Celebrity

“Some day, far into the future, this here machine will become a powerful medium with the potential to unite nations and inspire common folk through high-definition images of overweight D-list celebrities struggling to run and weeping atop rowing machines”.

Do you know to whom this quote - which is believed to have been uttered at the unveiling of the first television set - is most commonly attributed to?

Nobody. Absolutely no one said this.

Continue reading "If we wanted reality, we’d turn off the television" »

We’ve done it. We’ve finally ruined the Internet with our constant rage and all-caps rants. The vibe of the place has undeniably changed. We can all feel it.

It used to be a place for exchanging videos of animals doing people things and tricking Richard Wilkins into announcing celebrity deaths.

Now, it’s like being trapped in a shipping container full of knives and bees, or spending 20 minutes within a 15m radius of Deni Hines. Engaging with anything online has become an exhausting exercise. Every article, video and picture of George Lucas is accompanied by the ominous drum of sweaty fists pounding keyboards.

Continue reading "It happened. We’ve finally ruined the Internet" »

Say hello to our latest sporting hero. He’s had quite the journey to get to this point.

“Michael Clarke now walks with giants”, The Daily Telegraph editorialised yesterday. That was before he became only the third Australian ever to score a triple century on Australian soil. It’s a feat that pales only in comparison with Sir Donald Bradman’s 452 not out against Queensland at the SCG.

But Clarke is no Mr 99.94, lionised by all in perpetuity. He belongs in a different category of Australian hero altogether. Clarke is one of those superstars who we, the fickle Australian general public, only seem to really care for when they’re winning.

Continue reading "Clarkey smacks tall poppy syndrome for 329, not out" »

What happened
Sheen, the son of the excellent Martin and the star of a crap blockbuster TV show, destroyed his immediate career in a drug-, women- and media-fuelled tizzy of spectacular proportions.

There were signs that Sheen’s life was starting to careen out of control in January when he went to rehab after a series of public shenanigans. Two and a Half Men was put on hiatus.

But the kerfuffle didn’t really get started until Sheen called up a US radio show to tell the world just what he thought of Two and a Half Men and its producers. He declared the TV show was: “A pukefest that everyone worships” (right on, Charlie) run by an “AA Nazi” and “blatant hypocrite”. Producers, who were sick of Sheen’s issues and his partying, ended production.

Continue reading "Biggest moments of 2011 #9 The Sheen comes off Charlie" »

A new report has found that women on MTV reality television programs call each other rodents, skanks, trash bags, tricks (whatever that is) and hoes. The study condemns reality television’s negative depictions of female and male behaviour, as the networks compete to reach the next level of shock value. It can’t be denied that reality television often exploits and humiliates its participants for entertainment value.

There is, however, a notable exception in Junior MasterChef 2011, which has made a visible effort to protect the emotional and mental health of its young participants. I’ve observed the previews of both Junior MasterChef seasons with a resolve not to support a competition that places unnecessary, national pressure on children. But I’ve been won over by the optimism and resilience of the young participants.

The challenges are colourful, the judges gentle, and each negative comment comes wedged in a compliment sandwich. Children aren’t alienated from their families – a stark comparison with its adult counterpart, where participants must resign from society. The judges focus on celebrating the leaders of the scoreboard rather than exploiting the losers, and deliberate strategies are implemented to build upon the children’s self-confidence.

Continue reading "Bullying and humiliation: That’s entertainment?" »

Every so often you get to witness the laws in the culture you live in take a creaky step, tortoise-like, towards catching up with the hare that is our fast-evolving collective value system; in this case, the move towards recognising gay marriage.

For the gay community, and for the forward-thinking among the rest of us, it’s great to think we will probably no longer discriminate in granting of the legal rights and status of marriage. Like millions of other Aussies, I’m all for equality.

But the first question that springs to mind in 2011 is what, exactly, have gays won the right to? What on earth does “marriage” mean right now? And is it possible that even before homosexuals have the right to partake of it, us matrimonially-elastic and readily-divorcing straights have left the marital meringue out in the rain?

Continue reading "Good luck gays, us straight people have ruined marriage" »

I have long resisted writing about Twilight.

As children and adults across the world scrambled to hoard Robert Pattinson posters and glow-in-the-dark vampire soaps, I averted my eyes – lest I became a motionless pillar of salt.

