Report: Joe Simpson Wants $500K for Jessica’s Baby Announcement

The Famous: Watching the Watched

For weeks, Jessica Simpson has withheld confirmation on her pregnancy, flaunting her maybe-baby bump in paparazzi photos and at promotional appearances for her new fashion line. (She happily posed for pictures with fans' babies.)

Page Six reports the reason for Simpson's silence: she is shopping the exclusive for her baby announcement and the first shots of her child to various celebrity weeklies, supposedly asking for $500,000. Not surprisingly, the singer-turned-fashion mogul's longtime dadager, Joe Simpson, is behind the whole thing; the father-daughter duo won't confirm she's pregnant until a magazine takes the bait.Meanwhile, this latest issue of OK magazine has Simpson on the cover alongside the emphatic headline: "YES, I'M HAVING A BABY!" It's all a tease, however, because A) there's no official statement of any sort other than secondhand news that Simpson has been "slowly telling all her pals" that she and fiance Eric Johnson are expecting.

Simpson's representative has not yet responded to requests for comment.

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