Six degrees

Rihanna, the fiery Barbadian pop sensation, looks set to wow local fans with her new mullet mohawk hairstyle, and possibly a few catchy tunes, when she struts the stage at the Venetian Macao this week. In just nine years, RiRi has sold more than 100 million records, making her one of the bestselling artists of all time. In February, the singer appeared in a saucy fashion shoot for V magazine which ended in nudity and Rihanna wanting to “Take her top off and put that bitch in my lap.” That “bitch” was heroin-chic fashionista Kate Moss …

The world-renowned supermodel, once labelled “Cocaine Kate” by Britain’s Daily Mirror following a powdery indiscretion, spent four years dating eccentric actor Johnny Depp, one of the few people she says she has trusted. Now happily married to rock musician Jamie Hince, she has said of her former lover: “There’s nobody that’s ever really been able to take care of me. Johnny did for a bit. I believed what he said.” Moss has two swallows tattooed just above her bottom, inked by revered painter Lucian Freud …

In a career spanning six decades, the late philanderer and grandson of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud would only paint people he liked, famously turning down Pope John Paul II. The artist also refused a request from Andrew Lloyd Webber to paint his wife, saying the composer had “threatened” him “with the offer of free tickets for his shows”. In 2008, his painting of a chubby civil servant became the most expensive work by a living artist when it sold for US$33 million, US$10 million more than the previous record holder, Hanging Heart, by American pop artist Jeff Koons …

Wine-lovers with a spare HK$155,000 down the back of the sofa may be tempted to acquire one of Dom Perignon’s limited-edition, Koons-designed bottles of bubbly. Containing the champagne house’s rose vintage 2003, his bright pink resin sculptures are modelled on Koons’ eight-foot-high stainless-steel Balloon Venus. In 1988, Koons’ Banality series featured a range of gold-leaf-plated porcelain statues of celebrity chimpanzee Bubbles on the lap of his cuddly best friend, Michael Jackson …

Despite being dead since 2009, the King of Pop recently embarked on an Immortal World Tour with the art troupe Cirque du Soleil, courtesy of hologram technology. Some Beijing audience members were surprised when the iconic image of the lone protester blocking a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989 flashed up on giant screens on the show’s opening night. Wacko Jacko’s 1988 song Dirty Diana, although he denied it, was allegedly inspired by the late Diana, Princess of Wales …

Speculation and conspiracy theories suggesting the princess’ death in Paris in 1997 was not an accident and that Britain’s elite military regiment, the SAS, was somehow involved continue to fester. Mohamed al-Fayed, father of Diana’s boyfriend, Dodi, who was also killed when the couple’s car crashed, has claimed secret agents orchestrated the accident on orders from Prince Philip, so that the divorcee (from his son Charles) could not marry her Muslim lover. Social critic Camille Paglia recently wrote in Britain’s Sunday Times Magazine that Diana had maintained a “ravishingly seductive flirtation with the world press” and compared her to the publication’s cover star, the “new Diana” – Rihanna.