Murdoch's "pervert" vanishes !

      Perhaps it's the influence of Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law Mathew Freud, a UK "communications" expert who abhors some of his dad-in-law's enterprises like the wacky Fox News in the USA. Has he become a moral arbiter for the giant worldwide News Corp conglomerate and if so, how far is his reach ?
      This morning in the first edition of Rupert's much loved Daily Telegraph, and in the early morning editions of each of the tabloids throughout Australia, editors with hearts of gold declared the launch of a "Save The Perve " campaign.

     An unfortunate chap had been spotted viewing some saucy snaps of the gorgeous Miranda Kerr, the current squeeze of movie star Orlando Bloom, on a late night TV news broadcast as one of his co-workers fronted the camera explaining the latest financial news.

     We caught a glimpse of the hapless man's face as he turned to stare at the camera . A fleeting look of horror descended. He was busted.

    The video went viral throughout the world. 

     The wheels were soon in motion as an eager editor launched his selfless campaign dreamed up by a enterprising journalist, to save the poor man's business career.

    .

       As tSS sipped an early morning cuppa we pondered how long this latest lunacy would last. But phones were already in meltdown as bleary eyed lawyers from the respected firm, Messers Sue Grabbit and Runn were summonsed from their slumbers.

    Couriers were soon on their way with angry letters of demand. The editor of GQ Magazine from where Miranda's pics had emanted was fuming. Kerr's modelling agent was livid. Even the embarrassed "porn" viewer saw a brief ray of sunlight in his misery as he faced suspension, as the magic word "libel" was mentioned far and wide.

    It was all over by mid-day. The Tele's heartfelt pleas to save the man's career were dashed, along with that of the hapless hack who dreamed up the idea and who probably hoped to earn a place at the feet of the great Murdoch. The piece vanished from the net. Early editions were pulped.

  

   And how was this  all too brief campaign to Save The Perve  illustrated ? Why with a saucy snap of Miranda of course !

Another gratuitous snap of Miranda.


update : the man has kept his job.

ps : ninemsn still carries a "perve" story-there could still be some big cash in this  !

Murdoch's manipulated snap

Phones have been running hot since tSS attended Graeme Goldberg's Dee Bee's party in Double Bay on Tuesday night.

Media outlets are desperate to lay their hands on a photograph of cricketing great Glenn McGrath and his new girlfriend, Italian Sara Leonardi who were sitting quietly chatting at the restaurant.

The Daily Telegraph has run a front page snap today that is photoshopped to place the 2 closer together (right). The original is on the left.

Woman's Day is already spruiking a story for the next issue on their website but showing a much more honest version of the pair as they were seated on opposite sides of the table (below).
Where does that leave Murdoch son-in-law Mathew Freud who made the recent bizarre claim in the New York Times that he and several Murdoch family members were "appalled" by Rupert's Fox News in the USA ?.

Freud, a spin doctor for products like Kentucky Fried Chicken, Birdseye Peas and Nike says this on his Freud Communication's website :

"We get frustrated by our industry’s reputation. Ever been over-promised & underwhelmed? Thought so. We have a unique solution to the problem. TELL CLIENTS THE TRUTH. Is honesty always easy? No, but we believe that in the long-term you’ll respect us for it. We’ll get to make one kind of promise, the kind that doesn’t get broken…We believe that honesty earns trust."

Perhaps Mathew can have a quiet word with his wife's father and remind him of the Australian Journalists Association Code of Ethics and in particular this one:
9. Present pictures and sound which are true and accurate. Any manipulation likely to mislead should be disclosed.
Clearly a case for the PhotoshopDisasters blogspot.

Cafe wars vamp up in Bubble Bay

        Graeme Goldberg, the 6'6" Eastender, and host of DeeBees fires the first shot tonight with a customer loyalty party as a re-vamped Cosmopolitan opens directly opposite in the Eastern Suburbs society haunt of Double Bay.

       The Cosmospolitan has been undergoing major renovations since the Sir Standford Hotel shut down last year and is now open for business and drawing many of the older customers who favoured it's expansive outdoor seating area to while away the hours gazing at the passing parade.

