An Award for Dame Edna !

She's been thrilling and entertaining West End audiences for 3 decades as well as fronting numerous of her own TV series on the BBC and other British networks.

Now Australia's grand Dame Edna Everage has received another award that she has said is as great an honour as when the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam declared the Moonie Ponds housewife to be a Dame of the Empire at a ceremony at Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport in 1975.

At London's Simpsons-In-The-Strand restaurant during a ceremony presided over by TV  personality Terry Wogan for the 'Oldie Awards', Dame Edna was declared Oldie Of The Year  while HRH Prince Philip was declared Consort of The Year.

The Oldie is the stablemate publication of the hugely successful British satirical magazine Private Eye. It was started by Private Eye publisher Richard Ingrams in 1992 and presents  the type of articles written by the personalities that often appear in the BBC series Grumpy Old Woman/Men (screened in Australia on the ABC). Where else could one find on sale a DVD of programs with comedian Eric Sykes ?.

As Ingrams says :""After editing Private Eye for over twenty years, I decided in 1992, along with a group of friends (Auberon Waugh, Alexander Chancellor and Stephen Glover), to launch The Oldie. The aim was to produce an antidote to youth culture but, more importantly, a magazine with emphasis on good writing, humour and quality illustration..."

It's an entertaining magazine and well worth reading. You can subscribe by going here and find out who else received awards.

And here once again is Dame Edna in a moment of brilliance :

Stepping Out in the Big Apple



Rose Byrne



The delectable Aussie export Rose Byrne wearing a delicious pale pink Ralph Lauren  gown was at the uber smart Ciprianos on Wall Street, New York on Thursday evening for a ball to launch this year's New York Fashion Week. Rose arrived on the arm of honorary Aussie citizen actor Liev Shreiber.

No scandal here- Liev did the gentlemanly thing and escorted Rose a good pal of his wife Naomi Watts who had filming commitments and couldn't make the event. Rose is currently filming X-Men: First Class while Naomi is filming the bio-pic J.Edgar  which stars Leo DiCaprio as the famous cross dressing FBI boss J.Edgar Hoover.



On the same night in the same town Geoffrey Rush was being honoured for his role in The King's Speech at a dinner at the 5 star Mandarin Oriental hotel in Columbus Circle. Amongst the gum-leaf mafia were 2 of New York's newest residents Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin who moved to the Big Apple last September so Baz could work on his next project The Great Gastby.

 Luhrmann shot down in flames the recent claim that his movie had been shelved and told the Shuttle's mole that he had 2 studios after the project- Sony and Warner Brothers and that he would be making a decision on which studio to go with as early as the end of next week.The Great Gatsby also stars Leo DiCaprio in the lead role.                                                    

Meanwhile closer to home our gal Jackie Weaver who is being wined and dined from New York to Santa Monica and winning awards on the strength of her Oscar nomination for the film Animal Kingdom  is the recipient of another accolade.

Proudly displayed at the concierge counter at the smart Horizon building in East Sydney where any number of well known Sydneysiders lay their heads including Weaver, a large framed photograph of a beaming Jackie is displayed with a congratulatory note from the building's management.

Murder Suspect Remains In Jail



Alexander Despallières

 The French husband of the late Australian Peter Ikin, Alexander Despallières remains in a cell  in the gloomy Fresnes jail after an application for bail in the Paris Court of Appeal  on the 18th January was rejected.

Ikin was a much loved music industry figure who was pals with a host of big names like Elton John and Rod Stewart. He died after a suspected heart attack and a fall down a flight of stairs.

However suspicions were raised especially after Ikin's body was cremated without family permission and Despallières managed to gain probate on a will he presented to a London court naming him as the sole beneficiary to Ikin's estate.

Enter John Reid, fiery Scot's show business entrepreneur and friend of Ikins who hired investigators to look into the matter. An examination of Ikin's stored blood showed alarming amounts of paracetamol that could have been fatal. Despallières was charged with Ikin's murder and with forging his will.

