Legal Blondes Galore !

Tim Mimchin with Sarah & Nel Minchin at the Helpmanns

Legally Blonde swept the boards at the 2013 Helpmann Awards last night at the Sydney Opera House scooping up 5 gongs including  best musical, direction and choreography and an award for Lucy Durack as best female actor in a musical.

the Tap Bros

The spectacular Melbourne based stage event  King Kong, won four design awards for costumes, lighting, sound and scenery, plus a special award for Outstanding Theatrical Achievement. There are bound to be more plaudits for King Kong as it's heading for Broadway in the near future.

A total of 43 Helpmann Awards were presented during a glitzy night honouring the most outstanding live performances in Australia in the past year.

Colin Friels won for Death of a Salesman at Sydney's Belvoir Street Theatre and Alison Bell won for her role in Hedda Gabler at the State Theatre Company of South Australia. Geoffrey Rush was named best male actor in a musical for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.



Paul Capsis (below right) Lucy Durack (right )  Elizabeth Debicki (below)

theatre heavyweights : Baz Luhrmann, Andrew Upton and a glamorous blonde

Briden Star         Helen Dallimore            Erika Heynatz & Andrew Kingston           Cheryl Barker                                       

heading for Broadway : King Kong

What a Cheek !

Our national treasure Kylie Minogue has been posting pics of herself via Instagram taken by a pal in Positano in Italy. And doesn't she look fab !

On Monday the Singing Budgie will receive the foremost honour that the Australian live entertainment industry can bestow - the JC Williamson Award at the 2013 Helpmann Awards to be held at the Sydney Opera House.

Past recipients have included Barry Humphries, Dame Joan Sutherland, Googie Withers and John Farnham

Hitting the Heights

Their recent foray into the Los Angeles art world, via Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion seems to have paid off for Sydney couple Charles and Christa Billich.  The pair have purchased a penthouse near Rodeo Drive in Beverley Hills and plan to spend at least four months of the year there.
Christa was telling pals at the weekend at a cocktail party to aid St Luke's Hospital cafe that the penthouse will double as an art gallery and she and Charles had fallen in love with the city of angels.

Organised by the Darling Point Committee, around  hundred of the good and great attended the Great Gatsby themed party at the magnificent harbour side Spanish style mansion of Robert and Elaine Gregg.

left : Charles Billich (3rd left) parties with flapper friends to aid St Luke's Cafe.
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 Jewellers Hardy Brothers celebrated their 160th Anniversary with a dinner outside the amazing Guardian Vaults, a safety deposit unit. Guests included Governor Marie Bashir, Stephanie Rice, Edwina McCann, a brace of Waterhouses- Kate, Gae and Robbie and Jessinta Campbell.

Happy day in the UK with a sad memory

Britain (and it's dominions) are celebrating the birth of the third in line to the throne, The Prince of Cambridge.
 Kate and William have delivered the required heir and the world's media have a new celebrity to fuss over for the next two decades.

Something overlooked by Fleet Street is the fact that Kate's gynecologist is Dr Alan Farthing.  
 In 1999 one morning, Farthing's fiancee left his Chiswick home to return to her own house in Fulham. There an unknown gunman shot her dead at her front door. She was the popular BBC presenter Jill Dando and her murder has become one of the great mysteries of modern times. A local man Barry George was arrested and convicted in 2001 but after two appeals and after a new trial in 2008 George was acquitted.

Rupert The Movie

Patrick Brammel  & Rupert Murdoch

With the stunning success of two movies featuring the Big Goanna- Kerry Packer, comes a new mini-series Power Games: The Packer-Murdoch Story that features a young Rupert Murdoch going into battle over publishing deals with Sir Frank Packer,  Kerry's father.
 Lachy Hulme (right) stars as Frank Packer (he also played Kerry ) and Rupert Murdoch is played by Patrick Brammel. Some legendary Australian political figures feature in the series as well including Black Jack McEwen along with actresses playing Anna Torv, Rupert's wife No 2 (before Wendi Deng) and Lady Florence Packer, Sir Frank's second wife who died this year in Monte Carlo and Ros Packer, Kerry's widow and mother of James Packer.
                                                                   

