Dear Gossips,

Monday’s biggest deal was FOX’s confirmation - finally - that they’d confirmed Britney Spears as a judge on the upcoming season of The X Factor. Britney showed up alongside a confident and smug Simon Cowell at the FOX presentation. We’ll get to Britney later but about Simon, he kept promising that this time he’d found the magic formula, that this year would be the best ever, going so far as to challenge the competition, and prematurely declare that the competition would come in second. Where I come from that’s like inviting disaster. And we still need to talk about his black toilet paper.

Am flying to Cannes late this afternoon. Today’s column is on regular schedule. But tomorrow, because I’ll be in transit overnight, it’ll be a late start. Cannes is 6 hours ahead of Eastern Time and I land mid-afternoon. It’ll take me an hour or so to start writing and get caught up. Aiming to get the intro posted before noon ET. Sorry in advance and thanks for your patience. Will try to make it up to you in the next week or so with a lot of Pitt Porn!

Yours in gossip,

Lainey