 
  Double Bay-or Double Pay (or Bubble Bay) as kids refer to it because of it's expensive boutiques that come and go with great regularity, had hit hard times in recent years that seemed to co-incide with the collapse of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, once the favoured bolt hole of visiting celebrities like Bob Dylan, Princess Diana, Presidents Clinton and Bush and the stage for the final exit of INXS frontman Michael Hutchence.

         But retailers are reporting a mini-boom with the great US financial calamity as more and more people delay holidays abroad.  Expect GG to roll out the usual suspects-Leo Sayer, Max Markson and boxers Jeff Fenech and Joe Bugner.

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      Meanwhile on Wednesday the New Zealand born businessman and yachtsman Neville Crichton will host a glittering shindig to launch the new Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano at his Waterloo showrooms.

      There has been a parting of the ways between Chrichton and Tony Graziano, the amiable former boss of Ferrari and Maserati in Australia. Both are staying mum on the reasons but it was Graziano who used his connections to secure a deal to transport stars like Sophia Loren and Catherine Deneuve on their Sydney visits gaining valuable column inches in the media.

      

 It even paid off handsomely when Graziano stepped into the breach to get the most successful Miss Universe winner Jennifer Hawkins to her hometown of Newcastle during her triumphant homecoming tour after Rolls Royce / Bentley sniffed at the prospect proclaiming "we don't have that many customers up there", a reference to the steel city's working class origins. Hawkins repaid Graziano by purchasing the Maserati Tony chauffeured her in.

    

Guests arriving at a function to launch a new harbour cruiser last week were startled to see a glaring Neville Crichton as Tony Graziano 'gate-crashed' the launch and parked a Maserati at the entrance complete with a couple of glamour girls. Graziano is now flogging used autos and specialising in luxury Italian cars.

Festival wash out

Oh dear. The punters are most displeased. On a summer's night as rain poured down a much anticipated event seems to have gone down like a lead balloon.

The Sydney Festival has posted the following on it's website about the Rogue's Gallery concert on the Opera House forecourt.

"Sydney Festival is disappointed that Rogue's Gallery did not live up to expectations for some audience members.

Rogue's Gallery is our third collaboration with acclaimed producer Hal Willner, following the immensely popular Came So Far For Beauty (2005) and Lou Reed's Berlin (2007).

Rogue's Gallery came to Sydney Festival with a track record of previous shows at London's Barbican Centre, Newcastle's The Sage Gateshead and Dublin's Analog Festival, where it was warmly received by both public and media. Willner conceived the Sydney version on the same principles. His method is to bring together an eclectic range of artists for a short but intensive rehearsal period resulting in an event characterised by performances of spontaneity, risk and surprise."

Rogue's Gallery is a sea shanty with sailors,convicts, travellers and all the hardships, horrors, lusts and romance that went along with life at sea.It was conceived by actor Johnny Depp and amongst others it starred Marianne Faithfull (Quintessential rock survivor!),Tim Robbins (Hollywood superstar and musician!),Todd Rundgren (producer and legendary purveyor of deft pop gems!) and our very own Peter Garrett (former front man for Midnight Oil and current Federal Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts ).

Amongst the comments on the Festival's website :

"There was only one good thing about Rogues' Gallery for me; Kate St John playing an oboe in the first number. The rest of the show was really disappointing."

"Marianne Faithful had some presence, despite being out of time out of tune and forgetting the words, but the rest of what I saw made me cynical about old rockers"

"I felt sorry for some of the performers who did bring professionalism and inspiration to this second-rate event. In addition to poorly rehearsed and indifferent performances,"

"This was a very very disappointing event. It felt like being at the rehearsal for a rather bad high school concert."

"Ms Faithfull seemed to be under the weather (no pun intended) and had to hum when she couldn't find the words to read and Mr Robbins appeared to be chewing gum."

" It was a complete rip-off. When you pay $145 you expect professionalism and a class act."

