Apparently, the Daily News has a fascination with the antics of National Enquirer heir Paul Pope. Back in July, we mentioned how Rush & Molloy ran an item about the fight over Enquirer founder Generoso Pope Jr.'s $418 million fortune and Paul's role in it. All well and good... A $418 million fortune is news and the details of the court battle were salacious as hell.

Fast forward to October. Rush & Molloy just ran another item on Paul Pope. It turns out that Pope is wasting precious oxygen on planet Earth:

But perhaps his memoir, Confessions of a Rich Kid From Hell, which he's shopping to publishers, can give a clue to his behavior.

Pope, writing about himself in the third person, chronicles growing up with only bodyguards as friends. Even now, they are the closest people to him, yet he enjoys playing "practical jokes" on them.

"To see what they're made of," he writes, "Paul spikes the drinks of new bodyguards ... with Valium. Paul wants to see how they handle themselves under duress. One guy gets so loaded that he pulls out a gun at a bar and sticks it in the ear of a bartender."

He writes that he paid "one bodyguard $1,000 to swim across a Florida waterway, then punched him in the face after the guard arrives back on shore."

Pope details his zest for frequent sexual romps, though admitting he once "cut the hair off a model during a drunken stupor." But hookers, he writes, often "become so enamored with Paul and his desire to please them, that they often offer to come back and hang with him for free."

Yeah, Paul Pope is an awesome human being. It gets better when the News mentions that Pope is under investigation for a "panic button" call at his mansion in August. Allegedly, Pope assaulted girlfriend Christine Mulvehill and cops reported "probable cause exists to charge the defendant Paul Pope with domestic battery." The piece then goes on to note how mother Lois Pope, who he is fighting for control of the fortune, "is leading the financial effort to build a memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring disabled vets."

So what is a New York gossip column doing reporting on a domestic violence case involving a Florida newspaper heir that took place in August?

Our guess is that either someone on Lois Pope's side or at the Delray Beach police is feeding Rush & Molloy information. Either way, they better keep it coming. This stuff is amazing in its own sad, twisted manner, really.