"there was a long silence, one of those chilling silences like when you ask someone when the baby's due and they're not pregnant"

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'PEOPLE ONLINE' CELINE PR PRESSURE: THE STORY WILL NOT GO ON!

A feature by Staff Writer Stuart Gumboot.

Shocking revelations today as sources from People/People Online (the parent publication of Australia's Who Weekly) have revealed that pressure from Celine Dion's PR people and agent led to drastic changes in a planned feature. The story was to have been titled, 'Celine Dion: From Alien to Girl Next Door' but according to our source, "Celine's people flipped when they found out, we were lucky to have any story at all". The story eventually ran under the headline 'Celine Dion: From Rags to Riches'.

In exclusive pictures, released for the first time today, you can see the unusual texture of her alien skin. The detail, from a exclusive nude photo of Celine, above, links to the larger picture.

The trouble began when a sub-editor rang Celine's agent to check that stock family photos were the best original source available, as they appeared to have a greenish tinge that affected skin tones in the photos. During the course of a conversation with the media kit department at the agency, she made a joke about how the photos "almost made the family look like aliens". She recalls, "then there was a long silence, one of those chilling silences like when you ask someone when the baby's due and they're not pregnant".

Intrigued, she decided to dig further into Celine's past, uncovering discrepancies between Celine's official bio and stories told by friends and family. But, in her own words, "I never expected to discover that my flippant remark about Celine's family photo was in fact the truth! So I approached my editor and the journalist who wrote the original piece and asked them how they felt about this material. Of course we decided to run with it. And that's when things got nasty."

On the next page: Celine's alien family