Distant Cousins # 5

Are they perchance related ?

Bert & Ernie who live in the fantasy land
           of Sesame Street

 Malcolm Turnbull &  Tony Abbot on Monday
    releasing their NBN Policy and explaining
that fast speed broadband is Not For The Likes Of You

Tearjerker Moment # 1

Who didn't love Harrison Craig's performance on The Voice last night ?. Watch the video..it says it all.

Sir Laurence Street Joins the Team in Elizabeth Bay

Sir Laurence & Lady Penny Street

He is one of the Shuttle's favourite legal eagles and one of Australia's most respected jurists. At 87 years of age, Sir Laurence Street has moved into the uber smart nursing home Lulworth House in Elizabeth Bay.

Sir Laurence joins a veritable smorgasbord  of Sydney's most well known faces including entertainer Jeanie Little. promoter Harry M.Miller , Dame Leonie Kramer , former NSW premier Neville Wran and former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.

Harry Miller * Jeannie Little * Gough Whitlam

Sir Laurence Street & Rachel Finch
       at a party in 2008

Sir Laurence Street was the Chief Justice of the NSW Supreme Court and comes from a distinguished family of lawyers. His father Sir Kenneth Street was also NSW Chief Justice and his mother Jessie Street a tireless worker for Aboriginal and women's rights. It was largely her efforts that led to indigenous Australians finally getting a vote in 1967 (at one stage she was called Red Jessie in the media and a Conservative government refused to re-new her passport whilst she was abroad).

Nevile Wran (right) with
 artist Martin Sharp

Like Miller, Little , Whitlam and Wran, Sir Laurence was a regular on the social circuits in Sydney and Melbourne before ill health saw him hang up the gold embossed velvet Gucci pumps he often wore to parties.
Wife Penny Street is a great pal of Prince Charles and the pair always dined with Charles on his Australian visits.
Meanwhile a claim late last year by a former nurse that Lulworth House residents were "under-nourished" seems to have vanished from the ether.

exclusive : Why Rebekah Brookes Visited Australia

While media mogul and US citizen Rupert Murdoch was visiting Darwin this week and castigating the ruling Labor Party over the 457 visas, the former CEO of his British newspaper interests, Rebekah Brooks was staying at Lachlan & Sarah Murdoch's lavish Bellevue Hill mansion.

Brooks and her husband racehorse trainer Charlie Brookes hit the town with the Murdochs playing tour guides. The Icebergs restaurant at Bondi Beach was a particular favourite with the foursome dining there twice.

The Shuttle can now reveal the reason for Brookes visit that coincided with Rupert Murdoch's annual check-up of his Aussie interests : she is being lined up to become boss of Rupert's new Australian operations when his publishing interests come under a new regime as he splits his newspapers from his movie and TV interests.
Brookes still has to face a UK court later this year over the hacking scandal but an impeccable News Ltd source tells the Shuttle that Murdoch is determined that Brookes heads up his local publishing interests for at least 3 years with the expected election of a Tony Abbott LNP government in September.
 When the hacking scandal exploded in the UK last year and Murdoch flew into London, he declared that looking after Rebekah Brookes was his first priority and when she was forced to resign, he gave her a reputed $20M payoff.

Yoko, Jagger, Vanity Fair & A Fashion Fail

People are gearing up for the under-whelming Mercedes Benz Fashion Week that will be upon us next week.
Following the announcement that Qantas and the Emirates have joined forces, British Airways flew in model Georgia May Jagger on a promotional flight and she hit the runway at Mascot Airport to showcase the new British Airways 777 300ER jet.

Only 1st Class for Jagger

Georgia May demonstrates the
new Economy Class seats on BA

Jagger will be on the runway next week modelling for what has become a sort of Groundhog Day of Aussie fashion designers with the usual suspects showing off their wares. The brains behind Sydney's Fashion Week must feel international publicity isn't required this year having rejected, or ignored, a request from a Vanity Fair correspondent to cover the event. He's off to Melbourne and Hamilton Island instead, still puzzled why giving him a square foot of space at a few fashion parades was beyond the capabilities of the powers that be.
                                                      *****************************

Meanwhile as a parting gift our Vanity Fair scribe has supplied us with some snaps of our favourite wacky Japanese artist Yoko Ono lighting up the Empire State Building in New York yesterday.


Yoko is ambassador for World Autism Awareness Day and over 3000 buildings are participating in an Light It Up Blue campaign to raise awareness about autism.

