Comedian Garry Shandling became the first celebrity to take the stand at disgraced private investigator Anthony Pellicano’s wiretapping and bribery trial on Thursday.

Shandling told the Los Angeles federal court hearing Pellicano was involved in a “spin campaign” to assassinate his character during a late-1990s legal dispute between the funnyman and his ex-manager Brad Grey.

Shandling testified that he was disturbed to learn his personal records had been looked at four times in unauthorised police database searches in 1999.

Counting Crows singer Adam Duritz is reinventing himself as rock’s renaissance man - after discovering the link between opera and pop.

The star claims all music is interlinked, and insists fans should embrace every genre out there.

“Music is music. I’m 43, but I love Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis. There is no real reason why anyone shouldn’t love all of it,” he says. “I never understood opera in my life. That bugged me, so I went to the opera and bought opera records, and now I get it. Pop music comes from Puccini.”

Scarlett Johansson has helped raise thousands at a charity auction - one lucky fan has won the chance to accompany her to a future movie premiere after entering the final bid of $40,100.

The online auction site eBay.com was visited by 695,183 interested parties and received 170 bids for the date.

But the 10-day sale ended on Wednesday - and a UK-based user named bossnour was slated as the top bidder.