The best part of NY1 however is not the never-ending weather and traffic bulletins – it’s actually the morning “In the Papers” segment read by the caustic and loveable Pat Kiernan. So what if all he does is read out the best stories from the New York Times, Post and News? It saves us the trouble.

Now Kiernan has gone national with his new website PatsPapers.Com. Working with part-time editors in  New York and Europe and a producer in New York, he will publish an e-mail digest and a webcast during the downtime in his NY1 shift.

–41st & Broadway

Overheard by: really does live here

But, as the New York Daily News reports, “An overheating car triggered a stampede of catwalk-craving cuties,” while the Post adds, “The situation spiraled further out of control when a man hurtled over a barricade and slapped one of the girls in line.” Perhaps showing why they are models and not rocket scientists, the girls feared the car would explode, while others screamed that the man had a gun.

A woman waiting for her chance told the News, “The girls were running like it was 9/11 part two. I feared for my life.” Ultimately, three people were arrested for disorderly conduct and inciting a riot and six people were injured.

But developers have announced plans to erect a giant skyscraper in the area where he lives which is affectionately known as “DUMBO” – short for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. Dubliner Byrne believe the 18-storey building will block beautiful views of the Brooklyn Bridge and just doesn’t fit the community of converted four- and five-storey warehouses.

Raged Byrne: “This huge building will dwarf the bridge on the Brooklyn side, causing irreparable damage to the bridge’s singular and majestic presence.” He submitted his bitter objections to a city planning meeting last week.

Monday night wouldn’t be the same without the frothy teen drama Gossip Girl. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s like a PG version of the movie Cruel Intentions. In this week’s episode ‘Gone With the Will,’ bad boy Chuck Bass continues his downward spiral.

Also on Monday, the delightful comedy How I Met Your Mother continues. HIMYM, stars former Doogie Howser actor Neil Patrick Harris as the roguish womaniser Barney and perky American Pie cutie Alyson Hannigan as his crazy pal. For newcomers, it’s like an edgy version of nineties sitcom Friends.

Tuesday night’s episode of The Mentalist, “Red Rum” sees Patrick Jane move one step closer to finding information on the serial killer Red John. For newbies, The Mentalist is about a psychic detective who isn’t really a psychic. And, believe it or not, no it is not a rip-off of the quirky USA channel series Psych.

Thursday night is usually the best evening for entertaining TV. Grey’s Anatomy, featuring Patrick Dempsey as Dr. McDreamy, and its spin-off Private Practice, starring Kate Walsh, continue to get decent viewing figures, while Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin do their thing in clever comedy 30 Rock. We also quite like Kath and Kim, with Selma Blair, which isn’t nearly as bad as everyone says it is.

Then Friday features the delicious double bill on the USA channel of Monk and Psych. People in both the US and the UK will also be anxiously tuning in that day to see who is next to get booted out of the Celebrity Big Brother house. We hope it’s Tina. Sadly the original link to Big Brother Live has been taken down for copyright infringement but we will try to find a new one in time for the eviction.

Tip1: if you register an account with Sidereel.com, you can add all your favourite shows to your profile and it will automatically tell you when new episodes appear.

Tip2: newcomers should probably check out the old episodes of shows listed first. Otherwise it won’t make a whole lot of sense. Both SurftheChannel and Sidereel keep an excellent archive. In Sidereel, click “Search for results” at the bottom of each episode listing.

If you know of working links to UK content like EastEnders, Match of the Day etc, please email LarryMilk@topdollarnews.com.

Telly shrink Gabriel Byrne recently found himself an unpaid job – teaching Frasier’s crusty old dad to sound more Irish. Byrne, who plays a psychiatrist in edgy series In Treatment, stepped in to help when his veteran co-star John Mahoney was cast in Colin McPherson‘s play “The Seafarer,”  on Broadway.

Mahoney (pictured above) – best known for playing the grumpy dad in another TV shrink show, Frasier – is a proud Irish American himself but he had no idea how to do a Dublin accent. In between takes for In Treatment, Mahoney would chat with Dublin-born Byrne paying close attention to the lilt of his voice. Byrne even taped himself reading lines from Mahoney’s script of “The Seafarer.”