Every time you mention Twilight, a puppy kills a fairy and then runs into oncoming traffic. It’s akin to uttering the word “Sandilands”, which I am told is either a kind of small crustacean found in less than two per cent of the world’s oceans – or a range of designer doorbell tones.

Continue reading "I’d drink my own blood before writing about Twilight" »

Without me even knowing it, I’ve become a member of a club. It’s a pretty exclusive society with celebs such as Demi Moore and Nicole Kidman among its patrons. Victoria Beckham was recently accepted after years of trying for membership. Beyoncé is on the waiting list.

Apparently I’m a SMOG – a Smug Mother of Girls. We’re quite the trending topic on the internet after doctors reported an increase in women wanting a girl. Add to that a dubious survey that claims two-daughter families are the most harmonious and I’m starting to look like a stuck-up cow. Especially when DMOBs (Defensive Mothers of Boys) reckon SMOGs are judgmental of their boys’ behaviour.

“I know too many mothers of girls,” sniffs one blogger, “who truly believe that boys are unpleasant, noisy, smelly creatures who take the look off the place and get in the way.”

Continue reading "Smug mums don’t overthink gender" »

Society is seized by an obsession with cuisine. The Masterchef empire and the cult of the celebrity chef are facets of this fixation. All over the nation citizens rush to microwave their dinner in time to watch their favourite buff chef or pre-teen whip up something magic.

This increased interest in food, and particularly food preparation, could produce concrete improvements in the way we cook and thereby enhance our everyday quality of life.

Yet so much of what we are offered as culinary inspiration seems more liable to produce culinary intimidation, by virtue of its sheer complexity. And culinary intimidation is completely unnecessary since the secret of successful food preparation is to do as little as possible to it.

Continue reading "The best chefs cook naked" »

So the crowd cheers, euphoric, as the ‘guilty’ judgement of Dr Conrad Murray is read out.

Michael Jackson’s fans will now be able to remember him untainted – they will forget that he was a drug abuser, a consummate weirdo, they will forget the grim and disturbing pictures of his deathbed. He will be again the child star turned genius. In death, he will be perfect.

Meanwhile, the cardiologist who pumped him full of powerful drugs, who – the jury heard – committed numerous acts of negligence not big enough to have him found guilty of gross negligence, will have an uncertain fate in gaol.

Continue reading "Guilty verdict in Jackson case not black and white" »

Look, I’m sick of this not-being-famous crap. Enough’s enough. I want my fifteen minutes, and I’m not just talking jail time.

Clearly in the early twenty-first century I don’t have to have an actual skill to become famous - bad news for plate-spinners and cup-stackers everywhere – but I will need to approach my planned getting-of-attention in a systematic way.

I can already moonwalk amazingly well, so that’s done. I figure there’s just a handful of additional steps I need to take.

Continue reading "So you want to be famous? Here’s how…" »

In the past week over 400 people have died in floods in Thailand, three Australian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan and the European economy teetered on the verge of collapse. But most devastating of all was the news that Kim Kardashian’s marriage was in disarray after just 72 days.

Australia’s commercial networks and newspapers almost fell into the trap of misreading the break-up as a pointless, inane, staged piece of nonsense, but then came to their senses and ran blanket coverage of the story for three days.

Things could’ve got much, much worse though. There was the chance the vacuous, money-hungry, talentless reality TV star could have pulled out of her promotional tour to Australia, opening up the possibility that some media outlets would have to resort to reporting serious news. 

Continue reading "Kim Kardashian 1: No news would be good news" »

Think Kim Kardashian is nothing more than a walking, talking exercise in narcissism and lip gloss?

After all, she’s a reality TV starlet famous for having thought it was a good idea to film herself having sex with a little known rapper - and for her eye-poppingly clingy dresses. But don’t be too quick to write Kim off. Because if you dig down beneath the trowelled-on layers of makeup you’ll find just the kind of modern woman who should get the tick of approval from the sisterhood.

Don’t be confused by the drag queen eyes and slightly terrifying décolletage -  Kim Kardashian is a savvy entrepreneur, someone who speaks her mind and is vocally proud of her curvy figure.

Continue reading "Kim Kardashian 2: Things to admire about Kim" »

In a move shocking to precisely no one, Kim Kardashian, reality TV queen, perennial gossip magazine cover girl and not much else, announced yesterday that she and her husband of 72 days had filed for divorce.

From start to rapid finish Kardashian’s marriage was an exercise in attention and money-seeking.

