The X-Files
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At the LA premiere of her new film The Mighty, Gillian Anderson was talking about the news that X-Files' co-star David Duchovny and his wife Tea Leoni are expecting a baby. "I'm incredibly happy," she said. "But I hit him the other day, because he didn't tell me! I heard it through the press."

Chris Carter has announced thatDavid and Gillian will definitely be in the sequel to The X-Files Movie. Shooting begins halfway through next year and will coincide with the end of the seventh (and final!) season of the show.

Now Tea Leoni is pregnant (who isn't in Hollywood these days?) she's splashing out with delighted abandonment on baby things. One afternoon spree in Beverly Hills included baby clothes in yellow and $1,500 worth of Gucci accessories, including a sterling silver rattle.

New Life Form For Mulder
Get out the booties, as it looks like David Duchovny has at leats two major productions in the works. The 38-year-old is writing a baseball-themed X-Files script that he'll direct, but the big news is that the episode should premiere in late autumn, right around the time his wife, Tea Leoni, is due to give birth to their first child. The rumours have been floating around for weeks that Leoni, 32, is pregnant, especially after appearing rather bustily at the Emmy Awards last month, and now Inside Scoop hears it's true. Their reps, however, have offered the standard "No comment".

David Duchovny offered Prince Charles a cameo appearance in The X-Files. The prince delcined the thriller.

Billy Crystal will guest star in The X-Files.

Here's the evidence that David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson really are sick of working together. Movie producers want the stars to make a sequel to their hit X-Files Movie, but the only way they'd agree was if two movies were made, each starring in one of them while the other makes only a cameo appearance.

When The X-Files isn't shooting, Gillian Anderson can be found on start-studded Rodeo Drive - but only to buy clothes for her daughter Piper, 4. We hear that while Gillian spends a fortune on her little girl's wardrobe, she's frugal about her own, and was spotted the other day wading through the sales racks at swanky Saks in Beverly Hills.

Since marrying firecracker Tea Leoni, divine-looking David Duchovny has been on a health kick. He's been spotted popping into a trendy health eatery after yoga class (he was still wearing workout tights). There he gorged on tofu, sprouts and fresh juice.

Three episodes deviate from the usual obsurity of the cult TV series to background The X-Files Movie by revealing the existence of two warring groups of aliens; plus blooper tape and cast interviews. Rating: B

David Duchovny may be deadly serious on The X-Files but in real life he is hilarious, with his dry sense of humour and smooth joke delivery. He's now working on a standup act he wants to debut by the end of the year in an LA comedy club. And, of course, there's the '90s version of I Love Lucy David hopes to do for television with wife Tea Leoni.

"We had 300 bees in the same room and we had some little old beekeeper throwing buckets of them on to us. It was really frightening."
-- Gillian Anderson about The X-Files Movie.

Fed up Gillian Anderson has had it with men. Since splitting up with Clyde Klotz 18 months ago, the X-Files star has seen off three lovers. "It just takes too much energy," says Gillian, who dated an actor accused of sexually assaulting three women, followed by a painter, and yet another actor, before dumping him in favour of a second go with the painter.

David Sues Over Doll
The truth is out there - but not for long! It seems David Duchovny was less than impressed when toymaker Mattel set out to immortalise his X-Files character as a Ken doll.

In fact, David's tantrum over the little plastic replica reportedly rivalled anything his moody alter ego Fox Mulder has ever served up in the cult TV series. David hated the doll, claiming the hairstyle was wrong and made him look wimpy.

Now Mattel, threatened with a lawsuit from the irate actor, has pulled its X-Files Ken off toyshop shelves for a full overhaul - turning the original version into a collector's item.

I think it's about time I disrobed my literary fists of their televisual gloves and say what must be said. I'm compelled by the ghosts of Alwyn Kurts and Lucky Grills (okay, perhaps they're not dead, but as Australian TV investigators - viz Homicide and Bluey - they beat the FBI hands down) to right a popular misconception, propagated by the Channel 10 bigwigs.

Yes, you guessed it...The X-Files is crap.

