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!

Ita Ignites A Storm with Rupert Murdoch Claim

What was Ita Buttrose AO OBE thinking ?. Was it a carefully planned statement or a throwaway line ?. Certainly three of Sydney's top society gossip snoops believe the former.

Ita Buttrose and Prof. Ross Steele

Ros Reines ( Sunday Telegraph), Andrew Hornery ( Sydney Morning Herald) and Annette Sharp (Daily Telegraph) were speaking yesterday at the Secret Women's Business charity lunch at Quay restaurant and basically inferred that Ita had known exactly what she was doing when she made the claim about Rupert Murdoch.

It's already had a run on the top US political website Raw Story and from there it is just a matter of time before it hits the British tabloids.

Ita was talking during the second part of her Australian Story interview- Ita Tells Me So.

Near the end of the program Buttrose- former editor-in-chief of Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph, said that Rupert Murdoch instructed her to have a subject tailed because legitimate reporting techniques were not producing the desired results.

“I assigned a reporter to do it but [Murdoch] wasn’t happy with the result and said, ‘No, that wasn’t good enough. Have you followed this person?’” she recalled.
“I can’t give this instruction,” Buttrose later told then-News Limited chief executive Ken Cowley. “I’m not having anybody that works for me, for whom I’m responsible, follow anybody. I don’t want to be a part of it.”

During the credits of the show the following statements appeared :

“Mr. Murdoch has never asked any journalist to do anything improper,” 
a ( News Corp) spokesman said.
“Mr. Cowley has never been asked by Mr. Murdoch to have a reporter conduct surveillance of any kind on any individual and nor would he have agreed to it had he been asked by Mr Murdoch or anyone else,” 

Buttrose has been one of Australia's most successful female publishers having worked for both Murdoch and Kerry Packer. In 1972 she was hired by Packer to launch the Australian edition of Cosmopolitan but when the deal fell through, she and Kerry devised Cleo, one of Packer's most successful publications of all time. The story was told in the recent two part telemovie Paper Giants.The Birth of Cleo.


And even odder was her brother Julian Buttrose's friendly exhortation to spare fellers to give Ita a call and ask her out on a date. The last few times we've seen Ita out and about ( as our picture shows) she has been on the arm of the French tutor Professor Ross Steele. In fact the two sat front row at the Myer parade just ten days ago.


The ABC program Australian Story can be watched here.

A Date in New York City

Diary note for our New York readers (around 500 a day !)

photograph by Patrick McMullan (c) PMc

A missive arrives from New York (and America's) most famous social photographer Patrick McMullan (left):

"Next Wednesday I, alongside Jacqui Rosshandler and Arthur Shorin, am co-hosting a really exciting launch party for the revolutionary breath freshener, EATWHATEVER. It should be an absolutely 'kissable' event! Limited copies of my book KISS KISS will be available to buy and have signed. So check out the invite below, RSVP to eatwhatever@gita-group.com and meet up with us at the Museum of Sex next Wednesday at 8:30PM. Hope to see you all there!"

No party in New York , Miami or Los Angeles is complete without McMullan or one of his trusted snappers present. He visited Australia in the late 90's ( courtesy of the Social Shuttle) and hosted an exhibition in Kings Cross on the premises that are now Hugo's nightclub and welcomed a host of local social figures like Lady Sonia McMahon, Kirk Pengilly from INXS, Min Keating and Deeta Colvin. There's talk that McMullan may visit Sydney and Melbourne in the near future to check out the local scene.

Read Patrick's internet magazine PMc here.

Ita Buttrose For Sydney Lord Mayor ?

Ita Buttrose

More on the push by a group of inner Sydney businessmen who have become disgruntled with Clover Mayor, the local Sydney MP and Lord Mayor of Sydney.

Both the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph have followed up on our story about the growing anger over bike lanes that have sprung up around already crowded city streets. Much of the anger has been caused by the loss of hundreds of parking spaces which has resulted in increased parking fines for motorists which in turn funds the bike lanes which are used by only a handful of residents.