E! paid the couple $15 million for the television rights to their wedding special show, while People magazine coughed up close to $3 million for wedding and engagement related rights. The guests were treated to a $20,000 wedding cake.

Continue reading "Keeping up with the Kar Krash of a sham marriage" »

Meat Loaf is one loose unit. That’s why anything could happen when the headline act for the pre-game entertainment at tomorrow’s AFL Grand Final between Collingwood and Geelong lets rip with a medley of his biggest hits. Five songs in twelve minutes will be some feat for a singer whose tracks are often “epic” in running time.

Fingers crossed the whole show is a catastrophe because, let’s face it, the only reason anybody watches the grand final “entertainment” is to see one spectacular disaster. Good, bad or ugly, the “Bat Out of Hell” will be flat-out trying to upstage the biggest horror show involving song, dance and choreography ever seen at a major sporting event.

The worst in history is Angry Anderson and the Batmobile. I remembered this atrocity after coming across a great article by leading sports blogger The Mad Chatter.

Continue reading "When Mr Loaf meats AFL anything could happen" »

When done properly, a celebrity endorsement can literally make a company. The most famous example is when then third string sportswear company Nike (behind Adidas and Converse) signed first year NBA player Michael Jordan in 1984.

Jordan had just been picked third in the NBA draft after centers Hakeem Olajuwon and Sam Bowie, but Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight really liked the free-scoring Jordan and courted him personally.

When Jordan signed, Nike’s stock price was below 60 cents. When he finished his first three-peat in 1993, Nike’s stock price was $8.80 and now the biggest sportswear company in the world. When Jordan announced that he was retiring from basketball a few months later, Nike stock sunk to $5.20 and when he sent out his famous two-word “I’m back” press release, Nike stock surged again.

Continue reading "It’s a working class sham" »

Last week, Madonna earned the ire of florists everywhere when she revealed her contempt for hydrangeas.

After receiving a bunch of the popular flowers from a fan at a press conference, cameras caught the Material Girl chucking them aside and whispering: “I loathe hydrangeas”.

Pre-empting the inevitable online rage, Madonna uploaded a video “apology”, which saw her gently caressing a forlorn arrangement of the purple flowers.

Continue reading "Hush your apologies, you lame celebrity" »

The Beatles had 20, Elvis had 18 and Michael Jackson racked up 13. Even Wham! managed a respectable two.

No, we’re not talking about girlfriends, but something just as hard to get – Billboard Hot 100 number one hits.

So how is it that the biggest star of the millennium, with as many screaming female fans as The Beatles or Elvis, hasn’t scored a single US number one hit some seven singles into his career?

Continue reading "Bieber’s number one with the girls, but not with Billboard" »

You know what? As a society, I reckon we must be doing pretty well.

There are still just as many breaking news stories and outpourings of outrage and people walking up and down the street with placards full of puns, and there are still just as many current affairs stories and infomercials identifying new injustices and urgent problems on telly, but it’s the subject matter that’s important.

We often forget that there are populations in other countries experiencing war, famine, poverty, deadly epidemics, corrupt despotic dictators and unbelievable levels of government oppression and censorship.

Continue reading "We’re either doing great, or we’re totally screwed" »

Earlier this week, Liz Hurley tweeted about the nation’s obsession with the movements (or lack thereof) of Shane Warne.

“FYI Slender Shane ate very rare steak and chips for dinner. Hold the Front Page,” she wrote, while totally not attention-seeking at all. She did, however, have a point. Why do we still care about the various boring things Shane Warne does?

No doubt it’s the same obsessive curiosity that saw him land a chat show late last year for no particular reason whatsoever. We seem completely unable to discard our celebrities once their usefulness is at an end – and it’s killing Australian television.

Continue reading "There’s nothing more pathetic than an ageing star" »

Is it time for Australian media powers to draw up a code of conduct to deal with spin doctor demands?

Championing the media and their moguls may not be fashionable right now given the UK’s phone hacking scandal, and Labor and the Greens calling for their own inquiry off the back of it.

Nevertheless public relations spin is endemic and enduring.

Continue reading "Media scripts and avoiding the spin cycle" »

For 10 points, to which celebrities do these children belong: Colin, Elizabeth, Chester, Truman, Lily-Rose and Jack?

Any idea? Nope. That’s because their dads, despite being two of Hollywood’s top three highest earners, have never paraded their kids as accessories to their own fame. Congrats Mr Depp and Mr Hanks. In fact, double cheers to Tom who’s just become a grandad. I trust little Olivia Jane is doing well?

