LAWSUITS Blues giant Bo Diddley (Ellas McDaniel), 71, filed a lawsuit April 12 in Manhattan against Nike Inc. for what he calls unauthorized use of his name and likeness. The guitarist alleges Nike sold "You Don't Know Diddley" T-shirts bearing his image in 1999--eight years after his licensing deal with the sportswear firm expired. A Nike publicist says the company hopes to reach a settlement.... Paul McCartney's gal pal, Heather Mills, 32, will receive about $320,000 in damages from Britain's Scotland Yard for a '93 accident that cost her her lower left leg. The settlement entails no admission of guilt for bobby Simon Osbourne, who was cleared of driving his motorcycle carelessly in the accident.
ARRESTS Arizona native Richard Gordon, 31, was arrested in L.A. April 11 for allegedly trying to extort $250,000 from Family Feud's Louie Anderson, 47. Authorities claim Gordon threatened, unless the comic paid him money, to tell the media that Anderson sought sexual favors from him in 1993. Gordon's lawyer declined to comment.
DEATHS Ghoulish author and artist Edward Gorey, 75, after a heart attack, April 15, in Hyannis, Mass. "I like to think of myself as a pale, pathetic, solitary child," he once said. "But it was not true." Nonetheless, he won renown for spidery line drawings of lonely figures (below) and whimsically macabre themes in books like The Gashlycrumb Tinies and The Haunted Tea-Cosy. A Tony winner for costume design of Broadway's 1978 Dracula, he also devised the animated opening of PBS' Mystery!
--additional reporting by William Keck
