Post-breakup pain

New York – Jessica Simpson says she was stung when ex-husband Nick Lachey jumped back into dating after their high-profile breakup.

“Oh, it hurt me,” the 26-year-old singer-actress says in an interview in the March issue of Elle magazine, on newsstands Feb. 13. “Two or three weeks later? Yeah, I’d say it kind of hurt me.”

Simpson and Lachey, 33, starred in the MTV reality show, “Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica.” She filed for divorce in December 2005, after three years of marriage.

She made that decision, she says, after watching the 2004 romance “The Notebook” on a plane ride home to Texas. She figured out that the movie had a message for her: “It was about that moment of desperation. I needed to breathe.”

Does she still keep in touch with the singer, who is dating MTV’s Vanessa Minnillo?

“Mm-hmmm,” she tells the magazine. “He’s so much a part of my life, how could I not be? Any guy that’s going to be with me from this day forward has to understand that. You want to help me find a guy?”

It appears that’s not necessary. Simpson has been photographed recently with singer-songwriter John Mayer.

Super ratings are in

Peyton Manning had a lot of witnesses to his soggy super win, with the estimated 93.2 million viewers representing the second most-watched Super Bowl broadcast ever.

Only the 1996 Super Bowl between Dallas and Pittsburgh, which had 94.1 million viewers, had a bigger audience, according to Nielsen Media Research on Monday. Behind that 1996 game and the M-A-S-H series finale, Sunday’s game was the third most-watched program in television history.

The Colts beat the Bears 29-17 in a game played during a driving rainstorm in Miami. It was shown on CBS.

Also, Prince’s rain-drenched halftime performance at the Super Bowl set his album sales sprouting like Jack’s beanstalk, Amazon.com reports.

“The Very Best of Prince” shot from No. 710 to No. 71 on Amazon.com’s Top Sellers list for music, according to Amazon, while “Music From the Motion Picture ‘Purple Rain”‘ went from No. 432 to No. 53 on the Amazon list, a leap of 715 percent.

Overall, Prince’s average album sales on Amazon went up 653 percent.

Bumping into royalty

Dublin, Ireland – Britain’s Prince Andrew made a surprise trip to a suburban Dublin supermarket on Monday and pleasantly startled the shoppers – particularly one woman who collided with the prince at the bottom of an escalator.

Andrew, second son of Queen Elizabeth II, was on a one-day tour of Dublin as Britain’s special representative for international trade and investment.

The prince visited a new branch of Tesco PLC, the dominant British supermarket chain. It has become one of the biggest chains in Ireland, too, since moving in a decade ago.

“He is absolutely gorgeous, very well turned out,” said Margaret Bartley, who saw the royal being ushered through the Tesco branch in Malahide, a posh northern suburb of Dublin. Another surprised shopper physically bumped right in to him as she stepped off an escalator.

The Irish Republic was long off-limits to British royals because of the risk of assassination by the Irish Republican Army, but visits have become regular occurrences since 1994, when the outlawed group called the first of its long-term truces. Andrew’s older brother, Prince Charles, and father, Prince Philip, have been the most regular visitors.