Tom, Nicole, Keith,Swiss Pills & Prada

One guest at the Tom Keneally celebration was top show biz publicist Wendy Day (pictured with  husband publisher Mark Day.)
Wendy was having a cultural respite after collecting her most famous and steadfastly loyal client, superstar Nicole Kidman (in Prada) who arrived in Sydney that morning before heading to Melbourne to attend the Suisse Celebrate Life Ball with hubby Keith Urban to aid the Monash Children’s Hospital and Sydney’s Children’s Hospital. And doesn't she look fab!

Celebrating 50 Years

Bryan Brown, Tom Keneally & Jennifer Byrne

220 friends and fans turned up to the Westin Hotel to celebrate Man Booker Prize winner Tom Keneally's fifty years of publishing books. Plenty of amusing speeches by Richard Flanagan, David Williamson,  Bryan Brown and director Fred Schepis.
It's amazing to think that when Tom wrote his first book Australia had no such things a literary agent and books were sent to the UK to be published,
No wonder as Richard Flanagan pointed out that the great Henry Lawson said that anyone contemplating a career as a writer in Oz should fetch a revolver and shoot themselves.

David & Kirsten Williamson with Richard Flanagan,        ABC's Tony Jones                         & Fred Schepisi

 Delighted US and UK agents sent congratulatory videos as did Kathy Lette but the most impressive was from director Steven Spielberg (below) who credited Keneally with Spielberg winning a host of Academy Awards for his adaption of Tom's Schindler's Ark.

Dinner Date with Tom Keneally & Steven Speilberg

An evening not to be missed. The ABC is holding a dinner event to celebrate 50 years of publishing with Oscar winning author Tom Keneally.
Actor Bryan Brown is hosting along with Kathy Lette and Richard Flanagan.
And director Steven Spielberg is expected to drop in via video. Spielberg of course produced and director Schindler's List based on Keneally's 1982 Booker Prize winning book Schindler's Ark. Tom's had 3 books listed for the Booker prize including The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith which was made into a film as was his autobiographical book The Devil's Advocate.
Tickets are $150 and the dinner is on Wednesday 11th June at the Westin Hotel. Book here.

Kathy Lette                                  Steven Spielberg                                                            Westin Hotel

Movie Stars at premiers

Toni Collette attended the premier of her new film The Way Way Back at the Sydney Film Festival tonight at the State Theatre.
Collette has been spotted around Darlinghurst and Paddington in the past few days during filming of The Devils Playground, the film that picks up where Fred Schepisi's 1976 film left off.
 From the original book by Tom Keneally, the tale is set 35 years later in the 1980s and also stars Simon Burke who starred as a schoolboy in the original Catholic guilt laden true story based on Keneally's life. Simon was on hand at the premier tonight to support Toni while on the other side of town Collette's co-star Steve Carell attended the premier of Crazy Stupid Love.

                                           

Growing Old Outrageously with Prince

At the launch party for the 2012 Sydney Writer's Festival at the Hickson Road Wharf 2 on Wednesday evening the Shuttle's eyes were immediately drawn to the above tee-shirt.

And the wearer lived up to expectations. She's Elisabeth Davies and it's the title of book she's penned with her school day's pal Hilary Lindstead (pictured above)

Jennifer Byrne & the Chaser's Julian Morrow

Davies and Lindstead went to school together in England before parting company for 35 years and then meeting up again and discovering a shared love of travel. The eccentric pair embarked on a trial journey to Morocco. That tentative beginning has turned into a series of wonderfully unusual holidays, and Hil and Lis have been circumnavigating the globe ever since.
Among many other destinations, they have taken in Marrakech, Fez and the Atlas Mountains; Patagonia and the Galapagos Islands; Istanbul and Cappadocia. They've been on safari in Namibia, Botswana and the Serengeti, attended music festivals in Naples and Prague and made a pilgrimage to the western isles of Mull and Iona. Along the way they have encouraged, enraged and entertained each other, while living through countless adventures.

  In the preceeding decades Elisabeth went to Cambridge, studied economics and became a civil servant and journalist. Meanwhile Hilary had re-located to Australia where she has been a theatrical agent for names like Baz Luhrmann, Neil Armfield and Gillian Armstrong. These two are great fun and the book should be a good read-the Shuttle has just orderd a copy. After recounting their history the two minxs' were soon off working the party with writers like Professor Ross Steele, Roddy Doyle, Frank Moorhouse and Tom Keneally. Listen to the ABC Radio interview with Hil & Lis here.

## On Tuesday evening Prince wowed audience's at the Allphones Arena albeit with a toned down show  (he's found God or something) but the real action was at the after party at Ivy in the city where Prince jammed with Seal and Public Enemey's Flava Flav as the Shuttle's exclusive snaps show.

Pity the ballroom was packed to capacity but it was still better than the Allphones Arena and for a rock'n'roll party, fairly civilised.

When Celebrity Support Pays

THE AY FAMILY, Kurdish refugees from Turkey, were detained for 13 months in 2002 as the British government attempted to return them to Germany, where they had first made a claim for asylum.

At the time the youngest, Medya, was just seven when the family were arrested and locked up in 2002, Dilovan was 11, Newroz was 12 and Beriwan was 13.

But the Ay family had some high profile backers who pledged to support them in the community including actor Colin Firth, Harry Potter author J.K.Rowling and Australia's Oscar winning writer Tom Keneally, author of Schindler's Ark which was made into the film Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg,  the Devils Playground the film based on Keneally's life story, and The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith.

JK Rowling

Keneally, who trained to be a Catholic priest has been a long time supporter of asylum seekers both in Australia and abroad and now after a ten year campaign the four Ay children have settled out of court last week for a compensation claim rumoured to be in the high six figures.

Since their election, the Coalition government of David Cameron has pledged to end the practice of locking up child refugees.

In 2003 Keneally who lives on Sydney's Northern beaches said : "In a liberal democracy you can only maintain a policy of locking children up behind barbed wire by spreading lies and demonising the dispossessed of the earth. In the future, these children will tell their stories. There's bound to be literature that comes out of it, and people will gasp and say, 'How did that policy ever get through?'

and so it came to pass..

So the tSS is 4 weeks out but as it was revealed just 5 minutes ago-our spooky prediction 3 months ago has come true. NSW has it's first female premier in the capable form of  Las Vegas born, American accented and former Colorado Teamster's Union organiser, 40 year old Kristina Keneally.

Keneally is the niece of Oscar winning author Tom Keneally who penned the bestseller Shindler's Ark which was turned into a blockbuster film by Steven Speilberg. Kristina was elected in a party room spill after premier Nathan Rees threw in the towel 30 minutes ago.
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# with the elevation of Tony Abbott 2  days ago to Federal Opposition Leader of the Liberal Party, tSS has slaughtered it's pet chook and studied the entrails. Ignoring our advice to stick with our pal Malcolm Turnbull and running with an Abbott/Bishop ticket ( Julie Bishop as deputy leader) the Liberals look likely to lose another 20 seats in next year's general election.
           Should PM Kevin Rudd pull a double dissolution with the full Senate up for grabs-the Greens will pick up an extra 2 seats giving it the balance of power in the upper house. 
(If only former treasurer Peter Costello had still been around-who could resist an Abbott & Costello team ?)
Prove me wrong.
(ps: we'll still be going to Mal's Christmas bash. We'll be bold here with another claim..a defection is in the air)