Anna Torv & Lady Flo Packer

The Shuttle turned for some background to regular contributor Bill Ranken  (right) grazier and man-about-town who at 84 has known all these characters over the years. Ranken reports Sir Frank Packer was almost persona non grata in Sydney society with many considering him to be fairly rough around the edges "not that I think he was much interested in Sydney's social scene. I think he thrived on the rough and tumble of business but Kerry was extremely popular and known for his generosity and loyalty towards retired staff : Kerry could be a big softie and he was generous with charities and rarely sought recognition for it. There must be thousands of people who should be grateful Kerry went into bat to retain St Vincent's Hospital when developers were eyeing off the property. I always recall traveling through a county town with Kerry and we came across a car accident where fortunately no-one was hurt. But a local tradie was distraught because his van was destroyed and he had no insurance. Kerry jotted down his details- the chap didn't have a clue who he was- and then a week later the local rag reported how a generous but anonymous benefactor had replaced the tradie's van. Typical of Kerry !". As for Rupert :"pretty boring really, never saw him at parties, Don't think he was that keen on the night life.".
Ranken, who owns one of the state's finest cattle properties also dated Ros Packer before she met Kerry and he described Clyde Packer, Kerry's brother, as a jovial figure : "we regularly toured Sydney's nightspots in Clyde's Rolls Royce convertible with more and more attractive ladies joining the tour as the night wore on. Clyde was once stopped by police who deemed the Roller over-crowed and as a fairly large and rotund man, he astonished the coppers when he emerged from the Rolls in a flowing kaftan. When they noted his name- he was also an MP then, they proceeded to give us a police escort to Kings Cross". They were the days !

How Tom Cruise aided James Packer

Some remarkable revelations in the new book by Pamela Williams Killing Fairfax which is published today.
When James Packer feel into a slump in 2001 after some less that stellar business dealings, he came under the care of superstar Tom Cruise who helped boost James back to his old self. Cruise and Packer have been friends for years and Tom has holidayed on James' converted ice-breaker the Arctic P on the Mediterranean and attended James and Erica Baxter's wedding.
The association gave rise to the rumour that James had joined the Church of Scientology under Cruise's guidance.

Most of the Scientology reports appeared in Fairfax newspapers, now disliked by James. His father Kerry Packer was furious at the reports and sent Fairfax boss Fred Hilmer a copy of the United Nations Human Rights charter warning him  that he was violating the charter. The book also says James Packer rounded on Fred Hilmer at PM Julia Gillard's Christmas party last year at Kirribilli House telling him "Don't come up and try to be my friend...Fred. Fuck off."

James Packer is known for not suffering fools gladly. In 2009 it's reported he told  Nine Network  supremo David Leckie also to "fuck off' at a party for Sam Chisholm at the Sydney Opera House and then invited Leckie outside to ''sort this out".

James with Jodhi ...and wife Erica

At a Nine Network TV season launch at Garden Island when James with then wife Jodhi Meares, he spotted News Ltd gossip writer Ros Reines, called her aside and tore strips off her over reporting about his private life.

Hot Stuff

Meet Australia's entrant in the Mr GayWorld 2013 contest -below right- handsome Aaron a 26 year old real estate agent from Brisbane in Queensland.
The contest is judged on 31st July in Antwerp in Belgium and he's up against other good lookers like Allesio (below) from Italy.

Havana Brown poses for Maxim Australia in her first photo shoot for a men's magazine. It's a good excuse to re-visit the Shuttle's exclusive video performance of Havana singing at the Sydney launch of the new Volvo car.

 ....and last but certainly not least-here is one of our favourite singers-around-town and winner of this month's Mr Lovely Legs contest Jeff Duff performing and showing off his amazingly slim pins. Shuttle regulars will remember Jeff appeared in Baz Luhrmann's hugely successful The Great Gatsby partying beside superstar Leo DiCaprio as our pic below shows. The always-in-touch Daily Telegraph (prop : Rupert Murdoch) confused him for Aussie actor Barry Otto.

Hazel Hawke & Which Bank ?

Hazel Hawke who died last month was a much loved public figure who stood steadfastly by her ex-husband Prime Minster Bob Hawke, demonstrating amazing loyalty, even as Bob was having an affair with his biographer Blanche d'Alpuget who he later married.

Aussies took Hazel to their hearts and watched sadly as she succumbed to Alzheimer's disease. Hazel openly publicized her plight in the hope it would aid other sufferers. When she died the plaudits came thick and fast and Hazel was given a State Memorial Service at the Sydney Opera House as this page from the current Latte Life newspaper shows.
Alas for the Commonwealth Bank which has just launched a series of 'customer friendly' adverts, the passing of a former First Lady seems to have slipped their attention. This week they sent a missive addressed to Hazel to the old Ritz Carlton building in Double Bay where she lived for a time.
The Shuttle's operative sent the letter back with the following exchange. Perhaps the news hasn't reached Mumbai yet :

@CommBank Hazel Hawke is deceased

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		CommBank
		@CommBank
		@Lattelifesydney Our apologies, was not aware. thanks you for letting us know.

