Rock matriarch Sharon Osbourne’s British chat show has been axed because of falling viewer figures.

The first season of Sharon Osbourne Show has slumped from two million viewers to under one million last year and will be replaced by Dale Winton’s Supermarket Sweep on British television channel ITV1.

This is the second chat show of Osbourne’s to be axed - her US version was cancelled in 2004 after two seasons.

Funnyman Zach Braff is urging all mobile phone users to put their devices on mute, because he hates ringtones.

The Scrubs star can’t stand people who vocalise the fact they have cellphones with loud, annoying ringtones or by wearing wireless earpieces all day.

Braff writes on his MySpace page: “I hate ringtones. I think they are uber obnoxious. I am of the school that if you’re out of your house or your car, your phone should be on vibrate.”

Borat and Ali G creator Sacha Baron Cohen has emerged as the frontrunner to portray Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in a biopic produced by Robert De Niro.

The former Habonim youth club member has beaten his Sweeney Todd co-star Johnny Depp to play Mercury, who died from AIDS in 1991, after impressing the film’s producers, reports The Sun.

Actor Henry Goodman, who was famously given his marching orders from the Broadway production of The Producers in 2002, has said that his involvement in the show is now consigned to history.

The 57-year-old – who is about to return to the West End stage as Tevye in a new production of Fiddler On The Roof (following a sell-out run in the show at the Sheffield Crucible late last year) – was due to replace Nathan Lane as Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks’ hit show.