STRIKE A POSE...

This may get revisited in a subsequent pop papers, but, frankly, Madonna in Vogue deserves a segment all to itself - oh, yes, it's got everything. Conde Naste have been throwing their weight around, demanding fansites remove the images, so we'll have to ake do with the descriptions for now:

In the August issue of Vogue magazine, Madonna is featured in a lengthy interview and a photo spread at the English country estate she shares with her children, 8-year-old Lourdes (Lola) and 4-year-old Rocco, and her director-husband, Guy Ritchie ("Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels").

See? Some people thought she was using her kids as little more than fashionable add-ons; but it's not true at all - they're right at the heart of a full fashion shoot. And why worry about the implications of using your kids to bolster your image - it's going to be, ooh, two or three years before the tabs will start using the explanation that you'd put them onto the stage as a reason for pap-stalking them.

The photos include Madonna feeding chickens on the lawns of Ashcombe wearing a cream-colored Grace Kelly-inspired chiffon dress and cashmere cardigan and playing dress-up with her children in her sitting room while wearing a yellow cashmere cardigan and multicolored polka-dot silk dress.

Did you get the kids? Did you get the kids in the pictures? For I am - currently - a Family Woman. The kids are vitally important. You can't be rude about thiese pictures, there are kids in it. It's bemusing that she insisted a large chunk of the British countryside be deemed out of bounds to us yokels and servants to protect her family's privacy, and yet she's happy to piss that privacy away in a bid to cling on to the front of Vogue, isn't it?

She shares her wedding album with writer Hamish Bowles, finally allowing an outsider to see her in her gown, an ivory duchesse satin dress with an hourglass corset bodice and crinoline skirts. (Madonna and Ritchie were married in December 2000.)

Quick - show some interest, otherwise it'll be the book with the picture of her being shagged from behind by Vanilla Ice.

The 46-year-old singer-actress says she's different from the sexed-up star featured in 1991's "Madonna: Truth or Dare." In some ways, that film is hard for her to watch, she tells Vogue.

Well, in that we're in complete agreement with her - it's a bloody awful film; it took us three goes and a stiff brandy to get through it.

"I was a very selfish person. You go through periods of your life where the world does revolve around you, but you can't live your whole life that way," she is quoted as saying. "On the other hand, I kind of admire my spunk and directness!"

Good god - can you imagine how Madonna must feel looking at a time when she believed the world revolved around her? That must feel so strange. Thank god she's not like that now, eh? She'd be doing stuff like getting the map of the British countryside redrawn to suit her whim to live on a country estate, wouldn't she?

Madonna stars in a new documentary, "I'm Going to Tell You a Secret," that is due out later this year. She says the film "starts with the struggle of a dancer trying to get into a show" and ends with her visit to Israel.

We're not sure it's fair to second-guess a film, but we have a sneaking feeling that this film might be edited to make her look less like a demandy diva.

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