NEWS LITE : BUSH WANTS KING ALONG FOR BAILOUT.

How can former President Bush top last year's parachute jump? Throw in a King.

Bush told CNN talk-show host Larry King he plans to celebrate his 75th birthday in June by jumping out of another airplane, an encore to his March 25, 1997, stunt near Yuma, Ariz.

Boasting that he feels like a ``spring colt,'' Bush said toward the end of his appearance on King's show Tuesday night he is planning another parachute jump.

``Larry, you ought to go with me,'' Bush said.

King replied, ``If you do it, I'll do it.''

A Bush spokesman confirmed on Wednesday that the former president, who once bailed out of his damaged bomber during World War II, is serious. He said Bush wants to jump sometime around his June 12 birthday.

Protests spur Diana memorial plan cuts

The committee overseeing memorials to Princess Diana announced Wednesday that it has scaled down plans for an elaborate project in Kensington Gardens after angry protests from area residents.

The committee chairman said the original proposal for an elaborate, 2.7-acre site costing $16.5 million has been replaced by a more understated plan involving a smaller garden and memorial walk.

The most significant aspect will be a walkway connecting four of London's great parks - Kensington, Hyde, Green and St. James's - but the walkway no longer will follow Diana's funeral procession route.

The parks will be connected in a figure-8 shape, with Hyde Park in the center, allowing people to start and finish the walk however they choose.

Stafford's sickness snaps singing skein

All good streaks must come to an end.

Singer, songwriter and comedian Jim Stafford ended his consecutive-shows-performed streak at 3,300 when he got sick last week.

The 54-year-old entertainer canceled four sold-out shows in Branson, Mo.

``It was one of those really nasty, ugly, horrible viruses,'' a spokeswoman at the Jim Stafford Theatre said Tuesday.

Stafford, best known for his 1973 hit ``Spiders and Snakes,'' performs nearly 400 shows a year, often working seven days a week, sometimes twice a day. His streak lasted eight seasons in Branson.

Celine Dion taking performance break

Celine Dion will take two years off after concluding her current tour with a New Year's Eve performance in Montreal.

``We will try to live a more normal life,'' said her husband and manager, Rene Angelil, ``because what we are living right now is not normal, it's artificial.''

Dion, 30, noting the age difference between herself and Angelil, 56, said, ``I don't feel like going on like this for another 10 years because Rene won't be there forever, unfortunately.''

Jagger wants child off runway, in class

Mick Jagger has his household in an uproar over his demand that daughter Elizabeth, 14, give up her budding modeling career and concentrate on schoolwork.

But she's got an ally in model mom Jerry Hall, who told a British magazine: ``He's not getting his way. . . . Almost every schoolgirl wants to be a model.''

Lewinsky whines, dines in New York 

Monica Lewinsky chewed out the staff of a fancy New York restaurant after fellow diners giggled at her and a photographer met her at the door as she tried to storm out, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday.

The former White House intern got steamed during lunch when a couple at the next table laughed Tuesday while she was talking on her cell phone at Gino's, witnesses said.

``Do you find this funny?'' Lewinsky barked at the pair.

``As a matter of fact, I do,'' the neighboring diner replied.

Lewinsky and her luncheon companion, a woman believed to be her mother, Marcia Lewis, then tried to leave, but they marched back in and Lewinsky upbraided the staff after spotting the photographer, the newspaper said.

``She came storming back in the restaurant,'' said Cindy Bulson, 30, a fellow diner. ``She brushed by me and said, Excuse me! and headed straight toward the manager.''

Lewinsky, who wore a baseball cap and dark sunglasses, has been out and about this week while visiting her mother in New York. They've shopped at Bloomingdale's and dined at the elegant restaurant 21.

Corkscrews will twist Starr

If you've had it up to here with the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, Laurel Glen Vineyard is offering a decorously comical way to protest.

The image of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr will soon grace the corks of Laurel Glens Reds, a modestly priced, nonvintage red wine.

The Starr corks also will bear the slogan, ``Investigate Reds, A Better Use Of Your Tax Dollar.''

The wine, according to Patrick Campbell, owner of the Sonoma County winery, will allow consumers to use a corkscrew to retaliate against some of Washington's largesse.

``I would like to say he was chosen unanimously among our panel of experts,'' Campbell said.

Starr is the fifth well-known figure to be featured on the Reds corks. Lenin, Marx, J. Edgar Hoover and Mao have been immortalized previously.

``The wine industry is a serious affair and this gives us an opportunity to have some fun,'' Campbell said.

News Lite is compiled from Daily News staff and wire reports

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PHOTO Hizzoner rides victory wave

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and city Veterans Affairs Director Michael Handy display on Wednesday a surfboard the mayor won in a bet with his San Diego counterpart, Susan Golding, over the Yankees-Padres World Series winner.

Ed Bailey/Associated Press