NEWS LITE : DIANA BODYGUARD SEES ROUGH TIMES.

Trevor Rees-Jones, the only survivor of the Princess Diana car crash, is having a bad time of it.

The ex-bodyguard is working as a part-time clerk in a sporting-goods store in the small English town of Oswestry. He lives in a poorly furnished apartment in a rundown building because his wife, Susan, is selling their house. She left him and is living with another man, bar owner Peter McCarthy, scandalizing all of Oswestry, in Shropshire.

Plus, Rees-Jones' former employer, Mohammed al-Fayed, Dodi's dad, in an interview in this week's Time mag blames the accident on the ``incompetence'' of Rees-Jones and another bodyguard he says made unprofessional errors the night of the crash.

Despite having money problems, Rees-Jones has for some reason turned down an offer of $800,000 to tell his story. Still, his lawyer defended him against al-Fayed, noting: ``When Mr. al-Fayed learned of Trevor's resignation in April, he said he regretted the decision and that he could always have his job back. These hardly seem to be the words of someone who holds the bodyguards wholly or partly responsible for his son's death.''

Rees-Jones, who's said little of the crash and reportedly is depressive, told a British TV reporter he's dreading Monday's anniversary of Diana's death.

Socialite, actor find no enduring love

Never-wed San Francisco socialite Kelley Phleger, 30, may keep her streak intact.

Don Johnson, 48, who told of their impeding nuptials in April, has now put it on hold for a year. Something about the four-times-wed actor being caught out with an old girlfriend.

Johnson announced the wedding within weeks of meeting Phleger, right after he dumped teen-ager Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, who plays his daughter on the TV show ``Nash Bridges.''

Last spring, Johnson called Phleger ``the love of my life.''

Piano Man waiting out ailment in N.Y.

Billy Joel says recurring throat problems have forced him to postpone the fall leg of his world tour.

Earlier this year, the Piano Man canceled several American and European dates, including an appearance with Elton John, because of an upper respiratory infection,

Joel has spent the summer recuperating at his home on Long Island and has rescheduled all his September and October concerts for November and December.

``My doctor is encouraged by the progress I've made, but he wants to be sure that I am 100 percent before I step out on stage again,'' Joel said Wednesday.

Band's fan breaks out of jail for show

When the Smashing Pumpkins played a free outdoor concert in downtown Minneapolis recently, 17-year-old fan Pamela D. Keary just had to be there. So she strolled out of a Minnesota minimum-security pen where she's serving a 12-year stretch for second-degree murder and took in the show, according to Rolling Stone magazine. Cops picked her up after the concert and returned her to jail, the magazine says.

Messing with Bill; Clinton foibles feed biting song parody

He's lying low on Martha's Vineyard. The Republicans want his head. He's political road kill on editorial pages from coast to coast. And now one of President Clinton's diminishing oases - oldies radio - has evaporated.

In a blistering parody of a tune that he doubtless thought very cool as an undergraduate at Georgetown University in 1966 - ``Don't Mess with Bill'' - the president is skewered with his own finely cut versions of the truth.

In the week after his prime-time, nationally televised expiation about a sexual relationship with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky, a doctored version of the old Marvelettes hit is the hottest summertime song on WROR-FM in Boston.

``It's the No. 1 requested song on the radio station without any doubt,'' said Harry Nelson, the station's program director. ``I hope things will get straightened out and the country can get back to a more normal pace.''

As Clinton struggles to achieve a personal form of domestic tranquillity, prepares his legal case for possible hearings in the House and attempts to relax during his island vacation, he finds himself where no politician wants to be: the object of stinging ridicule.

Nelson and production director Gordon McAdams spent seven hours in a radio station editing room piecing together the president's own words from its well-stocked audio archive of Clinton cuts over the years.

The result? The Marvelettes song, about a jealous girlfriend, that rose to No. 7 on the pop charts 32 years ago, portrays the president as a gleeful philanderer and the first lady as the oblivious woman done wrong.

``I misled people, including even my wife,'' Clinton is heard saying from his confessional speech. To which the station has spliced this out-of-context Hillary Rodham Clinton retort: ``At this point, I don't pay much attention to it.''

``It's been great,'' Nelson said. ``We've received a ton of phone calls. We did it for a laugh and with no intention to be mean to anybody. We were running out of jokes because they were being recirculated.''The song is played at least six times a day. ``We might slip it in an extra time or two if the request lines start to get really, really hot,'' Nelson said.

News Lite is compiled by Karen Duffy from Daily News staff and wire reports

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3 Photos

PHOTO (1) Food fight

Thousands hurl tomatoes at each other Wednesday in the Spanish town of Bunol during the ``Tomatina'' tomato-throwing festival.

Associated Press

(2) Joel

(3) Johnson