Kate Gosselin's diva antics at a charity event

Kate Gosselin was a guest at an ice skating charity event for a 9/11 group held in Danbury, Connecticut over the weekend. E! Online has quotes from three separate people willing to go on the record about how difficult Kate and her bodyguard were to work with. The event founder, the stage manager, and skater Johnny Weir all said that they had issues dealing with Kate and that she was less than easy to work with. Kate did make an appearance free of charge, but she only ended up speaking for a minute or two and her requirements put quite a few people out. One of these issues wasn't Kate or her bodyguard's fault - Real Housewives of New York City castmembers Jill Zarin and Luann DeLesseps were also there with cameras, and TLC and Bravo had some territorial issues trying to make sure that Kate didn't get filmed by the other show.

Probably the most damning part of this story is how Kate turned away a ride from one of the skater's moms who showed up at her hotel Washington, DC to drive her all the way to Danbury. Kate refused to get in the car with the woman after allegedly knowing about the travel arrangements ahead of time. She insisted on having a stretch limo drive her instead. Now that's a real diva move. Maybe there's more to it that we're not hearing, though.

'Before she got there, it was very diva-esque,' stage manager Kari Hoffman tells E! News exclusively.

Not only was there drama over Jill Zarin also being in attendance'Bravo was shooting Real Housewives of New York City in the venue'but Gosselin dissed the star skaters, a volunteer and Hairspray star Nikki Blonsky…

Zarin, who braved strapping on a set of blades and donning a skimpy skating dress, took the time to introduce herself to Gosselin near the entrance to the stage, where prying cameras were nowhere to be found. However, Gosselin's omnipresent bodyguard Steve Neild wasn't having it.

'It completely threw her off guard and Steve stepped in between them, attempting to keep them apart,' Hoffman, who was assigned to keeping Kate happy, says.

The Real Housewife wasn't the only person Neild wanted to keep from his client.

Blonsky, who was serving as host for the evening, made a quick run to the restroom just as the lights were dimming in the arena. As she ran out, Gosselin was waiting in the wings for her introduction.

'Nikki finally comes out of the bathroom and we're trying to get her to the stage, but the security guard blocks her from getting to the stage!' Hoffman says. 'He didn't bodycheck her, but he definitely nudged her out of the way.'

Physically getting Gosselin to the show wasn't an easy feat, either.

While she sweetly waived any sort of appearance fee, the octomom insisted that the Heritage Foundation foot the bill for a car service to shuttle her and Neild from Washington, D.C., to Danbury, a trek of more than five hours.

Such a request would inevitably ring up quite a cab fare for the small nonprofit, so one of the skater's mothers offered her services'and that of her shiny 2010 SUV'to pick them up and bring them to the event.

'When she pulled up to the hotel in Washington, Kate's bodyguard came up to the car and said she wasn't getting in,' an insider tells E! News.

Neild told the generous mother that Gosselin, who had been informed of the transportation provided in advance, required a stretch limo with a divider. Only after the skating mother left to make the lengthy journey alone did the Gosselin camp set up their own chariot.

But that wasn't the end of it.

'It was really difficult to find a place to get her into the building because she wanted a side entrance, no crowd, no parking garage, and she needed to be dropped off right next to the entrance,' Hoffman recalls. 'It took three security guards and two others to get her to her dressing room.'

Gosselin wasn't exactly friendly to the A-list skaters, either.

'She didn't even look at anybody,' Johnny Weir tells E! News of meeting the reality star and posing with her on the red carpet.

After all that, Gosselin's actual participation in the show wound up lasting less than a minute.

Near the beginning of the show, she stepped out to a crowd chanting her name and introduced Derrick Delmore. And that was it.

'She did her little speech in the beginning of the show and left,' Weir says. 'Kate Gosselin was playing the diva act...I was disappointed to meet her and I was so disappointed she was involved in the show. It was such a waste.'

[From E! Online]

Why does Kate Gosselin need a bodyguard anyway? There are A-list actors and actresses who don't have bodyguards. I would say that it's technically not Kate's fault if her bodyguard was pushy with people, but she can tell him to be less heavy-handed. We don't know all the details of Kate's appearance, and maybe a lot of things went wrong and she's being unfairly blamed. When three different people say she was demanding and hard to work with though, there's probably some truth to it.

Yesterday we heard that Jon Gosselin wanted to postpone his divorce by 90 days in a supposed effort to forge a more amicable relationship with his family. We also heard that same day that TLC was going to boot Jon off the Gosselin reality show, which would be renamed 'Kate Plus 8.' It's pretty clear that Jon didn't have some great revelation about what an ass he is and that he's trying to delay the divorce in a last ditch effort to stay on the show. Radar Online reports that Jon never told Kate in person or on the phone that he wanted to slow down the divorce and that he tried to inform her in a letter 'sent through an arbitrator.' She found out about her husband wanting to stay legally married to her for three months longer by reading about it online like the rest of us.

Here's a Twitpic from the event organizer, Tara Modlin. She didn't Tweet anything negative and this seems to be a friendly enough photo. Johnny Weir and Kari Hoffman, the other two sources quoted in this story, also don't talk smack on Twitter about Kate.