exclusive: Leo gets married

Aussie based singer Leo Sayer has maried long time girfirend Donatella Piccinetti at a romantic beautiful country wedding In Berrima. Glen Marie Frost did the honours.

The Social Shuttle Scoops The Rest

It's becoming the norm-tales that appear first in the Social Shuttle and are picked up around the world from the UK's Daily Mail and Sunday Mirror, the Times Of India along with Australian tabloids.

Three weeks ago we published the exclusive story that media personality Ita Buttrose may stand for election as Sydney's Lord Mayor against the incumbent Clover Moore.

Ms Buttrose's could well sweep Moore out of office. She has a reputation for hard work and her credentials for the post are impeccable having worked for both Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer.

And Ita's profile has sky-rocketed since the tele-movie about her life, Paper Giants-The Making of Cleo received huge ratings.

Now the Sydney Morning Herald is to publish a story later today on Ita's mayoral bid as will the Daily Telegraph as our snaps of their websites show.

Even smaller tips appear here first.

One week ago we told how film director Baz Luhrmann had imported 6 superb left-hand drive vintage vehicles to appear in his $120M re-make of The Great Gatsby and lo and behold, the Daily Telegraph warmed to the theme with their exclusive photographs yesterday of Leo DiCaprio and Gatsby co-star Tobey McGuire practising driving a beautiful Duesenberg, one of two sourced from a US automobile museum.

On the 30th July we told of the drama in Double Bay when the suburb's very popular star-spotting restaurant and coffee shop, Dee Bees run by the amiable Graeme Goldberg shut-up shop, albeit as the signs on the windows say, temporarily "for renovations ". It took a full week for the Daily Telegraph and the local newspaper for the penny to drop and for them to get on board.

You read it here first!

Drama In Double Bay

The chattering amongst the clientele of the cafes, bars and hairdressing salons in the streets of Sydney's up-market Double Bay has been deafening.

Dee Bees : flags are flying but no-one's home

Last Saturday in the late afternoon huge black plastic covers started appearing on the windows of the suburb's most popular coffee shop and restaurant, Dee Bees. Stickers were pasted on the windows stating Closed For Renovations.  Removal vans appeared and the hundreds of photographs that adorn the walls- mostly of celebrities who have visited Dee Bees- began to be loaded into the back.

Many carry signatures of the great and famous who have dined at the restaurant-from Bill Clinton, Bob Dylan, Kylie Minogue to Michael Parkinson.

All this was happening while customers were still drinking their coffees around 5pm but it's what happened next that has set tongues wagging. An ashen faced  manager gathered the staff in a corner and soon several were in tears and it's said one even collapsed and had to be revived. Some have been employed at Dee Bees for as long as 15 years. Will Dee Bees ever open again ?.

Times in The Bay are hard and the suburb has numerous empty business premises. As Dee Bee's owner Graeme Goldberg, (known locally as Mr Double Bay) has pointed out numerous times in his Latte Life columns, former properties like the Ritz Carlton Hotel (which he once managed) are lying derelict and empty. For 20 years it was the favourite inn for visiting international celebrities like George Bush Jr, Princess Diana,Tom Jones and Madonna.

Graeme Goldberg

Sam Neill

Goldberg has been a thorn in the side of the snooty Woollahra Council who control Double Bay and has constantly urged them to up their game. He's fought against odd decisions to no avail, like the bizarre 2 hour parking limit imposed a few years ago in the streets in an area where people loved to lunch for hours and then wander amongst the shops.

The Shuttle has been unable to contact Goldberg but perhaps an odd moment said it all as we passed via the back lane on Tuesday. Workmen were seen removing the kitchen equipment and loading it into the back of a van. Watching with a rather puzzled look was a Dee Bee's regular, actor Sam Neill, puffing away on a cigar.

Rats Invade Ritzy Hotel

There is plague of rodents in the uber smart suburb of Double Bay according to 'Mr Double Bay' Graeme Goldberg the owner of the popular restaurant  Dee Bees.



Ritz Carlton Double Bay



Writing in the latest copy of Latte Life where he has a regular column, Goldberg says he and fellow business owners signed a petition asking the Woollahra Council to hire a pest controller. The matter was raised in a council meeting by councillor Andrew Petrie but apparently a Greens councillor nipped it in the bud claiming it was a problem for local business owners.



Diana at The Ritz



Graeme Goldberg



Says Goldberg "Mate you gotta be joking. they're coming out of the drains and last time I checked the Pied Piper of Hamlin didn't own a property in Double Bay. I suggest the council send the experts to the old cinema and the closed down Stanford Hotel"

The Stanford is a sorry sight at present. It closed nearly two years ago and in a previous life it was one of the chicest 5 star hotels in Sydney- The Ritz Carlton.



Bob'n'Blanche Hawke



As the Ritz it enjoyed an illustrious clientele including most visiting celebrities like Tom Jones, Whoopi Goldberg and Bob Dylan. Two US presidents stayed there -George Bush Sr and Bill Clinton and it was a home away from home for the late Princess Diana on her very last visit to Australia. Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke lived there for a year when he left office and was married there to wife Blanche and the late singer Michael Hutchence died in a first floor suite on a Saturday morning in 1997.



As the Standford Hotel the inn gradually declined in favour and a new owner plans to turn the site into luxury apartments but is having problems with local council height restrictions. At present the building remains empty and uninhabited like the suburb's former cinema in New South Head Road.

Goldberg and others want action and believe the problem will escalate fast : "The Bay has always had rats but they wear suits and sip Chardonnay. If there is vermin breeding you don't have to be Einstein to know where to start looking"

Michael Parkinson Becomes Honorary Australian

Comedian Ben Elton has become a citizen and 70's star Leo Sayer loves the place.

