By Belinda Luscombe

YOU BLACKMAILIN' ME?

So here he is, ROBERT DE NIRO, minding his own business in a New York City bar, when this paparazzo, this JOSEPH LIGIER, shoves a video camera in his face. De Niro allegedly grabs the guy's hair; the photog files assault charges. And then the real drama starts. Ligier's attorney calls De Niro's people and offers to drop the charges in return for, say, $300,000. De Niro and his lawyers decide to play along. The attorneys negotiate the price down to $150,000, and the cash payoff takes place in a limo--with cops listening in. Bingo! Ligier spends the next six hours in custody. De Niro calls it extortion; Ligier says that's a lot of raging bull. The D.A. is letting a grand jury make the call.

HAS JULIA FOUND A ROMEO?

It just must be fabulous to be JULIA ROBERTS: to make $12 million for some movies and work with Woody Allen on others; to be a goodwill ambassador to Haiti and have a world problem get attention because she brings it up; and, best of all, to be hounded worldwide by photographers. Last week the news broke that Roberts had found love with a Venetian water-limo driver--an Italian tabloid even ran a blurry photo, possibly of the two kissing. "It's not true," says Roberts' spokesperson. "I didn't ask her if she kissed him, but she kisses everyone. She's very affectionate."

MAKEOVER ALERT!

Sadly, one of the best winter spectator sports, kitschy-ice-skating-outfit-watching, has been in decline ever since the Soviet Union went capitalist and discovered good taste. The final straw: OKSANA BAIUL, whose feathery, tear-stained confection did Ukraine so proud in the 1994 Olympics (above), has been given a makeover in December's Seventeen (left). Well, it had to happen. In the year she has lived in the U.S., Baiul has cottoned on to a lot of what it means to be an American teenager. When not performing, she likes to shop, she says, especially for clothes and makeup. And while her English isn't perfect--"I put headlights in it," she says of her new hair color--the 17-year-old has picked up the essentials without formal study. "I like fashion," she says. "But I won't wear anything that looks b.s. on me."

SEEN & HEARD

Barry Sheck has a keen grasp of legal minutiae but not the traffic code. The O.J. defense lawyer was stopped by cops after making an illegal U-turn in Manhattan and issued summonses for two other minor offenses. "I can't believe this is a story," said Scheck.

In other remaindered O.J. news: a dismissed Simpson juror is reportedly doing the only logical thing for a person in her position--posing for Playboy. Tracy Hampton, 26, spent last Thursday at a studio rented by the magazine and set up to resemble a courtroom.