Les Miserables Murdochs

Wendi & Rupert at last night's premiere

Rupert and Wendi Murdoch graced the red carpet at last night's Sydney State Theatre premiere of Les Miserables joining local actors and the two male stars of the film Hugh Jackman and Russel Crowe.


The Murdochs were in Melbourne last week to attend the memorial service for the late Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, Rupert's much admired mother who died at the grand age of 103.

The Shuttle attended many parties at the home of Matt Handbury and his then wife Fiona at their harbour side mansion Altona (currently being rented by the Jackman clan). Fiona, who has since divorced Matt often spoke of the animosity between the Handburys and Murdochs. Matt inherited his mother Helen Handbury's  magazine empire which she as Rupert's sister inherited from Sir Keith Murdoch.

Now a Murdoch family insider Rodney E.Lever who assisted Murdoch in the creation of his media empire has penned a series of articles for the political website Independent Australia telling of the strained relationship that now bedevils the Murdochs : Rupert is estranged from his oldest son Lachlan and daughter Elisabeth who is married to Britain's ace PR consultant Mathew Freud.
While Matt Handbury attended Dame Elisabeth's service in Melbourne as did Lachlan and his wife Sarah Murdoch (Fiona has since become the Countess of Dartmouth), the Murdochs all went their separate ways and declined to attend the refreshments afterwards or to mingle with the other 1000 guests.

Mayne Bites Murdoch

Stephen Mayne, the young journalist who started the highly successful political website crikey.com.au (mortgaging his house at times to pay bills ) and then sold it for a cool million dollars has been tackling Rupert Murdoch at the annual News Corp AGM in New York.

Mayne offered Rupert a few books to read on his up coming trip to Australia  (and thus avoiding American comedian Jon Stewart's Washington Rally To Restore Sanity on Oct 30th who Rupes says he has never heard of).

Man Bites Murdoch by sacked Melbourne News Corp editor Bruce Guthrie and Bruce Dover's (News Corp former senior Hong Kong executive) Murdoch's Adventure In China that describes how News Corp lost billions of dollars in China. Murdoch says it's all fantasy but when Mayne requested any News Corp executive present to raise their hand if they had read the books, apparently none had.

Mayne also asked if Murdoch may consider retiring when he turns 80 next year but Rupert was having none of it : "only when my health gives out". ( his mum Dame Elisabeth Murdoch  is 101).

Tackling Rupert on the great hacking scandal the great man replied  : "There was an an incident more than 5 years ago. The person who bought a bugged phone conversation was immediately fired and in fact he subsequently went to jail". 

And to Mayne's helpful suggestion that he may read the New York Time's claim that there was a "collective amnesia " in News Corp about the whole affair he replied :"I'm sorry. Journalists who have been fired, who are unhappy, or work for other organisations - I don't take them as an authority, and least of all I don't take The New York Times as authority.

Mayne also got a comment on son-in-law Mathew Freud's ( "Britain's most powerful PR business chief") recent condemnation of  Fox News.
"He could not have been more wrong." says Rupert.

Finally Mayne congratulated Rupert for firing News Corp political hack Glen Milne (known in the trade as "the poisoned dwarf") who famously attacked Mayne and pushed him off the stage at the Walkely Awards in 2006.
"I didn't know anything about it " says Rupes.

It sounds like Murdoch is in top form again and has recovered from his recent British Parliamentary Committee appearance when at times  he looked rather confused  and had trouble hearing the questions that left many wondering whether an ear trumpet should have been provided for the media mogul.

 # There is no truth to the claim by one wag that Wendi Murdoch was waiting just behind a curtain ready to spring to action to defend her man but we're reliably informed that all attendees at the meeting were frisked for cream pies before being allowed to enter the auditorium.

You can read Mayne's full account here and below we bring you the fabulous Glen Milne attack on Stephen at The Walkelys when Glen -apparently having digested to much flu medication-went on the rampage.

Not All Doom & Gloom For The Murdochs

Sarah Murdoch at the Astras last night

The Murdoch family still face battles with the British parliament and a public still reeling from the great phone hacking scandal but life appears to be far rosier for some members of the extended first family of the media.

While Lachlan Murdoch accompanied his father Rupert Murdoch and brother James to London this week keeping a low profile and returning to New York with them on their private jet, his beautiful wife model and TV presenter Sarah Murdoch was  last night voted Favourite Personality at the Astra Awards for pay TV held at the Sydney Theatre Company.

Anna Torv splash

Sarah is host and executive producer of the series Australia's Next Top Model which co-incidentally is screened on Foxtel , the cable network part owned by her famous father-in-law.

Meanwhile the on-line magazine The Beast has come into bat for the Australian actress Anna Torv and claimed that she is a victim of the The Emmy Awards’ 10 Biggest Snubs.

Kia Torv, William & Anna Mann, Hans Torv

Anna appears in the hugely popular TV series Fringe which has a world wide cult following.