In The Dreamtime With Diana & Freddie

The Hollywood actress Shelley Winters was once lunching with an actress pal who wanted to pick her brains- she was penning her autobiography and was worried that she had led a fairly tame love life. "I 've had few affairs with stars" she said.
Winter's responded :"look, if they are gay or dead, just say you screwed them. None will complain"
                                      ***********************
The Shuttle's eye was drawn to a tale that swept the world yesterday. No-one yet has clocked it as an April Fool's Joke. Such fine publications as the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph have faithfully repeated the tale verbatim.
Cleo Rocos who worked with the late British DJ Kenny Everett says that one night in 1988, she, Kenny and the late Freddie Mercury dressed Princess Diana in military jacket and sun shades and they all went of to the South London gay pub the Vauxhall Tavern where Diana was able to buy drinks with nary a punter spotting that the Most Famous Woman On The Planet was in their midst :
“When we walked in . . . we felt she was obviously Princess Diana and would be discovered at any minute. But people just seemed to blank her. The venue was packed, but the presence of Mercury, Everett and Rocos helped divert attention and Diana was able to order drinks at the bar before the group left,"
Such a  sweet tale from Cleo's new tome : ' The Power of Positive Drinking".

In 1996 the Shuttle spent a few days with Diana on her last trip to Australia for the Victor Chang Institute, accompanying her to various events to document the visit, commissioned by her Aussie pal Marie Sutton who had talked Diana into her last charity event before retiring from public life.

One night we were smuggled out of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Double Bay, all 3 of us crouched in the back seat of a car, to avoid the press. Diana was visiting the St Vincent's Hospice to meet HIV patients. We were sworn to secrecy. She wanted no publicity. Diana sat and chatted to patients for over 5 hours. We took snaps of each patient with Diana as memento's.

Marie Sutton

Driving back to the Ritz Carlton the driver took us via Oxford Street to show Diana the Golden Mile of gay clubs. Diana commented that she visited gay AIDS patients around the world but had never been to a gay bar. Whilst she was still a Royal she said "my detectives would have never let me enter one without it being searched for days beforehand. In fact going to any bar was out of the question".
Freddie Mercury died in 1991 from AIDS. From about 1987 he had become a recluse and was never seen again in public again . Kenny Everett was a regular at the Vauxhall Tavern but usually went unnoticed mainly as all the patrons more or less looked just like him. It was 'clones' pub.

Diana was finally divorced from Prince Charles in 1996 and lost her Royal title and the privileges that came with it including 2 permanent detectives from the Royal Protection Squad - the ones who "would have never let me enter one (gay bar) ".  In the year leading up to her Australian visit she spoke to Marie Sutton almost daily. She would relate the extraordinary lengths she would go to meet her lovers- the private houses of the Aristocracy where she could arrange a discreet visit for a weekend  in privacy which she knew the Protection Squad would always vet. Perhaps they slipped up in the Vauxhall Tavern incident.
What a shame Diana's great pal Sir Elton John hadn't joined this little pub crawl to confirm the tale.

exclusive : Sharon Sargeant Special

She can usually be found shopping in the smart boutiques of Double Bay, perhaps having a coffee at the Cosmo or lunching at the uber smart Ottos. All within a cooee's distance from her Darling Point apartment (a Ferrari is parked in the underground garage).

The Shuttle encountered her 2 years ago at the Finger Wharf in Woolloomooloo, with the British Rugby team in tow (captain Mike Tyndall & wife Zara Phillips were elsewhere that day), escorting them to a gin palace where a bunch of scantily clad girls awaited to join the lads on a harbour cruise. The Shuttle's subsequent report was picked up by British newspapers and a scandal ensured.

 We are talking about Sydney's Sharon Sargeant and now a wad of new pics have landed on our desk, sent by a tourist visiting something called Adultcon in Las Vegas armed with a Box Brownie : here they are for your perusal  to brighten up a quiet Easter.
Sharon's a good Catholic gel so say 3 Hail Mary's before viewing :

Sharon Sargeant with the English Rugby team

Hugo Weaving Is Well Hung

Katrina Greenwood (aka Mrs Hugo weaving) and daughter Holly

That time of the year : the annual Archibald Prize is awarded for the best portrait of a significant figure in Australian cultural life . And this year it was Del Kathryn Barton's painting of Matrix. Lord of The Rings & Hobbit star Hugo Weaving. The 'Packer's Prize' was the Mathew Lynn pic of crime writer Tara Moss.

 Tara Moss &her portrait

Burlesque star Venus Vamp & her Wendy Sharpe portrait

It's the second year that a portrait of Weaving has been entered and last year's portrait by Nicholas Harding has been sold to the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, according to Hugo's wife who was on hand with daughter Holly for the launch party. Hugo was in Melbourne filming so couldn't attend..
The Wynne Prize for Landscape was won by  Imants Tillers for Namatjira while the Sir John Sulman Prize went to Victoria Reichelt for After (books). You can see all the paintings at the website for the Art Gallery of New South Wales while here is a selection taken by the Shuttle after 3 glasses of champagne,
                         

what is it ?

Hugo Weaving at the 2012 Archibald

Bondi Booze

Last week we featured the World's Largest Message-In-A-Bottle : a giant bottle of Solo launched by Miss Tenerife Sady Chavez Diaz in Teneriffe : this week we present the World's Largest Esky filled with giant cans of Jim Beam floating in the Icebergs Pool at Bondi Beach.

Ellen Day 2

Ellen deGeneris and wife Portia di Rossi plus crew dined last night at Neild Avenue in Rushcutter's Bay.

