Bakker: Didn't Tell Press To 'Drop Dead'

Posted: March 28, 1989

Jim Bakker yesterday disputed a report that he had told reporters in a Sunday sermon to "drop dead." Said the disgraced TV preacher: "I'm tired of having everything I say to my church leaked out. . . . I never in my life said to anyone, 'Drop dead.' I would not say that to a fly. And I hate flies. Now Tammy might." An audio tape of Bakker's Easter sermon had him saying: "I want all the members to be at the office next Sunday for a believers-only meeting. So anyone from the press that comes in may drop dead. Maybe that will scare them away." Bakker also said that he had checked out several sites in Florida for a possible relocation of his North Carolina-based ministry. The move is tied to two factors: a decision by his local zoning board forbidding him to use his house south of Charlotte as a TV studio, and his loss of a leased satellite TV-linkup truck that was sold by its owner.

In related news, the Rev. Eugene Profeta, for whom Jessica Hahn was secretary and to whom she turned for sexual solace after her encounter with Bakker, yesterday got six months in the Albany, N.Y., jail, five years' probation and was ordered to pay $26,000 in back taxes for tax fraud and tampering with a witness.

HEAVILY POPULATED AD

Revlon, which has sponsored the Academy Awards TV show for 16 years, will rival the Oscar stage itself in celebrities tomorrow night when it crams 19 famous folks into three 30-second ads. The spots, directed by Big filmmaker Penny Marshall, will show the 19 answering that nagging question: What makes a woman unforgettable? Among the answerers are Grace Jones, Deborah Harry, Joan Rivers, Emma Samms, Harry Dean Stanton, Carrie Fisher, Andrew McCarthy, Frank Langella, Lauren Bacall, Joe Montana and Little Richard, who says: "She has to have that Tutti Frutti beauty." But exactly.

THE RICH GET RICHER

Will somebody please tell Bill Cosby to pick up the $66 that the California state controller's office is holding for him? The Philadelphia native is among a bunch of new people who've turned up on the controller's list of those who failed to collect money and other property due them. In Cosby's case the $66 is a check written to him by NBC in 1971. "No wonder he never picked up the check," said a spokesman for the controller, noting that Forbes magazine figures the comedian pulled down $84 million in 1986-87. A bit harder to understand is the much-less rich Gene Hackman. He's due $893 from a long- abandoned bank account.

A ROYAL MISHAP

A rack of royals who turned out for an early spring turn on the palace grounds in a horse-drawn carriage yesterday watched the queen's husband narrowly escape injury when it overturned. Prince Philip was at the reins when a carriage wheel hit a concrete post and broke. "As it was going over, Prince Philip and his groom stepped off into a verge," said an unidentified witness. (A verge is a grassy border along a British road.) The witness added that Queen Elizabeth; Prince Andrew; the Duchess of York, and Princess Margaret's daughter, Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, stood there, not on the verge of doing anything, and watched the carriage roll over. One of the horses had to be treated for a minor injury.

LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL

Bands played and balloons bobbed as President Bush, accompanied by his wife, Barbara, and six of their 11 grandchildren, blew a whistle yesterday to open the traditional White House Easter egg roll on the South Lawn. About 40,000 youngsters and parents attended. The President hung in for 15 minutes of the four-hour event before slipping back to the Oval Office. Before leaving, he asked one girl if she knew who lived in the White House. "The Easter Bunny," she said. "Who else?" he asked. "I don't know," she said. Celebrity guests included Christopher Reeve of Superman movie fame; some Washington Redskins; Marilyn Quayle, who read fairy tales, and Vice President

Quayle, who congratulated children for finding the hidden eggs. The American Egg Council gave 5,000 eggs to this year's roll while the White House contributed 23,000 wooden ones as prizes and souvenirs.

MARKINGS

Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto, 35, the first woman to head a modern Muslim country, is expecting her second child in October. The prime minister, wife of landowner Asif Zardari for 15 months, had a boy, Bilawal, on Sept. 21. A month later, she was elected head of state.

The seldom-seen and even less seldom-heard Lalla Latifa, wife of Morocco's King Hassan, broke tradition yesterday by hosting a lunch for British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Rabat. Lalla Latifa, who usually attends women- only events, didn't even serve lunch to Queen Elizabeth when she visited Morocco in 1980.

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