Monte Won't Be A Guest

An invite to the Public Storage Blues Party in Manhattan lands on our desk and after perusing the guest list we note another Sydney-sider has been invited to the same event.

Frank Monte & Anthony Hayden Guest in New York

 It's the noted private eye and sometime LA & New York resident Frank Monte. The invitation is to a fund raiser for the British, New York based writer Anthony Hayden Guest

Readers may re-call that Hayden Guest was the inspiration for Peter Fallow, the hard-drinking hack in The Bonfire of the Vanities by author Tom Wolfe. Others claimed that the late writer Christopher Hitchens was Fallow but Hitchens said Hayden Guest fit the bill far better then he.

 It appears Hayden Guest has a dilemma : his personal art collection valued at $650,000 has gone astray from a storage firm. Anthony had forgotten to pay a bill of $1350 and the firm sold the collection for a paltry $650.

Now Hayden Guest is suing Public Storage and friends have rallied around to raise money to hire a top notch New York brief.

Jamie Lee Curtis & Christopher Guest

Hayden Guest says he keeps in touch with Monte on a regular basis :"I'm very fond of Frank and we exchange Christmas cards every year. We shared digs for a few months on the Upper West Side "

Monte says he won't be able to make the party in New York but will send a donation : "Anthony is a great pal and we went to dozens of parties in New York together. He can't stay home and is quite exhausting at times. He also looked after me once when I was very ill so I owe him a favour".

Guest wrote a book  The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco, and the Culture of the Night about his New York exploits. He contributes to a number of US publications like Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair.

His older brother (Baron) Christopher Guest is a Hollywood script writer and is married to the movie star Jamie Lee Curtis and both will be at the Public Storage Blues Party next month.

Exclusive-Top Investigator Frank Monte drawn into Department Store Scandal

The same day that Mark McInnes-ex David Jones store CEO has flown back into town to face a $37million lawsuit, the Social Shuttle can reveal that private eye Frank Monte is on the case and  is investigating Kirsty Fraser-Kirk, the former DJ's publicist at the center of the scandal.

Monte with Donald Trump

The Shuttle has always maintained a fairly good on-going relationship with the international private investigator but he wasn't revealing any details when we managed to get through to him tonight.

"I would never either confirm or deny who my clients are " said Monte. "In fact I'm rather surprised you would ask me to". 

He did however confirm that someone had hired him to look into the background of the girl at the centre of a scandal that has rocked Australia's top department store chain and forced Mark McInnes to resign from his job that is said to have carried a yearly salary of $8 million.

A little over 2 weeks ago we called into Lotus Restaurant in Potts Point where Monte was celebrating his 60th birthday with family and friends and ended up chatting via a mobile phone to top US TV interviewer Larry King who had rung to wish the gumshoe all the best.

Monte has appeared on numerous US TV shows including Oprah Winfrey and Howard Stern and is a regular name in  the US newspapers. He seems to pop up in all sorts of intriguing cases-from the disappearance of  Michael Rockefeller Jr in New Guinea to the mysterious John F. Kennedy Jr plane crash. He was also head of security for the Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis and once led a team of mercenaries into a Middle East country to rout some insurgents on behalf of  the Sheik of Dubai.

And now that our memory of a conversation with the urbane Frank at his birthday bash returns, he did mention that he was working on "something big" without revealing details.

Monte, who has offices in Beverly Hills, New York and Dallas and had recently returned from the US did say on the night that he had been meeting with a former top FBI agent who was an expert profiler.

" We are doing some business together and it involves an upcoming case" said Monte over a glass of Bollinger.And not the everyday stuff-vintage Bolly.

Kirsty Fraser-Kirk

" I've just received a handsome retainer " said Monte. "I'm letting my hair down for the night before I get stuck into a very complex job on the books".

McInnes has said that many of the sexual harassment claims against  him are untrue and that he will be "vigorously defending himself"

Monte dines with Anthony Hayden Guest in New York

On the 2nd of August Ms Fraser-Kirk's legal representatives revealed details of her lawsuit against David Jones and McInnes with the staggering claim they were suing for an unprecedented $37 million. 

The following day David Jones held their Spring & Summer parades with all media mentions consumed by the pending court case.

 Many experts and commentators have speculated that the release of Fraser-Kirk's legal case that day was obviously carefully planed to over shadow the fashion parades (which normally would have starred DJ's star model Miranda Kerr who was still holidaying with her new husband Orlando Bloom).was a strategic mistake and could backfire.

Whilst Frank Monte is keeping his lips sealed on just who his client is, it's an indication that this story is going  to get bigger...much bigger and very very sticky !