Drag Star For Hollywood and Film Fame

Courtney Act, seen here in our pic with Danni Minogue recently is headed for Hollywood but is also to play the lead role in a film based on the life of the legendary Kings Cross transgender show biz star Carlotta.

Carlotta, who was born Richard Byron first appeared in the famous Les Girls show at in Kings Cross and for many years worked for the Sydney crime baron Abe Saffron who ruled all night life around Kings Cross with an iron first.

Carlotta

Carlotta also appeared on the TV show Beauty & The Beast where a panel of 4 women would do battle with the 'beast' and host, the late Stan Zemanek as viewers wrote in letters asking for advice.

Les Girls finally closed it's doors in 1993 after a 35 years and was the inspiration for Stephan Elliot's "Priscilla Queen of the Desert". The show continued on the road under the banner of co-star Simone de Troy for several years including a short stint at London's Wimbledon Theatre. Carlotta also appeared in the famous Number 96 , 1970's soap opera playing a transgender girlfriend of Arnold Feather.

Courtney Act, Shane Jenek was a finalist in the 2003 Australian Idol quest and had a hit record "Rub Me Wrong" in 2004. After several attempts he has now secured a working visa for the USA.

Here is Carlotta on Beauty & The Beast :

Forget Planking-Airport Crossdressing All The Rage

Following our fashion report on the gentleman flying from San Francisco airport in a fetching bikini outfit, stockings and high heels, have we uncovered a new phenomena?.

Videos of crossdressers at airports are cropping up on youtube where it looks like a new craze is underway and we are in at the beginning !. Our man in SF is named Howard and as we suspected, is a businessman who simply likes to feel comfortable on his travels as he told the SF Chronicle yesterday.

Check out these youtube videos of Howard and others at airports.
 

Fashion Special-Airline Flights-What They Are Wearing #1

In these troublesome times with ash clouds from Chilean volcanoes interrupting airline flights and a controversy swirling around the USA over searches of travellers by the TSA, how pleasing to see someone has chosen to make life easy for harried airport officials by choosing this sensible outfit in which to board his flight.

The gentleman, who was happy to pose was snapped by a fellow traveller at San Francisco airport (where else?)  and the picture was sent to the local newspaper The San Francisco Chronicle.

You will note he wears a comfortable electric blue bra type top and bottom with a contrasting camisole that can be easily whipped off in the summer heat and sensible stockings to prevent deep vein thrombosis.

A simple necklace sets off the outfit with high heel slip on shoes all the better for easy removal on long haul flights. Combined with a tasteful plain black carry-on hold all means our traveller can alight from his flight, refreshed and head straight for the office or that important business meeting.

More at The San Francisco Chronicle.

Potty Peer & The World's Richest Person

(funcrunch.com)

Our favourite nutty Scottish noble Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is heading for these shores again to stir up the debate about climate change scientists who he calls 'eco fascists'. Monckton says the climate change claims are a plot to install a World Government

Lord Monckton guardian.co.uk

A month ago in Los Angeles Monckton described Professor Ross Garnut who has just delivered the final Garnaut Climate Change Review commissioned by the Australian government, as having "a fascist point of view" and someone who expected people to "accept authority without question".

Prof Garnaut

"Heil Hitler, on we go," said Lord Monckton as a Garnaut quote was displayed beside a huge swastika on a screen.

Monckton, who has stood for political office in England several times,( twice receiving not a single vote) once unsuccessfully tried to get an injunction to stop a BBC program "Meet The Sceptics" which featured him and which he reckoned made him look like a 'potty peer'. He also sponsored an anti-gay campaign and said all AIDS sufferers should be quarantined for life.

He'll be a star attraction at the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies conference in Perth next week where he will join fellow climate sceptic and Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott along with the mining magnates Gina Rinehart and Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest who last year funded a million dollar campaign to de-rail former PM Kevin Rudd's proposed new mining tax which they said would destroy the industry.

As if to prove their point, both Reinhardt and Forrest added several billion dollars to their wealth in the year following their campaign.

And according to a 60 page research done by Citigroup Global Markets, a division of the big US banking group Citibank Gina Rinehart is on the way to becoming the world's richest person !

