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NY Daily News JV gossip Lloyd Grove found himself in the middle of a highly amusing feud between rival publicists after he passed along a "leaked" e-mail to Britney Spears' manager (amazingly enough, it seems she has someone on staff to advise her, "Just stay home, get fat, and squeeze out a couple of rugrats with that deadbeat husband of yours, kid. People will still love you when you're ready to tour again in ten years!") aimed at poaching the embattled baby-fumbler from Leslie Sloane Zelnick, her heroic PR enforcer. Hilarity, as they say, ensues:

[5WPR exec Tracey] Nguyen wrote to Brit's manager: "I would NEVER allow any of my clients to do an interview, let alone such an important one as the one that Britney just did, without being there to make sure that the questions that were being asked were appropriate, and also to make sure that she looked her best on camera at all times."

Offering to handle Brit "for less than what your current publicist is charging you and do 10 times better of a job," Nguyen claimed: "A perfect example that I can present is what I was able to do for Lil' Kim. Two years ago, no one wanted to touch her. She was perceived as a raunchy rapper who had gone way too far with her plastic surgery. ... I see Britney today in the same position that Kim was once in."

Britney Spears is the same as a convicted felon?

Zelnik shot back: "She must not have taken PR 101, where they teach you: When you're trying to steal other people's clients, don't diss your own."

Really, with Lindsay Lohan's weight up to relatively normal levels and the gradual reappearance of her once-vaunted breasts, no individual celebrity offers a better opportunity for a crisis manager to show off her chops than Spears, who on any given day might need someone to defuse rumors that she's pregnant with her manny's quadruplets, is looking into the possibility of having K-Fed deported, or absentmindedly left her infant in an empty bucket at KFC after being lured across the food court by the siren call of the Cinnabon. We can't fault Nguyen for seizing a chance to steal away a client who'd give her the opportunity to ply her trade at the highest possible level.