An alleged accomplice Jeremy Billien was charged with uttering forged documents in respect of the will that Despallières had used to gain Ikin's reputed $20 Million fortune. Billien and another were named as witnesses to the purported will. Billien remains on bail.

Adding a sinister note to the case was a letter from a relative to the French prosecutor alleging that 5 people including his parents and grandparents had all died in Despallièrs' sole presence. The case is expected to be back in court at the beginning of April when Despallières will have the noted French lawyer Olivier Metzner defending him.

Despallières enjoyed brief fame as a pop star in France and had ambitions to develop a TV series. Here is a video we have uncovered of an audition where he appears.

Dannii and Friends

Courtney Act with Dannii & Kris

To Matt Moran's Aria Restaurant balcony for a small party to launch Foxtels' Danni Minogue: Style Queen, a three part documentary series following Dannii as she prepares to embark on one of the biggest challenges in her career and a brand new chapter of her life – launching her brand-new fashion range Project D.

Dannii allowed cameras access in the run up to her dream business at the same time juggling all the other important elements in her life; TV, music, writing her autobiography,red-carpet events, modelling, her boyfriend Kris Smith, travelling between London and Australia for Australia’s Got Talent – and her most important job – impending motherhood.

Dannii was in top form and she was joined by partner Kris  and her partner in Project D Tabitha Somerset Webb with a surprise visit from Courtney Act who has just returned from a tour of the USA and the UK. We loved Kris's spectacles even though he admitted he doesn't actually need them but they do make him look intelligent.

One small faux pas - Dannii having a Tony Abbott moment  when responding  to a question while being interviewed : "sh*t happens!"..not a popular phrase today.

Dannii also revealed that she is eager to have another baby.

Fashion Brings Out The Big Names

David Jones was first cab off the rank with their Autumn Winter Fashion Launch at the Elizabeth Street store.



Dannii



Just to show there were no hard feelings now that the fashion duo from Sass & Bide, Heidi Middleton and Sarah Jane Clarke have decamped to the Myer chain of stores, a DJ's spokesman happily told any interviewer who would listen that sales of Sass & Bide fashion had been just a tiny, teeny fraction of DJ's income.

Myers must think otherwise having forked over $42M for around 65% of the brand.

Melissa George

Trundling through the grand marble floored store and past a photo station and then in circles around the ground floor and up 7 sets of escalators to DJ's former floor of boutique shopettes were Jane Ferguson , Harry M.Miller, Jan Logan, Grant Pearce, Mark Patrick, Lyndey Milan and Skye Leckie amongst the usual suspects who front Sydney and Melbourne's fashion parades.

Dannii Minouge was there and so was actor Melissa George , both looking trim and glam. ( If you have a spare few hours catch up on Melissa in the excellent HBO series In Treatment in which she stars opposite Gabriel Byrne).

Leggy beauties Sarah Murdoch and Megan Gale waltzed by. Alex Perry and Collette Dinnigan sat with Camilla Franks-all had their wares featured in the parade as did George Gross and Harry Who (both with deep suntans). Akira Isogawa. Carla Zampatti and her equally talented daughter Bianca Spender showed their latest and it wouldn't be a fashion show without Alex Perry, Alannah Hill and Josh Goot.

Needless to say, the gallons of Veuve Clicquot were eagerly quaffed.



Supermodels collide !



Sarah Murdoch & Megan Gale





Nicole Trunfio models





Sophie Faulkner in tight leather



no party is complete without Lara Bingle



Playwright David Williamson Honoured at US film Festival

With less than three weeks to go to the Academy Awards, tributes continue to flow in for Australian film identities.

Jackie & Hailee at Santa Barbara AP

On Sunday at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival David Williamson (right) was part of the team that received the prestige Panavison Spirit Award for Independent Cinema for the film he wrote, Face to Face directed by Michael Rymer-the first time in the festival's history a non-mainstream Hollywood film has received the award .  

Face to Face stars Vince Colisimo, Matthew Newton , Sigrid Thornton and Luke Ford.