“I have a lot of Irish in me but this really helps,” says Mahoney, who was born in England and had an Irish grandfather but lost his accent when he emigrated to the US. Referring to his role in the play, at New York’s Steppenwolf Theatre, Mahoney says: “I play a filthy old drunk, recently blind, chronically hung over.

In the movie, Dublin-born beauty Bolger plays Roma, a young girl who forms a bond with teenage Nazi concentration camp victim Rosenblat after she keeps him alive by tossing him breadcrumbs and apples over the barbed wire fence.

However, Rosenblat, who went on to marry Roma following a chance meeting years later in New York, has now shockingly confessed he concocted the information in his book, “Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love that Survived.”

Retired New York telly repairman Herman, whose bogus story has now been scrapped by publishers, apologised this week, saying: “I wanted to bring happiness to people, to remind them not to hate, but to love and tolerate all people. I brought good feelings to a lot of people and I brought hope to many. My motivation was to make good in this world. In my dreams, Roma will always throw me an apple, but I now know it is only a dream.”

Even chat show queen Oprah Winfrey was taken in by the hoax. Oprah who hosted Rosenblat and his wife, Roma Radzicki Rosenblat, on her show twice, called their romance “the single greatest love story” she had encountered in her 22 years on the show.

Beloved President JFK

He’s one of the most popular political figures of all time, but a new book will trash the reputation of America’s favourite president John F Kennedy and portray him as a sex fiend.

The bombshell new book “American Adulterer,” by British writer Jed Mercurio, ignores Kennedy’s political accomplishments and focuses instead on his daily addiction to illicit sex sessions with beautiful starlets like Marilyn Monroe, Angie Dickinson and Judith Campbell Exner. And the page turner, billed as a work of fiction, is set to spark outrage among the powerful Kennedy Clan, who are regarded as America’s own royal family.

Publishers Simon & Schuster say American Adulterer, released this July, is an “explosive retelling of Kennedy’s White House years,”  a period in which “we see him at his worst, as a compulsive philanderer. “Kennedy had an uncontrollable and unrelenting appetite for sexual adventure.”

JFK’s daughter Caroline Kennedy, who is hoping to follow in her father’s illustrious footsteps by becoming a New York senator, has so far not commented on the forthcoming book.

He’s been on our screens for five decades – but Irish actor Stephen Rea says the characters he plays never gets any nookie! The closest he came to getting lucky was in his Oscar-nominated movie The Crying Game and the female ‘love interest’ in that film turned out to be a cross-dressing MAN!

However, Rea – one of the busiest stars in Hollywood – claims he is happy never getting the girl. “Can you imagine having to do all that sex in a film?” says 62-year-old Rea. “Sex in movies is not fun. There’s a lot of people watching, your butt is in the air, it’s not the most fun. You will be much happier if you don’t see my butt in the air, believe me.”

CRACKPOT actress Rose McGowan could ensure a low budget movie makes millions – thanks to her bizarre IRA rant. Rose, who played a sexy witch in the telly show Charmed, left fans spellbound at the premiere of Fifty Dead Men Walking,when she said: “Had I grown up in Belfast I would have 100 per cent joined the IRA.”

However, though her idiotic remarks were slammed by the producers of the movie about an IRA infiltrator,  the negative publicity has persuaded distributors all over the world to buy the rights to screen it. In her notorious rant, McGowan, 35, whose dad is Irish, added: “My heart just broke for the cause. Violence is not to be played out daily and provide an answer to problems – but I do understand it.”

Made on a shoestring budget, Fifty Dead Men Walking, which would probably only have got a limited release without Rose’s shocking intervention, is based on Martin McGartland’s 1997 memoir about a young Catholic in Belfast recruited by the British. Says a movie insider: “The people at Handmade Films who produced this were quick to condemn Rose’s comments. But secretly they are probably thrilled because they paid peanuts to make it and the bad publicity is going to turn this into a monster hit. Rose is a bit of a maverick who doesn’t play by Hollywood rules – but despite her despicable views, fans love her because she’s a bad girl. That’s why she is always being cast in dark roles as a witch or a killer.”

Handmade Films executive Guy Collins made a series of deals to sell the film – in which Rose plays a Prove femme fatale – worldwide shortly after the recent Toronto Film Festival.