Bob Dylan's outhouse blues

How sweet is life when you live next to a celebrity in Malibu? Outside Bob Dylan's house, the answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.

That's what some of the singer-songwriter's neighbours are charging in an increasingly odoriferous dispute over a portable toilet at his sprawling ocean view estate on Point Dume.

Residents contend that the nighttime sea breeze sends a noxious odor from a portable toilet on Dylan's property wafting into their homes. The stench has made members of one family ill and forced them to abandon their bedrooms on warm nights, they say.



For more than six months, Dylan, 67, has ignored their complaints and their pleas to remove the outhouse, the downwind neighbours say.

"It's a scandal - Mr. Civil Rights' is killing our civil rights," said David Emminger, whose home is directly behind the toilet - which is apparently intended for use by employees of the entertainer best known for his 1960s-era protest songs.

Emminger and his wife have installed five industrial-sized fans in their frontyard in an attempt to blow the odour back at Dylan. They say the fans are no match for the ocean breeze that sweeps across the singer's land, however.

There's a news video here.