And at the same festival Jackie Weaver received a Virtuoso Tribute Award for her performance in Animal Kingdom.

Phil Noyce & Jackie Weaver AP

Also honoured with a Virtuoso Award was newcomer Hailee Steinfeld for her role in True Grit. Both Jackie and Hailee will be competing for the Best Supporting Actress award at the Oscars.

On Monday Jackie was the guest of honour at a lunch at a Santa Monica restaurant with a host of Hollywood types-director Phil Noyce and actors John Lithgow and Billy Baldwin with director Quentin Tarantino paying a flying visit.

Jeanne Little's Health Battle

Just last May TV star Jeanne Little was telling New Idea magazine that rumours of her failing health were greatly exaggerated.

Sadly today her daughter Katie has been giving a series of media interviews to inform the world that Jeanne's health has rapidly deteriorated in the past few months and with her mother suffering from a  particular vicious form of Alzheimer's disease, Jeanne no longer recognises her own family members.

Jeanne Little has been appearing on our screens for over 40 years beginning with the Mike Walsh Show in 1974, the Ray Martin Show, a number of variety shows fronted by her and as a panelist on Beauty & The Beast .

Noted for her outrageous voice she was once flown to London to appear on Michael Parkinson's chat show and was such a sensation that the Evening Standard newspaper TV critic said: "what a woman ! with Jeanne Little in the house, you wouldn't need a TV"

Her successful tribute show about Marlene Dietrich, Marlene toured Australia and the USA to critical acclaim.

Ironically, in the interview Jeanne gave to New Idea eight months ago it was the health of her husband Barry Little that concerned her. Barry had just had two knee replacements and suffered complications. Now fully recovered, Barry who met Jeanne when they were both teenagers is said to be devastated over Jeanne's condition.

Neuroscience Research Australia has set up the Jeanne Little Alzheimer's Research Fund and daughter Katie is urging people to donate :

“Mum always poured so much energy into supporting many, many charities for which she was awarded an Order Of Australia." says Katie. "She had huge compassion for people and was always trying to lift people's spirits and inspire them to make a difference. I know she'd love this research fund and would be thrilled to know she's still helping people even when she can't get out there and do it herself." "Can you imagine what she would be saying? It would be like ‘Daaarlings! You've just got to help! You've just got to!'"

Here is a clip of Jeanne Little singing 'Kingsford Smith. We're Proud of You" in 1988 :

Great Scacchi :"Driven out of my Dream Home"

Australian actress Greta Scacchi and her family have been driven out of their million dollar country cottage in England over a dispute with neighbours.

According to the UK Daily Express newspaper the dispute has cost the actress nearly $300,000 after she and the owners of a neighboring stables battled in court over the surfacing of a private road owned by the actress but used by the stables:

Greta, Carlo & Mateo at the 2009 Flickerfest in Bondi 

(c)

“I have loved this valley since my golden childhood memories and chose to raise my children in this simple idyllic cottage,” she told the Daily Express.

“It should have been a refuge, a peaceful family home, but our harmony has been so compromised that I was recently forced to move my family to get away from the stress the situation has caused us.”

Greta, her husband Carlo Mantegazza and their 12 year old son Matteo and Scacchi's daughter Leila have moved into rented a house in nearby East Grinstead. The family regularly travel to Sydney to visit Greta's mother who lives in the Sydney suburb of Randwick.

Read the full story here at the Express.

Fear & Loathing in Oprah Land

She swept into Australia and took the country by storm. Well certainly the media that is who all sang from the one song sheet as the Oprah Winfrey tour Downunder descended upon the nation with over 300 guests and 200 staff (and Gayle of course) and spread to points all over the land while the collective readers of the nation's tabloids were treated to every thrilling encounter with a wallaby, barbecue or rutting Koala and so on.

No-one could possibly deny that Oprah did the country proud with her TV specials recorded at the Sydney Opera House which were broadcast in the US last month. It remains to be seen if the expected tourist flow-on is forthcoming and certainly having what could be the world's most powerful media personality spruiking for Australia has to be seen as a major publicity coup.