Michael Buble, Anna Nicole, The Who and Robin Hood

Michael Buble and his favourite actor Cary Elwes

  Crooner Michael Buble has announced via this week's Woman's Day that his favourite all-time movie and actor are The Princess Bride and star of the flick, Cary Elwes who also played Robin Hood in Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
By co-incidence Elwes was in Melbourne last week as a guest at the Comic Con convention along with Star Trek's William Shatner and George Takei and actress Shannen Doherty. Around 33,000 fans attended the convention.
The Shuttle's omnipresent spies also report that  Elwes was spotted at Melbourne's magnificent National Gallery of Victoria last Friday where he appeared absorbed in the works by Australia's first acclaimed artist George Washington Lambert.

Kit Lambert with Townshend & Daltrey

George Lambert's self portrait

As reported by the Shuttle last year, Cary Elwes is to direct a bio-pic on the life of the late rock manager Kit Lambert who discovered The Who and Jimi Hendrix amongst other music legends. Lambert led a dissolute but magnificent life before dying tragically in mysterious circumstances at the age of 43 in 1981. At his peak he owned a house in Belgravia and a palace in Venice where he wooed his neighbour, the art collector Peggy Guggenheim.
Kit was the grandson of George Washington Lambert  and the son of noted English classical composer Constant Lambert .

The Who perform at the closing concert for the London Olympics last year

George Lambert was appointed the official war artist for the WW1 Gallipoli campaign that is so etched into the Australian psyche and was accompanied on that venture by a young war correspondent Keith Murdoch, father of media baron Rupert Murdoch. Both were disturbed by the upper class British generals at Gallipoli who they considered dangerous and incompetent.

Agnes Bruckner stars as Anna Nicole

Kit Lambert was born into privilege and was privately educated and his classical education combined with a rock'n'roll lifestyle influenced The Who's music as exampled by the rock opera Tommy. Remaining Who members Peter Townshend and Roger Daltrey are enthusiastically backing the film about Lambert and it's rumored will be composing music for the film.  The Rolling Stones and The Who are the remaining 60's Supergroup and are still huge throughout the world. In 2010 The Who performed at the most watched event in TV history, the Superbowl and at the closing ceremony for the London Olympics last year in front of an estimated 750 million viewers worldwide. 
 As for Cary Elwes, he has several films to be released soon including one on the life of Anna Nicole and he has just produced a film about the famous meeting between Elvis Presley and president Richard Nixon in 1970. Nixon made Presley, who was high as a kite on drugs at the meeting, an Honorary Marshall. That movie is to be released by Aussie actor Eric Bana's production company.

Plenty of Flavour in this Latte

Transvaal Avenue in Double Bay

While daily newspapers are losing readers at the rate of up to 20% every 6 months, former Fairfax editor Andrew Jaspan says it's the local publications that will be the beneficiaries as readers turn to specialised newspapers. Double Bay's Latte Life, now in it's 3rd year seems to be proving Jaspan right as it goes from strength to strength.

The Shuttle recently witnessed a well known newspaper columnist verbally attack an 18 year old intern from Latte Life over an alleged slight at a recent Kings Cross party- they must be something right.
This week's edition has an up and close interview with the paparazzi Jamie Fawcett who has emerged from the manicured bushes of the Bay-one of his haunts-to give his thoughts on local celebrity hunting, and also brings an update on the scandal they broke some months ago the outrageous shop in the Bay that is still selling luxury label rip-offs right under the noses of some of the smartest boutiques in the country.
All this comes courtesy of a new journalist Jonathon Marshal (known in the trade as  Maverick Marshall) who broke the story about stripper parties at the once snooty former Ritz Carlton Hotel in the Bay-one time home of such notables as Bob Hawke, Bill Clinton, Madonna, Princess Diana and George Bush Sn.
Pick up a copy around the cafes of Double Bay or you can read Latte Life online here.

