By Sean Nicholls and Emily Dunn
The celebrity sycophant Richard Wilkins's premature reporting of the death of the actor Jeff Goldblum has earned him a distinguished sending up by the American satirist Stephen Colbert . Wilkins interrupted the Today show's coverage of Michael Jackson's death on Friday morning with the "breaking news" that New Zealand police were saying "Hollywood actor and all-round nice guy" Goldblum had fallen to his death while making a movie across the Tasman.
His co-host, Karl Stefanovic , later told a red-faced Wilkins that the report was a hoax - a false report spread on Twitter. The offending Today show footage was broadcast in a comedy sketch on Colbert's show this week, in which Goldblum appeared on stage to learn the news that he was dead - according to Twitter and Wilkins - and then delivered his own eulogy.
© 2007 The Sydney Morning Herald