The Pedestrian Council of Australia has called the lanes a "compo time bomb ".
Clover Moore also seems to have lost support in the normally left leaning chain of inner city newspapers published by the Alternative Media Group.
The Shuttle has learnt that the business group plan to bring in publishing identity Ita Buttrose to run for Lord Mayor as an independent, an election she would have every chance of winning given her popularity and fame.

Not only does Ita have impeccable business and political connections she is seen as an astute business person in her own right having worked for the late media mogul Kerry Packer as well as being Editor in Chief of the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph for Rupert Murdoch and eventually her own publication ITA. She was also for many years the chairperson of National Advisory Committee on AIDS.

Clover Moore with Bill Clinton

Buttrose was behind the creation of the magazine CLEO which proved to be a money spinner for Packer and went on to edit his personal favourite publication the Australian Woman's Weekly that under Ita became  per capita, the largest-selling magazine in the world.

Ita was featured in the telemovie series  Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo earlier this year. Actress Asher Keddie played Ita in the series and will reprise the role in the follow-up series later this year.

Clover Moore has been the independent MP since 1988 and Lord Mayor since 2004. Her popularity has plummeted lately and she only just scrapped back into parliament in the state election earlier this year.

Sign Of The Times?

For 25 years Jonathan Chancellor has been the nation's expert on movements in the property business. Whether it was a soap star selling or buying an apartment or a high flyer trading up in the mansion market, Chancellor has his finger on the pulse.

Now the Shuttle hears that he is moving from Fairfax Newspapers to the top political website crikey.com.au having been snapped up by former Fairfax managing editor Eric Beecher who now owns crikey.

Chancellor's extensive list of contacts within the property market rivals none and he has been the author of numerous scoops on who is going where in the homes market. Often it's an indicator of how the economy is travelling.

In a country obsessed by property prices, reading what the rich and powerful pay for where they live is eagerly perused by those in the suburbs. Jonathan is widely published in various Fairfax newspapers that include the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Canberra Times, Australian Financial Review and the West Australian.

Is it a wise move ?. Fairfax were one of the first of the Australian newspaper networks to move into the Internet world pre-2000 and at the time they were much criticised but it stood them well for the future with Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd playing catch-up ever since. Murdoch has admitted as much.

Legend has it that when he was CEO at News Ltd, Lachlan Murdoch sent a memo around to staff saying not to spend too much time accessing the net as it was a 'passing fad'.

Fairfax's huge yearly profits- the 'Rivers Of Gold' as the late media mogul Kerry Packer coined them, come from it's classified advertising in which it has dominated the Australian market for decades.

The current CEO of Fairfax Greg Hywood was on the ABC's Media Watch last week and scoffed at the idea that printed newspapers were a dying industry as the British media writer Roy Greenslade proclaimed them to be in this article :More US newspapers dying by the day.
Greenslade writes for The Guardian in the UK which along with the Daily Mail have been the two British newspapers to reap a windfall with their internet websites.

Jonathan Holmes

Responding to presenter Jonathan Holmes question on whether  "the newspaper model-is it a dead duck?, Hywood said  "of course it’s not. I mean some newspapers may go but many will survive".
Despite his comments staff levels at Fairfax have been cut by 50% over the past ten years.

Crikey was started by former Victorian premier Jeff Kennet staffer Stephen Mayne in 2001 and despite having to mortgage his home once to pay legal fees, Mayne sold the site in 2005 for $1M.

It's sign of the times that Chancellor would move from the relative security of Fairfax to the much smaller publishing world of crikey.
                                           *******************
Read Jonathon Holmes full interview with Greg Hywood at Media Watch ABC TV.
Stephen Mayne now publishes the internet shareholder's activist website The Mayne Report.
Perhaps perfectly illustratimg the tensions within the publishing world of today : watch the legendary attack upon Mayne at the newspaper gongs- The Walkley Awards as political writer Glenn Milne-revved up on flu medication scuffles with Mayne :

Hottest Bachelor Named - Loser Strips

Australia's Cleo Magazine Bachelor of The Year was named last night-Olympic swimming champ Eamon Sullivan (above) described as "charismatic, ambitious,  intelligent, and amazing in the kitchen ".

