Wednesday Briefs: Elton John going to royal wedding; Meredith Baxter on Oprah today; Bravo’s Andy Cohen not a fan of PS 22

Elton John, who was a close friend of the late Princess Diana, has confirmed that he and partner David Furnish have been invited to Prince William and his fiancee Kate Middleton’s wedding in London next month.

Elton had told HollyScoop.com he was not expecting to be invited: “I don’t know them (princes William and Harry) very well. I’ve only met them twice – once when they were young and once at the Diana Memorial Concert… I knew their mother but that is the only thing. I’m not playing at the wedding. I haven’t been asked and I don’t expect to be asked.”

But in the end, Elton made the cut. He so memorably performed a special version of Candle in the Wind at Princess Diana’s funeral which ended up being an even bigger hit than the song was the first time around!

BOOK TOUR: Meredith Baxter’s appearance on The Today Show yesterday certainly got a lot of buzz with her allegation that former husband, actor David Birney, had beaten her during their marriage.

Today, she is the guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show as she continues to promote the heck out of her new memoir Untied: A Memoir of Family, Fame and Floundering.

Baxter played the oldest daughter on the ABC drama Family before going on to star as the mom on the long-running NBC comedy Family Ties. She later received an Emmy nomination for playing convicted murder Betty Broderick.

Oprah has lined up her Family Ties hubby Michael Gross as a surprise guest and Michael J. Fox, her TV son, appears via a videotape message.

NOT A FAN: You know how most people, myself included, were delighted by the performance of the choir from Staten Island’s PS 22 at the end of the Oscar telecast?

They sang Over the Rainbow and were joined by all the night’s winners. I thought it was a graceful and uplifting way to wrap up an evening that had few highlights or surprises.

But Bravo’s Andy Cohen hated it!

His said this week on MSNBC’s Morning Joe: “A public school chorus singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.’ I literally…if I wasn’t going to go out to some parties I would have slit them right then. It was the worst. I was looking for a knife to stick in my eyes, it was so terrible.”

Geez! That’s a lot more bitchy than anything said on those Housewives reunion specials that Andy hosts!