that’s just scandalous

Of course you’ve led a respectable life. You’d clear any background check. But next time you mount your high horse when “Extra” starts slinging mud, take this into consideration: Would anybody put your wardrobe up for auction at a starting bid of five big ones?

That, my friend, is the difference between you and Divine Brown, whose red Lycra stretch top and cotton pleated skirt--the very outfit she was wearing when she caught Hugh Grant’s eye the night of his arrest--can be yours, so long as you outdo the current bidder at the Scandal Agency’s online auction (https://www.scandalagency.com). Or if red’s not your color, walk a mile in the diamondback rattlesnake-skin boots, kicking off at $800, that Joey Buttafuoco sported when a vice cop lassoed him on Hollywood Boulevard. What about Dennis Rodman’s silver nose ring, starting at $700?

Scandal Agency’s Ruth Webb and partner Sherri Spillane (former wife of novelist Mickey Spillane) have written the book on helping those who’ve had the book thrown at them turn a profit. In 1994, the two talent agents created a lively sideline specializing in le scandale, representing such luminaries as John Wayne Bobbitt, the Mayflower Madam and cop-turned-call girl Norma Jean Almodovar, who, by the way, is also a sculptress. (She’ll let her O.J. chess set, featuring Judge Lance Ito as king, go for a minimum $50K.)

Just where do they find this stuff? “To use my ex-husband’s line,” says Spillane, “it was easy, I picked up a telephone.” Rodman’s personal effects, for example, were provided by his previous live-in love Jenny J., who ended up with the items when Rodman jilted her for Carmen Electra. (Seems Rodman has a way of leaving his nose rings in the sheets.)

It’s too early to tell whether sufficient numbers of people are willing to spend good money on The Bad. Indeed, a point could be made that the sort of fetishism Scandal Agency is catering to just doesn’t seem to be in the air anymore. Spillane admits that the scandal wing of the Ruth Webb Agency hasn’t picked up any new clients recently. So we have to ask: Isn’t scandal--as a commodity, anyway--just a tad too ‘90s?

“I can answer in five words,” says Spillane. “ ‘How to Marry a Millionaire.’ ”

And if you hanker for Mr. Rockwell’s marriage license, set your browser to Scandal. She’s made the call. He’s thinking about it.