While Sydney's Oxford Street drag queen star Maxine Sheild is still basking in the glory of having
co-hosted the controversial shows of Madonna, a veteran of the Sydney drag scene Stan Munro is wowing them in the Wales village of Abercam. Stan who is 75 &makes Maxine look like a spring chicken can still command an audience belting out Shirley Bassey songs. Munro was born in Abercan but left at age 22 and toured the world before settling in Australia. Along the way He became great pals with British comedians like Larry Grayson & John Inman of Are You Being Served fame currently being screened on Australian TV.
This wondrous lady above is the delectable Maxine Maurine Shield who holds sway at the famous Oxford Street gay nightclub the Midnight Shift. Maxi has just been announced as the Entertainer of The Year at the Diva (drag) Awards and quite right too. Maxi will also serve as Hostess at Madonna's tour next year as the Ultimate Door Bitch (but she's really very nice) Below is X Factor judge Dannii Minogue who took a turn last Sunday at Justin Hemmes' Beresford Hotel as Bingo Caller at Tranny Bingo. They raise funds for charity. No matter how much they try to kill of Sydney's nightlife with the restrictive Lockout Laws they can't keep a good woman down. Or a man. Or a tranny for that matter.
Whispers thinks this is the most handsome photo of Leo DiCaprio who picked up a cool $12M to attend the opening of the new James Packer Macau casino Studio City. Accompanying Leo were Martin Scorcese, Robert de Niro and Mariah Carey who also sang at the opening. Our exclusive pics come from Adam Zammit who as Director of Live Entertainment and Events put the night together. Along with a 6000 seat arena ( Madonna will sing there in February next year) and the Pacha Nightclub Zammit is launching the multi-million dollar House of Magic. What fun !
She's a welcoming sight to Darlinghurst visitors : drag star Maxi Shield patrols Sydney's Oxford Street like she's owns it. And why not. On freezing winter nights like those we are currently experiencing Maxi warms the cockles of any heart as she happily chats to passersby at the Colombian Hotel on the Golden Mile adding a touch of glamour to the strip, now losing much of it's glitter under new licensing laws that are crucifying inner-city nightlife.
Now Maxi will be the grand hostess at Madonna's 2016 Rebel Heart Tour of Australia where she will host after-parties in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne and hopefully it could lead to a whole new career along the lines of Perez Hilton who does similar around the USA. # Maxi swears that bosom is real.
While daily newspapers are losing readers at the rate of up to 20% every 6 months, former Fairfax editor Andrew Jaspan says it's the local publications that will be the beneficiaries as readers turn to specialised newspapers. Double Bay's Latte Life, now in it's 3rd year seems to be proving Jaspan right as it goes from strength to strength.
The Shuttle recently witnessed a well known newspaper columnist verbally attack an 18 year old intern from Latte Life over an alleged slight at a recent Kings Cross party- they must be something right.
This week's edition has an up and close interview with the paparazzi Jamie Fawcett who has emerged from the manicured bushes of the Bay-one of his haunts-to give his thoughts on local celebrity hunting, and also brings an update on the scandal they broke some months ago the outrageous shop in the Bay that is still selling luxury label rip-offs right under the noses of some of the smartest boutiques in the country.
All this comes courtesy of a new journalist Jonathon Marshal (known in the trade as Maverick Marshall) who broke the story about stripper parties at the once snooty former Ritz Carlton Hotel in the Bay-one time home of such notables as Bob Hawke, Bill Clinton, Madonna, Princess Diana and George Bush Sn.
Pick up a copy around the cafes of Double Bay or you can read Latte Life online here.
Dame Helen Mirren berates a team of ear-splitting drummers outside the Gielgud Theatre in Soho, London who performed while she was trying to give a performance as The Queen.
The drummers were advertising London’s As One In the Park gay music festival. What is about gay festivals and bloody drums ?. Bad enough that the old phoney Madonna is adored by the gay community but they have penchant for loud drums as any Sydneysider who wanders near Oxford Street will discover.
Video by Chris Dangerfield.
