Oprah Winfrey has revealed that she has been spending quality time in her pajamas since her final show. The 57-year-old ended her talk show on Wednesday after 25-years and said that she is already enjoying laid-back living. Taking to Twitter, she wrote, “Staying in PJs all day. “Getting my hair braided for summer vacation. Reading all your emails!” She ended her programme with an hour-long ‘love letter’ to her fans, with some words of advice. “Each one of you has their own platform. Mine is a stage in a studio. Yours is wherever you are you can help somebody, you can forgive, you can listen, you can heal – you have the power to change someone’s life,” she said. “Gratitude is the single greatest treasure I will take with me from this experience. “I thank you for sharing this yellow brick road of blessings. I won’t say goodbye – I’ll just say, ‘Until we meet again.’”
Oprah Winfrey has had about 28,000 guests on her show and 1.3 million audience members over the past 25 years. She has also received more than 20 million letters since the show began in 1986. The astonishing figures have been published in the chat show queen’s magazine, O. Since 1986, Winfrey, 57, has interviewed five US Presidents, seven princes, six princesses, one reigning queen, one former queen, an earl, a lord, a count and a duchess. Singer Celine Dion is the most frequent female guest, with Chris Rock the most frequent male guest. Winfrey has also given away 570 cars.
After more than two-and-a-half decades on air, TV chat show queen Oprah Winfrey has announced the date of her last show. The final episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show will air on May 25. Winfrey will then turn her attention to her new cable network, OWN (The Oprah Winfrey Network). The 57 year-old is yet to announce who her final guests will be.
Supermodel Stephanie Seymour has spoken of her pain at the reaction to photos of her with her son. Seymour could not hide her pain when she discussed the outrage sparked by photographs of her embracing her 17-year-old son, Peter, on a beach. She insists he was merely play-flirting to try to get her out of feeling down over putting on weight – and was stunned that anyone would think anything inappropriate could be happening. “I’ve gone through a lot in the past two years, and I gained a lot of weight, and it really upset me,” she told Oprah Winfrey. “So I spent two days indoors, and when I came out and finally decided to just go outside, my son was so happy to see me come out of my room. “He was trying to make me feel good. He was wooing me and gave me a big hug and a kiss, and we had no idea that that one second would be turned into something that could ever be thought of as [inappropriate]. “He’s my baby! He’s a gorgeous young man, but he’s my baby.”
Oprah Winfrey whisked away hundreds of her most loyal fans for an Australian adventure. The American chatshow queen flew 302 “ultimate viewers” Down Under, and the extraordinary scenes are now being aired in a four-day TV extravaganza. Winfrey and her best pal Gayle King were seen enjoying the famous sights including Ayres Rock and the Great Barrier Reef. In what proved to be the biggest surprise in her show’s history, the 56-year-old media mogul had announced she was taking her entire audience on a magical trip to Australia. And the show saw the group of Americans – many of whom had never left the US – jet to the other side of the world for a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. Gasping in awe, they got to snorkel, barbecue on a beach, visit Tasmania and Kangaroo Island and enjoy a big welcome concert in Melbourne. The city of Melbourne rolled out the red carpet for Winfrey and her guests, and they were met by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard – the country’s first female leader.
Oprah Winfrey continued her big Australian adventure by dishing out extravagant gifts to her most loyal fans. The chat-show queen, whose trip Down Under is being serialised in four parts this week, brought a smile to the faces of 6,000 people during a concert at the Sydney Opera House. She gave each person in the audience a special silver and pearl pendant to mark her farewell season, and welcomed the likes of Bon Jovi and Russell Crowe to entertain the crowds. Joining the open-air party were the wife and children of late crocodile hunter Steve Irwin, who paid a touching tribute to the famous Aussie, who died aged 44 in a stingray attack in 2006. Winfrey, 56, travelled around Australia with her best pal Gayle King and 302 of her biggest fans to reward them for their years of loyal support. For two shows at the famous Sydney Opera House, 12,000 additional people were chosen out of a pool of 350,000 applicants. During the extravaganza, Winfrey lent a big helping hand to an Aussie family struggling to pay their bills because the husband, Kristian Anderson, 34, is fighting cancer. He recently captured hearts around the world by posting a romantic video to his wife on YouTube, which prompted the TV megastar to step in. Winfrey told them: “We want you to spend every ounce of energy being together and focused on getting well, so we want you to take off some time from teaching Rachel, don’t worry about the bills because you will be getting a cheque for a quarter of a million dollars!” The trip of a lifetime wraps up on Friday’s show with an appearance from rap superstar Jay-Z.
