ENGAGED: Elton John, 58, and his partner, Canadian film producer David Furnish, 42, plan to marry later this year, once gay partnerships become legal in England on Dec. 5, the musician tells Britain's Mirror newspaper. "Meeting David has been the greatest thing to happen to me," said John. His spokesman, Gary Farrow, added: "A date and venue has not been set, so it may not be until next year." The two first met in 1993 when a mutual friend invited them to dinner.
PLASTICIZED: Clay Aiken's latest release is a piece of plastic, with the recording star now starring on a MasterCard debit card that features his face, the financial company has announced on its Web site. MasterCard calls its card MYplash, apparently an acronym for "my plastic cash," the New York Post reports. "The difference between MYplash and a normal bankcard is that MYplash has your son's/daughter's favorite recording artist on it," says MasterCard. Now, if only your bills could go to Aiken at the end of the month.
DIED: Beloved British actor Sir John Mills, 97 – known to friends and colleagues as Johnny – died Saturday at his home in suburban London. He had been ill for about a month. An Oscar winner for playing the village idiot in David Lean's 1979 Irish epic, Ryan's Daughter, Mills also created memorable roles as Pip in Lean's classic 1947 adaptation of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations and as the mousy cobbler Will Mossop in Lean's 1954 Hobson's Choice. Americans also knew him as the father of actresses Hayley Mills (Pollyanna) and Juliet Mills (TV's The Nanny and the Professor.) They survive him, as do a son Jonathan Mills, a screenwriter, and Sir John's wife since 1941, novelist Mary Hayley Bell.
PLEADED: Aidan Quinn, 46, pleaded guilty to drunken driving while he was in Maine for the filming of the HBO movie Empire Falls, (a two-part series to debut May 28-29), the Associated Press reports. Quinn didn't appear in Kennebec County Superior Court Thursday, where his plea was entered through his lawyer. The actor was ordered to pay a $500 fine, and his driver's license was suspended for 90 days. The guilty plea came as a last resort following unsuccessful motions to suppress evidence and to have the case – which stemmed from an October 2003 arrest – thrown out of court.
SOLD: A microphone that sat on late TV host Johnny Carson's Tonight Show desk in the 1960s and '70s has been bought by an anonymous bidder for $50,787 – twice the estimated price at Dallas's Heritage Galleries. The microphone, salvaged by chief boom operator Stan Sweeney, still has the words "Johnny's mic ... not Ed's ... not Fred's..." on a label in reference to show cohost Ed McMahon and producer Fred de Cordova. Carson, 79, died in January. Heritage Galleries reportedly plans to auction Carson's desk later this year.
HONORED: Movie critic Roger Ebert, 62, will get his Hollywood Walk of Fame Star on June 23, says the city's Chamber of Commerce. Says Ebert: "I just read that when Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize, he said, 'The child in me is delighted. The adult in me is skeptical.' I feel the same way, except that the adult in me is delighted, too."
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