 Organisers this year sensibly chose ace PR Roxy Jacenko of Sweaty Betty to promote the event-hence acres of coverage on TV networks and newspapers. Roxy is the sort of publicist who doesn't subscribe to the current fad that media workers-photographers, journalists and TV crews are some sort of 'necessary evil' to be tolerated and shoved into a pen and then discarded when it suits.

hosting-Sophie Monk

This years' event was a glittering bash with a black tie dinner at the Ivy ballroom and actress Sophie Monk-still looking for that big break in Hollywood, flew into town to host the event. Sophie confided to the Shuttle that she had been 'celibate' for a year but was looking for a possible candidate amongst the 50 bachelors on show that evening.

On the subject of celibacy-there was much talk during the evening about the successful TV film



Bachelor shows his charms



 Paper Giants : The Birth of Cleo  just screened on the ABC and it's creating editor Ita Buttrose (who famously declared after divorce she intended remaining celibate), and the late media mogul Kerry Packer's hand in getting to print Cleo Magazine in the 1970s which at times reached sales of up to 250,000 copies a month and is still going strong.

Everyone credited actress Asher Keddie for her role as the lightly lisping Ita Buttrose as having given an award winning performance.

Society photographer Bill Ranken who has been around long enough (he's 81) to know the Packers and all the personalities featured in the film (he's also 'landed gentry') agreed Asher's performance was superb and that Tony Barry as the guff Sir Frank Packer was spot on.

As to the long rumoured romance between Buttrose and Packer, Ranken says it never happened :

 "Kerry never mixed business with pleasure" says Ranken.

"Kerry admired Ita for her talent and he would never have risked complicating the business relationship by making it personal. It was just the usual Sydney gossip that ramped the relationship into a love affair. "

Ranken , whose Society Spy pages can be seen in Latte Life also says the film skipped over Kerry Packer's tipple of choice Fanta and how that choice of drink it came about.

Asher Keddie & Rob Carlton as Ita Buttrose
& Kerry Packer in the ABC's Paper Giants.

"Restaurants around the world would be phoned ahead to tell them Kerry was booking a table and that a crate of Fanta should be on hand. The corporate jet was always stocked with plentiful supplies." says Bill.



bachelors come in all sizes



" In the film Kerry says he went on a bender when very young and woke up with a shocking hangover the following morning. He says in the film and that 'he never wanted to feel that way again'. The real truth is that in between the drinking and waking up there was a scene that resulted in tragedy that Kerry never got over. He swore off alcohol for life and kept his word". Ranken declined to illuminate on what had happened that fateful night.




bachelorette attacks cake

 

The media behaves

the Shuttle scoops Fleet Street-again!

Lord Hamlyn

A Day at The Races

Nearly a week after the Social Shuttle revealed exclusively that the lifetime patron of the famed Sydney dominatrix Madame Lash was the British peer and publisher Paul Hamlyn, Britain's Daily Mail has caught up to speed.

We attended the launch of the Madame Lash biography penned by Sam Everingham last Monday evening at her city residence The Kirk, a deconsecrated Presbyterian Church. While 200 guests were treated to topless acrobats and an opera singer the expected guest of honour Gretel Pinniger -Lash's real name, failed to show despite phoning ahead from her limousine- a former hearse with the numberplate STIFF, to tell our snapper to be prepared and wait outside for her arrival in an outfit she said contained "ten yards of red taffeta and a whip or 2".

Madame at The Kirk

Former Oz Magazine founder and later Kerry Packer executive Richard Walsh launched the book and gave a brief history of Lash expecting the lady to appear at any moment. She never arrived.

