It is not healthy to be jealous of your colleagues. Even less so to snoop on their emails and leak them to the press. Just ask Larry Mendte, the former news anchor of a CBS-owned TV station who has been sentenced to six months' house arrest

In affectionate 1970s news spoof Anchorman, Will Ferrell's comic creation Ron Burgundy is consumed by jealousy with the arrival of his younger female colleague, Veronica Corningstone.

But while Burgundy ended up wrestling bears in San Diego zoo, real-life US TV news anchor Larry Mendte has been sentenced to six months' house arrest after a long-running feud with his younger female colleague, Alycia Lane.



Lawyers for Lane, 36, said 51-year-old Mendte had "destroyed her career and made her a tabloid feeding fenzy".

Mendte - who features, above, on YouTube in an unfortunate Burgundy-esqe blooper - was said to be jealous that Lane's $780,000 salary was rather more than his. She allegedly told him during an on-set row that she was the "rising star" and he was on the way out.

Except he won't be going out anywhere right now. Mendte, speaking about the affair earlier this year, has been sentenced to house arrest and 250 hours of community service, plus a $5,000 fine.

Mendte was sacked from his job at CBS-owned Philadelphia station KYW-TV in June this year. The pair co-anchored the evening news bulletin on the station from 2004 until the beginning of this year.

Mendte, who snooped on his colleague's emails 537 times, told the court: "I felt I was in trouble. My career, my future, my family's future was in trouble. And, this is where I got into more trouble – federal trouble."

But the drama is not over yet. Lane herself was fired by the TV station at the turn of the year after she was arrested following a scuffle with police. Her departure was reported, with delicious irony, by none other than Mendte himself. How differently we watch that report now.

The charges were later dropped, and Lane is suing KYW for wrongful dismissal.

On-air personality clashes between high profile news anchors tend to be rather less high profile in the UK.

BBC News 24 presenter Philip Hayton - here presenting the BBC's One O'Clock News - was the exception rather than the rule when he quit three years ago rather than carry on co-presenting with Kate Silverton.

"It boils down to incompatibility," said Hayton. "We did four hours of live TV every day, and you have to like each other." Ouch.

Back in the US, Lane is now known as "anchorbabe" thanks to bikini-clad pictures she sent of herself to a well-known sports broadcaster that were intercepted by his wife.

She began to suspect her emails were being leaked when stories about her began appearing in newspapers, including a photo of her dancing with Prince Albert of Monaco.

By coincidence, Ferrell was rumoured earlier this year to be considering a sequel to Anchorman. He may rule out this real-life plotline for being, well, a little too fanciful.