Here's Todd Rundgren in top form:

Rich pickings on the Golden Mile

          Underbelly ,The Golden Mile is almost upon us. The third in the series of hugely successful mini-series about the real life Australian underworld brings us up to the present day. Where the original Underbelly dealt with a 10 year crime spree in Melbourne in the late 1990's when around 30 gangland murders took place, including 2 rival gangsters being blasted to death with shotguns as they sat watching their kids play football. The Golden Mile takes us into the heart of Sydney's Kings Cross.

         But what is this "golden mile'  business?. One newspaper writer has picked up on the theme (conveniently after the Shuttle mentioned it ) as often stated by tSS-the Golden Mile has always referred to Darlinghurst's Oxford Street gay strip replete with pubs, drag bars, sex clubs, heavy leather bars, saunas, male peep shows, adult book stores and everything in between.

          Walk a half a kilometer to the north, via the infamous underage male hustler hangout The Wall and one enters Kings Cross which has had an extraordinary revival in the past 5 years with numerous smart nightclubs popping up all over the place. But this area has never been referred to as the golden mile.

         Adverts are running thick and fast for the new series, shot in a downtown suburban Crows Nest shopping center which was turned, for a few short weeks into a garish neon lit Kings Cross of the 1990's . Bewildered pensioners thought they had stumbled into an alternative reality as they encountered yelling barkers outside The Pink Pussy Cat and the odd baseball bat wielding rival gangs in pitched battles.

         However a phone call to Underbelly's publicist brings a 'no comment' on whether series 3 will actually incorporate the real Golden Mile. The 2 areas have always been intricately linked with no qualms over sexual preferences when a quick buck was to be made or a bent copper to be nobbled.

        Indeed the history of gay Oxford Street has been as bizarre and dangerous of that of the Cross at times with murders, mysterious nightclub fires and stand over merchants threatening rival disco owners.

        And no mention has been sighted in the advertising for Underbelly ,The Golden Mile of whether the legendary Mr Sin, Abe Saffron is featured . Saffron, who died in 2006 was considered one of the most powerful organized crime figures in the country. The tiny 5'2" 'property developer' had a controlling interest in just about every strip joint, bordello and nightclub in Kings Cross. He left an estate of over $20 million dollars although experts estimate plenty more was squirreled away abroad. Saffron even successfully saw off the US Mafia when they tried to muscle in on the action in the 1970's.

       Kings Cross had a bohemian atmosphere from the 1920's on but it was in the 60's and the Vietnam War era when it blossomed into a full time chaotic nightclub and disco center. The influx of R&R (rest and recreation) US army personnel in their thousands saw the suburb bloom overnight into a land of nightclubs, strip joints, live sex shows (inviting audience participation) brothels and lots of illicit drugs. Amsterdam by comparison looked quite tame. And the local cop shop overlooking the area seemed oblivious to then illegal activities happening right at it's front door. 2 Royal Commissions later found dozens of corrupted policemen had become very rich by turning a blind eye.
      Along with the Yanks came some mysterious characters like Bernie Houghton of no fixed background who opened the Bourbon and Beefsteak that still operates for 22 hours of the day. Hougton was thought to be an ex-CIA agent involved with the infamous Air America. Bernie arrived with a suitcase stuffed with cash.
       Abe Saffron's Les Girls transvestite cabaret show was another runaway success as busloads of suburban mums and an occasional husband came night after night to watch the extravagant drag shows.