She's the daughter of Gold Coast radio network owner Hans Torv who is the brother of the former Mrs Anna Murdoch and she's the cousin of James, Lachlan, Prudence and Elisabeth Murdoch. Anna is named after her famous aunt.

John Noble

Not that Anna has much contact with her famous media family cousins. She's been estranged from her father Hans since the age of eight when he and her mother parted company but she does maintain contact with the former Mrs Rupert Murdoch and regularly visits her aunt in New York.
Anna Murdoch  married New Yorker financier William Mann and as our exclusive picture shows is extremely close to her brother Hans and his present wife Kia. Anna Mann is also a co-owner of the Queensland radio network run by Hans.
Anna Torv has been signed for another series of Fringe along with the star of the show, Australian actor John Noble who The Beast reckons should also be up for an Emmy.

Murdoch and the Communist

The British blogger Madame Arcati draws our attention to Cruden Park with this beautiful photograph.  It's the road leading to the home of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch the matriarch of the media family and mum to one of the most powerful men on the planet Rupert Murdoch.

Cruden Park will be open for one day on August 28th (co-incidentally grandson Lachlan Murdoch's birthday) under the Open Garden's Scheme.

Dame Elisabeth is noted for her conservative views and is said to have castigated her son for some of the more raunchy parts of his British newspapers The Sun and the News of The World .She's also the patron of the Australian Family Association that was recently outraged by Cate Blanchett's global warming adverts, and which campaigns against same sex marriage, human cloning and euthanasia.

Peter Cundall & Dame Elisabeth ABC TV

How pleasing then to see Dame Elisabeth had once hosted our favourite Communist, the ex ABC gardening guru Peter Cundall at  Cruden Park as our picture shows.

Cundall who has his own exceptional property in the Tamar Valley in Tasmania where he now lives was born into dire poverty in Manchester  and has been a fierce anti-war campaigner for the second half of his life particularly after his various experiences in theatres of war.

He was in the parachute regiment of the British Army in WW2 and in 1946 he was arrested as a spy by Marshall Tito's soldiers in Yugoslavia. He says he was enticed across the border by a beautiful girl who then vanished. Cundall spent a year in solitary confinement in a Ljubljana prison.

After joining the Australian Army as a librarian he ended up as a machine gunner in the Korean War.

He is now active in left wing and environmental causes and once stood as a Communist Party candidate for the Tasmanian Senate and he was a high profile opponent of the Iraq invasion.

In 1969 Cundall began a gardening talk back radio programme and became one of the most loved gardening experts on ABC TV when he fronted Gardening Australia for two decades, retiring in 2008 at the age of 81. Cundall recently led the unsuccessful anti-Gunns Pulp Mill campaign in Tasmania and is never shy for a few words against recalcitrant politicians.
Here he is being arrested at a rally outside State Parliament by some very polite coppers :

Watch Out Gay Soldiers & Cate Blanchett -Christians Are Marching

Days after Cate Blanchett came under a sustained attack from Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd stable of newspapers, another religious organisation has scored a victory in having an HIV advert pulled in Queensland.

Tabloids like the Daily Telegraph went on the rampage over Blanchett's appearance in a Climate Change advertisement with a claim 'the community was outraged' that a  Hollywood actress with a $53 million fortune should be pushing for a carbon price (seemingly forgetting Cate would be paying full whack of a carbon tax and was supporting lower income Aussies getting a carbon tax refund presumably from the likes of her).

The community turned out to be comical MP Barnaby Joyce and the Australian Family Association (patron : Dame Elisabeth Murdoch). Now a close ally of the Australian Family Association- the Australian  Christian Lobby has succeeded in having an HIV warning advert pulled by Adshel after just 30 complaints.

The models in the advert promoting awareness of HIV in same-sex couples, Michael O'Brien and his partner have now got over 100,000 supporters on their facebook page.

Earlier this year the Australian Christian Lobby which claims it has 200,000 supporters (but a membership of less than 2000) tweeted that when Anzacs went to war it wasn't for "gay marriage and Islamic"(sic).

No doubt that came as a surprise for Edward Young who at first was refused a war 'widows' pension by the government when his partner of 38 years Larry Cairns, a WW2 veteran died in 1998.
The UN Human Rights Committee ruled otherwise in 2003. 
It is part of the forgotten history of this country-the number of gays and lesbians who fought in WW1,WW2, Vietnam and every other conflict.

In schizophrenic fashion, News Corp has been agitating for it's own corporation to become 'carbon friendly'. You can read about the HIV advert event in err..The Australian (proprietor : R.Murdoch).

exclusive: Geoffrey Rush Attends-Cate Blanchett Calls In Sick

 Theatre director Neil Armfield was able to call in some heavyweights to launch the new book about the Belvoir Street Theatre-Geoffrey Rush and David Wenham.

And Geoffrey is always happy to help the Belvoir-he's a member of the syndicate that owns the theatre that includes some pretty big names. Nicole Kidman, Mel Gibson, Sam Neill, Gillian Armstrong and Peter Carey are all part owners.