Here's our tribute to Lord Monckton : Springtime For Hitler!

Dame Edna Everage is Pregnant !

B & W president Susan Diver with Dame Edna

That's the stunning disclosure Dame Edna Everage revealed yesterday at the Black & White Charity's Women of Achievement lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel in Sydney.

Mrs Barry Humphries-Lizzie Spender

The Dame was in top form as she gave the audience some unique insights into her life and made some other stunning revelations.

We heard about her daughter who has shacked up with another female, her son who is a fashion designer and has a very close male 'friend' and for the first time Dame Edna told us of the daughter she had named Lois whom she has never spoken of before.

a big favourite-Governor Marie Bashir (left) arrives

Before she was famous Edna and her husband Norm went on a holiday by the sea. They left Lois in a cot on the veranda of their holiday home and forgot about her. In the morning they discovered that Lois had disappeared and the awful truth soon became clear. Lois had been stolen by a rogue giant Koala and was never seen again.
 And on and on it went with an audience of 600 in stitches.

One poor elderly lady came in for the Edna treatment when she was  asked where she was from and replied that she had come for a day out from a retirement home just to see Dame Edna. Edna asked if her security guards were close by.

B & W regulars : Baron & Baroness Boyd

Sadly copyright restrictions prevent us from posting the film we made of Dame Edna's talk today-the show was filmed for a Qantas in flight film. So you need to take an international flight to see her and that may be difficult at present as flights have been cancelled yet again due to ash cloud from the Chilean volcano.

 And the Dame saved the Shuttle from mistakenly purchasing a very expensive rug when we waved to a friend during an auction and it was accepted as a $2800 bid for a floor rug. She bid $2850 and saved the day !. One bidder also paid $6000 for the chance to dine with Edna at the restaurant of their choice.

An amusing moment: as Dame Edna posed on the grand staircase of the Four Seasons to record an introduction for the Qantas film surrounded by helpers and a film crew, an American tourist asked the Shuttle "is that Julia Gillard ?".

Murdoch and the Communist

The British blogger Madame Arcati draws our attention to Cruden Park with this beautiful photograph.  It's the road leading to the home of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch the matriarch of the media family and mum to one of the most powerful men on the planet Rupert Murdoch.

Cruden Park will be open for one day on August 28th (co-incidentally grandson Lachlan Murdoch's birthday) under the Open Garden's Scheme.

Dame Elisabeth is noted for her conservative views and is said to have castigated her son for some of the more raunchy parts of his British newspapers The Sun and the News of The World .She's also the patron of the Australian Family Association that was recently outraged by Cate Blanchett's global warming adverts, and which campaigns against same sex marriage, human cloning and euthanasia.

Peter Cundall & Dame Elisabeth ABC TV

How pleasing then to see Dame Elisabeth had once hosted our favourite Communist, the ex ABC gardening guru Peter Cundall at  Cruden Park as our picture shows.

Cundall who has his own exceptional property in the Tamar Valley in Tasmania where he now lives was born into dire poverty in Manchester  and has been a fierce anti-war campaigner for the second half of his life particularly after his various experiences in theatres of war.

He was in the parachute regiment of the British Army in WW2 and in 1946 he was arrested as a spy by Marshall Tito's soldiers in Yugoslavia. He says he was enticed across the border by a beautiful girl who then vanished. Cundall spent a year in solitary confinement in a Ljubljana prison.

After joining the Australian Army as a librarian he ended up as a machine gunner in the Korean War.

He is now active in left wing and environmental causes and once stood as a Communist Party candidate for the Tasmanian Senate and he was a high profile opponent of the Iraq invasion.

In 1969 Cundall began a gardening talk back radio programme and became one of the most loved gardening experts on ABC TV when he fronted Gardening Australia for two decades, retiring in 2008 at the age of 81. Cundall recently led the unsuccessful anti-Gunns Pulp Mill campaign in Tasmania and is never shy for a few words against recalcitrant politicians.
Here he is being arrested at a rally outside State Parliament by some very polite coppers :

Dame Edna stars in The Hobbit

Maybe not Dame Edna Everage but her manager (and many say  the two have never been seen in the same room at the same time) Barry Humphries is to join the cast of The Hobbit.