          And then there was the crossover to Oxford Street. Saffron become the backing partner for the lesbian entrepreneur Dawn O'Donnell who died in 2007.  O'Donnell's first career was as an ice-skating star. She settled down to run a butcher's shop before discovering there was more money to be made under the table by operating a gay drinking spot, the Trolley Bar.
     Followed by a lesbian sauna, Dawn was soon in her stride with a string of nightspots and sex bookshops on Oxford Street. always with Saffron in the background.
Jools, Patches, Flo's Palace, The Exchange Hotel, Ruby Reds, Capricos were all owned by Dawn and packed to the rafters night after night and when business got slow, there was always a mysterious fire and an insurance policy to collect. Or as Saffron  would put it, "time for a fire-sale !"
      Both Saffron and O'Donnell were at times in partnership with  Roger Claude Teyssedre who amassed a fortune in property from the proceeds of a number of gay saunas before he expired under strange circumstances from the effects of an Aid's related illness while being cared for by his newest lover Ludwig Gertsch who had kept friends from visiting the dying Frenchman in his last days. Low and behold, a new will appeared ,written 17 days before his death leaving all of his multi-million dollar fortune to Gertsch, cutting out previous beneficiaries.
         The cream of Kings Cross and Darlinghurst nightlife figures including Saffron and O'Donnell , a few dozen favored weeping Greek lads and dozens of drag queens made up Teyssedre's funeral cortege.
      In the family pew at the crematorium sat Gertsch with four of Teyssedre's ex-lovers. As for Gertsch, whatever the circumstances surrounding the will, Roger's fortune did him little good.
           An increasingly paranoid Gertsch said he was receiving death threats and fortressed the Paddington mansion left to him by Teyssedre.
           Less than 2 years later his trussed up body was found in bush land in the Blue Mountains. Gertsch had been strangled. Stories abound of spurned Teyssedre lovers hiring Italian hit men to do away with Ludwig. When police broke into his wall safe a week after his body was found, the million dollars in cash that had supposedly lain there since Teyssedre's death was missing. In it's place was a $5 note wrapped in a black cloth.

       If Underbelly 3 doesn't include some of these events it's really missing the plot. So far we know from advertisements that the likeable 'Teflon' John Ibrahim  (left with Paris Hilton ) features heavily. Ibrahim started out as the gangster George Freeman's bodyguard before becoming a nightclub entrepreneur who seems to have a share in most of the Kings Cross nightclubs and a few in Oxford street to boot.

             Police say he's an "organized crime figure". Word around town is that Ibrahim is shopping around for a publicity firm to help him cash in on the certain fame that will spread country-wide with the screening of the series but hasn't found a taker yet. Unlike Melbourne's Mick Gatto who featured in the first Underbelly series who has just published his life story. Gatto was charged with murdering the hit man Andrew "Benji" Benjamin , admitted shooting Benji dead but successfully claimed self defense. Publicist Max Markson looks after Gatto but apparently he declined Ibrahim's approach.

           And what of the department store heiress Juanita Neilson who went missing when she was running an activist newspaper and agitating to prevent rows of beautiful Victorian terraced mansions in Kings Cross from being razed to the ground by property developers ?. She disappeared after visiting a Saffron nightspot supposedly lured there by an advertising order. Everyone who lives in the Cross (including tSS) can point out a a different tall building where Neilson's body is supposed to lie, buried in concrete.

        tSS lives a few stories above the Cross in one of the lovely art deco buildings just a few meters from the El Alemain fountain that signals the beginning of this new 'golden mile'. Far enough away from the hullabaloo but close enough to hear the odd scream, bullet shot and police siren,. We'll be a fierce critic of this new series.

Current state of play :

Underbelly 1 :. Crime family matriarch Judy Moran  (right) whose family featured in the series (shooting others dead or being murdered themselves) has just been charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact, in connection with her brother-in-law's death.

 Mick Gatto is now an "employment and building consultant" and operates a crane hire business and is constantly perplexed why people think he's a criminal.

Drug lord Carl Williams serving 25 years to life for murder. (he was murdered in jail in 2010).

Underbelly 2 A Tale of 2 Cities : Abe Saffron-dead, gangster George Freeman-dead, drug baron Robert Trimbole-dead.

Underbelly 3 The Golden Mile: no-one has been charged over Ludwig Gertsch's murder. Dawn O'Donnell leaves $3M out of $16M to her widow Aneik Baten while a Lucien Freud painting listed in the estate is found to be a fake.

Underbelly3 The Golden Mile will begin screening in April on the Nine network.

Jonathan King probed by Madame Arcati

For the unenlightened, Madame Arcati is one of the UK's most famous bloggers with an extremely healthy and envious world-wide following. And she has a habit of getting up the collective noses of British tabloid editors and journalists.

Although one suspects Madame may also have a large fan base on the Street Of Shame as she exposes some of the nonsense and vagaries of the variety of pompous poseurs who now eek out a living writing the drivel that appears in many British newspapers as they plunge towards an uncertain future.