David Wenham & Bille Brown

Barry Humphries at Belvoir Street

25 Belvoir Street is a book of essays and historic snaps of the theatre. Contributors include Rhoda Roberts, Neil Armfield , Robert McFarlane and Ralph Myers and it's edited by Fairfax journalist David Marr.

It's on sale from tonight at the box office for $77 and there are a limited number signed by Rush and Armfield.

Below is part of Geoffrey Rush's speech which went on for nearly 20 minutes.

One great Belvoir Street supporter who decided not to attend knowing her presence would draw attention from the tome was Cate Blanchett.

On the weekend the News Ltd tabloids, the Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun and Rupert Murdoch's own baby The Australian tore into Cate because she is starring in a Climate Change series of adverts with actor Michael Caton.  

News Ltd's campaign against Blanchett was a spectacular low point for a bunch of tabloids that regularly sup in the gutter. The main gripe seemed to be that the actress is apparently worth $53M according to BRW's 2011 Rich List and that she was 'out of touch' with 'ordinary' Australians.

Emily Barclay & Geoffrey

Since Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced that Labor would be introducing a carbon tax News Corp have been beside themselves with rage-none of which surfaced when 4 billionaires last year mounted a deceptive campaign against a new mining tax (that would have cleared Australia's debts in four years) on the billions those magnates reap from mineral deposits owned by the whole country.   

News Ltd spouted the line of the mining magnates-that they would up stakes and go elsewhere, Which would be some feat with the wealth being actually in the ground here.

According to the tabloids Blanchett's appearance in the adverts had "sparked outrage in the community". And who was the 'community ?. The far right wing Australian Families Association (patron : Dame Elisabeth Murdoch) and nutbag politician Barnaby Joyce.  Missing in most News Ltd reports on the great Climate Change debate is that the tax raised by Labor will be distributed to working families to cover increased costs.

We think Cate may have the last laugh here.                     


** On Wednesday 8th June at the Belvoir the long awaited Benedict Andrews production of The Seagull opens. The Chekhov play stars Emily Barclay, Bille Brown, Judy Davis (Woody Allen reckons she's the greatest actress in the world) and David Wenham.

The season has already sold out but there is standing room available but get in quick:
Box office 612 9699 3444

discreet aristocratic entrance

      Slipping quietly into her former home town for a visit is the Countess of Dartmouth, the former Fiona Handbury who divorced the owner of media magazine empire, Matt Hanbury in 2001.Hanbury also happens to be Rupert Murdoch's nephew which has earned him the nickname-The Man From Uncle.

     When Sir Keith Murdoch died in 1952 he left one newspaper, the Adelaide Advertiser to his son Rupert who has since parlayed it into the News Corp world-wide media empire.

     Leaving a handful of small moderately successful magazines to daughter Helen, her son Matt turned them into a nation wide publishing success Murdoch Magazines which he sold in 2004 to Perth billionaire Kerry Stokes for $77M.

      Fiona, a former model who has appeared on Vogue covers around the world was once Sydney's party queen, holding court at the Handbury's magnificent Point Piper pile, Altona. The Handbury parties were the most sought after invites with Matt

(pictured right), a frustrated rock'n'roller taking to the stage with his own rock band and electric guitar.

        Altona is one of the most desired harbourside properties. Fiona once confided to tSS at one of their poolside shindigs that the Handbury and Murdoch clans aren't terribly close and only ever meet at the most formal family functions like birthday get-togethers for the Murdoch matriach Dame Elisabeth Murdoch.

       As part of her divorce settlement, Fiona received Altona which she promptly sold for nearly $29M. It currently rents out to visiting celebs like Bono and actor Hugh Jackman. Jackman  has expressed a desire to purchase the house.

      Cashed up, Fiona fled the Sydney scene for rural England.

Enter William Legge, the 10th Earl of Dartmouth.and an MP of the European parliament. Friends were surprised when Legge took Hanbury for his bride, convinced he was destined for confirmed bachelorhood. Now Fiona is a regular at London society parties and across the pond in New York and the Hamptons.

There's a rumour around town that the Countess's visit may involve discussions of a financial kind. Handbury still owns a highly successful publishing company Murdoch Books which goes from strength to strength operating, from a set of magnificent offices on a huge wharf on the harbour.

   

As revealed exclusively by tSS a year ago actor Eric Bana has become the public face of Father Chris Riley's Youth Of The Streets charity which gives homeless kids  a head start with the skills needed to survive after a rough childhood. YOTS as it is called is one of Matt Handbury's favourite causes and he has purchased a country farm for the charity and is it's most feverent financial supporter. Matt currently lives in the National Trust listed Bronte House on a 50 year lease on condition he opens the superb gardens which have magnificent sweeping lawns down to Bronte beach once a year to the public.
                           As for the Countess, she divides her time between a Belgravia house and a New York apartment while the Earl attends to affairs in Brussels.

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Distant cousins ?

Belgian cartoon character Tin Tin

                                                                                            

                                                                                                              Aussie PM Kevin Rudd