But can one image what it's like when that  power is turned against you ?.

The writer Kitty Kelley found out when she published her best selling book Oprah : A Biography. Doors slammed shut all over the place as she details in this piece just published in The American Scholar titled  Unauthorised But Not Untrue:

 "I had felt the chill of media disdain when my publisher began booking my promotion tour. Larry King barred the door to his CNN talk show because, he said, he didn’t want to offend Oprah. Barbara Walters did the same thing, proclaiming on The View that the only reason people wrote unauthorized biographies was to dig “dirt.” There was no room for me at Charlie Rose’s roundtable and no comfy seat next to David Letterman. The late-night comic had recently reconciled with Oprah after a 16-year rift and did not want to risk another. On my 10-city tour I made few, if any, appearances on ABC-owned-and-operated stations because most of the stations that broadcast The Oprah Winfrey Show are owned by ABC or its affiliates. No one wanted to displease the diva of daytime television"

There is much much more in her article as Kelley writes about researching biographies of the Bush family, Frank Sinatra, Jacqueline Kennedy and more. Read the full story here.

courtesy Kitty Kelley (c)

Pairings and Partings

The former Premier of NSW Bob Carr once described him as "the Rumpole of the Lower Traffic Court"- colourful barrister Malcolm Duncan has passed away suddenly at the age of 54.

Duncan was a regular sight around Kings Cross and Potts Point where he was born and lived his entire life.
Taking on what some said were lost causes, he regularly tackled in the city courts issues that he saw as  'attacks on democracy' . One of his regular targets was the Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore who Duncan told the Shuttle was"out to turn Sydney into a bureaucratic nightmare where one will have to file a form in triplicate to the appropriate council office just to cross the road"

Duncan, a conservative was an adamant opponent of the Kings Cross  Medically Supervised Injecting Room but despite this he attended the launch of a book about the centre by it's director Ingrid van Beek.

Earlier in the week he had unsuccessfully attempted to obtain an injunction to prevent it's publication. The book described him in less than flattering terms during the very public political battles to keep the injecting room open. Malcolm was particularly miffed at being described as 'florrid' in the tome. but he couldn't keep away from the party and on spotting Clover Moore there he said "does she have the appropriate planning permission to be here !"

Despite his professed conservatism Duncan moved in many circles, supported the new nightclubs and discos springing up in the Cross with their extended drinking hours, successfully railed against Town Hall plans to redesign Fitzroy Gardens and wrote a blog on the left wing writer Margot Kingston's Webdiary where he described former PM John Howard's 11 year term as The Howard Drears and filed amusing chapters on his two books-The Great Australian Novel and The Chronicles of Nadir.

Duncan will be sorely missed-certainly by his political opponents who begrudgingly put up with Duncan's regular measuring of their campaign posters. Perched perilously atop a ladder in the busy Kings Cross streets during elections with a tape measure Malcolm would check the posters adhered to the rules and more often than not, would place his own above theirs at the same time.

Malcolm stood as an independent at almost every state and Federal election usually getting around 500 votes. He'll miss the appointment he had early next month with the private eye Frank Monte to give him some of his election tips for the March 2011 state election and next week the political rally he was staging in Kings Cross against the ruling Labor Party.
                                                        ********************

Oliver and Roxy

Anthony & Terry

They were both at the recent Hermes beach party and they have just announced their engagements. Shoe designer Terry Biviano has told the world she and her current beau the Sydney Swan's footballer Anthony Minichiello will be getting hitched . Terry is also due to join the cast of the new Foxtel reality TV show WAG Nation which will follow the daily lives and adventures of sportsmen's wives and girlfriends.


And the effervescent boss of top PR firm Sweaty Betty Roxy Jacenko was sporting a sparkler on her hand that our diamond adviser says "looks like 5 carats to me!" when she arrived at the bash with her fiancee stockbroker Oliver Curtis. Perhaps these two should get their honeymoon in early. The Shuttle's legal mole says Curtis may soon be called to appear before some sort of official body over the affairs of his friend John Hartman who was jailed recently after being found guilty of insider trading.

