STONE'S THROW?

There are two stories going around about the recent breakup of the three-month-long romance between Basic Instinct's ice-pick queen, Sharon Stone, 34, and country star Dwight Yoakum, 35.

In one version, which was reported elsewhere, Yoakam dropped Stone so he could return to his old girlfriend.

Our sources tell a different story—starting with the claim that it was Stone who did the dumping, not Yoakam.

Furthermore, one source says, Stone is already seeing Chris Peters, the 23-year-old musician son of producer Jon Peters and his ex-wife, actress Lesley Ann Warren.

THE BABY DID IT

Actress Ellen Barkin and her husband, actor Gabriel Byrne (Miller's Crossing), are expecting their second child in early December. (Son Jack is 2.)

Barkin will continue filming This Boy's Life, a drama costarring Robert De Niro. through this month, but the pregnancy means she has withdrawn from Romeo Is Bleeding, a thriller that Peter Medak (The Krays) is set to direct for Miramax. No word yet on who has been cast to replace her.

After finishing Boy's Life, Barkin will return to the couple's home in Bedford, N.Y., to await the baby's birth.

MADONNA WHO?

When Madonna was in Portland, Oreg., last month shooting Body of Evidence, a courtroom thriller with Willem Dafoe due in October, the local paper, The Oregonian, ran a contest called Madonna Watch, in which the paper invited readers to share their snapshots of the singer-actress.

It received a whopping three entries, one of which was a picture of a statue of the biblical Madonna. "We gave a party, and nobody came," says Ellen Heltzel, the editor who initiated the contest.

Oh, yeah. The Madonna statue pic won the prize, a $50 gift certificate to a local vintage-clothing store.

JIGGLE REMOVAL

First came Charlene Tilton's Abdomenizer. Next, Suzanne Somers weighed in, so to speak, with the ubiquitous and fascinating Thigh-Master. Inspired by those successes, exercise-equipment moguls sent up a cry: Give us stars to match our products!

The latest to respond is none other than Farrah Fawcett, who, to hear Fred Reinstein tell it, was jiggling a tad in the wrong places. "She had a tiny bit of cellulite" on the back of her thighs, says Reinstein, who co-owns a company that makes the Exerstik, a curved bar used in overall toning-up exercises. Fawcett tried the bar and lost the flab, he says; now she'll begin selling the Exerstik and another of Reinstein's products, a high-powered massager, via TV ads that will begin airing in June.

Why's Farrah doing all this? "She has been guaranteed a percentage of sales," says Reinstein.