could in that kind of ’70s way — there is very little between us as musicians and our instruments and getting it down on tape.

“We tried to catch it in an honest way. You can hear skin against strings and I think that’s why it has that ’70s vibe.

“The five of us sat in a room when we rehearsed these songs and we tried to capture a performance of 10 songs that are relevant to each other, that take you on a journey from A to B.”

All the Lost Souls is released on Saturday.

Rapper 50 Cent has reignited his feud with Kanye West, insisting the hip-hop star “sucks.” The rap rivals have been trading insults since they realized their new albums would be released on the same day next month.It was thought they had put their differences aside after performing a song together at a New York gig recently.

However, 50 Cent – real name Curtis Jackson – has reignited the feud, reports Allhiphop.com.

He says, “It’s friendly feud but its not possible for Kanye to beat me. It’s the teddy bear vs. the gorilla. Kanye sucks. I’m going to be honest, he sounds like a robot.”

50 Cent said he’d hang up his mic if Kanye West’s new album outsold his. He might have spoken too soon.

Critics are raving about West’s Graduation - and its already sold 200,000 more units than Fiddy’s Curtis since yesterday’s same-day release in the US.

The hip-hop egomaniacs were pitted against each other when, last month, Fiddy said on http://sohh.com/

“If Kanye West sells more records than 50 Cent on September 11, I’ll no longer (perform) music. I’ll write music and work with my other artists but I won’t put out any more solo albums.”

Associated Press said on the strength of the albums, West could claim a “landslide victory.”

“… Graduation still sound like a logical step forward. Yet Curtis sounds like Fiddy is standing in place … Fiddy’s outsized cockiness sounds like a comfortable artist repeating himself, afraid to tinker with his winning formulas.”

Ryan Dombal, from Pitchfork, gave Fiddy just 4.9 stars out of 10.

“in direct opposition to Kanye’s fearless, risk-taking, Graduation, 50’s new album is a blatant rehash – a bottom-line sequel that insults the same audience it mildlessly panders to.”

Respected sie HiphopDX said: “50 cent may be a superstar, but Curtis is pedestrian.”

But critics heaped praise on West’s Graduation.

Rolling Stone gave the album 4.5 stars out of five, saying: “This is an album that you first like, then love.”

HiphopDX echoed the sentiment.

“Kanye has created another must-have album that will continuously bump on your CD players and mp3’s for months to come.”

Kanye West won in a landslide in his face-off with fellow rapper 50 Cent. West’s Graduation outsold his rival’s Curtis 957,000 to 691,000 in the first week of release, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures.

The two discs topped Billboard’s albums chart, followed by country star Kenny Chesney’s Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates, which sold 387,000 copies.

Graduation’s sales are the largest since 50 Cent’s The Massacre opened with 1.1 million copies in March 2005 and the first album to surpass 800,000 since West’s Late Registration sold 860,000 copies in August 2005. Graduation also set a first-week record with 133,000 digital downloads.

“It’s a great day for hip-hop and for artistry because people in hip-hop emulate success,” says Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, president and CEO of West’s label, Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam. “It signals that with the right amount of attention and a credible album, there is still an interest in buying physical CDs.”

Jay-Z says West got a boost in street credibility with defiant single Can’t Tell Me Nothing. His Daft Punk-fueled Stronger did well on rhythmic and pop radio stations. Most reviewers favored Graduation over Curtis.

Despite all the attention leading up to the Sept. 11 releases, it was the quality of music, not the hype, that drove sales, says Island Def Jam chairman Antonio “L.A.” Reid.

He says the date was chosen to take advantage of West’s participation in MTV’s Video Music Awards two nights earlier.

And while the rivalry got people talking, such pairings are unlikely to become routine.

Competition is “invigorating to the participants and to the spectators,” Reid says. “But if people think this is a new way of releasing records, they are going to be sadly mistaken.”

The public was fascinated in this case thanks to the outsized personalities of the controversial rappers. For weeks, the debate raged on radio, TV, magazines and blogs.

Early on, 50 Cent, who previously had outsold West by a wide margin, declared he would quit making solo records if he finished second. He has since backed off, saying he has another album in the works (Before I Self-Destruct) and blaming his label, Interscope Records, for not promoting Curtis well.

A new version of 50’s hit I Get Money (Billion Dollar Remix), featuring Jay-Z and Diddy, was released Monday. “We’re still competing, but we’re not enemies,” says Jay-Z.

This week’s numbers were good news for the ailing record industry. West, 50 Cent and Chesney sold 2.04 million albums combined to surpass total sales for the previous week’s top 200 albums (2 million). Still, overall sales are down 9% compared with the same week last year.