The Peter Jackson $500M movie starts filming next March in New Zealand and Humphries will play the Goblin King.

It's not Barry's first acting role. He appeared as Rupert Murdoch in the 1980's TV series 'Selling Hitler' about the scandal involving the Sunday Times newspaper and the fake Hitler diaries, the Kath & Kim movie and Barry McKenzie Holds His Own based on the Private Eye magazine comic script.

Humphries contributed some immortal lines to the 2 McKenzie films such as when McKenzie is collared at a London party by a pompous  Hooray Henry who asks him : "tell me Mr McKenzie, is it true Australia is full of homosexuals?" to which McKenzie replies:
"No that's just the publicity we put out to attract the Pommy migrants"

Tomorrow at mid-day Dame Edna Everage will give a twenty minute talk at the Black & White charity committee's Woman of Achievement lunch. The Shuttle bring carry a full report.

In the meantime-here is a slice of Aussie culture from a Barry McKenzie fillum with the wonderful John le Mesurier.
And if you think that's an exaggeration  : In 2007 newly elected PM Kevin Rudd dumped former PM John Howard's 'migrant test' that required prospective migrants to know amongst other things who Don Bradman and Mervyn Richardson were!.( Richardson invented a lawn mower).

Ethical Shoes- No Sweat !

Rupert & Matt Noffs at the opening of Gideon Shoes

As long ago as 1991 the writer and 'futurist' Faith Popcorn predicted that ethical manufacturing businesses were the coming wave of the future. Now a new 'ethical' shoe store has opened in Bondi Beach -Gideon Shoes, the brainchild of brothers Matt and Rupert Noffs. They threw a small party to celebrate.

Chrissy Pisotto & Tali Jatali

The Noff brothers come from a family with a history in charitable works.

Their grandfather was the much loved Rev Ted Noffs who opened the Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross in 1964. The Wayside was a drop in centre for down and outs, drug addicts , prostitutes in fact just about anyone who needed to a friendly shoulder to lean on. Ted was famous for his non-judgemental acceptance of anyone no matter what their circumstances were.

Ted had a stroke in 1987 and sunk into a coma where he lingered, finally passing away in 1995. At his funeral in the city the streets where packed with an assortment of people-Hells Angels, schoolkids, captains of industry, powerful politicians, policemen and society figures.
                                                              

musician Damian Downey

When Matt and Rupert decided to start manufacturing their own shoe designs they headed of to Asia but were horrified by the conditions of factory workers there so decided to have them made back home where they are now hand produced. Not only do they refuse to support sweat shops they have a long history of supporting the disadvantaged.

Operating out of the Ted Noffs Foundation run by Ted's son Wesley, Matt and his wife Naomi  started the Street University a retreat for Western Sydney street kids. Rupert opened a unique thrift shop-One Noffs in Randwick where donated clothes are re-styled by fashion students into entirely new garments.

Rupert Noffs, Prince William & Kevin Rudd

The seal of approval was put on the Noff's charity works last year when former PM Kevin Rudd visited them with HRH Prince William.

So forget about your overpriced N*kes run up by Vietnamese kids  (send them some money direct instead) and check out Gideon Shoes which really are fantastic and made of the finest Kangaroo and Cane Toad leather.

You can even have them tweaked to your own design. And they're mighty comfortable.

## over 2300 people have clicked onto our Gideon Shoes report with over 400 from the USA while 4 have emailed to ask if Gideon Shoes are available in the US. That we do not know although there are rumours they may be opening a shop in New York (where I'm sure they'd 'walk' out of the store).
Go to the Gideon website here for the latest news and email them direct-they're a friendly bunch ! :

Picture : News Corp Boss Sleeps In Street

Luna Park

John Hartigan

There he is in our snap-John Hartigan the boss of Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd empire in Australia.

He'll be sleeping rough tonight at Luna Park (motto : Just For Fun) along with over 200 other CEOs to raise awareness and cash for Sydney's homeless which is reaching epidemic proportions.

