We totally misunderestimated Liz Smith. She's not an over-the-hill, air-kissing virtual publicist for celebrities: she's a sly media prankster, a wickedly clever manipulator of credulous journalists.

From yesterday's New York Times profile:

So LIZ SMITH was having dinner with NICOLE KIDMAN at New York's Four Seasons and it seems the actress really likes to pig out.

"Nicole ate the entire bread basket," Ms. Smith said. "Then she said, 'Let's have some of those fabulous fried shrimp.' " Ms. Kidman then plowed through a main course and finished with chocolate cake and ice cream, convincing the gossip columnist that the actress meant it when she said she did not believe in diets.

From today's Liz Smith column in The New York Post:

IT IS very amusing to me to be out talking about my new book "Dishing" and to find that people are most enthralled with my view of the fabulous star Nicole Kidman. I have told a story about first meeting her at the Four Seasons in the Seagram Building, and though I expected her to arrive with an entourage, she came alone.

I assumed we would have a cup of coffee or tea, maybe some bottled water and she'd rush off soon after for her next appointment. Instead Nicole sat down. She had no p.r. person with her. She began talking and eating the bread in the basket of the Pool Room. She ate every single kind of bread and roll they offered. When that was gone, she said, "Should we have some of those lovely fried shrimp with mustard fruits?" We had them. We decided then we needed Dover sole cooked the Four Seasons way and in the meantime, she had a baked potato prepared with their special olive oil. By now we had gone way beyond her then-husband, Tom Cruise, and her then-movie co-star George Clooney and her beloved Australian family, her children, her ambitions, her hopes, her dreams. We drank a fine white Chablis and we ended up with chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream. I asked Nicole what her favorite food really was? She opined that she adored Krispy Kreme doughnuts and ate them every day when they were available. Nicole weighs about 100 pounds, maybe 119 soaking wet. Don't ask what this means, but evidently she can eat anything.
For some reason people love this story, and I find I like it too. In this day and age where magazines put out entire issues that are fat free, fat avoidance prone, eating as sin, it's nice to think there's someone around who still looks good and likes to eat.

Liz punk'd The Times into running the story and then she got another column item out of their running it. Pretty sneaky, Liz!

Move over Joey Skaggs, there's a new media prankster in town!

'THIS NEW YORK' GONE [NYP]
Related: Liz Smith Ignores Blogs [Wonkette]