BREAKING: Tina Turner To Tour, Oprah Hearts the CP Toilet

I'm just in from the taping of the May 8 "Oprah Winfrey Show" at Caesars Palace where Tina Turner announced she's going back on tour at age 68 for the first time in eight years. Tickets go on sale on May 12 for a tour that kicks off from Kansas City on Oct. 1.

I must say, I'm a little confused about whether there was an embargo on that news. The woman who prepped the audience told the thousands who filled Cher's new performing home, Caesars Palace's Colosseum, not to tell anyone. But a group of us journalists were invited to attend -- including Robin Leach, the L.A. Times columnist/blogger Richard Abowitz and Review-Journal columnist Doug Elfman as well as the local CBS affiliate that airs "Oprah" -- and I was given no preconditions whatsoever.

So, that said, Tina's going on tour having been prodded, she said, by Sophia Loren to stop lolling about her Swiss home and go back to work. But first, Cher came out to perform "Take Me Home" in a shredded blue dress with a matching blue headpiece and about a dozen dancers in 1970s outfits including, unlike the all-female Bette show, a few male dancers. Later, Tina did "Nutbush City Limit" on her own and then the two divas -- Oprah, being Vegasy, called them "a pair of queens" -- shared the stage for a rousing (is there any other version?) "Proud Mary." Cher looked particularly fetching in a shiny red mini-dress and a long-straight-black-hair wig.

The "Oprah" show also includes some video of Cher with designer Bob Mackie showing a few of the 17 daring costumes she'll sport when she opens in Vegas on May 6. There's a body-length Indian headdress, something Cher refers to as "Cleopatra comes to Caesars Palace" and a "warrior goddess" look she'll don for the Pat Benatar classic "Love Is A Battlefield." Cher said the show will span her pre-Sonny career and include the Sonny & Cher tunes "It's The Little Things" and "The Beat Goes On" as well as a rendition of the Sammy Davis Jr. standard "I Gotta Be Me."

Cher also went on a bit about having dated Tom Cruise, which I hadn't heard but which has been out for a month or so and has a lot of online skeptics scratching their heads about when this could've been and how nobody would've known it until Cher said it. It's further baffling because Cher told Oprah about some incident where Cher and young Tom went to a restaurant in New York, I think, and some waitress turned out to be an old schoolmate of Tom's who, Tom told Cher, wouldn't have spoken to him back in the day. I suppose that's possible since Tom crew up in Syracuse, but kind of amazing nonetheless.

The most interesting stuff, though, was what Oprah rambled on about OFF CAMERA. First, she'd just come from visiting Tom Cruise's home in Telluride, Colo., where she rode on a snowmobile with him and spoke of his firm buttocks and how hot he was to grip as they took their spin. "You're like, 'Take me home, Tom,' " she enthused. There was no discussion of Suri or Katie, but someone shouted out from the audience something related to Cruise's infamous I-love-Katie meltdown because Oprah replied, "I didn't jump on his couch." Good to know. She said that episode airs May 2.

NOT as good to know, but perversely fascinating nonetheless, was Oprah's lengthy aside to the crowd about the high-tech toilets in her Caesars Palace suite. As it happens, the thing lifts the lid automatically when you enter the bathroom and, she explained in shocking detail, it is capable of washing and blow-drying your butt and other parts. "I swear, I gotta get one of these on the show and show everybody," she said. "I'm coming back here! I'm cleaned up AND cleaned out!"

I wondered what she was referring to, so I Googled "butt-cleaning toilet" and found this. There. We're done. Oprah, you need not ever speak of this again. In fact, please, please, please don't!

That said, quite a fun show. I was a little worried in the beginning when it seemed every Vegas cliche was coming into play -- "Viva Las Vegas" blared as the audience prepper came on, there was much to-do about the Tina and Cher impersonators in the audience and the prepper did lay that tired "What Happens in Vegas" line. Yes, she got it wrong. She must've read Christina Binkley's book.