I was in London last week (proof positive that bloggers do have real lives), and I picked up a copy of the newsweekly New Europe. On page 6, the British pop singer Sophie Ellis Bextor (of “Murder On The Dancefloor” fame) appears in a truly tasteless anti-fur ad from PETA. (Click here if you really want to see it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

Weird thing number one: The ad dates back to 2002. What the heck is it doing running in 2008? Is PETA that hard-up for new spokesmodels?

Weird thing number two: In the same week PETA first unveiled the ad, Sophie happily attended the opening of a new Versace boutique in the Knightsbridge section of London.

Versace sells lots of fur.

PETA hates Versace so much that when PETA vice president Dan Mathews was asked a few years ago to nominate a “man of the year” for a gay men’s magazine, he chose Andrew Cunanan, “because he got Gianni Versace to stop using fur.” Cunanan was Versace’s murderer.

So Sophie did the anti-fur ad for PETA, and then presumably had to wade through PETA picketers just to attend the Versace opening. Asked about the apparent contradiction, here’s what she said:

“… I don’t have a complicated view about it. I don’t wear fur, but I don’t mind other people wearing it, or standing here in a shop that sells it at all.”

Just think — if all the other anti-fur celebrities were this dedicated to the cause, PETA could wipe out the fur industry by… well, by the time the sun goes supernova. And I’m so intrigued by the idea of PETA running the ad again more than five years later. It’s like, “If you keep pretending you hate fur, we’ll keep pretending you have a career.”