Live In Person : George Clooney !

Quite how the list of guest speakers at Mondays' gala event in Sydney-Global Leadership Forum will enlighten those shelling out between $880 and $1100 with is any one's guess but the line-up is fairly glitzy.

Home maker expert Martha Stewart will be talking about 'building a global brand' and the promoters are claiming she "had more influence on how Americans, eat, entertain, and decorate their homes and gardens than any one person in our history" while Hip Hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons will be spruiking his latest book Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All. Perhaps the 99percenters on Wall Street should grab a copy.

One speaker who should be interesting is Nobel Peace prize winner Muhammad Yunus who started Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1983 to help poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them. Maybe the big four Australian banks who make multi billion dollar profits each year but were just dragged kicking and screaming to pass on the half percent interest rate drop in the past few days will take note.

But the biggest draw card commanding a reputed fee of $500,000 must be heart throb movie star George Clooney -live in person as the website says-who arrives this morning. He will talk on human rights and saving the planet, and those on it.
                                                                                               
Let's hope this conference is more successful than the last event the Shuttle attended, former British PM Tony Blair's speech at Darling Harbour earlier this year When Blair arrived surrounded by a dozen body guards and Federal Police he was greeted by just 4 media reps and a half empty room.

The only other Ra Ra event the Shuttle has attended was one many years ago hosted by advertising guru Siimon Reynolds and real estate genius John McGrath. We ended up standing on our chair shouting slogans along with the other eager bright eyed punters. But it was 8 am in the morning and after 2 glasses of champagne-the bribe we accepted to be there.

Tickets for the Global Leadership Forum Unwrapping Genius are still on sale here

A Chance To Ask Tony Those Difficult Questions

" Get out of your homes and attack them in the streets, you people who love Moamar Gaddafi'".

Does Tony Blair love the soon to be ex-leader of Libya ? They look pretty pally in our snap.

You will get a chance to ask Tony soon when he visits Sydney Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane on his first Australian speaking tour. Blair who was prime minister of Britain for 10 years is one of the " most respected , engaging and in demand speakers of our time ". (according to the press release ).



Anthony Pratt



He's being brought to Australia by Anthony Pratt who inherited the Dick Pratt billions when his father died in 2009 along with Vizy Industries-the largest privately owned cardboard packaging company in the world. Apparently the two Anthonys are good friends.

This won't be  Blair's first visit to Australia. He's been twice-before he was PM. Once to see his good friend the former premier of WA Dr Geoff Gallop and to attend a Rupert Murdoch get-together on the Sunshine Coast in QLD. The rumour goes that it was then he cemented a relationship with Murdoch and a promise of future support even though then Aussie PM Paul Keating advised  him it would be an 'unmanageable ' relationship.

Tony Blair was appointed Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East when he resigned as PM in 2007 which should present a few challenges for him at present although he's been fairly quiet on the subject.

If you want to go and hear Blair's speech you can get tickets via Melanie Hendra at melanie@marksonsparks.com or phone 612 9699 2000

Kylie's London pad for sale at a bargain price !

Further to our story on the London property developers Candy & Candy (see below) and the falling value of their empire.

 

Our favourite songbird Kylie Minogue has put her London apartment up for sale at a reduced price of $6.6M (although a little budgie tells us any offer over $5M will seal a deal !). Kylie bought the apartment from the Candy's in 1998 paying $5.4M.

The Social Shuttle has been to Kylie's lovely flat twice (she's an old family friend) and although the gorgeous pad is impressive, it seemed indicative of everything that was wrong about the era of New Labour Thatcherism in England where style triumphed over substance, consumerism was on steroids and an  American style of flaunt your wealth crassness consumed the British persona when it had survived for centuries on the very opposite

Kylie says she found the place a bit austere and when her brother left some years ago, a little on the lonely side. And especially when little sister Danni moved out in 2004. She wants a cottage somewhere which is really more her style. The extended Minogue family are extremely close and she wants to be able to have room for family to stay. In fact we reckon Kylie is seriously thinking about having her own family-she adores Danni's new baby.

Property prices sky-rocketed under Blair & Co's corporatism and every man and his dog became a developer as reality shows pushed the fable that all could become rich and that the ' inevitable bubble will burst' day would never arrive, as it did in the USA under the Fannie Mac (or is it Freddie May ?) fiasco . The British population should be gearing themselves up for a correction still to come in the property market.

You can read about Kylie's beautiful place here :

Here's the gorgeous Danni talking about her new book out soon. 

Will our Max decide Britain's next election ?

Max with Carson Kresley

For a month now the tabloid media has been waging an all out assault on our favourite celebrity spruiker Max Markson who likes to think of himself as Australia's answer to Britain's Max Clifford. Originally from Bournemouth via a saucepan stall in a Shepherds Bush market, Max is Australia's top celebrity agent.
 

Max's crime was to disrupt the holy of holies-a cricket match. When model Lara Bingle, best known for the failed Oz tourism campaign 'So Where the Bloody Hell Are You?' discovered that a previous boyfriend footballer Brendan Fevola had distributed some topless snaps of her taken on his mobile phone, she did the only sensible thing. She hired Max to negotiate a deal reputedly worth $200,000 with a woman's magazine to tell her side of the story.

Lara does a Bingle

 Bingle's then fiancee  Michael Clarke, vice captain of the Australian cricket team was about to embark on a tour of New Zealand. As the team strode out for the first day, missing was Clarke. He had flown back to Sydney to see Lara. The howling of sport's writers, egged on by their tabloid comrades was deafening. Leading the moralising charge was Sydney Morning Herald cricket writer Peter Roebuck who delightfully informed us that 'to do a bingle' was new cricketing slang for fumbling the ball.

Others like the fragrant Miranda Devine weighed in wanting to know, just who was Bingle and what did this "airhead "do all day as Miranda pondered on the size of Bingle's IQ.

But Markson was deemed the villain of the drama.
Max was denying the tabloids their God given right to a saucy tale. And he was encouraging them to beat up the story to boost sales of magazine carrying Lara's story.

Beware of a reptile scorned.

Now Max has become the story as a newspaper yesterday revealed supposed emails to Max from a 'disgruntled' employee questioning the legality of  Max's ability to avoid speeding fines. Markson's business registered Mercedes has clocked up over $30,000 in fines but avoided being de-registered via a complicated loophole whereby a company can declare it doesn't know the identity of a driver when the offence occurred.

They're out to get Max and today tSS hears news that a writer from the UK  Independent newspaper is flying in to do a piece on Markson. 

 

As Britain's Labour Party and PM Gordon Brown vie to be re-elected they have brought in ex-PM Tony Blair to boost morale.

 Expect a major story to appear about Markson's involvement in Cherie Blair's ill-fated Oz book tour in 2007.
A charity that expected to receive substantial funds from the tour cried foul when the pot was discovered to be empty. tSS was ejected from one function after approaching  Mrs Blair and asking her if she might consider donating profits from her book to an Iraqi children's fund.