Joke’s on You: Barbara Bush apparently appreciated...

Joke’s on You: Barbara Bush apparently appreciated the humor in “Naked Gun 2 1/2,” even though it was at her own expense. Among the guests at Tuesday night’s state dinner at the White House was actor Leslie Nielsen, whose slapstick with a Barbara Bush look-alike was a highlight of the madcap movie: Nielsen’s gumshoe character knocks the First Lady over as he bolts out of a White House restroom, then cudgels her to the floor with an errant swing of a giant lobster.

Winner: Nigerian author Ben Okri could not believe he won the Booker Prize, Britain’s most prestigious literary award. “I’m floating in a dream at the moment,” Okri, 31, said in London as he sipped champagne at a party for his winning novel “The Famished Road.” In the book a “spirit child” with magical powers leaves a utopian realm for life on Earth. Past winners include Nobel laureate William Golding and Salman Rushdie.

Coping: Since losing her husband to cancer two years ago, advice columnist Joyce Brothers says she has learned to survive. She told an audience at a church lecture in Prairie Village, Kan.: “You need to be good to yourself. It’s not a tribute to the person you have lost to make your life smaller or to not have joy.”

Battle Plans: It’s been nearly nine months since thousands of troops from Ft. Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C., began coming home from Operation Desert Storm, and hospitals in and around town are bracing for Operation Baby Boom. “We’ve got a lot of pregnant women here,” said one spokeswoman for Womack Army Medical Center. “Mother Nature took its course once the soldiers returned from the Persian Gulf,” said another.