MA reminds tSS of the former News Ltd journo, ex-Liberal Party flack and shareholder activist Stephen Mayne who has become the bane of Rupert Murdoch's life by asking difficult questions at News Corp shareholder meetings.

Mayne started the website crikey.com.au in 2003 and (with help from tSS) quickly built it into the leading political, business and social comment website in Australia. Despite having to sell his house to pay a few libel lawsuits (without our help) he sold crikey in 2005 to former Editor-in-Chief of the Sydney Morning Herald Eric Beecher for a cool one million dollars.

That's a long-winded introduction to say, why comment on a book when Arcati gives such good review ? Read her views on pop mogul and self confessed "vile pervert" Jonathan King's autobiography. 65 My Life So Far by Jonathan King.

King has been penning best selling songs since he was a university student in 1965 when he wrote the much recorded 'Everyone's Gone To The Moon". His book is flying off the shelves and apparently has become a wildly popular read for holidaying Brits on the Mediterranean. tSS will read it when Amazon finally get's it's act together.

A small extract from Madame Arcati's review :

"Oh, JK! How could you? Or rather, how could you not?

What with all the celebs you've fucked, discovered, promoted, befriended, detested, wanked, created, re-invented, guided, supported and, yes, fucked again with your self-proclaimed 8" phallus over the decades, how could you not have had an index compiled for this monster-sized tome of star goss that is your autobiography? It took me half an hour to find the Madame Arcati mention on p570. And then I only found it by deductive reasoning.

Please, please get one done for a future reprint! Listen to a gnarled old index-loving clairvoyant."

Madame's wish may come true. On his website King says his self-published book may be about to be picked up by a major publisher.

Watch one of King's great hits-Johnny Reggae by The Piglets

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## Friday-we set our sights on Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, climate denialist and the man who single handedly won the Falklands War !

batty Lord returns...

     3.34am- Our favourite Peer of the Realm in the form of Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley has flown back into town and will host a gala dinner at the Sheraton Hotel on Tuesday night.

      tSS has secured a one-on-one interview with the leading climate sceptic and expects much fun as we probe his Lordship on his wacky views. On Tuesday he will continue the theme that all this climate change nonsense is simply a rallying call for the left, devoid of a cause since the Berlin Wall fell !.

      Monckton also financed a film in response to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

    
     The Great Global Warming Swindle starred Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols and was directed by Malcolm NcLaren (err..note to sub-editor: Mildred, please check this !).
    

       

The guest list should be most illuminating. Monckton enthusiast, the like-minded Alan Jones will be MC.

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 #   The latest issue of Cleo has taken our advice and done a piece on the website Passive Aggressive notes.

a friendly Freudian slip

    That's how writer Mandy Miami described the diminutive Mathew Freud in a British magazine many years ago, long before he became the "most influential public relations executive in Britain"  according to PR Week magazine. Freud is boss of Freud Communications: motto:  "Sometimes we upset people.."

   But what is this statement all about in the New York Times ?. According to the newspaper Freud says:

 “I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to,”

       Oh really ?. Shurley shome mishtake as the English satirical magazine Private Eye would say. Freud is referring to the boss of the US cable network Fox News, Roger Ailes.

      Rupert Murdoch had just heaped praise upon Ailes and his skilled management of Fox News and it's capture of every right-wing ratbag US viewer and it's slavish devotion to Republican Evangelism.
       Mathew Freud is also married to Rupert Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth.

       But what about his dad-in-law's UK publications The Sun or the News of The World which have been dragging journalistic standards down to gutter level  for over 2 decades ?. Not that they had far to fall.

       A little too close to home perhaps.

        Murdoch's British rags dole out tosh by the tonne each week but who could forget some shining moments like the 'Gotcha' headline of The Sun front page in 1982, celebrating the horrible death of 323 young Argentinian sailors in a useless war for the sheep-shagging Falklands Islands begun by the Murdoch adored Margaret Thatcher.