Now Sir Michael Parkinson has been given the rare honour of giving the Australia Day address at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music tonight.

Parky is no stranger to the place, Both he and wife, the TV presenter Mary Parkinson have been visiting Australia for 30 years. They spend most summers in an apartment in Rushcutter's Bay overlooking the harbour. One daughter and her family have lived here for 20 years which gives them the excuse to visit.

But of course, Parkinson's love of Australia has always been well known and since his retirement last year he told the Shuttle in January 2010 that one of the joys of giving up his interview program was the ability to spend more time here and of course, the ability to watch even more cricket, one of his greatest loves.

Leo Sayer (Australia Day Council)

Tonight Michael Parkinson in his speech pointed out some of the reasons he loves the place including the lack of snobbery and the directness of Aussies. He used former Prime Minister Paul Keating as an example pointing out the outrage that surged through British tabloids when Keating put a protective arm around HRH The Queen on an official visit and labelled Keating The Lizard of Oz :

 "He was simply reaching out in a friendly gesture as one human being to another. Here we are all human beings."

Parkinson said Australia first came to his attention as a boy in Shropshire when his miner father constantly commented on the quality of Australian cricketers. In his speech he marvelled at how the country had progressed from a penal colony to in his words : "one of the most powerful and progressive nations in the world".

And he brought up the subject of the devastating floods in Queensland and the dreadful bush fires in Victoria last year saying :


"It is a reminder to the world of the resilience and the courage of the Australian people"

# Fans of Parky should check out former East Ender Graeme Goldberg's Dee Bees cafe in Double Bay where Michael and Mary often take breakfast. You may even see Leo Sayer there-he and Goldberg are great mates. According to Graeme, Ben Elton is yet to visit as he lives in Perth with his family.

See our earlier chat with Michael Parkinson at Doyles in Watson's Bay.

A reminder of Michael Parkinson's brilliant show with one of his favourite guests-Dame Edna Everage.

When Two Tribes Go To War

A publishing battle is brewing in the exclusive confines of chic Double Bay as a new publication-Latte Life finds itself in the firing line of the established Wentworth Courier.


The Courier, published for over 70 years has always jealously guarded it's Eastern Suburbs market with a near monopoly on the rivers of gold in classified  and real estate advertising.

Each week the Courier thuds on resident's doorsteps with pages packed with glossy adverts for everything from an affordable Cloveley bungalow to harbour side mansions selling for tens of millions of dollars.

Latte Life  burst on the scene 3 months ago when publisher Jane King decided that Double Bay needed it's own publication concentrating on the cafe life of the fashionable suburb. Jane believes The Bay has been neglected and that the Courier has gone in too top heavy promoting  the giant Westfield shopping centre in Bondi Junction which she believes is strangling business in the village type atmosphere of Double Bay.

"I was brought up in England and always loved High Streets and village shopping centres" says Jane. "I spotted a gap in the market with Latte Life and the response has been fantastic".

Now columnists on Latte Life have suddenly found themselves on the receiving end of job offers from rival publiciations . It seems there maybe even more publications opening up in the area.

Goldberg :"30 years too late"

'Mr Double Bay' Graeme Goldberg , owner of Dee Bees one of the Bay's most popular restaurants has just started to write a column for Latte Life about the happenings in the area. With his impeccable show business connections it was a smart move on the part of Latte Life. Two days after his first column appeared  Goldberg found 3 representatives from an unamed rival magazine  in his cafe. They offered him a n increase in pay if he shifted to them to write a column.

Goldberg said "they were 30 years too late.  The Courier has always been very supportive of me and I love the new Latte Life but that's how long I've run businesses around here and suddenly I'm in demand everywhere !"
Other advertisers in Latte Life have found themselves approached by media salesmen suggesting better advert rates could be had with another publication if they wished to move their custom.

Over ten years ago the Courier had it's dominance of the area challenged when 20 real estate agents formed a syndicate and published the weekly Eastern Express with pages packed with classifieds. Soon both were  in an advertising price war. But a court challenge  from the Express and a claim of 'predatory pricing' against the Wentworth Courier finished off the challenger. The Eastern Express lost the case and were landed with the debilitating legal costs.

Jane says she isn't worried. "I don't have real estate advertising or take escort service classifieds so I'm not really competing for the bulk of  the Courier's advertisers. And hopefully some competition will make the Courier up it's anti"

She plans to branch out with Latte Life and it's cheery mix of social snaps, gossipy stories and interviews with famous locals with it's present 20,000 copies a month and increase the paper's circulation area to outlying suburbs and take on the Courier with it's 50,000 weekly copies.

The market-Sydney's ritzy Eastern Suburbs contains the biggest concentration of Australia's wealthiest citizens along with a huge swathe of  young professionals, wealthy retirees, gays and lesbians and those working in the arts and the movie industry. It's a marketer's dream target so much so that  the London School of Economics once used the Wentworth Courier in it's lectures to students as an example of a newspaper that was perfectly pitched to reach a specific audience.

There could be room for a third newspaper and locals would be the winners. Looks like an interesting battle  ahead.

the Shuttle on the Today show..

"A grey gadabout" is how he's described but the Social Shuttle's snapper Bill Ranken takes it in his stride.

At 80 Ranken has seen it all and reckons he wouldn't be impressed :  "even if Jesus Christ walked through the Harbour Heads-unless there was a smart homecoming party for him."

Watch the Today show at ninemsn as they follow Bill on the party circuit and interview him at Graeme Goldberg's DeeBees cafe.