It could be a chilly Father's Day for Oprah Winfrey 's dad.

The talk queen tells us she's "shocked" and "disappointed" that she had to hear it from the Daily News that her 74-year-old pop, Vernon, is writing a book about her.

Winfrey said she laughed recently when "one of my assistants said, 'The Daily News is calling. They say they heard your father is writing a book about you.' I said, 'That's impossible. I can assure them it's not true.'

"But then my sister said, 'I think you should call your father.' I called him and it turned out he is writing a book. The worst part of it was him saying, 'I meant to tell you I've been working on it.'?"

Winfrey, 53, confided, "I was upset. I won't say 'devastated,' but I was stunned."

"The last person in the world to be doing a book about me is Vernon Winfrey," she added. "The last person."

Oprah was 14 and pregnant when she left her mother's home in Milwaukee to live with her father in Nashville. Her baby died weeks after he was born. She has said before that she's grateful to her father for helping her go on, for teaching her discipline and the importance of education.

Nevertheless, Vernon, who plans to call his book, "Things Unspoken," was quoted as saying he should have been tougher on her, because Oprah was "out of hand and an unruly child."

"I have a good relationship with him," Oprah told us Sunday, when she received the Elie Wiesel Foundation Humanitarian Award at the Waldorf. Though she hasn't seen Vernon since he accompanied her on a trip to Africa a few months ago,
she said, "We talk, we talk, we talk."

That's why "I would have preferred to have known my father was working on this. It would have been a nice gesture, a courtesy," she said.

Vernon isn't the only biographer Winfrey has on her tail. This month, an Illinois court dismissed extortion charges against
Keifer Bonvillain, who sought $1.5 million for "embarrassing" information he claimed was destined for a book. Oprah is letting her lawyers deal with it - "whatever happens, happens."

Potentially more troubling is the bio Kitty Kelley has under construction.

Oprah said she won't try to interfere with it. "I'm not cooperating with it, but if she wants to write a book, fine. This is America. I'm not discouraging it or encouraging it."

The maker of best sellers added, with a wink, "and you know I can encourage!"

Oprah, of course, has no shortage of famous admirers. Among those who donned black tie and gowns on a "Sopranos" night were Edie Falco, Katie Couric, David Bowie and Iman, Dustin Hoffman, Ron Howard, Sidney Poitier, Barbara Walters, Sydney Pollack and Martha Stewart.

Also there, at separate tables, were Oprah's longtime beau, Stedman Graham, and her best pal, Gayle King. The increasingly rare presence of Stedman with Oprah prompted even Ted Koppel to observe that he and his wife, Grace, just celebrated their 44th anniversary, but "Oprah and Steadman have been engaged for longer than that."

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Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt brought their wares to market yesterday. Slipping out of their Hotel du Cap hidey-hole, the paparazzi's most-prized targets made their way to a press conference at the Cannes film festival to talk about "A Mighty Heart," the Pitt-produced film about the terrorist execution of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Jolie, who plays Pearl's expectant widow, Mariane, said: "I remember being six months pregnant and thinking, 'I can't imagine at this time not having the father with me.'"

The emotional conference, attended by the real Mariane, was leavened by some Brangelina banter. Asked to respond to Jolie's remarks about religious conflict, the distracted Pitt excused himself by saying, "I was wafting in the words of ... what's her name."

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Now that she's out of rehab, Britney Spears is said to crave a different fix. A few hours before her mini-concert at Mansion in Miami, "she was calling around for a doctor to give her a B-12 shot," says our spy. "A doctor shot her up before her show." Brit's rep says, "If she did [get the injection], I wouldn't be surprised. The vitamins keep your energy going."

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Josh Hartnett and Penelope Cruz had an intimate date at Alias Restaurant at Clinton and Rivington Sunday night. "They came in around 10, both casually dressed but looking super-hot," said our spy. "Penelope wore a fedora."

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New York Observer publisher Jared Kushner may have some competition for Ivanka Trump. Maroon 5 front man Adam Levine shared a table with her for a chat at a party Saturday night, and she and Zach Braff exchanged phone numbers.

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Barely a week after breaking up, John Mayer and Jessica Simpson are still keeping us guessing.

Saturday, sometime standup comic Mayer did a set at the Comedy Cellar in the West Village, talking about being single. In it, he complained that Carrie Underwood 's new song "Before He Cheats" is too aggressive toward guys.

"Maybe he's not cheating - maybe he broke up with you and you just can't deal with it," he suggested. He then concluded a riff about kicking a woman "on her knees" with: "Maybe next time, she'll think before she speaks."

But now a source tells In Touch that John and Jessica met Sunday night. And Mayer was seen leaving Simpson's downtown hotel, the SoHo Grand, around noon on Monday.

"He was looking really happy," says a witness. "He couldn't stop smiling."

Maybe she gave him some more material for his act?

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KATIE Holmes, call your lawyers and Scientology advisers.

A blond-haired, blue-eyed fashion student, who claims to be a virgin, has changed her name to Katee Holmes and is launching a porn career in which she'll be deflowered in her first movie. And that's got the real Katie Holmes' camp in an uproar.

"It's a really cheap shot," a rep for the actress, who's married to Tom Cruise, told Page Six. But Shy Love, an adult film vet who manages the 5-foot-9, 122-pound Katee - a small-town girl from Illinois - insisted: "Katee is using the name as a tribute to Katie, who has always portrayed an innocence in everything she's done, beginning with 'Dawson's Creek.' "

Well, not quite everything - Holmes did go topless in the 2000 movie "The Gift," but she's shunned any on-screen nudity since tying the knot with Cruise, who's believed to have gotten her sex scene with Aaron Eckhart killed from "Thank You for Smoking."

Katee, 18 - a student at the Fashion Institute of Design in Orange County, Calif. - has no such qualms. She wrote to Shy Love, who runs Adult Talent Managers and has a Myspace profile, and the two discussed having her "first" sexual encounter filmed.

"I know it's pretty extreme to lose my virginity on camera, but I like the fulfillment and excitement I get from watching porn, so I figured [a movie] was the best place for me to lose it," the not-that-innocent Katee said. "How many people wished they could relive their first experience, if not to remember it but to learn from it, right?"

Love said she'll start slow with her improbable virgin, having Katee try a girl/girl encounter first. "She comes to the porn world completely natural - with a perky pair of A-cup breasts that are far too perfect to have been constructed by any doctor. And she's not just a porn virgin, but an actual never-been-kissed virgin," Love gushed.

Holmes' camp is weighing her possible recourse. A friend of Katie told us, "It's really kind of sleazy, using her name like that."

A spokeswoman for Cruise said, "Obviously, Tom would support Katie in anything she decides to do about it."

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