     And let's not even go near the once respectable Sunday Times which reached it's lowest point in 1983 when it published the hilarious Hitler Diaries which contained nonsense like ""Eva gave a glorious supper party tonight at the Bergdorf with boiled veggies. Hermann G. doped to the eyeballs as usual. Heinrich H. reports excellent results with Zyclon B (wife Margarete still an old cow).Tomorrow we take Poland. Dinner after with the Thyssens " or words to that effect.

        Despite being informed the diaries were a hoax, Murdoch published anyway declaring "we're in the entertainment business".

    Which is just what Fox News is. Entertaining to a point but with rather serious consequences. Along with Murdoch's worldwide media outlets it was a major drum beater for the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions.

     Where was Freud at that time ?. Probably hosting wonderful PR events at his Notting Hill house with guests like Prime Minister Tony Blair who was declaring that Saddam Hussein's (non-existent) WMDs were "45 minutes from London", a line fed to him by perhaps the former most influential public relations executive in Britain, Alastair Campbell and possibly dreamed up by a gossiping London taxi driver according to the newspaper of alleged repute, the Times (which previously promoted the bogus "45 minute" claim without question-owner: R.Murdoch)

     What is happening here ?.

      Fox News is horrendous, as can be seen just recently in one small example when a group of Los Angeles fire fighters who had travelled to Haiti under their own steam and expense were pictured dragging a 70 year old lady from the earthquake rubble on one TV network while at the same time the atrocious pill popping lard bucket and radio host Rush Limbaugh was interviewed on Fox telling Americans not to donate to the various Haitian relief funds as a solemn Sean Hannity nodded in agreement.

      The Sydney Morning Herald (article removed) speculates that Freud's statement is some sort of power ploy within the Murdoch family: "Authorised by the committee"as Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff puts it.. The committee being Lachlan Murdoch, Elisabeth and possibly presumptive heir James Murdoch. Or against James by the others. Wolff speculates that the statement has been released deliberately.

Mathew's great grand-dad Sigmund

 Perhaps Mathew Freud has dreams of taking over the News Corp empire with wife Elisabeth's help when Rupert kicks the bucket. After all with clients like Kentucky Fried Chicken and Nike (both still ripping off workers) the world would be Mathew's oyster with a global media empire to play with.

       Forget it Mathew. News Corp is a teetering financial dinosaur riddled with cancer and when Rupert is called to account before his maker it will crumble like the deck of cards it is, currently superbly juggled with a magician's skill and sleight of hand that has bedazzled bankers and money lenders worldwide. Settle just for the News of The World, it's more your style.

(Roger Ailes suggested Freud see a psychiatrist ! )

                                                          

calling private eye Frank Monte

    An alarming report as an heir to the US Rockerfeller fortune goes missing from Melbourne airport shortly after collecting a hire car. Herman Rockefeller (pictured) hasn't been heard from by his family since arriving in Australia last Thursday which family members say is unusual. But is he from that family ?. Police aren't quite sure.

   Sounds like a case for the world's most famous private eye Frank Monte, currently moving digs from the luxury Horizon building into the even more salubrious Ikon apartment block in Potts Point.

    Monte says the "walls were too thin " at the Horizon and besides, he was just living out the end of society doctor Dr Robert Fox's lease. Fox is now living in Melbourne.

     "I always planned to live at the Ikon" says Monte. "The views are better and the rooms larger".

      Will this missing heir be found ?.

Unlike his relative Michael Rockefeller Jnr, the son of Nelson Rockerfeller who was the New York governor when his youngest boy disappeared in the wilds of the Asmat region of southwestern New Guinea around 1961. The Rockerfellers are one of the most powerful and richest US families and they called upon a young Italian born investigator Frank Monte to search for the heir.

Monte with Donald Trump

Rockefeller Jnr was never found alive although Monte says he tracked down his final movements and found the missing man's skull, duly delivered to to Nelson Rockerfeller in New York. The subject of Michael Jnr's disappearance is never discussed by the Rockerfeller clan.