Meanwhile Prime Minister Julia Gillard met the Easter Bunny AKA shock jock Kyle Sandilands. Which is scary.

The Ellen File

Just as we had an insider on the Oprah Winfrey tour, the Shuttle has an onboard spy posing as a diesil dyke same sex gender lover on the great Ellen deGeneres tour of Sydney.

Here is our first picture of Ellen and Portia de Rossi an their harbour cruise today. (pic by Andy Lassner)

Death Complicates Ikin Investigation

Whilst Australia's media and the weird mob at Fairfax have been  hyperventilating over the great non-challenge of Julia Gillard's leadership, the French media has been delving into the strange death of high profile French lawyer Olivier Metzner whose clients have included Manuel Noriega, former French  prime minister Dominique de Villepin   and Alexandre Despallieres the man being investigated over the death of Australian record boss Peter Ikin.

Metzner                                          Despallieres                                        Ikin                                    Noriega

Metzner was rich, gay and connected and lived in a luxury apartment on the Boulevard Saint-Germain but it was at his private island in Brittany where his body was found floating in the surf.
Metzner was the lawyer for former French singer Alexandre Despallieres who is being investigated over the death of Warner Music boss Peter Ikin who died after a fall down the stairs of a Paris hotel. Despallieres obtained probate on a will Ikin purported to have left but that was overturned in a London court. He was also a personal friend of Despallieres and it's believed he was not being paid which leaves the accused murderer in a sticky position.

As to the reason for Metzner's death, although many say he suffered from depression, others have hinted at darker reasons and point to Metzner's involvement with members of the French underworld.
Read The Independent's Obituary.

Justin Beiber * Cody Simpson

Any mention of either of these names brings the Shuttle an extra few thousand page hits. We are shameless.
As one of the first to expose the talents of Aussie Cody Simpson to the world - here is an exlcusive video he has just sent us of Justin Beiber surprising Simpson and joining him on stage at his show last night in Paris :

Letter from Las Vegas

THE MYSTERY surrounding the absence of Sydney party girl Sharon Sargeant has been revealed : she's been spotted by the Shuttle's spy disguised as a one-armed-bandit, hitting the bright lights of Las Vegas.

Sargeant has featured many times on the Social Shuttle as well as the UK's Daily Mirror and numerous European publications because of her outrageous antics. She's also a pin-up girl for a US battalion in Afghanistan .
Apart from being spotted at Hugh Jackman's recent Oscar party in Los Angeles she also attended the Adultcon Convention in Vegas.

But what news of her permanent fiancee, the private eye Frank Monte ?. Our spy says he was spotted deep in conversation with some serious looking gents at a private dinner at the ritzy Sahara Hotel. Apparently they were the security managers of Las Vegas' top casinos and Monte was imparting some advice. One rumour has it that Monte was involved in unmasking the recent $32M card sharp attempt at Melbourne's Crown Casino. Monte was seen arriving at the casino last month for 3 days that coincided with a visit by Crown owner James Packer.

Beefing Up The Bourbon

The legendary Bourbon & Beefsteak in Kings Cross has re-surfaced with a swell opening party and endless Laurent Perrier. As The Bourbon, it looks like they got it right. A friendly atmosphere, good food and drinks and a great layout with live bands 7 days of the week brings back the old days when the Bourbon was the place to end a night in Sydney, usually at around 3am when you could party on until the morning.

Kerry Chikarovski & Peter McGauran

long legs at The Bourbon

 Opened in 1967 by the mysterious Bernie Houghton who arrived in town with a suitcase full of cash, for the next 40 years the B&B reigned supreme with visiting celebs like Frank Sinatra, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Madonna taking advantage of it's 24 hour license. One night cricketer Ricky Ponting even danced with drag queen Carlotta. Houghton said he was an ex-US Air force man but many claimed he was a CIA agent or ran Air America in Vietnam : whatever his background he was the perfect host.

He managed to secure a permanent visa via ASIO  for services rendered. Houghton had connections and the B&B became a hang-out for holidaying CIA agents and local mobsters. Amongst it's bizarre decor with stuffed bears, monogrammed Zippo lighters, Confederate flags and Indian mementos was Houghton's own M16 which he claimed saved his life many a time in  S.E.Asia.
The Bourbon is now owned by Coogee Bay Hotel  owner Christopher Cheung who snapped up the derelict property ( Houghton died in 2005) for 22M.

dance partners

Bernie Houghton

World's Largest Message-in-a-Bottle

"What's all this about?", I hear you ask.
It's an excuse to run some pics sent to us of gorgeous Miss Tenerife, Sady Chavez Diaz jumping off a giant bottle of Solo. The bottle will be towed 200 nautical miles off the coast before it's released and it is equipped with the required navigation lights for a drifting object in international waters, it has Automatic Identification System, radar reflector and tracking technology. It will be monitored continuously and if needs be, we will use a tugboat to get it safely ashore wherever it ends up, says Joakim Sande, CEO of Solo. (and many thanks for the crate of Solo). You can follow the bottle's progress on Facebook. Naturally.