The legendary Bourbon & Beefsteak in Kings Cross has re-surfaced with a swell opening party and endless Laurent Perrier. As The Bourbon, it looks like they got it right. A friendly atmosphere, good food and drinks and a great layout with live bands 7 days of the week brings back the old days when the Bourbon was the place to end a night in Sydney, usually at around 3am when you could party on until the morning.
Kerry Chikarovski & Peter McGauran
long legs at The Bourbon
Opened in 1967 by the mysterious Bernie Houghton who arrived in town with a suitcase full of cash, for the next 40 years the B&B reigned supreme with visiting celebs like Frank Sinatra, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Madonna taking advantage of it's 24 hour license. One night cricketer Ricky Ponting even danced with drag queen Carlotta. Houghton said he was an ex-US Air force man but many claimed he was a CIA agent or ran Air America in Vietnam : whatever his background he was the perfect host.
He managed to secure a permanent visa via ASIO for services rendered. Houghton had connections and the B&B became a hang-out for holidaying CIA agents and local mobsters. Amongst it's bizarre decor with stuffed bears, monogrammed Zippo lighters, Confederate flags and Indian mementos was Houghton's own M16 which he claimed saved his life many a time in S.E.Asia.
The Bourbon is now owned by Coogee Bay Hotel owner Christopher Cheung who snapped up the derelict property ( Houghton died in 2005) for 22M.
A year ago the most bumbling but lovable TV interviewer fell from a ladder while trying to hitch some Christmas fairly lights to a tree near the backyard pool in his Melbourne house. Molly banged his head on one of the repro Sphinx heads that adorn his Egyptian themed house and for a few months we all feared we may lose him.
In hospital doctors worried he may have suffered serious brain damage.
At times nurses had to lead Molly back to his bed when he was convinced the hospital hallways were a red carpet premier of a new film or rock event. Once they nabbed him a nearby coffee shop where he had fled convinced he was being held prisoner and had begged the shop owner to call him a taxi. At times he looked perplexed when handed his trademark cowboy hat.
But Molly is back in form and the man who famously ummed and ahhed his way through an interview with a bemused Prince Charles in 1979 (see below) has returned with a triumphant interview with his old pal Elton John who has slammed Madonna as as "like a fucking fairground stripper, a nightmare " and that "Her tour's been a disaster. And it couldn't happen to a bigger cunt" Several media outlets have proclaimed that Elton's outburst was meant to be off-camera and not part of the interview.
Oh yeah?. Our spy in the Molly camp says Elton said after his Madonna attack "and make sure you print that Molly."
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Hughes with Danton
Art Critic Robert Hughes who passed away today at the age of 74 never fully recovered physically from a 1999 car accident in the Northern Territory
But it was the death of his son Danton Hughes in 2002 that really rocked Robert andand knocked the wind out of his sails. Hughes confided to friends that he felt a total failure as a father after Danton, who had been living with designer Jenny Kee, committed suicide in Kee's garage while she was visiting friends in Byron Bay.
Although Hughes and Kee never spoke to each other while Danton was living with Jenny, they had one meeting after Danton's death and settled their differences.
Hughes would also say that if he had never metand married American artist Doris Downes that he believes he may well have joined Danton in suicide.
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, BobDylan, 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 Lifecolumns, 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 SamNeill, puffing away on a cigar.
The story is so hot in Italy that the media there has gone into meltdown. On December 2nd respected investigative journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi published his new book Metastis; A Chronicle of 'Blood & Money".
Gianluigi Nuzzi
In Metastis Mafia godfather Giuseppe di Bella, now a police supergrass says that fashion designer Gianni Versace was murdered by the notorious Calabrian Mafia N’drangheta, a little known but feared group with close ties to South American drug lords.
di Bella says that he and his fellow mobsters laundered billions of dollars for the South Americans by filtering it through legitimate businesses and one of them was the Versace fashion empire to the tune of $200M a year.
He claims that Gianni Versace was taking so much money out of his fashion business and taking so much cocaine he was beginning to believe the money belonged to him. di Bella says a hit was ordered on Versace to teach others a lesson.
And he says the reported killer of Versace, Andrew Cunanan was a patsy and was himself murdered by the Mafia.
Giancarlo Capaldo, of the Rome based anti Mafia department, said: 'We
have opened a file into what Di Bella says - he is an informer and his
information in the past has always proved correct.'