                                               Frank Monte on the Larry King show

      Monte went onto become one of the most famous gumshoes in the world, working for Aristolte Onassis and various Arab sheiks and royal familes out of offices in New York and Los Angeles. He detailed his life in a book, The Spying Game and has been the subject of hundreds of magazine profiles, appeared on the Larry King and Howard Stern TV shows and ran one of the world's first internet live shows when he hit New York nightlife with thousands of viewers watching real life action via Monte's tiny spy cameras.

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      Friday night was the last appearance in Australia for Tallulah Rendell on her world tour. Song-writer and singer Tallulah is the daughter of former London and Hello social scribe John Rendell, famous more recently for his best selling book Christian The Lion. Tallulah's mum is the top British publicist and co-host of the hysterical Ladettes to Lady TV show Liz Brewer.

                                                   Tallulah Rendell and father John

 Tallulah made several appearances at the Vanguard in Newtown and the Oxford Art's Factory in Darlinghurst before jetting out today for New Zealand and Japan while dad John tours local schools lecturing kids about animal conservation in Africa.

exclusive : Sydney snares film awards and Morgan's on the way

            On the day NSW premier Kristina Keneally ( with Cate Blanchett in tow) announced that Sydney has lured the Australian Film Awards (AFI) away from their usual home in Melbourne, tSS can exclusively announce plans are well underway to film a science fiction epic based on the Sir Arthur C.Clarke's award-winning 1972 novel Rendezvous with Rama ,some of which will be shot in Australia.

           The rights to Rama were purchased by actor Morgan Freeman several years ago and he has raised $US200M to produce the film. tSS's Hollywood spy disguised as Freeman's co-producer says that script problems are nearly over with Freeman, a perfectionist  demanding re-writes to steer the movie away from Hollywood sensationalism and to stay more faithful with Clarke's original concept, much like Stanley Kubrik's epic 2001 A Space Odyssey, based on another Clarke novel.

        Rendevous with Rama is set in the 22nd century when an alien ship suddenly appears in Earth's solar system and an expedition is sent out to explore the first alien artifact. The film has been Freeman's pet project for over 10 years now.
         tSS was fortunate to visit Sri Lanka in 2006 to meet with Freeman and Sir Arthur when the actor arrived to spend a week with the science fiction master in his rambling beachside bungalow to discuss aspects of the production.
         Much of the film is to be shot in New Zealand at Lord of the Ring's director Peter Jackson's studios with dates now being lined up at Sydney's Fox Studios and the Gold Coast's Warner Bros studios in 2011. Freeman will produce, direct and star in the film and is expected to visit Australia later this year.
         Freeman and Clarke formed a close bond as far back as 1996 when he first contacted the writer about purchasing the rights to his book. He, along with most of Sri Lanka were rocked when Sir Arthur was accused of sex crimes by one of the UK's most tawdry tabloids in 1998.

           Unkown to the outside world, Clarke had been paralyzed from the waist down for over 15 years putting paid to some of the physical claims by a reporter. Like the US president FDR, he would have himself propped up for media photographs to give the impression he was mobile on his legs.
           Clarke was regarded as one of Sri Lanka's most honoured citizens having spent almost his entire life living there. Despite Sri Lankan diplomats demanding the British newspaper hand over their proof, it continually declined to or ignored them.

            Then 3 young men admitted they had been paid cash by the newspaper to make the claims and withdrew their allegations. To this day, a Sri Lankan arrest warrant is still outstanding for the newspaper hack who filed the original report. Several NGOs who picked up on the false claims citing rumours alone, were only relieved from million dollar defamation lawsuits upon Clarke's death in 2008.
           At the time of the allegations, stories swirled about that the false claims were an attempt to embarrass HRH Prince Charles who was to travel to Sri Lanka in 1998 to invest Clarke with his knighthood. tSS has some inside credible knowledge on that, which we may publish one day.
            When Clarke died, he left most of his milllion dollar fortune to his Sri Lanka male partner of over 40 years and their extended family. The lurid tabloid stories contained tales of children living in Clarke's compound of an old English style house and half a dozen smaller houses. The kids turned out to be the children of his partner's brothers and sisters, all who had been housed by the British born writer.
          

you call that a drag queen ?