Compare them to Willow Smith, Suri Cruise, Lourdes Ciccone Leon and Romeo Beckham who, thanks to some pretty intense parental showcasing, are now being heralded as style icons. You heard right – we’re now supposed to admire the dress sense of a five-year-old.

Continue reading "Precocious pint-sized style icons on parade" »

The end of the News of the World as we know it. I can’t help but feel partly responsible. It’s not because I ever worked for the paper masquerading as a fake sheik exposing celebrity transsexuals, randy bishops and corrupt snooker stars.

It’s not because – as a writer for a News Ltd publication – I feel infected by some sort of communicable corporate unscrupulousness. It’s not even because I belong to the broad – and now broadly disgraced – field of journalism.

Nope. The real reason I feel partly culpable for the foul play of this nasty little tabloid is because I like reading about grubby celebrity scandals. And grubby celebrity scandals often require grubby journalistic tactics.

Continue reading "In our own way, we all love a little News of The World" »

Lord save us from the celebrity lifestyle gurus.

Save us from their nettle mayonnaise and organic cotton t-shirts handmade by Guatemalan nuns and their tips on how they struggle to cope as a working woman on a paltry eight figure salary.

If there’s one person we have to thank for this inundation its Oprah Winfrey who pioneered the faux-everywoman shtick before cannily parlaying it into billion-dollar business.

Continue reading "What a load of Goop; celebrities are no gurus" »

The other morning I was thinking about life - because, well, that’s what people do when they’re on the toilet.

As I used my housemate’s slightly dryer towel to wipe my hands, I realised I’d been doing it wrong - life, that is, not hand-drying, which I’ve actually developed quite a knack for.

All this time, I’ve been focused on “the journey”, when the end product is clearly the most important bit. The end product being, of course, a sweet, badass biography. What’s the point of being content if there isn’t a seven-figure book deal at the end of it all?

Continue reading "It’s not myopic to be dreaming of my biopic" »

Welcome to this week’s episode of I Call Bullshit. Today we’re going to look at Oprah. Oprah Winfrey is the sort of mega-star who often leaves people breathless. With wide-eyed adoration, gasping sycophancy, or cynical shock that she is indeed such a mega star.

She is worth gazillions, and her passing endorsement of any old product is worth millions, even billions. Her gift is that people dwell on her every word. But is she full of pearls of wisdom, or is she full of the proverbial? Let’s look at some of her more famous quotes.

I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.
Utter tosh. I am not becoming a crispy-topped piece of melt-in-your-mouth pork belly.

Continue reading "ICB: Oprah Winfrey. Woman of wise words or woo-woo?" »

The exact time and date of the beginning of the end of civilisation is said to be recorded on the birth certificate of an Israeli baby.

Arriving suspiciously close to last week’s planetary alignment, Like Adler wasn’t fooling anyone.

While reportedly exceptionally cute and a source of profound joy to her parents - Lior and Vardit - many believe she is also a harbinger of society’s downfall.

Continue reading "Like, I totally give this name the thumbs up" »

For nearly a decade, the question of what Osama bin Laden might look like ran a close second to where he might be located.

Do years of murderous terrorism escalate the hair greying process? Would he be with beard or without? And what are the dress regulations for 21st Century villainy? Semi-criminal or smart homicidal?

In the long years between the September 11 terrorist attacks and Operation Assassination, these were key questions faced by US authorities as they tried to keep the visuals on their wanted posters and card decks up to date.

Continue reading "Osama: a frail, pathetic poser" »

The other day, my daughter came downstairs wearing my shoes. Not the younger one, whose chief purpose in life is to steal my heels and strut around pretending she’s a teacher. Or a hooker. It’s hard to tell.

No, this was the older daughter, the 10-year-old whose delicious little baby feet have somehow morphed to the same size as my own, hence her apparent need to borrow my Converse. The new ones.

Anyway, as you can imagine, I was so thrilled, I threw my arms around her and announced that now we shared clothes, we were undisputedly “best friends”. Would she also like to help herself to my GHD? When could we go shopping together?

Continue reading "You’re my mother, not my friend" »

Every now and again, I like to watch men and women in technicoloured fetish suits pummel each other for a good 90 to 120 minutes.

Earlier this week, I did just that and took the time to catch Marvel’s latest technogasm, Thor. It was awesome.

