* “The Queen” Helen Mirren is blasting reports that her rejection of a dinner invitation from Queen Elizabeth II was meant as a snub. The Oscar winner says she was unable to dine with the queen because she was on a film set in South Dakota. “I was honored to be invited to dinner at the Palace,” Mirren said in a statement Wednesday. “I was contracted on that date to be working in South Dakota, in a situation which was impossible to change. … I would never have the hubris or the rudeness to insult anyone who had the kindness to invite me to dinner.”
*Tom Selleck, who reigned in Hawaii as “Magnum, P.I.,” is getting ready to take over “Las Vegas.” Selleck will join the cast of the NBC drama next season, playing a billionaire with a mysterious past who becomes the new owner of the show’s centerpiece hotel, the Montecito Resort & Casino, the network said Wednesday.
*The Rolling Stones have agreed to relocate a concert in Belgrade from the city’s racetrack after local animal activists balked at a plan to sedate the horses stabled there to keep them calm during the performance. Members of ORCA, the Serbian capital’s largest animal-rights group, had argued that the noise of the July 14 concert would traumatize the Hippodrome’s 300 equine residents.
*Larry Combs, principal clarinet of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 1978 and a member of the orchestra since 1974, will retire from the CSO in June 2008. A founding member of the Chicago Chamber Musicians, Combs plans to continue performing chamber music as well as to keep teaching at DePaul University. Before joining the CSO, he played in the orchestras of Montreal and New Orleans and the Santa Fe Opera.
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The Personals page was compiled by Emily Rosenbaum from Tribune news services and staff reports.