 Paul Hamlyn, Baron Hamlyn of Edgeworth was born in Germany and fled with his family to the UK in 1933 and became one of the richest publishers in the world with Hamlyn Books (born Paul Hamburger he chose the name Hamlyn from a telephone book). When he died in 2001 he left an enormous fortune including a $500M charity foundation plus a yearly stipend to Gretel with the stipulation his name never be revealed by her.

Clyde Packer (left) with Sir Frank and Kerry

It was always common knowledge that Hamlyn was Pinniger's benefactor. He was introduced to Madame Lash by Clyde Packer, brother of Kerry Packer. Clyde was considered to be Sir Frank Packer's business heir but after a public spat with his father he sold his share of the publishing business to brother  Kerry for $4M in the 1960's and spent the next 40 years wearing caftans and indulging himself in the counter culture that included hiring  the services of Madame Lash. It was Packer who introduced other wealthy like-minded businessmen like Gordon Barton to Lash.

Hamlyn, who has family members in Sydney visited regularly and would take Lash on trips to Asia. One service that the dominatrix specialised in that is rarely mentioned is that she allowed the whip to be turned on her !. And rarely mentioned is the fact that in her 3 houses-The Kirk, one in Melbourne and a splendid beach house at Palm Beach, she has fully equipped dungeons that includes Nazi officer outfits.

Eddie McGuire-arrogant, over rated meglomaniac.

  Hey, they aren't our words !.

       They're from one of the 10880 10886 10890 members (coincidentally mirroring the same number of tSS readers since we first revealed the website's existence) who have joined up to Eddie McGuire is ruining the 2010 Winter Olympics coverage facebook page.

    Another recent joiner Tim Stone says "he should be cryogenically frozen so future generations can be annoyed."

    Poor Eddie. We feel guilty. He really is a nice chap. Eddie is a regular at Graeme Goldberg's Dee Bees cafe in Double Bay and on nodding terms with tSS. He calls in after picking his kids up from the nearby snooty Cranbrook School.

   What would former Channel Nine boss the late Kerry Packer say about Eddie's crass homophobic remarks on the men's skating efforts at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games ?. Probably a lot after the number of complaints that have flooded the Nine switchboards. The current owners of the Nine network. PBL Media didn't return our calls.

Rob Astbury at his 2006 book launch

The King

   Instead we turned to the nation's former top sport's broadcaster who reigned at the Nine network for years, the openly gay Rob Astbury who now lives in Thailand where he is a property developer.

      Astbury, a good friend of McGuire's isn't saying much. He referred us to Peter Jess who mangers the biggest names in Australian sport including Olympian and aboriginal Cathy Freeman whose book, which Jess promoted, was a best seller. Jess has contracted Astbury to promote his upcoming autobiography Twice As Hard. Jess told tSS Astbury’s book will reveal intimate details about some of the nation's top sporting personalities and the biggest names in television. Jess says Astbury’s account of his personal and business life in Thailand will ensure the book is a block buster that is sure to amuse, bemuse and shock.
        Astbury's 2006 book King & I, about his long time relationship with the King of  Television, the late Graham Kennedy was a best selling despite ruffling feathers in the media..

  
     46 year old McGuire has had a meteoric rise from his working class background. He is president of the Collingwood Football Club and hosts a number of TV and radio shows. He is reputed to earn up to $5M a year.

    He was appointed the CEO of the Nine Network in 2006 in a surpise move after the departure of David Gyngell whose father, the legendary Bruce Gyngell was the first person to appear on Oz TV and Channel Nine in 1956.

     McGuire lasted nearly a year and presided over plunging ratings before Gyngell was lured back from the USA.

Jessica-boned

      His famous quip "bone her"-a directive to sack newsreader Jessica Rowe has become common lexicon after an internal memo was leaked. Jessica had the last laugh-her husband Peter Overton is now the network's top newsreader. Eddie is also a good friend of Kerry Packer's son James.

   

  It's hard to believe McGuire would actually be anti-gay. Comments like those of his and Olympic's co-host Mike Molloy are pretty much standard football language. The Footy Show is a perfect example with hardly a week going by without a footballer climbing into drag for an amusing sketch.Not for long though.

