Nick Lachey has offered his good wishes to ex-wife Jessica Simpson, who just announced her engagement to Eric Johnson.

“I will say the same thing I always say: I wish her the very best,” he told Us Weekly.

Nick proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Vanessa Minnillo, just a week before Jessica got engaged, and sources say the timing was just coincidence.

When Us asked Nick why it took him four years of dating to propose, he said, “All things have their appropriate time, so thank you.”

Jessica recently had only kind things to say about Nick’s engagement.

“I couldn’t be more happy for Nick. Our relationship was over a really long time ago so it would be nice if everybody could move on with us and just celebrate the love between him and Vanessa,” she said. “I wish them nothing but the best.”

Anything you can do I can do better! So says Jessica Simpson.

Jessica Simpson representatives Lauren Auslander and Cindi Berger tell The Associated Press that the singer and sometime actress is engaged to former NFL player Eric Johnson, who is originally from Needham.

Pop Open the Bubbly: Longtime lovers Nick Lachey and Vanessa Minnillo are getting hitched.

The host of the NBC acapella talent show The Sing-Off and his GF, a former Miss Teen USA-turned MTV VJ, made the announcement in a statement to Us Weekly Thursday evening.

“We’re excited and incredibly happy about our engagement and we look forward to a wonderful future together,” exclaimed Nick and Vanessa, who have three years and a nude sex snap scandal to their credit.

The marriage will be the first for Minnillo, 29, and the second for Lachey, 36, who was previously wed to ditzy singer/actress/designer Jessica Simpson.

Ironically, Simpson and new beau Eric Johnson were recently seated three tables away from Nick and Vanessa at a restaurant in Los Angeles, Star Magazine reports.

Can you say awkward?

“Jess was overheard telling the waitress ‘I hope Vanessa likes her clothes. I bought them for her, since Nick took all my money.’”

Jessica Simpson had the hands-on support of boyfriend Eric Johnson at the Jessica Simpson Collection “Show Me Your Blues” Jeanswear launch Tuesday night. She recently tweeted about him, ‘damn I’m lucky!’

In addition to the former NFL-er and recent business school dropout, Jesssica’s sister Ashlee and hubby Pete Wentz was also there.

Her vocals have carried her to the top, and now it’s being reported that Jessica Simpson is in talks with “American Idol” producers about becoming a judge.

Apparently, the “Come On Over” singer and the “Idol” executives have met to speak about the potential job, but have not come to an agreement just yet.

Meanwhile, Ms Simpson’s love life is nothing short of new and exciting- earlier this week, she and new beau, Eric Johnson, along with Simpson’s mom Tina and friends were spotted partying it up at Dos Caminos in New York City.

After plenty of margs and tequila shots, an on-looker said that Jess and Eric were “very touchy-feely” throughout the meal and added, “He always had a hand on her back, was touching her hair and kissing her head.”

When the table was cleared, the lovers even “made out a few times!”

For someone who says she doesn’t know a heck of a lot about football, Jessica Simpson sure gets around pig skin a lot. If you know what I mean.

The “Dukes of Hazzard” bimbo has admitted that she is getting cozy with ex-NFL player Eric Johnson, with the pair reportedly having started their romance in May.

Johnson was a tight end for the San Francisco 49ers before ending his career with the New Orleans Saints in 2008.

The football hunk divorced his wife in February 2010, with a source close to Jess and Eric telling TMZ that the pair are “very happy.”

Singer and actress Jessica Simpson has won an arbitration to keep an exercise video featuring her from being marketed.

The arbitrator’s decision was revealed in a court filing on Friday by lawyers for Simpson, 29. The lawyers asked a New York state court to approve the April arbitration ruling, which bars Speedfit LLC and its owner, Alex Astilean, from using Simpson’s name and likeness to promote the 2005 video.

The arbitrator awarded Simpson nothing on her breach-of-contract claim but awarded $357,587 to cover fees and costs. Astilean was ordered to pay Simpson’s business manager, David Levin, $50,000 for defamation.

Astilean said in an interview that he plans to challenge the arbitrator’s ruling. He said he had countersued Simpson for $10 million.

“I worked for one year to edit a very good video,” and now “my video is nowhere,” Astilean said. “We lost the house, we lost everything. We don’t know how we’re going to survive.”