At this point I wish to point out that no, I'm not in the pay of SBS, the ABC or Channels 7 and 9. I've also never had any links with the shadowy military-industrial complex that supposedly runs the world (although I did have a fairly extensive collection of Airfix model airplanes when I was 12). And no, the editorial staff at Sofcom know nought re my true identity, gender or inside leg measurement, so they can't help you if you want to firebomb my residence.

So where do I get off telling you about my misgivings re the quality of The X-Files? How can I be right when so many people watch this hourly dose of drivel week-in, week-out? To paraphrase Scarlett O'Hara, frankly my dear, I couldn't give a babboon's backdoor.

My evidence is not as ridiculous as Fox's so-called cogent facts re alien/government conspiracies. Nor are they as ludicrous as the shots taken of Gillian Anderson wilst she was preggers, and Chris Carter had to devise a camera angle that hid that oh so obvious midriff bulge (and a plot line that could explain her absence). No...most of what I'm about to reveal can be related to your own experiences as well as my own, or patently obvious observations we can make about the 1990's that even Pauline Hanson could understand.

Tackling the big 'un first, is "the truth out there"? And if so, can two hunky agents from the FBI locate it? I don't think so. After all, how many people do you know that have been murdered/impregnated/cloned/invited onto spaceships by aliens? No one has come up to me and said 'Hey Andrew, guess what? I just got propositioned by that three headed reptilian acid-blooded insectoid being over by the Cafe Bar'. And why is it that Americans always seem to be the ones interacting with folk from outer space. Agents Mulder and Scully aren't the only Yanks who've seen how stupid Americans are when it comes to supposed aliens, vampires, the undead and the unknown. After all, how many of us remember Don Lane's fixation with Doris Stokes?

Another thing; where's the truth in two gorgeous federal agents linking up with some geeky computer nerds, some so-called Deep Throats and other societal cast-offs? Hey, I could be wrong, but isn't the US attorney currently trying to get Bill Gates to stop being the cyber-monopolist that he's striving for? How come Fox and Dana aren't beating down the door on Gates' Seattle mansion saying 'Okay Bill, we want all the viruses that aliens installed in Windows98 now...what's that...you put them there?'? The FBI has a greater history of having its boss wearing slinky cocktail dresses as opposed to smothering conspiracy.

Then there's the unrequited passion between agents Mulder and Scully. As I've pointed out in earlier columns, we the TV audience have been down this road before. At least in Moonlighting David (Bruce Willis) got Maddie (Cybill Shepard) up the duff, and they showed it on the series. Plus they had a Shakespeare episode and a black and white episode. I think it's about time to out Chris Carter and say proudly "Look at Moonlighting, look at The X-Files...I can't tell the difference".

My biggest gripe with The X-Files is that it portrays the government (i.e. the US) in some kind of grey cahoots with the military and big business. As far as I can see, no government, no army, no company is that efficient that it could even try to develop or hide any facts or conspiracy. For example, look at our very own Australian government. Can you imagine Alexander Downer or those jokes in the Dept of Foreign Affairs covering up an alien invasion from the Australian Federal Police. First up our cops wouldn't even get the funding for a Mac II, then the mandarins and politicians would probably say to the aliens 'Look, we'll give you East Timor if you go on A Current Affair and say that John Howard is a bold and vigorous leader'.

After all, how can anyone believe that 'the truth is out there' via The X-Files when the US government can't even hide the purported phallus length of Bill Clinton (as reported by Paula Jones). Mulder and Scully should be finding that 'the incompetency is out there' instead.

As for the army and such like, ever heard about the most notable oxymoron in the English language? It's called military intelligence.

In closing, The X-Files is one of my least-watched shows because it panders to a crappy vision of TV which has been recycled before, and anyone who can give any credence to this show probably also believes in those TV alien autopsies, The Tele Tubbies and that Peter Luck is a hard hitting journalist. Credulity, cynicism, and suspicion are the rallying cries of today's TV audience, and instead of imagination folk want to see tripe dressed up as entertainment.

But I do concede...Gillian Anderson looks far sexier than Roger Climpson.