Fashion Follies

Meet Felix Reiss who just last November was working at the Shuttle's supermarket of choice, Coles in Macleay Street Kings Cross. This month he has been treading the boards on the European catwalks and last week he opened and closed the Dior Homme show in Paris.The excellent rag trade website frockwriter brings us this and other hot-tips about the fashion world. It's a good read.
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One Australian fashion personality has been sounding off this week .
 Nicholas Huxley (left) is head of the Fashion & Design Studio at TAFE and he's had a hand in crafting the careers of the majority of our fashion designers and some of the the biggest names in the industry.
Huxley has ticked off both David Jones & Myer department stores for leaving him off their guest lists for years at the yearly fashion parades and soirees. As Nicholas puts it :
             " Today I appeared in the Sunday Telegraph as one of the 10 Secret Style Makers of Australia! (Thanks Elle again)! I have been nominated 5 years out of the 6 years of the Fashion Laureate Award for service to the Fashion industry.I have been nominated for the Fashion Group International Lifetime Achievement award. I have won two FIA(Fashion Industries of Australia ) awards. I have been nominated for an AFI (Australian Film Industries) Award for costuming a motion picture. In 2008(Sydney Magazine) I was chosen along with 4 other Fashion Industry people to be one of the 100 most influential people in Sydney."
 Huxley has a good point. The number of vacuous b-list slebs rolled out at these parades is as legendary as the snooty clip-board  (Ipads now) wielding "PR" consultants who think they are terribly important.

the judges : Didier Cohen * Charlotte Dawson * Alex Perry * Jennifer Hawkins

 Now he's also laid into the new season of the reality TV show Australia's Next Top Model : 
" OMG!!!! Australia's Next Top Model!!! Sorry..but what can I say?? WOW!! I'm sorry but I'm finding it very difficult to look at the judges..There is so much of everything going on...BOTOX GALORE..SO MUCH TALK BUT NO MOVEMENT IN THE FACE / WHITENED TEETH TO THE POINT OF WHO NEEDS THE LIGHTS ON..JUST FLASH THE TEETH! AND A MALE MODEL///WHO'S A BIT LIKE A LOG OF WOOD!
Ouch ! You tell 'em Nick !! 

The Extraordinary Shapes of Geoffrey Rush

ABC TV

Geoffrey Rush's career on stage and screen is being celebrated in an exhibition at the Arts Centre

Melbourne and it's well worth the trip down south as the Shuttle made today for a preview.
Rush reflects on his many achievements and explores his ability to inhabit characters through a remarkable physical and verbal dexterity. Featuring costumes, photographs, moving image and personal items, the exhibition highlights roles created by Geoffrey Rush in plays including Exit the King, The Diary of a Madman and The Importance of Being Earnest, and in films such as Shine, Quills, Pirates of the Caribbean and The King’s Speech.
The exhibition runs from  6th July to 27th October and you can book online here.

Vale Gary Shearston

Folk singer Gary Shearston has died of a heart attack in an Armidale hospital at the age of 74. He rose to prominence as a folk singer of Irish and Australian songs in the 1960s and had his own TV show for some years before being invited by the US folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary to tour the USA. But it was his 1975 droll and wonderful hit version of the Cole Porter's classic I Get A Kick Out Of You that put Gary on the world stage. In his later years he became an Anglican priest. Here is Shearston on the UK TV show Top Of The Pops:

Kirstie Takes The UK by Storm

 The UK's most sensational newspaper (many say the most appalling) the Daily Mail has taken a cue from the Social Shuttle (they often do) and given Australian ex-Vogue editor Kirstie Clements' book about her life and times in the fashion world a huge plug.

Launched in March, The Vogue Factor has been flying off local bookshelves and looks like being a hit in the UK as well.
 Clements was editor of Australian Vogue for 13 years before being shafted for unknown reasons. She was hugely popular amongst fashion designers during her tenure and has now delivered a tome that lifts the lid on the local and international fashion world where she had a regular front row seat at the New York, London, Milan and Paris fashion shows and a direct line to the world's most famous designers. It's a rollicking read and you must try it!
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Paula.....or is it Patti ?

A sharp eyed reader has pointed out the remarkable similarity between Melbourne based TV personality Patti Newton, wife of legendary TV host Bert Newton (and mother of troubled actor Mathew Newton) and the recently axed US TV celebrity chef Paula Dean. They could almost be sisters as our snaps show. Are they perchance distant cousins ? I think we should be told.