John Rosenberg, a lawyer for Simpson, said, “My clients are extremely pleased with the arbitrator’s decision and are fully confident that the award will be confirmed by the court.”

Speedfit shot the video over three days in August 2005, the same month that Simpson appeared as Daisy Duke in the movie “The Dukes of Hazzard.”

Simpson and her business management company, With You Inc, accused Speedfit of failing to deliver a video fit for sale, despite having one year for editing.

In a 35-page ruling, arbitrator Kathleen Roberts called the case “particularly difficult” because Astilean had spent years developing the Speedfit system, and because the battle with Simpson was “personally and financially devastating” for him.

But she said “Astilean’s frustrations with what he believes to be the bad-faith conduct” of Simpson led him to unlawfully publish materials related to the video and to defame Levin.

Astilean said he has hired a lawyer, who did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Wonder how Jessica Simpson maintains her million-dollar smile?

So does she. “I don’t brush my teeth,” she told iheartradio Thursday. “No, really!”

“I just use Listerine — and sometimes I’ll use my sweater,” she claimed, bursting into laughter.

“I do brush every now and again, but my teeth are extremely powerful. Fine, maybe when I’m 60 I’ll all, “ow!”

The singer adds that she loves “anything fried,” and that her nutrition habits weren’t always the best. “Growing up in Texas for me, fish was a fish stick. We weren’t really the healthiest of people. [My mom] didn’t force me to eat healthy.”

Simpson, 29, opened up yet again about her ex John Mayer‘s raunchy comments regarding their sex life. “Maybe in his mind he was thinking about giving me a compliment but he wasn’t,” she quipped.

“In relationships, in general, going through a divorce and going through very public break-ups … you don’t want to disappoint people who are rooting for you to be successful in love. I just have to find the right man.”

Simpsn also came to Gaby Sidibe‘s defense against Howard Stern for his recent outburst that the Oscar nominee could kiss her Hollywood career goodbye because of her weight.

“I’m actually surprised somebody had the cojones to say that,” Simpson tells me from a New York City hotel. “I just think that’s really disrespectful.”

And not exactly accurate…

“It’s unfortunate because she walked the red carpet at the Oscars and she owned it,” Simpson said of the Precious star. “She was beautiful. There was no denying that she did not think she was the most beautiful person on that red carpet. She was just owning that moment for herself. She had such confidence and I absolutely 100 percent think she could get anything in the world that she wants.”

Simpson knows a thing or two about being publicly crucified for her appearance. But she’s fighting back.

“I don’t care how harsh the criticism is, you’re not going to take me down,” she said. “I’m going to get back up and fight. I’m not going to let anybody’s opinions destroy me.”

Simpson’s new VH1 reality series, The Price of Beauty, follows her and best buddies Ken Paves and Cacee Cobb as they travel the world exploring different cultures’ ideas of beauty.

The show, premiering March 15, came along just at the right time, following Simpson’s mom jeans fiasco last year. “After all the public scrutiny that I went through in the past year, I felt I was just stripped of everything,” she says.

But now? “I got curves!” she says. “I can’t get rid of them. There ain’t no getting rid of them. At this point, I just celebrate them…I’m a healthy girl. I work out. I box. I try to eat right. I still like my corn dogs, my burgers and my onion rings. I can’t help it. Just as long as I feel good about myself and if I feel healthy, I feel beautiful.”

Especially when she lets her hair down.

“I feel most beautiful when I am in my bathtub, listening to Sade,” she said. “I also feel beautiful when I laugh and when I’m with my friends and I just have a T-shirt and booty shorts on.”

And then, without missing a beat, she laughs, “With my heels on, of course.”

I’ve got more Jessica scoop. Make sure to keep coming back, y’all! Yup, she talks John, Billy, Tony and…living the single life!

Jessica Simpson appears on ‘Oprah’ Wednesday and will address John Mayer’s recent Playboy interview in which he discussed their “crazy” sex life and likened her to sexual “crack cocaine.”

“There’s nothing worse than being disappointed in somebody,” Jessica says in the clip below. “I’m not angry. I’m – well, I’m a little bit angry.”

When asked why she’s angry, Jessica says, “I don’t want people to know how I am in bed. I mean, I guess I could have been a lot worse.”

Jessica, who is promoting her upcoming VH1 show, ‘The Price of Beauty,’ also talks about her weight (“I love my curves”).