People

By Belinda Luscombe

MCMILLAN FINALLY EXHALES

This sounds like a great idea for a book, or even a movie! TERRY MCMILLAN, 46, just married JONATHAN PLUMMER, 24, a student she met while on holiday in Jamaica about three years ago. Attending were her son from her first marriage and her sister Crystal. If this all sounds a tad familiar, it's probably because it's currently playing at a multiplex near you. In McMillan's book How Stella Got Her Groove Back, now a movie, the lead character, 40, meets a 20-year-old student in Jamaica whom she eventually marries. And, why yes, Stella does have a son and two sisters. The simple (real life) nuptials took place on the beach in Maui, with the barefoot bride in spiky hair braids. Check upcoming novels for details on how the marriage works out. --Reported by David E. Thigpen

AND NOW, THE FULL HONDA

Did The Full Monty give Americans a taste for seeing less-than-buff foreigners in the raw? The producers of Waking Ned Devine are hoping so. The movie is the story of what happens when someone in a tiny town in Ireland wins a big lottery. It doesn't sound too racy a plot line, but it's the most dangerous one that Irish actor DAVID KELLY, 69, has taken on. "Right up to the second we shot the scene, I had never, ever sat on a motorbike, and I didn't realize one has to balance," says the 112-lb. or so Kelly. "All worry about the nudity went out the window as the fear, terror and sheer cold crept in," he says. "Even at 35 miles an hour, I thought, 'My God, it's Steve McQueen time.'"

MURDOCH'S NEWEST GOOOOAAAAL

RUPERT MURDOCH may not be America's favorite billionaire (that would be Cuddly Warren or Nebbishy Bill), but in Britain, he's a real crowd displeaser. So it was a nervy step to buy the U.K.'s most popular soccer team, Manchester United, and thus earn the ire of all those British soccer fans. The $1 billion purchase brought on predictably apoplectic headlines from the British tabs--including MURDOCH MOST FOUL and GREED 4, HONESTY 1--and threats from fan associations and former players that they will stop supporting the team. The kerfuffle is in sharp contrast to the blase reaction when Murdoch bought the Los Angeles Dodgers for a piddling $350 million. Is there something Dodger fans don't know?

PIERRE, MEET OZYMANDIAS

PIERRE CARDIN, whose name is already emblazoned on 800 different products from floor tiles to jellies, and who is credited with bringing the world the bubble dress, colored tights and roulette trousers, now wants to do something really big: he plans to build a 435-ft.-high fluorescent obelisk near the site of the old Alexandria lighthouse in Egypt. This column, a model of which was unveiled last week, will be a little fancier than the one that tumbled into the sea about 600 years ago. It will be made of concrete covered in mirrored glass, with 16,500 computer-controlled lights inside, and will cast colored light beams 43 miles out to sea. The Egyptian government has approved the plan, and only the small matter of financing--to the tune of $86.2 million--remains. "It's a project that makes people dream about the past and the future," Cardin told Associated Press Television. Yeah, especially disco.

HANKS VERY MUCH

O.K., so nothing tops a velvet Elvis painting in terms of bizarre music-star folk art, but this is pretty good. To celebrate the 75th anniversary of HANK WILLIAMS' birth and the release of The Complete Hank Williams CD set, Mercury Records amassed a collection of folk art depicting the guitarist-singer. The exhibition includes such pieces as Lonesome Hank, above, painted on a rusty lawn chair, and Setting the Woods on Fire, below, both by Bob Gray; and Dark Hank, middle, by Todd Greene. And move over, Elvis--while on display in New York City, more than half the available pieces were sold. Including the lawn chair.

With reporting by David E. Thigpen