In brief: Chris Martin jealous of Brad Pitt

Chris Martin, lead singer of Coldplay, whose album Viva la Vida is out this week, has told Rolling Stone magazine of the insecurities he feels because his wife, Gwyneth Paltrow (pictured), who once dated Brad Pitt; he said: "If your wife went out with Brad Pitt, you'd want to prove yourself, you know what I mean?"… Shami Chakrabarti, 38, director of the civil liberties pressure group Liberty, whose friendship with David Davis is thought to have been influential in his resignation, is to become the new Chancellor of Oxford Brookes university, replacing C4 news anchor Jon Snow… A Jean-Michel Basquiat painting owned by the rock band U2, after being spotted in a New York gallery by bass player Adam Clayton, is to be sold at Sotheby's next month; the work, Untitled (Pecho/Oreja), dating from 1982/83, which has been hanging in the band's Dublin studio, is expected to fetch £4-6m… A tuxedo Daniel Craig wore in the Bond film Casino Royale is among the movie memorabilia to be auctioned in London next week at a fundraising dinner in aid of the National Film and Television School...

Unlike Rest Of World, Sarah Larson Shocked To Learn She Was Little More Than Clooney Arm Candy

Even though she spent nearly a year silently standing by George Clooney's side at movie premieres and on jaunts to the United Nations, it seems that Sarah Larson forgot the first rule about Being George Clooney's Girlfriend. Namely, you do not talk about Being George Clooney's Girlfriend. Just days after her extensive interview with Harper's Bazaar hit the stands — one in which she confessed that "I don't think [George] has any trouble getting anything he wants" — she suddenly and quickly found herself on the receiving end of that maxim. Unfortunately for her, she learned that what Clooney wanted was for her to give back his garage door opener and hitchhike her way back to Vegas. Now, details have begun to emerge from the Larson camp about their breakup, ones that predictably cast a sympathetic light on the comely sandworm emulator. Serving as part of a vast right-wing conspiracy against noted lefty Clooney, Fox News reports:

“She thought they were getting married. Instead, she got dumped,” a friend said. “She’s really upset. Devastated.”

As things got serious with Clooney, Larson had moved into his Los Angeles mansion, subletting her home in Las Vegas. Tongues wagged that she might be "the one" when he took her to the Oscars this year.

"She’s totally heartbroken and doesn’t deserve this,” a friend said. “It came out of nowhere. They had made all these plans.”

Turns out those plans called for little more than Larson to find the nearest WiFi hotspot, enabling her to surf Yellowpages.com to find the number of a local U-Haul with an available truck. You see, Clooney has a history of dating women that are young, pretty and anonymous. From Celine Balitran to Krista Allen, once people in the fly-over states begin to recognize the name of the girl who he's schtupping, history and habit dictates that Clooney lowers the boom on them. And although we're pretty positive that The Charming One will never publicly address the reasons behind the breakup, we're pretty sure that her sketchy past and the anonymous phone calls left on Clooney's visual voicemail didn't help her cause much.

DENISE RICHARDS - RICHARDS BLAMES MEDIA FOR SAMBORA SPLIT

DENISE RICHARDS is convinced her relationship with BON JOVI star RICHIE SAMBORA only broke down because the media accused her of breaking up his marriage.
Richards began dating the Bon Jovi guitarist after she split from her former husband Charlie Sheen in 2006 - just months after he ended his 11-year marriage to her friend Heather Locklear.
The Wild Things star was the focus of many press reports accusing her of coming between Sambora and Locklear - and Richards blames the media's depiction of her for putting a major strain on their year-long romance.
She tells U.S. talkshow host Larry King, "They (Sambora and Locklear) were getting divorced; he and I were friends and it happened. And she had moved on. She was already involved with someone else at the time.
"It (the press coverage) affected, I think, the circumstances. It was very difficult to sustain a relationship. We were so slammed in the press. We were dealing with our parents dying. We were going through very difficult divorces and custody and it put a strain on our relationship. I regret the timing, perhaps, and I feel terrible anyone that was hurt and involved. But I did not split up their marriage."