Newlyweds begin reality series

Los Angeles — Following in the tradition of “The Osbournes,” husband-and-wife pop singers Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson are letting MTV cameras record their first year of marriage.

The series “Newlyweds” is scheduled to premiere at 9:30 p.m. Aug. 19, the cable channel announced Thursday.

Among the unscripted moments, Simpson burps and Lachey insists he has to watch a college basketball game.

“A lot of people are going to be able to see we’re just normal people, normal newlyweds living a new kind of life together,” said Lachey, of the boy band 98 Degrees.

Lachey, 29, and Simpson, 23, married in October.

NBA star takes shot at acting

Los Angeles — Lakers forward Rick Fox is playing a new role this summer — as the romantic interest of Gloria Reuben on the new Lifetime series “1-800-Missing.”

He’ll appear in five episodes of the series, starring Reuben as an FBI agent, which begins Aug. 2.

Fox had a recurring role in the HBO prison drama “Oz,” and appeared in the films “Holes,” “He Got Game,” “Eddie” and “Blue Chips.”

Fox, 33, has said he’d like to pursue an acting career when his pro basketball days are over. He’s married to actress-singer Vanessa L. Williams.

White Stripes guitarist sidelined

London — The White Stripes have canceled two weekend dates in Scotland and Ireland because guitarist Jack White has broken a finger, a British representative said Friday.

White was injured Wednesday in an auto accident in his hometown of Detroit, said Colleen Maloneys of Beggars, a London firm representing the duo.

The White Stripes had been booked at two festivals this weekend: the T in the Park festival in Kinross, Scotland, and the Witnness festival in Naas, Ireland.

Cruise spreads learning bug

New York — Tom Cruise said he learned to overcome his learning disability through Scientology.

“When I was about 7, I had been labeled dyslexic,” he told People magazine for its July 21 issue. “I’d try to concentrate on what I was reading, then I’d get to the end of the page and have very little memory of anything I’d read.”

After “Top Gun” came out in 1986, Cruise became a Scientologist and discovered the “Study Technology” the religion’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, developed in the 1960s.

Now the 41-year-old actor is a founding board member of the Hollywood Education and Literacy Project, a nonprofit group that uses Hubbard’s teaching techniques in a secular setting.