      The rumour mill inside the Nine network is in overdrive with the current bosses including Gyngell said to be alarmed at the backlash.

Sir Frank and son Kerry

# The founder of the Nine network Sir Frank Packer was a noted homophobe who abhored the number of gays in the budding TV industry.

Barton-"fluid" sexuality

# Sir Frank's sons and heirs Kerry and Clyde talked tough but rebelled against their father's views. Clyde used to attend publisher Gordon Barton's famous "anything goes" parties where one's sexuality was expected to be "fluid". Whilst Kerry Packer took care of business, his older brother Clude roamed Sydney in a Bentley convertible, his enormous girth encassed in flowing brightly coloured caftans. He could have been the lead float at any Mardi Gras.

# Cranbrook School-the expensive private boarding school in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs where the Packer, Gyngell & Murdoch clans were tutored was the butt of endless jokes in it's early years including the raunchy song that ended with the words-"if you can't get a girl get a Cranbrook boy "!

Cranbrook

# # tSS is travelling to Thailand next month to interview Rob Astbury amongst other expatriates who live there. Astbury’s manager, Peter Jess says, “Astbury is ready to blow a trumpet which will make King and I seem like comparing a wave to a tsunami.” According to Jess, Astbury, in his book Twice as Hard, describes television as a “despicable industry” and he will name stars with first hand account tales about top executives which will have lawyers working overtime. Is the raw truth a defence?.

 # Derryn Hinch is a leading contender for the title of 'Australia's Worst Journalist". Voting at the website ends on the 28th Feb.

# Bruce Gyngell was the driving force behind the successful networks-TV am and Yorkshire Television in the UK.

# Expect a float dedicated to Eddie McGuire in the Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras on Saturday week.

Eddie's houseguest-Johnny Weir

# Eddie has invited top US skater Johnny Weir to stay with him during his upcoming visit to Australia.

                                       ********************************

Everyone is invited to join the Social Shuttle team in the Champagne Bar in the Member's Stand at the Pink Stiletto Race Day tomorrow (Friday) from 1pm at Royal Randwick racecourse.

If you make a substantial donation to the Bobby Goldsmith Fund we may even introduce you to singer Maria Venuti !

like some bastard love child of Rupert Murdoch and Silvio Berlusconi..

  Oh dear. That's how Nicky Moore describes the Olympic coverage by Eddie McGuire : "Racist, insular, lowest common denominator, uninformed, homophobic, dull, cheesy, irrelevant, flag-waving … like some bastard love child of Rupert Murdoch and Silvio Berlusconi.".

   The facebook page- Eddie Mcguire is ruining the 2010 Winter Olympics coverage has a growing membership. In the past few days it's grown from a few dozen to 2075. It's description in the 'philosophy' section says : "Anyone else absolutely sick of this no-talent clown and his verbal diarrhoea during the 2010 winter olympics?"
    Michaela Riddell says :"I was embarrassed and ashamed and then to top it all off The Brokeback (Mountain) comment was just outrageous- does Eddie have any evidence that sexuality affects capability ? ".
    Why did the Channel Nine network put Eddie in charge of the Winter Olympics coverage ?. Surely they learnt from James Packer's experience. When McGuire-the host of the quiz show Who Wants to Be A Millionaire ran the network on behalf of Packer he almost stuffed the place. It was typical of younger James-his father Kerry would never have made such a mistake. Nor would Kerry have allowed a raft of homophobic comments to air. He would have been on the blower the following morning blasting the commentators if he got wind of any statement-like McGuire's fellow host Mike Molloy's dig at some Olympians for "not leaving much in the closet" remark.
     Packer cared for every viewer no matter what their race, sexuality or age. They were his meal ticket and he knew it. When he lured one of the top sport's broadcasters away from a rival network he interviewed him personally in his office. When the broadcaster announced he would taking his male partner to any social functions Packer said "everyone knows your a bloody poof and couldn't give a stuff-now sign the bloody contract".
                                          ******************************

UPDATE : within 5 hours of tSS reporting on the anti-McGuire facebook group membership has climbed to 4328.

