‘He Will Truly Be Missed’

Buddy, Bill Clinton’s chocolate Labrador retriever, died Wednesday when he was hit by a car near the former president’s Chappaqua home in upstate New York.

The 4-year-old dog “ran from the Clinton residence, playfully chasing a contractor who had just left,” said Lt. Charles Ferry of the New Castle Police Department. A car struck the dog as he ran across the road at the end of Clinton’s cul-de-sac. Buddy was taken to Chappaqua Animal Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Neither Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton nor the former president was at home at the time, but they issued a statement through spokeswoman Julia Payne, saying that the dog “was a loyal companion and brought us much joy. He will truly be missed.”

The playful antics of the first dog were well-known, as was his uneasy relationship with Socks, the first cat. The retriever even became fodder for a book: In 1998, Hillary Clinton collected letters from children for “Dear Socks, Dear Buddy.”

The Clintons received Buddy as a present four years ago and named him after the president’s great-uncle. When the president left office, Buddy moved with the Clintons, and Socks found a home in Virginia with Clinton’s secretary, Betty Currie. On the subject of his relationship with Buddy, Clinton once quoted President Harry S Truman: “If you want a friend in Washington, you need to get a dog.”

Yesterday’s News

It’s a dark day in Hollywood when a good gossip columnist loses his job. New York Daily News columnist Mitchell Fink, an institution in celebrity news circles, was let go Wednesday after 31/2 years there. He told us the post-Sept. 11 shift away from gossip may be the cause. “People get really afraid when they are threatened economically, and there is no doubt the Daily News and other newspapers have been hurting tremendously since Sept. 11,” Fink said.

On Thursday morning, he fielded calls from friends, reporters and book agents. “I respect the News’ decision,” Fink told us. “I have no regrets. I broke a ton of stories there.” (He takes credit for breaking the J.Lo-Puff Daddy split, for instance.)

But Fink is surprised that the decision was made just two weeks after United Media agreed to syndicate his column. “They were supposed to announce it today,” he said Thursday. “I was to be the guest of honor at a dinner with their sales staff. Their plan was to slowly start rolling this out and then come with a big splash in March.” Now that plan is on hold indefinitely, perhaps until Fink negotiates another newspaper contract.

Daily News spokesman Ken Frydman said that “the decision was made for budgetary reasons.” To fill the page vacated by Fink, the newspaper has expanded the length of another gossip column, by husband-and-wife team George Rush and Joanna Molloy.

Fink, who got his taste for gossip during the 11 1/2 years he spent at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, said that he’s unsure where he’ll land but that “I believe that the interest in celebrities and their lives is always going to continue.”

“There’s probably never been more of a need for this type of diversion than now.”

A Surprise Wedding

On New Year’s Day, 56-year-old Eric Clapton married his 25-year-old American girlfriend, Melia McEnery, according to a British tabloid, in a surprise ceremony at St. Mary Magdalen Church in Ripley, the village southwest of London where Clapton was raised by his grandparents.

The wedding immediately followed the christening of the couple’s 6-month-old daughter, Julie Rose, and Clapton’s 16-year-old daughter, Ruth Patricia.

Clapton’s bandmate, guitarist Andy Fairweather Low, 51, is godfather to Julie Rose. Low’s wife, Barbara, said the wedding was not announced until after the baptism. “We went there thinking it was just a christening for the girls. But at the end of the ceremony, the vicar said, ‘We have two people here who want to get married as well,’” she said, the Sun reported. “Then Eric stepped forward, and everyone cheered.”

Clapton reportedly met McEnery, a graphic artist, in Los Angeles two years ago while working on an album with B.B. King.

Clapton was married to George Harrison’s ex-wife, Patti Boyd, for nine years. Clapton’s son, Conor, is buried at the church where the wedding took place. The boy died in 1991, at the age of 4, after falling from the 53rd floor of a New York apartment where he was staying with his mother, Italian actress Lori del Santo. Conor’s death was commemorated by Clapton in the hit song “Tears in Heaven.”

Sightings

Dick Van Dyke stopping to chat with Larry King who was having breakfast at Nate ‘n Al’s delicatessen in Beverly Hills on Wednesday morning.