Denise Richards Will Cut You

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Baby On Board, Something, Something Burt Ward

Car seat, shmar seat. Hopefully that wasn’t what Britney Spears had to say when the LAPD showed up at her mansion to get "contact information" at the request of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services.

Seems our favourite young celebrity mom was caught on camera while behind the wheel of her SUV with her infant son sitting on her lap.

But don’t worry, it wasn’t Britney’s fault – the paparazzi made her do it! She had stopped for a Starbucks (just like real people!) and her bodyguard (just like… never mind.) went in to fetch her caffeine hit, when the evil photographers surrounded the unprotected mother and babe. When the wayward servant returned, Britney sped off with her five-month-old still perched on her lap.

"Today, I had a horrifying, frightful encounter with the paparazzi while I was with my baby," Spears said later in a statement. "...I was terrified that this time the physically aggressive paparazzi would put both me and my baby in danger. I instinctively took measures to get my baby and me out of harm's way. I love my child and would do anything to protect him."

Like putting him in harms way, I suppose, missing the irony, as usual. Including the fact that she got caught because of a picture taken while she was escaping from the paparazzi.

Not surprisingly, the lensers didn’t see their role quite the same way. X17, the photo agency representing the shutterbugs who aimed their lenses at Spears' said the pictures were taken "in a very peaceful context, in which photographers exhibited no aggressive behavior."

Lesson learned? Buckle up, especially when there are dozens of people taking your photo.

Guess Who's all Wet?

Some pistol-packing paparazzi soaked stars Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams at the Australian red carpet premiere of Brokeback Mountain over the weekend. Seems like Heath has pissed off some of the camera jockeys by spitting at them at some previous event, and they were out for revenge.

"It's true that he's misbehaved for the past 18 months but he won't do it again in a hurry," said photographer Peter Carrette. "...I hope that Heath learns some manners out of it and that he will learn that in this profession it's a two-way street."

While Ledger didn't respond he may be pressing charges and the studio says the cameraman will never get accreditation again. Responds the man with the license to spray: "I put out [photographs] to 56 countries of the world and if they don't need that sort of publicity ... they're cutting off their noses to spite their face."

Which raises an interesting relationship -- the unspoken one between the paparazzi, the tabloids and celebrities. They need each other, feed off each other and wouldn't exist without each other. Sure celebrities complain about their presence and talk about how their privacy gets invaded, but without them they would disappear between films, and the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

It is a two-way street. Stars (and their handlers) want red carpet photographs, they want to be fawned over during press junkets and so they complain, but not too much. And they release personal details as payment. Why else would Brad and Angelina and now Gwyneth announce pregnancies, would Eminem's publicist confirm that he got married over the weekend?

Celebs don't have to talk about this stuff. They don't have to confirm or deny or say anything. The tabs will suss it out on their own and some would say they write whatever they want. So why do they do it? Because they want to. It's easy to forget the paparazzi and celebrities work in the same business -- one just makes a little bit more.