Ben Widdicombe recently had a chat with former Village Person Randy Jones, mainly about the geigh singer's new memoir Macho Man. Jones recounted one story from the book, about Tom Cruise, that was eventually vagued-up after the Queen of Scientology's lawyers got involved. Though Jones had no problem talking about the incident with ol' Dame Widdicombe, saying "Tom and I had the same management company at the time. I met him at a party Andy Warhol threw for Peter Gatien's Limelight [nightclub offshoot] in Atlanta." It was apparently "quite the party." Poor Tommy. All these old stories about his early career keep popping up and there's really nothing he can do about it.

Our theory, for what it's worth, is that these tales are just remnants of an old song and dance. Cruise was basically discovered, or at least developed, by David Geffen, a known and powerful gay. Wouldn't you, a 20-something year-old, cute young actor maybe play up the gay a bit, if it could land you a star-making movie like Risky Business? Now many years and great successes later, those early desperate days keep coming back to haunt him. It'd be like if someone was constantly telling potential friends and lovers stories about when you were in high school, when you were needy and would do anything to be in a clique. Except, you know, Tom is a gigantic crazy person with an army of angry lawyers and you're, well, just you.