The UK Sun newspaper has got in on the act. The fact the The Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch who also owns the rival Foxtel cable network where the Olympics are also being reported is entirely co-incidental.

how to lose a billion $$ or 2

Packer and ex-model Erika Baxter marry in France.(c)

Paul Barry's Who Wants to Be a Billionaire? The James Packer Story is about to hit the shelves and is eagerly awaited by those who are looking for an insight into whether the 'third generation' syndrome-where the grandson of self-made successful men can dilute the fortunes built up over decades and handed down through a family has come into play.

James Packer is son of the late media mogul Kerry Packer who transformed his father Sir Frank Packer's  one newspaper into Australia's dominant media company with TV stations and a magazine publishing empire.

It's reputed that James has lost two billion dollars on his Machau casino venture. Young James, it's claimed, ignored advice from various advisors to take note of Chinese superstitions about Feng Shui or indeed , taking on the Chinese at their own game and in a location where they dominate. He built on the "wrong" side of a river , is one claim,and was hoping to reap in a fortune at the gaming tables via sponsored gaming tours from the Chinese mainland.

This was complicated when the Chinese government began a crackdown on civil servants who were popping over to Machau and losing small fortunes of government funds at the roulette tables.

James Packer has divested himself of all his father's media assets including the once successful Nine TV network and Kerry's personal favourite that the Packer fortune was built upon-the Women's Weekly-once the biggest selling magazine in the world and still with a healthy circulation. In 2005 when the Shuttle attended the grand soiree thrown by big Kerry at his Nine studios to celebrate 50 years of the Weekly's publication, James was absent.

Insiders say unlike his father, known for his legendary grilling of business owners when about to purchase a corporation, James seems to rely on the advice of  investment bankers which can complicate a decision if a sale involves large fees from negotiations. They say his desire to outdo his father is so driven that he makes quick decisions that have seen him now reduced to the 4th richest Australian while Kerry was always number one.

Kerry Packer was regarded as a tough operator but always fair and was a low-key philanthropist who would think nothing of donating a few million dollars to purchase a fleet of ambulances outfitted with cardiac arrest units after a nearly fatal heart attack in 1990's. There are still dozens of older Packer employees who still live on generous pensions from Kerry long after they left his employment. Loyalty was the older Packer's trademark.

Father Kerry apparently despaired when James joined Scientology upon advice from his good pal, actor Tom Cruise. Although he has since left Scientology he still regularly holiday's with Cruise. James also sold Kerry's much loved Arctic P- a converted minesweeper on which James and newly wed wife Erika Baxter honeymooned on the Med with Cruise and Katie Holmes after their wedding in the South of France in 2007.

An example of James Packer's odd decisions was the launch of his new Nine's network season in 2001 at Garden Island when James spotted the Murdoch gossip columnist Ros Reines . Packer exploded at the sight of Reines. took her aside and berated her for 5 minutes about her intrusive articles about his private life.  It dominated the media for days, his TV season launch ignored.

An Eastern Suburb's hairdresser claims he took a recent call from James who remonstrated with him for commenting on wife Erika's hair to salon clients. 

Perhaps he should take advice from former partner Lachlan Murdoch, born on the same day as Packer, who left his father Rupert's empire and sold off his News Ltd shares to retire from public life. James and Lachlan together lost over $200M when they invested in Jodee Rich's One-Tel mobile phone company against their respective father's advice.

  James Packer & ex-wife Johdi Meares at Garden Island (c)
 

Paul Barry who wrote best-sellers about Kerry Packer and former entrepreneur Alan Bond is to launch his book in Sydney next week.

missing the colour

The tabloids really should consult the Shuttle more for inside information. The callous gunning down of Michael Mcgurk outside his house , gangland style and in full view of his young son, carries all the hallmarks of a professional 'hit". These days the long-time policy of never involving a victim's family has been abandoned in what was a brutal, one-bullet-to-the-head execution as McGurk sat beside his 9 year old son in his Mercedes. A truly horrific experience for the young lad whose anguished screams were heard streets away.