Stuff blew up, there were heaps of bright colours and Anthony Hopkins proved that elastic-less eye patches are indeed the way of the future.

Continue reading "Of Gods, men and jerks: We can be (super) heroes" »

Tonight is Australian TV’s night of nights – the red carpet love-fest that is the Logies. But really, is there anything worth celebrating about Aussie television?

Yes we’ve got more choice than ever before, with the four major channels boosted by an increasing array of digital and Foxtel offerings.

But choice can be deceptive – and if I had a dollar for every time I clicked the remote these days, I could well have outbid Seven and Foxtel for the rights to AFL. Put simply: there’s nothing worth watching.

Continue reading "Crap TV: Breeding ignorance and feeding my frustration" »

When I was 12, I wanted to be an air hostess when I grew up. My best friend wanted to be a traffic warden. She even drew a picture of herself in a beige uniform handing out a parking ticket.

Neither of us achieved our dreams, what with me becoming a journalist and her having to make do with working for one of the world’s biggest film companies.

So she, in particular, was astounded that today’s children no longer have such civic aspirations as we did. Instead, they just want to be famous.

Continue reading "Fame? I’d rather learn how to fly" »

Julian Assange repeatedly said that is the car accidents not the bus accidents of war that have resulted in the massive numbers of civilian casualties revealed by the Afghanistan and Iraq War Diaries in 2010.

Now it’s the media circus around the comparatively pedestrian accident of his legal situation that is drawing global attention away from Wikileaks and the revelations it has made.

Malcolm Turnbull was right when he said that Prime Minister Julia Gillard should not have jumped on what he called a “media frenzy” in describing Assange as a criminal when it had not been established that he broke Australian law.

Continue reading "Where’s Wikileaks in the celebrity circus?" »

Tomorrow Barry O’Farrell assumes the mantle of the Premier of NSW. That’s not a prediction from a well-informed insider, by the way. It’s a stone-cold fact, hewn from the knowledge that there hasn’t been a conclusion this foregone since Ricky Martin turned out to be a bit light in the loafers.

Which leads us to the question - what could Fatty possibly do to balls up this one horse race? With one day left on the campaign trail shot clock, what catastrophic cock-ups could the man cook up to fall short of the biggest sure thing since hipster douchebags queuing up for Apple products? You know it, I know it, and you can be sure as shit old Barry knows it.

So with that, Barry, we dare ya. We double dare you to take The Punch Policy Pepsi Challenge, and pepper a few of these zingers into the ears of your electorates. We honestly doubt it’ll make one iota of difference…

Continue reading "There’s no way Barry can lose this election. Or is there?" »

Sometimes, when I’m particularly sleepy, I drink coffee. It’s my little way of pistol-whipping my brain in the face and letting it know I’m in charge. There are times when I simply can’t afford to let old Grey Matter drift off and have to resort to sweatshop tactics circa 1982.

Often, however, this just doesn’t cut it. Scientists tell us that at any given time, we are using but a small fraction of the squishy stuff inside our domes. The rest, apparently, is busy playing solitaire, visiting AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com or sharing a spliff.

This, simply put, is not good enough. And so, in a desperate search for scientifically-sound solutions, I have once again turned to Hollywood.

Continue reading "If I only had a (Limitless) brain…" »

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Blimey, we can barely make it through a week without someone proffering an apology.

Those above came from John Galliano, Tiger Woods, Todd Carney, Ricky Nixon and Fergie, the Duchess of York – whose latest transgression led her to admit: “I am just so contrite, I cannot say.”

This, just two weeks after her last apology for offering to sell access to her ex-husband, saying she needed to “find the lotus flower within”.

Continue reading "Celebrity apologies and crocodile tears" »

Gee, doesn’t Elle Macpherson look fabulous. Still so lean and tall, with her trademark tousled blonde-tipped locks falling all over her shoulders.

“She looks a woman half her age,” fawned a Daily Mail reporter over recent pictures of the supermodel, wearing a cowboy hat and swaggering through the streets of Rio.

You’ll not catch me disagreeing, Elle’s definitely still got it. But there’s a reason she has so much time to primp and preen.

Continue reading "Hey, Supermum. Spend a bit of real time with the kids!" »

More than 90 per cent of people who finish Snooki’s book A Shore Thing reportedly Google the phrase: “If I hold my breath for 45 seconds while repeatedly head-butting a wall, will I get amnesia?”

A more pressing question for many of you, however, is probably “who or what is a Snooki?”

Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi is the result of an innovative reality television show called Jersey Shore which places a bunch of potential sexual harassment lawsuits in a house in New Jersey and leaves them to enjoy some good ol’ fashioned ‘roid rage, borderline alcoholism and painful acronym-inventing (eg. DTF).

Continue reading "Schmucks and dirtbags deserve contempt, not fame" »

Enough. Unpopular though it may be, it is a time to take a stand.

We have to stop celebrating morons and their attendant antics. We have to stop defending idiots and their self-imposed tragedies.

Whether it be a middle-aged former cricketer with a penchant for romancing equally vacuous bimbos or drug-addled footballers with a natural gift for screwing up every fifth chance offered to them - it’s about time we drew a line in the sand and said “sod off!”.

Continue reading "The Stupid People: They are legion, and dangerous" »

There’s something about Warnie.

A strange thing has happened in recent days while the Australian public has been on Shane Shag Watch, like some pervy roommate busy listening for the tell-tale squeaks of suffering bed springs.

Slowly, disturbingly, the realisation has dawned – we like Warnie. We love Warnie. We LOVE Warnie!

Continue reading "The spinner who shagged me: why we love Warnie" »

We don’t mind if you can’t sew. Just wear underwear.

According to a survey, the vast majority of Generation Y females are losing their womanly ways.

Traditional female skills such as sewing, ironing, cooking, homemaking and other ‘womanly’ traits are on the decline and instead women are driving automatic cars and contributing to a growing incidence of consumerism.

Continue reading "SHE SAYS: just don’t forget your undies" »

So Miranda Kerr & Orlando Bloom have named their first born Flynn. Flynn? A normal name and spelt correctly?

I must admit I breathed a sigh of relief for the genetically blessed cherub. With two world-famous parents I was expecting baby Bloom to be saddled with a weird, made-up name that would haunt him for the rest of his days.

Something like Apple, Dweezil or Heavenly Hirrani Tiger Lily.

Continue reading "Moon Unit! Tell Apple to leave Peaches alone!" »

It’s a universally (at least I hope so) accepted truth that the best song EVER does not actually exist.

It simply can’t. It’s pretty unlikely your best song will be my best song, mainly because songs are subjective and all that, but also because everyone has had different life experiences, so songs speak to each of us in different ways.

Much the same for the world’s worst songs.

Continue reading "What’s your favourite worst song?" »

If we are to believe America’s small-screen bible, TV Guide, one of the “greatest moments in television history”, occurred on September 13, 2004, when an over-excited talk-show host went whirling like a dervish amid her studio audience shrieking: “You get a car! You get a car! You get a car! Everybody gets a car!”

It was the opening episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show’s nineteenth season and even back then, the title of Daytime Television Queen was beginning to feel inadequate for Oprah. For her millions of fans, the very name brought positive energy. Oprah wasn’t just a celebrity any more, she was a state of being.

And that day her devotees got their “loaves and fishes” moment. Oprah kick-started the season premiere by revealing to her 276 live audience members that they would each receive a $30,000 Pontiac G6 sports sedan.

Continue reading "The Oprah has no clothes" »

So Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal have stripped off for the cover of Entertainment Weekly. Surprised?

It’s becoming a trend in Hollywood to gain attention through everything but their actual profession -acting.

It doesn’t shock me though that these two got partially naked to promote their new film, Love & Other Drugs. Hathaway, 27, plays liberal artist Maggie Murdock in the movie, opposite Gyllenhaal’s commitment-phobic Viagra salesman Jamie Randall.

Continue reading "Lacking a bit of attention? Get your gear off" »

If Dickens was alive he’d concede talent counts for little and intelligence for less in one’s bid to become famous in modern society.

Thanks to the internet and TV today we’re breeding a generation of talentless twits who view fame as a right, not a privilege.

In the Dickensian era, society had great expectations of those who aspired to walk among the elite.

Continue reading "Generation fame: when a real job just isn’t enough" »

Quick someone hold the babies, Angelina Jolie may about to be trumped in the unabashed pursuit of profile building philanthropy. Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria, singer LeeAnn Rimes and actor Tim Robbins are just three of the big names giving support to the latest social media craze: TwitChange.

The brainchild of an Atlanta minister seeking new ways to raise money for children of the Haitian community, TwitChange is also the latest way for celebrities to show how much they care, in 140 words of less, just as long as you’re willing to pay for it.