In a statement the Versace family said: 'The declarations from the informer are false and shameful.
Gianni Versace, whose celebrity friends included Diana, Princess of
Wales, Elton John,Madonna and Naomi Campbell was shot at close range in the back of the
head on the steps of his Miami mansion on July 15, 1997 in what detectives at the time speculated
had the hallmarks of a mob hit.
Cunanan was found dead several days later on a Miami houseboat. It was claimed to be a suicide.
Donatella
But the Versace Mafia claims are not new.
Ten years ago Santo and Donatello Versace took Australian private eye Frank Monte to court in Sydney after he published a book, The Spying Game in which he detailed the very same claims. The Versaces won their case and the book was pulped.
Frank Monte
While few questions were asked at the time about why the Versaces bothered coming all the way to the Sydney Supreme Court to take on Monte something quite different was happening in Italy.
Numerous Italian publications said that it was common knowledge that Gianni Versace and the Mafia were ln bed together.
While Monte was on the receiving end of criticism in the Australian media, the opposite was happening in Italy. He was being hailed as a hero for exposing the Versace empire as a fashion fairy tale just too good to be true. They treated him as the underdog in the Sydney trial. Meanwhile Italian newspapers published photographs of Gianni leaving by boat from his lavish villa on Lake Como accompanied by known Mafia members.
The local Australian media has all but ignored the di Bello story but in Italy, the UK and the USA the story is gaining traction. At least 2 major British newspapers are to shortly publish new details about the Versace empire and both have contacted Monte.
Now the Shuttle has seen a copy of a manuscript written not long after the Versace shooting-The MiamiJigsaw. The author received several credible death threats at the time and decided not to publish. The manuscript contains never before published details of the Versace and Cunanan deaths in Miami, much of it sourced from detectives who worked on the case.
There are details that possibly didn't seem that important at the time but with the Gianluigi Nuzzi book now become very pertinent.
Such as the fact that ownership of the houseboat on which Andrew Cunanan's body was found , linked back to a known Mafia member and was a base for mob members. Despite the well publicised details of Cunanan's trip across the USA from California to Miami on a serial murder spree, no publication at the time mentioned his stay in Las Vegas before the trip began.
In FBI records there are details of Cunanan receiving large sums of money in Vegas despite having no job or income with photos of him meeting with mob members. In police reports the pathologist who examined Cunanan's body said that the claim that he had died 8 days after Versace was dubious and that he may have in fact, died before Versace.
Witnesses say the man who shot Versace yelled a known Mafia curse in Italian. Cunanan did not speak the language. Nor did any of those witnesses identify Cunanan as the shooter. Beside Gianni's bod lay a dead pigeon, a known Mafia symbol.
In The Miami Jigsaw it's clear that Miami police held little faith in the Cunanan murder theory, particularly as Versace had been killed in a classic Mafia style hit in broad daylight. Added to this was the manner in which Cunanan had killed all his other victims-shooting them front on while facing them or torturing them first.
The book has FBI records to show the federal agency thought similarly.
Last night Santo Versace confronted Giuseppe di Bella on Italian television and poured scorn on di Bella's claims. But when di Bella said that he had met Santo on a number of occasions which Santo denied, he revealed intimate details of Santo's home. Today talk back radio in Rome was running hot with callers on the side of Giuseppe di Bella.
Journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi talks on Italian TV about the N’drangheta and the Versace murder.
It was one of the smartest bashes Sydney has seen for some time.
The 75Th Birthday party for one of the top producers of pearls in the world-the famous Paspaley Pearls who dominate the industry in Darwin and Australia.
Thrown at the magnificent Great Hall (part of the snooty gel's school SCEGGS) in East Sydney.
Models stood very still in nice poses on marble plinth's wearing beautiful pearl and diamond creations valued at millions of dollars and a host of well heeled Sydney-siders and Paspaley customers trotted out for the evening to view the gems, scoff Darwin oysters and quaff the finest French champagne.
We counted ten multi-millionaires in the room including the Man From Uncle-publisher Matt Handbury , (he's Rupert Murdoch's fabulously rich nephew) hotel csar Terry Schwamberg and heiress Anna Lisa Klettenberg who quietly informed us that she has just purchased a few chalets in her favourite skiing town Aspen, as one does-"so much nicer than hotels my dear". Quite.
But there was an undercurrent coursing through the room. The magnificent decor had been put together by designer Edward Coutts Davidson.
For the unenlightened Coutts Davidson swept into town from London eighteen months ago, took up residence and brought his well thumbed CV to impress the locals. That includes designing and decorating houses for Madonna, Kate Moss and George Michael and a dozen glitzy magazine articles told us all about it.
Paspaley's 75th was to have to been a superb showcase for Coutts Davidson's exceptional talents with it's genteel guest list, wonderful location and the Chiparustableau living statues in a 1920's hall decorated as a speakeasy complete with a lively floor show of black musicians specially flown in from Harlem for the evening.
In a town where the party decorator James Gordon reins supreme, Gordon may have found a rival to his unique talents. But it seems it isn't to be. Coutts Davidson appears to have vanished and was certainly not at the party he designed which was a credit to his skills.
It seems Mr Coutts Davidson has fled these shores unexpectedly and some prospective clients are a tad unhappy, others extremely disgruntled. Something about large deposits paid, goods undelivered and so on. There is talk of Inspector Knacker getting involved.
Apart from that minor detail, we can assure you that not only do Paspaley's deserve their reputation as one of the world's finest jewellers-they know how to give a memorable party !
Marylynne Paspaley poses with a bunch of hoofers from Harlem
Actress Demi Moore is due in Melbourne next week to appear in court over a legal action she is taking against the top selling magazine NewIdea for breaching copyright of her photographs.
The magazine-known locally as No Idea, printed a series of black and white snaps taken at a private party Demi threw to celebrate the Oscars. The snaps show herself, her daughter Rumer Willis, Orlando Bloom, P Diddy, Cameron Diaz and Amanda De Cadenet hamming it up at the after Oscars party in 2008 given at Madonna's house.
Moore lodged a claim in 2008 stating the magazine breached her copyright when it published the pictures on the front cover and on two pages inside its March 8 edition without her permission.
She says she has suffered loss and damage as a result of the publication.
According to the statement of claim, Moore spoke to event organiser Jeffrey Best at the party and the pair agreed that by paying for the photographs Moore would be assigned the copyright.
The trial before Justice John Middleton is expected to run for four-days beginning on Monday.
Other witnesses will give videolink evidence from Los Angeles.
She's a welcoming sight to Darlinghurst visitors : drag star Maxi Shield patrols Sydney's Oxford Street like she's owns it. And why not. On freezing winter nights like those we are currently experiencing Maxi warms the cockles of any heart as she happily chats to passersby at the Colombian Hotel on the Golden Mile adding a touch of glamour to the strip, now losing much of it's glitter under new licensing laws that are crucifying inner-city nightlife.
The Shuttle recently witnessed a well known newspaper columnist verbally attack an 18 year old intern from Latte Life over an alleged slight at a recent Kings Cross party- they must be something right.
At times nurses had to lead Molly back to his bed when he was convinced the hospital hallways were a red carpet premier of a new film or rock event. Once they nabbed him a nearby coffee shop where he had fled convinced he was being held prisoner and had begged the shop owner to call him a taxi. At times he looked perplexed when handed his trademark cowboy hat.
Hughes confided to friends that he felt a total failure as a father after Danton, who had been living with designer Jenny Kee, committed suicide in Kee's garage while she was visiting friends in Byron 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.
In Metastis Mafia godfather Giuseppe di Bella, now a police supergrass says that fashion designer Gianni Versace was murdered by the notorious Calabrian Mafia N’drangheta, a little known but feared group with close ties to South American drug lords.
In FBI records there are details of Cunanan receiving large sums of money in Vegas despite having no job or income with photos of him meeting with mob members. In police reports the pathologist who examined Cunanan's body said that the claim that he had died 8 days after Versace was dubious and that he may have in fact, died before Versace.
tive clients are a tad unhappy, others extremely disgruntled. Something about large deposits paid, goods undelivered and so on. There is talk of Inspector Knacker getting involved.
e Cadenet hamming it up at the after Oscars party in 2008 given at Madonna's house.