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Opra Winfrey

Cape Town — Oprah Winfrey’s embittered ex-stepmom Barbara Winfrey is throwing massive shade on the billionaire talk show queen, dishing dirt in return for payment in a scathing tabloid interview.Winfrey asked Barbara to please leave her house in Nashville, Tennessee, which belongs to the talk show queen and which she invited her dad, Vernon and Barbara to stay in.

Barbara just got divorced from Vernon after 14 years and is bitter about being kicked out of the house. She refused to sign a confidentiality agreement which would have seen her get more out of the divorce deal —and is instead sitting with the British tabloid newspaper Daily Mail to mouth off about Oprah.

Barbara told the tabloid that Oprah is “a horrible decorator”. “Money cannot buy you taste. She would put plaid with stripes and all sorts.

“Some people can have money and be mentally rich — secure in what they have I guess. But others, how can I put it (…) some people you can’t take the ghetto out of,” Barbara says of Oprah.

When Vernon and Barbara once visited Oprah at her Chicago high rise apartment, Barbara says Oprah once got on the intercom and yelled: “Negroes in the house! Negroes in the house!”

“She thought it was funny. I thought it was insulting. I’m older than her. I know what it means. She was reminding us of our low class.”
Barbara says Oprah didn’t really allow them to stay at her homes but always at hotels. When Oprah threw her Legends’ Ball at her Santa Barbara mansion, Vernon and Barbara were not invited to stay in the house but had to stay in a nearby hotel.

They were told they can’t mix with the A-list celebrities and their table was not on the main floor with John Travolta, Sidney Poitier, Tina Turner and Alicia Keys “but tucked in the corner on the second floor. We weren’t allowed to mingle with the celebrities — but we did”.

Barbara says Oprah doesn’t want to get DNA tested to make sure that Vernon is really her father.

“I think she’s afraid because she knows it would prove he is her father. She can’t quite believe that such a silly man could make such a magnificent creature.

“But Vernon’s her father all right. They have the same big feet, with the same callouses underneath; they have the same bags under the eyes and the same nose. They’re so alike.

“My husband once told me that just because someone gives you something does not mean that they love you. He was talking about Oprah,” says Barbara.

“Her brand is that she’s a nice, caring generous, giving person. That’s not how it is. She’s controlling – it’s all about control.”

Barbara says that Oprah once visited and complained that “my sheets didn’t have 1,000 thread and the bath towels and coffee cups weren’t big enough”. —  Channel24