Continue reading "TwitChange: celebrities show they care" »

Is anyone really that shocked at a rugby league player having a big night on the turps?

The arrest in Brisbane this morning of Cowboys captain Johnathan Thurston is, as Darren Lockyer said of his mate, a real pity for him and he’ll be cursing himself for (allegedly) pushing the boundaries with the cops.

But it’s neither corrupt like a salary cap rort nor a flagrant moral infraction like taking performance-enhancers. It’s a low-level bit of stupidity and right-minded people will assess it with a shrug.

Continue reading "Johnathan Thurston and the rise of the so-what scandal" »

Dearest Oprah, can we start by saying: ohmygod ohmygod ohmyGOD.

We can’t thank you enough for getting us out of the little marketing pickle we have found ourselves in ever since the Lara Bingle Where-the-Bloody-Hell-Are-You business (yes, what were we thinking?). For your enjoyment we have enclosed some photos from inside our marketing department from the moment we heard the news that you have decided to shoot your first ever overseas show in Sydney. As you can see, there was quite the excitement.

A few more pictures follow. We will of course have a full itinerary ready by the time you arrive but now that we’re locked in there are a few preliminary things you might want to think about that we’ve listed below.

Continue reading "A thank-you note to Oprah from Tourism Australia" »

Most OTT: January Jones

Look, I applaud her for going there. She really experiments and most likely wants us to know she’s not the inspid, vacant, pretty doll character she plays on Mad Men. She’s really driving that point home here, ‘cause holier-than-thou Betty Draper wouldn’t be caught dead in this! I’m not saying I like it. Far from it. It’s too blue, too shiny, too short in the front and too long in the back, not to mention those pointy bosoms, where did they come from and WHY?  And try as I might, I can’t figure out WTF the dress is made of. Is it furry fabric? Does she think dressing like a descendant of the Cookie Monster is hot? The mind boggles. But I understand where she’s coming from. ‘Cause sure, Betty Draper looks beautiful and dresses amazingly, but I wouldn’t want to be known around Hollywood as the dumb blonde either, that’s a stereotype I’m sure would be often labelled on beautiful actresses. So January Jones is setting herself apart, and I say, let her.

Continue reading "Emmys red carpet verdict" »

Few of us will ever know how it feels to be as wealthy or perhaps as drop-dead gorgeous as Elin Nodergren, but plenty of people following the Tiger Woods saga will understand how it feels to be betrayed by someone you love. 

In her first and only interview with US People magazine this week, Nordergen admitted to have been completely “blindsided” by Tiger’s actions, that their marriage for her was a “real one” and that she had never doubted Woods for a second.

“For the last three-and-a-half years, when all this was going on, I was home a lot more with pregnancies, then the children and my school. 

“I was blindsided…I felt stupid and embarrassed,” she said of her reactions to the seemingly unending revelations of Tiger’s infidelities.

Continue reading "Elin Nordegren is stronger on her own" »

“Ben Cousins makes me want to take ice,” was the declaration of one punter into the twitterverse.

Others commented that if coke helped you get a body that ripped, it was time to get snorting.

Cousins said in the introduction of his doco Such is Life that he wanted to “send a powerful message to young people, for that matter all people, about the way drugs affect your life”.

Continue reading "The next Cousins instalment better include some remorse" »

If you’re sick of swallowing all the political chatter from Jules and Tony take a break and chew on something meaningful out of America. And it’s not President Obama’s eloquent speech at the White House Ramadan dinner, where he defended plans for a mosque at Ground Zero. Rather, meet Paula Deen, the self-described ‘Queen of Southern Cooking’.

A woman that makes burgers using donuts as buns, lasagna sandwiches and single handedly butchers food to the point that she induces dry retching. The video above involving frozen cheesecake and a large pot of boiling oil should give you a sufficient introduction to Deen’s world.

As she says: “Just when you thought you couldn’t make cheesecake any better!”

Continue reading "US celebrity chef captures hearts, may also stop them" »

Well, it’s official. Footballers are processed meat. Anyone who dares add a touch of spice must be eliminated and buried deeper than toxic waste.

If you haven’t yet caught the news, Brownlow medallist and triple premiership player Jason Akermanis has been sacked from his second club, the Western Bulldogs. This, remember, is the club that opened its arms to Big Bad Barry Hall, so you’d assume they’re prepared to give guys something approaching a long leash.

But no. Today, they’ve decided enough is enough. Seeya Aker. