Breaking news : Titanic (2) Sinks !

Alas, along with his political career hitting rock bottom it looks like billionaire Clive Palmer's ambitious project to recreate the Titanic has also sunk. Palmer's Blue Star Line's twitter page hasn't updated for ages and now this video has appeared on YouTube

So shoot us..the ship sails

Whispers has been on holiday and had to forgo the pleasure of keeping our loyal readers (so many in the USA & Russia) up to date.

Well it has been a long extended Silly Season so I doubt much was missed.

Even better: we picked up an amazing story while sunning ourselves in The Bahamas while staying with pals who were family friends of the legendary Sir Harry Oakes ( left ) who created the famous and exclusive Paradise Island resort there. COMING SOON !

However we have noticed that adverts for wacky Clive Palmer's United Australia Party are beginning to flood the airwaves as multi-millionaire Clive resurrects his political career.
But what of that other venture-  rebuild of the fated Titanic which sunk on the 15 April 1912 on it's maiden voyage with the loss of over 1500 lives.

Word reaches us via a Palmer operative that the project which was suspended in 2015 due to financial problems with Palmer's main company Mineralogy was in dispute with Chinese government-owned Citic over the payment of hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties to Palmer companies.
The Australian Supreme Court in 2017 found for Mineralogy, awarding it $US150 million, at the time worth about $196 million, in unpaid royalties.
Apparently the funds have now been paid which is why Clive is cashed up, going back into polticis and has relaunched the Titanic 2 project with the following video.

Going Down on The Titanic

Yes it's true. 

Whispers almost went down with the HMS Titanic and we're rather pleased. There is a fascinating new exhibition of over 360 Titanic artefacts on display at the Byron Kennedy Hall at Fox Studios.

The promoter of the show Tom Zaller is pictured above on the Titanic's Grand Staircase. Actually that's not the real staircase, it's the one that was created for the film staring Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Zaller is actually one of the very few people who has been down to view the wreck of the Titanic in one of those tiny submarine thingys and it inspired him to create this exhibition which premiered in Moscow, has been to Perth and is now in Sydney.

Everything else on display are original mementos from The White Star Line. Visitors are led through various rooms to view a first class cabin, nice, and then middle class (oh dear) and lower class where ten people shared one bunk (just kidding). The exhibition culminates in the Memorial Gallery, where visitors learn the passenger’s fate on the cold early morning of April 15, 1912. There is a complete list of the unfortunate passengers who didn't survive and a list of those who did in each of the boats. And..there is a Real Iceberg ! Yes a real one.

Visitors are given a Boarding Pass with a passenger's name and you can check whether you live or die ! Whispers was in the name of Mme Léontine Pauline Aubart (left) from Paris, and fortunately she survived in Lifeboat 9 with her maid Emma Sägesser.
#  Léontine Pauline Aubart was a 25 year old singer and the mistress of millionaire Benjamin Guggenheim who was also on board but did not survive. Apparently she went on to become a society hostess in Paris holding wild parties!

Compare the First Class Cabin with Second Class- 4 beds in a tiny room, and Third Class...shudder..we dare not show you (nothing has changed)

China gets less grand as you go downmarket to Third Class. At least they gave you a plate and some cutlery

 

Clive Palmer's Inspiration

He's building a replica of the Titanic which is due to sail from Southampton on it's maiden voyage in 2016 and ordered 100 mechanical dinosaurs for his Palmer Coolum Resort on the Sunshine Coast but of course, we all know him more recently as a candidate for Prime Minister who has launched his own political party.
Our favourite wacky billionaire Clive Palmer appeared on morning radio yesterday claiming to channel Miley Cyrus but the Shuttle reckons the real inspiration for Clive's antics is former Russian president Boris Yeltsin. Watch the 2 videos and see if we lie !

Titanic 2 Sails Without Us

Those crafty Chinese are already re-producing humble Toyota Corollas, Bentleys and Rolls Royce's so why not a new Titanic on behalf of wacky billionaire Clive Palmer.

Palmer's new Blue Star Line has released photos of his new tub and it all looks a bit austere. The good news is that moaning pensioners (us by the time the ship sails ) will be banned from the boat.
A promotional lunch on the Archille Lauro did the Shuttle's seafaring head in. It sank in 1994 shortly after we recovered from food poisoning.

Bon Voyage !!

No Oldies For Capt Clive !

Wacky billionaire Clive Palmer said today pensioners would be banned from his replica Titanic 2 when it sets sail. Palmer has teamed up with a Chinese corporation to build the boat and take to the high seas with a floating casino on which only 'people like us' will be allowed onboard to gamble.

Clive is reported as saying :""We'll be in international waters, so we can probably stop pensioners from coming without breaching any legislation,
"There will be some sort of screening to make sure the people who do go there are people who can afford to go there."I think third class we'd have to have questions about, wouldn't we?"

So that means any ship-board romances between first class  and third class ala Jack Dawson & Rose is out and by the time Titanic 2 is launched hopefully the Shuttle will be a pensioner and be barred from the tub.

Capt.Clive of The Titanic 11

Just when politics was getting boring with the 'scandals' surrounding Speaker Peter Slipper allegedly sexually harassing a male staffer and Labor's Craig Thompson resigning over endless claims a union credit card was used at the Sydney bordello A Touch Of Class having gone off the boil.

Now, comes news that our favourite mining billionaire the portly Clive Palmer has set up a new shipping company called Blue Star Line and the announcement that he has commissioned a Chinese shipping company to build a replica Titanic for his tourism company and that he will stand at the next Federal election for the seat of Treasurer Wayne Swann.

Palmer worth a reputed $4B was the mastermind of a campaign in 2009 to scupper then PM Kevin Rudd's plans for a mining tax that would raise a billion dollars a year. Along with fellow mining magnates Gina Rinehart and Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest, Palmer held a rally in a Perth park claiming the tax would be the ruin of us all. After his success in watering down the tax he celebrated by buying 55 favored employees each a new Mercedes SUV  for Christmas.

Palmer says the Titanic 11 will be 'unsinkable' and that "you don't have to be too clever to be a politician"!. Quite.

Titanic-How It Sank

Life Changing Moments On The Bridge

Just the other day we had David Hasslehoff proposing to his Welsh girlfriend Hayley Roberts at the summit of Sydney's famous Harbour Bridge.

James Cameron & wife Suzi last month on the Sydney Harbour Bridge

It's one of the all time great tourism successes-shackling together groups of eager climbers and leading them to the top to take in the awe inspiring sight over Sydney's magnificent harbour. The Shuttle did it once. By the time you get to the peak the oxygen levels kick in. It's an instant high and you feel like taking on the world. Hence The Hoff and his fiancee following in a long line of those making life changing decisions (one reader unkindly suggests it was a publcicit stunt..surely not ?). Marriage proposals are the norm for couples chained together in their bridge issue overalls.

Oprah Winfrey and gal pal Gail did it as our picture shows. Michael Caine and his gorgeous wife Shakira climbed as did Richard Branson and even the Vienna Boys Choir have all made been to the top.

Now a Christmas visitor who was spotted on the bridge, movie director James Cameron has announced that he will be leaving America and moving South of the Equator. The director who spent December and January in Sydney with his family checking out facilities at Fox Studios has bought a 1067 hectares farm in New Zealand and will be moving there to live.

Oprah

In April this year Cameron, who directed two of the all time most successful films, Titanic and Avatar will move to the property which is about 90 minutes from Wellington and the Weta Digital studios that won an Oscar for it's work on Avatar. He will spend the next twelve months working on the sequel to Avatar.

exclusive : The Guggenheim Aussie Connection !



Peggy in Venice



Currently on show at the Art Gallery of Western Australia is A Collection In Venice-the fantastic art collection of famed US art patron Peggy Guggenheim. It's been ignored by most media except for an ABC TV story this week.

Amongst the extraordinary works that were owned by Peggy Guggenheim are pieces by Mondrian, Rothko, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollack and Marcel Duchamp.

Max Ernst

 Guggenheim inherited around $US2.5M from her grandfather Benjamin Guggenheim who died in the Titanic disaster in 1912.

After working for a time in a New York book store she moved to Paris and immersed herself in the Bohemian world of art, having numerous affairs with now famous names of the art world.

She married Max Ernst in 1941 and became pals and the patron of artists like Duchamp and Man Ray. With her wealth she promoted artists who today are legendary.

 Older Shuttler's may remember the controversial 1973 purchase of Jackson Pollack's Blue Poles . Pollack owed his reputation in the USA to Guggenheim's relentless promotion.

The newly elected Labour government of Gough Whitlam  paid $1.3M for the painting-the then highest ever price for a modern work of art. Scathing criticism lasted for years although the work, now at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra is estimated at being worth $180M .

Peggy Guggenheim eventually settled in Venice on the Grand Canal at the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni in 1949 after divorcing Ernst where she continued her love of art collecting and along the way, indulging in love affairs with artists.

But there is one love affair that has never been written about before.

Kit Lambert with Pete Townshend from The Who

In the 1970's,  rock band manager Kit Lambert who  discovered the legendary The Who arrived in Venice to purchase his dream home. Lambert had always believed he had been conceived in Venice during a  night of passion between his mother and famous father, the English classical composer Constant Lambert.

He found his villa, ironically named Villa Lamberti next door to Guggenheim's Palazzo Venier dei Leoni . Within a year the two had become close friends and were having a torrid love affair. It lasted on  and off for over 3 years.

However Lambert  was addicted to heroin and had a fierce cocaine habit which Peggy, despite her bohemian aspirations, abhorred. Lambert was also having financial problems due to his drug intake. Peggy ended the affair one morning when she visited Lambert in his villa for breakfast.

As Lambert would later re-call, Guggenheim's parting words to Kit were-"Quite frankly, Kit, I simply cannot afford you !".

Christopher 'Kit' Lambert  who died in 1983 after a mysterious fall down a flight of stairs was the grandson of one of Australia's first and most famous artists-George Washington Lambert.

Along side Blue Poles in Canberra can be found several G.W.Lambert works and beside the driveway to Mrs Macquarie's Chair in Sydney there is a statue dedicated to him.

Peggy Guggenheim ; A Collection In Venice is at the Art Gallery of Western Australia from the 9th October 2010 to 31st January 2011

## Coming soon-the woman who turned down Andy Warhol's offer of marriage !

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Uber fashion designers and the darlings of the pop set Dolce and Gabana have been accused of a massive tax evasion scam in Italy.

Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, along with five other people, are accused of channeling profits through Luxembourg, paying just three per cent tax on sales royalties instead of much higher Italian taxes. As a result, the Italian treasury has allegedly been defrauded of an estimated €420m.

Read more at The First Post.