"Hanging In The Vatican"

Aussie media have joined the Billich Roadshow and headed off to California where colourful Sydney couple Charles & Christa Billich, owners of the Billich Gallery in The Rocks intend to take LA by storm. The town of make believe and the fabulous Billichs were always destined to collide.
The pair will launch themselves at their "good friend" Hugh Heffner's Playboy Mansion. Christa is no slouch in the publicity department and could teach Hef a few tricks. Occasionally a journalist, still wet behind the ears, trots out the Billich line like this chap in the Fairfax business publication BRW. The writer repeats the claim the Billichs have made for years : "His portrait of Pope John Paul II is hung at the Vatican."
Hung at the Vatican ?. Perhaps lying against a wall in dusty basement somewhere along with the thousands of other trinkets, bauble and gifts that flow into the Vatican, the White House ,Buckingham Palace and so on.

Billich fans (?) : Ian Thorpe and the late King of Tonga

It's one of the neatest publicity doddles in the book. Gifts are never sent back (postage !) and the sender often receives a polite, form 'thank you' letter.
Try it yourself and send Prince William and Kate Middleton a gift for their new baby to Kensington Palace.
Critics have been unkind to Charles calling his works anything but art. In 1995 the Sydney Morning Herald's art expert John McDonald labelled Billich’s painting as “a slippery form of graphic design backed with a high-powered marketing strategy". 
The BRW scoffs at their stable mate's words but McDonald's most salient point was that amateur collectors may be buying Billich works in the belief they were an investment that would increase in value.
Charles & Christa are immensely likable. The Shuttle attended one Billich extravaganza in Surfers Paradise in 2002 (another natural home for the couple). While Christa and 2 girls posed nude on the ballroom stage at the luxury Sheraton Mirage resort, Charles sat at an easel wearing a beret & smock and painted the trio. Dozens of punters formed a queue to buy their 'investments' including White Shoe aficionado and property developer Keith Williams.

Charles vs Norman

Two years ago at the Lawson Menzies Auction house in Annandale where they sell second hand furniture (their prize art auctions are held in the city) a Billich print came up for auction. There are 2 Australian artists whose works bring groans from the regular bidders:  Norman Lindsay and Charles Billich. The Billich print fetched $1.

Some 1999 words still ring in the ears of the Shuttle. At a Sydney reception for the International Olympic Committee, President Juan Antonio Samaranch the crowd parted and a Charles Billich painting was revealed by a local minor IOC official who beamed proudly . Standing nearby was the high flying solicitor and Sydney Olympic's chief Rod McGeoch (husband of the respected publicist Deeta Colvin). A look of horror spread across his face as he exclaimed to the official : "Oh no ! you are not going to give him that are you ?" . He shook his head in disbelief.

Hef waiting to greet Charles & Christa !

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Victor Lownes

The Billich action takes place at the PlayBoy Mansion home of Hugh Heffner. Hef hosts a lot of parties. Anyone can hire the Playboy Mansion for a party or event, a product launch, Barmitzvah or wedding and every now and then Hef may wander through a room to make the punters feel they are getting their money's worth.

James Hunt : Mark Hamill

The Shuttle has been to many Playboy parties in LA, New York and London. The US parties give tackiness a new meaning. The London parties at the old Park Lane Playboy Club were a tad better but the weekend parties thrown by Victor Lownes (the UK Playboy boss) at his Stocks Mansion in Herfordshire were sensational.
At one memorable party that lasted 3 days with a permanent Champagne and Dining Marquee, the Shuttle shared a hot tub with 3 Bunnies, racing car driver James Hunt (subject of the film Rush starring Chris Hemsworth ) and Star Wars actor Mark Hamill . Guests were bussed to and fro from London by helicopter and with each arrival a movie star or celebrity would alight-Joan Collins, Tony Curtis, or Rod Stewart.      Below : The Master at work :

Julia As You Have Never Seen Her

Dancing on stage in the early 90s at a birthday party for fellow Emily Lister and premier of Victoria Joan Kirner who is at the microphone.

Below : those naughty Madame Tussaud's mob today placed their Julia Gillard waxwork outside a dole office.

Superman Fails Julia

In the end, the pleadings of superstar Russell Crowe couldn't save Australia's first female Prime Minister Julia Gillard from the combined attacks from Kevin Rudd and the chorus line of media hacks at News Ltd, Fairfax and the ABC.
Here is Julia Gillard's elegant resignation speech. But following is her real speech- the one she wanted to say channeled by comedienne Jackie Loeb.

Superheroes For Gillard

Following our Gladiators For Gillard report on Russell Crowe's twitter support for Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Superman's dad has appeared on the ABC lamenting the lack of gallantry in politics.