But whilst newspapers described McGurk as a businessman-he was always known to us as Last Stand Mick the name the Shuttle dubbed Michael over a lunch 5 years ago which the Edinburgh born ex-boxer accepted with good grace-being in that when a debt collector was needed, McGurk was the man to call if things became difficult .
McGurk, with his soft Scots accent was known not to suffer fools gladly and during his 20 years in Australia had built an amazing multi-million dollar fortune via a variety of property deals. Often those deals had soured and enmity would build between McGurk and his partners.

One of McGurk's oddest enterprises was in 2006 when he attempted to sue the world's richest man, the Sultan of Brunie over the sale of 400 year old a miniature copy of the Koran kept in a tiny jewel encrusted case. The Sultan claimed no knowledge of the relic or McGurk.

The Shuttle was contacted yesterday by a tabloid looking for a snap of Adam Tilley, the businessman whose luxury Eastern Suburbs house was firebombed a year ago with McGurk at first charged for the offense with those charges recently dropped. Adam is brother of Ben Tilley, Kerry Packer favourite and close companion who travelled the world in Packer's Lear Jet whilst Kerry visited casinos where he would pick up, or drop a bundle. Apparently $6M in one go at Crockfords in London's Mayfair a year before he passed away.

But  the coppers should look further afield than the Tilleys who have always trod the straight and narrow. McGurk is bound to have built any number of enemies in his 15 year career.

Into the fray steps "Sydney Identity' as the media describes him-Big Jim Byrnes famous for getting Alan Bond out of his bankruptcy. Byrnes is banned from  being a company director and punters are still wondering what happened to their antiques consigned to Byrne's Cromwell's Auction House which collapsed a year ago. Byrnes only recently pulled up the Shuttle and requested that we should cease describing him as "rich" as he was a man of humble means. He then clambered into a new bright red Bentley and sped off. Big Jim claims McGurk held a tape-recording that could "bring down the government". Mmmm.                                                  

                                     But what's this new "Sydney Identity" moniker ?. We much prefer the favorite euphemism for businessmen of no fixed business-the more old-fashioned and delightful "colourful racing identity' the former way of describing those numerous chaps about town like the late Perc Galea who first earned the name when no-one could actually quite work out how Perc, a friendly chap , who drove luxury cars, lived in a huge mansion but never appeared to have a job apart from punting at the races.Something he was pretty good at, obviously.

"colourful racing identity"                                     Sultan of Brunei

vale Bakes

He's been one of Sydney & Melbourne's most loved characters but now Johnny Baker has passed away from liver cancer.

'Bakes' as he was known to his friends, had battled skin cancer for many years now , receiving treatment at some of the world's top cancer clinics courtesy of good friends the Packers and TV mogul Paul Ramsey. Johnny was celebrating with Lady Sonia McMahon for her birthday just this year on Ramsey's luxury gin palace on Sydney Harbour when Sonia took a tumble down a gangplank.

Johnny squired, well walked , some pretty fancy ladies about town..Big Kerry's widow Ros Packer.. Caroline Laws ..Princess Margaret..Princess Mary of Denmark. A night out with Bakes often ended up with a sore tummy from laughing at his hilarious tales

Now Bakes is no more-gone to that great cocktail party in the sky. A modest man who lived in a small Bondi house and attended mass every morning, Johnny had one of the fastest wits around town and could enthrall party guests from princes to footie players...everyone just loved Bakes. We never quite knew what Johnny did for a living but a trip to New York, Paris or London in the Learjet, or a Mediterranean cruise in his converted minesweeper the Arctic P just wasn't on for Kerry Packer if Bakes wasn't onboard for entertainment value.

He'll be missed by all..Skye Leckie, wife of Channel Seven supremo David is organising the send-off expected to be at St Joseph's in Edgcliff and packed with Sydney's finest followed by a champagne wake. Bakes would have it no other way. RIP Johnny..we all loved you !