In a city where one house (Altona) just went on the market for an estimated sale price of $60 million, there are families living rough in caravans, cars, on church steps while hundreds of young people sleep rough at train stations and so on.

The Mathew Talbot men's hostel in Woolloomooloo, just a stones throw from the Finger Wharf with some of the countries most expensive restaurants and the penthouses of Russell Crowe and broadcaster John Laws, accommodates around 35000 people a year and serves 600 meals a day.

So far the combined CEOs have raised over $1,230,000 $3,326,064 but aim to quadruple that overnight. Hartigan, who reckons he can "sleep on barbed wire " is the biggest fundraiser to date.

You can go to the website of the CEO Sleep out 'Rise To The Challenge' and donate in the name of your favourite CEO (if you have one/) or register to sleep-out with them

Swimming With Whales

The UK Daily Mail newspaper's website gets more hits per month than any other publication on the planet. This is probably one reason why-go and check out these amazing photos of Russian scientist Natalia Avseenko swimming naked with Beluga whales in freezing water, all for the sake of science.

I Am Woman

photo by Rob Rich

One guest at Monday's Tony Awards in New York was the Australian singer Helen Reddy who can be seen in this pic from New York Social Diary on the arm of actor David Hyde Pierce.

Toni Lamond

Reddy is probably best remembered for the massive hit she co-authored, I Am Woman that rocketed her to stardom in the US after a few hard years of living in cheap hotels. The hit changed Helen's fortunes and she had 15 hit songs in the Billboard Top 40 with 3 number one hits.

Helen was at the Tonys to see if her nephew, Tony Sheldon would pick up an award for best actor in a musical.
Sheldon appears as Bernadette in the Broadway box office hit Priscilla Queen of The Desert but he lost out to Norbert Leo Butz  for his role as an FBI agent in the play Catch Me If You Can. Reddy is the sister of Sheldon's mother, the Australian stage star Toni Lamond.

Helen also had an illustrious career on Broadway appearing in Blood Brothers, Call Me Madam as well as a successful one woman show  Shirley Valentine. She nows lives in a Darling Point apartment courtesy of a long time fan.

Go to David Patrick Columbia's excellent New York Social Diary for more terrific pics from the Tony Awards and below is Reddy's famous song : I Am Woman.

A Recipe For Wagyu Beef From Ezekiel

That's what award winning chef Peter Gilmore told the guests last night at The Quay restaurant at a dinner to celebrate the San Pellegrino restaurant awards. Apparently the recipe was inspired the Ezekiel passages in the Bible.

Peter Gilmore

He was talking about the main dish of a lavish  banquet at Sydney's top restaurant that sits by the harbour and has spectacular views over the the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge and points beyond.



The dinner for about 25 was in the upstairs dining room that was once an outlook station for pilots when The Quay was a part of the Overseas Terminal where ocean liners once berthed on a weekly basis.

Quay has again been named amongst the World's Top 5o Best Restaurants in the San Pellegrino restaurant awards. It clocked in at no 26, up one place from last year at the awards which were announced in April at the Guildhall in London.

If they dined on Wagyu beef in Biblical times like that enjoyed last night, they certainly ate well.

Three other locals came in the top 100-Tetsuyas and Marque in Sydney , and Attica  in Melbourne. The Copenhagen restaurant Norma was voted No One for the second year running (a favourite of Prince Frederick and Princess Mary of Denmark) and a Stockholm establishment- Lilla Nygatan was named as the 'one to watch'.
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Altona

For a lazy $60 million the harbour-side mansion Altona in Point Piper can be yours according to adverts that have appeared in a local Eastern Suburb's newspaper.

Publishers  Deke and Eve Miskin have just put the house on the market. They bought it from Fiona Handbury, the ex-wife of Rupert Murdoch's nephew Matt Handbury for $28m in 2002.
Fiona, who has re-married to William Legge, the grandson of the romance novelist Barbara Cartland, is now the Countess of Dartmouth and received the mansion in a divorce settlement.

The Miskins are moving to the northern playground of Byron Bay and for the past 3 years have let the house out to celebrities like  Hugh Jackman. One actor who has inspected the property with a view to buy-Russell Crowe .