‘Friends’ band tunes out

Duluth, Minn. — Now that the show is over, therapists tell People.com that many “Friends” fans will have the same kind of withdrawal symptoms that drug addicts experience (thanks NBC!). But one guy is feeling way more sick. That’d be Phil Solem, the dude who sings the show’s cloying theme song, “I’ll Be There for You.” The dude whose gravy train has departed for good.

Solem, front man for the Minnesota-based jangle pop act The Rembrandts, prays the band will not be remembered as a one-hit wonder, even though he admits that without “Friends,” the group wouldn’t have sold nearly as many albums as it did.

But he’s a tad bitter about his success: “We lost a lot of hard-core, original fans because they thought we’d decided to take the easy way, but we felt forced to be press monkeys.”

Paltrow prepares for motherhood

The June issue of W mag features a resplendently pregnant Gwyneth Paltrow on its cover. Inside, Paltrow, who’s expecting her first baby with new husband Chris Martin, said, like her own mother, Blythe Danner, she wouldn’t mind putting her career on hold so she can be the best darn mom around.

“My mother turned down every fantastic movie there was,” Paltrow tells W. “She turned down these amazing things that would have made her a huge movie star.”

Dave to tape really ‘Late Show’

New York — David Letterman and the crew of “The Late Show” will put the notion of New York as the “city that doesn’t sleep” when the show tapes at 3 a.m. CDT next week.

Letterman will tape his May 14 show at early that day, CBS says. It will be broadcast at its regular time, 10:35 p.m., that night. Typically, Letterman tapes his Thursday and Friday shows back-to-back on Thursday evenings.

Given that he’s the father of an infant, Letterman may be a little more used to being awake in the wee hours than he has been in the past.

“Late Show” executive producer Rob Burnett has a simple explanation for the sweeps stunt: “Things seem funnier when you’re really, really tired,” he says.

Supermodel wins privacy case

London — Supermodel Naomi Campbell won her appeal Thursday in her privacy case against a newspaper that published photographs of her leaving a drug counseling meeting.

Reversing a lower court decision, the Law Lords, Britain’s highest court, ruled 3-2 that the Daily Mirror invaded Campbell’s privacy. The lords also overturned an order requiring her to pay the newspaper’s legal costs, estimated at $630,000.

Campbell had asked the panel, which sits in the upper chamber of Parliament, to reverse an October 2002 ruling that the Daily Mirror was justified in publishing a picture of her leaving a Narcotics Anonymous meeting because Campbell had previously lied to the media about her drug use.