The Oprah Winfrey Show will end its run in 2011 after 25 seasons on the air, Winfrey’s production company said Wednesday night.

Winfrey announced the final date for her show during a live broadcast Friday, bringing an end to what has been US television’s top-rated talk show for more than two decades.

The programme airs in 145 countries worldwide and is watched by an estimated 42 million viewers a week in the US alone.

Over the years, The Oprah Winfrey Show grew from a newcomer that chipped away at talk show king Phil Donahue’s dominance into a programme that turned inspirational.

Oprah covered a gamut that ranged from interviews with the world’s most famous celebrities to an honest discussion about her weight struggles.

Winfrey famously wept in Chicago’s Grant Park as Barack Obama, whom she endorsed, was elected president.

Earlier this year, Forbes scored Winfrey’s net worth at $2.7 billion, even as the magazine knocked her from atop its list of the world’s most powerful celebrities. The honour went to Angelina Jolie, but Winfrey was still Number 2 on the annual Celebrity 100 list – and the top earner at $275 million.

In 2003, Winfrey became the first black woman to make Forbes magazine’s billionaire’s list, and just the second African-American after BET cable network founder Robert Johnson.

The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, which cost her $40 million, opened near Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2007.

– Daily Mail

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Salad, double espresso, and ‘running like a bat out of hell’

Victoria Beckham has revealed the secret behind her super-svelte physique – a combination of salad and running ‘like a bat out of hell’.

Beckham, 35, gave a no-nonsense assessment of her diet and exercise routine in an interview with US beauty magazine Allure.

She said, “I’m not going to lie – I’m not one of those people that says, ‘Oh, I eat hamburgers.’

“I eat salad. And I start off every day with a double espresso. Then I get on the running machine and I run like a bat out of hell.”

– Daily Mail

Fashionably late Mariah Carey keeps fans waiting an hour

Like all A-list celebrities she knows the importance of being fashionably late.

Having started her week by keeping TV presenter Phillip Schofield waiting for nearly an hour, Mariah Carey saw no reason to speed up for the thousands who had braved the icy weather to watch her turn on Christmas lights.

Sealing her reputation for lateness, the superstar singer kept the crowd at Europe’s biggest shopping arcade waiting for nearly an hour as she enjoyed a few glasses of champagne with husband Nick Cannon at the Dorchester Hotel, just three miles away.

– Daily Mail

Vatican slams blockbuster New Moon film

The latest movie in vampire saga Twilight is a ‘deviant moral vacuum’, the Vatican said Wednesday.

New Moon, which opens in Britain Friday, is a “mixture of excesses aimed at young people and gives a heavy esoteric element”, a spokesman added.

The blockbuster opened on Wednesday in Italy and took £1.8 million at the box office. Monsignor Franco Perazzolo, of the Pontifical Council of Culture, said, “Men and women are transformed with horrible masks and it is once again that age-old trick or ideal formula of using extremes to make an impact at the box office. – Daily Mail

Oprah opened the 19th season of her talk show by giving away a brand new Pontiac G6 car to the 276 people in her first audience. Winfrey started her show in 1984. She hit the headlines in 1996 when she dragged a trolley of meat on to the set of her show to illustrate how much weight she had lost.