for some reason I love that David Spade is now involved in all of this
Page Six
May 2, 2006 -- Denise Richards is turning her formidable wrath on "The Showbiz Show" host David Spade after he called her a backstabber for romancing Richie Sambora, the estranged hubby of Richards' ex-best friend, Heather Locklear.
Richards - who recently kicked off a custody battle with husband Charlie Sheen by accusing him of threatening to kill her and being addicted to drugs, gambling and teen porn - has seen an erosion of public sympathy since pictures of her smooching Locklear's husband surfaced last week.
Spade is now said to be seeing Locklear. When he cracked to reporters last week that she was "home nursing the knife wound in her back," Richards' camp contacted us to accuse Spade of dating Locklear when she was still married to Sambora.
A source very close to Richards tattled to Page Six: "David is notorious for preying on married women like Heather Locklear and Rebecca Romijn and Krista Allen, who goes back and forth between David and George Clooney . . . And Heather was seeing David last year." (While we didn't want to interrupt our source, we should point out that Allen is not married.)
By way of comparison, our Richards intimate insisted that the "Wild Things" actress only began dating Sambora in March, after both of their marriages had fallen apart.
Spade's spokeswoman, Meredith O'Sullivan, said of our source's claims: "These remarks are completely false and unfounded. It is unfortunate that anyone would feel the need to attack the character of someone who has done nothing wrong and isn't involved in this situation."
Last week, Sheen's manager, Mark Burg, defended Sheen to Page Six, claiming Richards was punishing him for seeking joint custody of their two young daughters, Sam and Lola.
But our Richards authority counters that Burg has an ax to grind with the actress because she fired him after the two squabbled over a TV deal he was negotiating for her.
As for Locklear, our source says that she and Richards "grew apart" before Richards took up with Sambora. "I think they just had very different interests," said our source cryptically. "Denise's focus is on her children right now."