       Trolley dollies on Air New Zealand have got their knickers in a twist over their new uniforms (pictured right). The hosties complain that their new threads make them look like 'drag queens off the Mardi Gras 'pink' flight".

     

One commented to a NZ newspaper "I haven't worn that colour since I was 5".  The uniforms were designed by top NZ fashion designer  Trelise Cooper (left).

He based the print design on the Maori symbol, the 'koru', a name given to the new unfurling fern frond and symbolizes new life, growth, strength and peace. It's also the corporate design of Air NZ.

tSS hasn't been to the Land of the Long White Cloud ( and is not sure if we should after reading Duncan Fallowell's Going As Far As I Can) but we do have a rather batty aunt there who married a confirmed bachelor Knight of the Realm so he could get respectability and she in turn, the title Lady.

       Once when she visited Sydney tSS drove her to see Bondi Beach where she commented on the number of dark-hued folk about and upon hearing they were mainly Maoris who seemed to love the beachside suburb she replied.."really ! New Zealand seems to be getting lots of them there too !". Well she is slightly crackers and drinks a lot of gin.

            If we ever do travel there (which is likely to be soon on a mysterious project at the amazing Peter Jackson film studios) we will surely catch the Mardi Gras 'pink' flight".

     

      

 But do these uniforms really look like 'drag queen ' outfits ?. More like furnishing coverings to us and really-who cares what the person asking "beef or chicken ?" really is clothed in ?. The only requirement I have is that the pilot is sober, unlike me, on long haul flights.

And they certainly don't look like our favourite Maori drag queen Carmen (left).

            

 tSS has found the perfect Hostie outfit for the new Mardi Gras 'pink' flight. (right). We think we might put the idea to Virgin airline boss Sir Richard Branson (left) with the idea he launches regular Mardi Gras 'pink' flights.


Afterall he took up tSS's suggestion to introduce live entertainment on his first London to New York flights a long time ago. We reckon it's a winner of an idea.

Hollywood loves Toni-Sydney adores Cate

While Toni Collette was receiving plaudits at the Golden Globes in LA where she was voted Best Actress in a TV series-the terrific show The United States of Tara, a much smaller get-together was happening in Kings Cross when a number of media theatre critics gave their own awards for the year's local productions at the Sydney Theatre Awards.

It wasn't going to be too difficult to guess who would receive the top gong-Cate Blanchett for her Sydney Theatre Company's production of A Street Car Named Desire, directed by the legendary Liv Ullmann and which wowed audiences throughout the USA.

Cate is one of the most bankable stars in the world, one of the most gorgeous with flawless porcelain skin, captivating eyes and is the least affected by her amazing success.
There's no chance she'll trade in long time husband, playwright and director Andrew Upton, she adores him. Still commanding up to $15M a movie, she has a few homes dotted around the world but prefers her stately homestead in the fairly suburban Hunters Hill, albeit with superb harbour views where she can give her kids a kind of normal life.

And she still hangs out at the bar after an awards affair or opening night and always look quite beautiful.And she treats tSS to a glass or 2 of champers and drops us home in her limo. Our kind of gal.

Under Blanchett's stewardship the Sydney Theatre Company goes from strength to strength drawing endorsements from the likes of Giorgio Armani who has flown into town to see 3 productions including Streetcar and this year's critics award for the best production The War of the Roses.

Other theatre types who dropped in included Leah Purcell and actor Marcus Graham (left)-Nic Kidman's secret long-time ex. Marcus tells us he has another gig in a new series of the US show Sins of The City and is ploughing through half a dozen Hollywood scripts.

Tiny actor Tom Burlinson (right ) handed out a few awards. He tells tSS he is still in such high demand for his Frank Sinatra tribute show he could spend the rest of his life in the Catskills or Las Vegas making a fortune.

Actor Josh McConville was named best newcomer for his roles in The Call and Strange Attractor. And in mid-presentations, word came through that the lovely Caroline O'Connor had just received 3 standing ovations at the opening of Cell Block Tango on Broadway (clip below)

Cate tries her hand badly at the piano...

and (below) poses with something in a frame.

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Tomorrow tSS goes to Redfern where HRH Prince William meets some indigenous kids. What fun !