Sarah Ferguson toyed with the idea of starring in a celebrity chef show before she landed her own US documentary series. Fergie, who was dubbed the ‘Duchess of Pork’ during her marriage to Prince Andrew, revealed her plan to take part in a cooking programme during an e-mail exchange with pal Oprah Winfrey. She asked the chat show queen what she thought about the career move and Oprah quickly talked her out of it. The pair then came up with the idea for Master Class: Finding Sarah a six-part series about the Duchess which premieres on Oprah’s new TV network in the spring. Oprah, 56, opened up about her frank e-mail exchanges with Ferguson during an interview with a US magazine. The TV star said she kept in touch with the Duchess of York after interviewing her earlier this year. “She started e-mailing me and at one point asked what did I think of her doing a celebrity chef show,” the chat show host revealed. “I said ‘That’s not going to help you. How are you going to rehabilitate yourself on a celebrity chef show? You should be working on yourself’.” Mindful that Fergie might think she was being ‘used’, Oprah put forward the idea of working together on a docu-series about her life. In the TV show, the Duchess will open up about her troubles and explore her battles with weight, relationships and money with the help of experts such as Dr. Phil McGraw.
Rosie O’Donnell has spoken out in support of friend Oprah Winfrey amid rumours that she is a lesbian. The openly gay comedian and talk show host said that Winfrey is so honest that she does not understand how anyone could suspect her of lying. Referring to an interview that Winfrey gave, in which she insisted that her relationship with best friend Gayle King is purely platonic, O’Donnell told ABC News, “I think that she’s always told the truth so why people wouldn’t believe her, you know, I don’t know. “Anything that she says, I believe is the truth… She’s not a faker in any way.” She continued, “I thought she was really great on that road trip she did with [friend] Gayle [King] when they were going into the camper and Gayle said, ‘Let’s spice up those lesbian rumours’. “I was cracking up… I don’t think she’s gay.” O’Donnell added that people just don’t understand close female friendships because they are often not exposed to them.
Russell Crowe has taken Oprah Winfrey sailing around Sydney’s picture-perfect harbour, with her 300-strong audience trailing behind in a flotilla of yachts. Crowe, as well as taking the helm of the yacht Eagle Rock, also gave Winfrey a hat from his rugby league football club, the South Sydney Rabbitohs, which she wore during the two-hour sail on Monday morning. Winfrey said she was having the “best time ever” out on the water, and that she would like to return without the cameras. Asked if he knew how to sail, Crowe replied: “You should see my movie Master and Commander.” The stars were also joined by his wife Danielle Spencer, who sat on the deck wearing a sun hat. There was no sign of her and Russell’s two boys. Also accompanying the stars was a replica of explorer Captain James Cook’s ship the Endeavour.
British actress Thandie Newton has revealed her two young daughters think of close pal Oprah Winfrey as ‘Queen of the World’. The Crash star, who is mum to 10-year-old Ripley and six-year-old Nico, gushed about her friendship with the American billionairess during an appearance on The Jimmy Kimmel Show. “She is everything you can imagine and I say that sincerely,” said the 37-year-old. “I remember when my girls and I went to see her and my husband and I were trying to figure out how to describe what she does in this world and we decided that ‘Queen of the World’ did it. “My youngest daughter had said ‘So is she the queen of America?’ and we’d said ‘Well, she’s kind of bigger than that, she’s more international, she’s Queen of the World’.”