Sir David Frost on Julian Assange and Robert Kennedy

 David Frost spoke today of the most impressive person he had ever interviewed in his long career: The former US Senator Robert Kennedy who was assassinated in 1968 .

Robert Kennedy

"He was forthright, honest and had a keen intellect, one of the most truthful people I have ever interviewed" said Frost at a press conference he gave today in Sydney with the former British talk show host Michael Parkinson.

Parky & Frost

The pair are doing 2 shows at the Sydney Theatre this week where they interview each other and reveal some candid moments  interviewing some of the most famous people during their respective careers.

Both said Nelson Mandela was a interview subject they had both greatly admired. Frost who has concentrated on world leaders said that he found former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam to be a "towering intellect, possibly the most intellectual politician"' while Parkinson said that both he and Frost were fond of cricketer Shane Warne who he described as "a life enhancing force".

Of all the people he had loathed David Frost described the former head of the Hitler Youth League
Baldur von Schirach who served 20 years in prison for crimes against humanity as a "particular loathsome person".

von Schirach "loathsome"

"He had absolutely no regrets about his time as a Nazi and I shivered after the interview when he put his hand on my arm and with a twinkle in his eye said 'at 23 you were in charge of your own television show and at 23 I was in charge of the Hitler Youth-you see we really aren't so different! ' "

On Julian Assange who Frost has just interviewed and Wikileaks he said: "I was expecting a fairly soul-less person but I was pleasantly surprised and liked him by the end of the interview".

Asked what he thought about Assange's release of secret cables Frost said:
"it hasn't been proved that anyone has been harmed by them and they have exposed serious crimes. It's the sort of thing journalists should be doing".

Parkinson and Frost said that research and preparation was the most important aspect of interviewing any person with Parkinson giving the ABC interviewer Andrew Denton as a great example of a young interviewer of today who gets the most out of his subject.

And they weren't giving much away about what their two man show will be about :
"I'm still working out things to ask Michael "said Frost."In fact this press conference has given me some new ideas".
"I think David will turn out to be my favourite interview subject of all time " responded Parkinson.

To book for Parky And Frost. Two Nights Only Tues 8th Feb & Wed 9th Feb go to this website.

Here is David Frost and part of his famous interview with Richard Nixon:

London Mayor Wants His $100 Wager Win from Aussie

Writing in the UK Telegraph newspaper in a piece titled Even the Aussies want to bend the knee to the Queen , London Mayor Boris Johnson says he made a $100 bet 20 years ago in a Melbourne pub and as he has won the bet-he wants his winnings !. Unfortunately for Johnson, he just can't remember who he made the bet with as he lost a slip of paper with a name on it but he recalls it was an Australian university professor.

Johnson says : "somewhere out there is a vaguely Left-wing Aussie professor who owes me a hundred bucks. The only trouble is that I can't remember his name, so I am shamelessly using this column to jog his memory "

www.moviemem.com

The subject of the bet : that HRH The Queen would still be the monarch of Australia in the year 2000, which she was and still is.

Boris had just seen the film The King's Speech in which Geoffrey Rush as the speech therapist Lionel Logue reminds the future King George V1 that he will also be the King of Australia. The line jogged Johnson's memory about  the bet he made all that time ago when he was a visiting Professor of European Thought at Monash University.

Clover Moore

If you are that professor then 'fess up and send Boris his $100.

In the meantime, perhaps the London Mayor who nips around the dangerous London traffic on a push bike could give our dog collar wearing Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore some tips on just what those intrusive bike lanes that have appeared all over Sydney are actually used for.

On a trip from the Harbour Bridge today, the Shuttle travelled to the headquarters of Courier Newspapers in Alexandria alongside miles of the gleaming new bike lanes that have halved the size of car space on roads. We didn't spot one single cyclist.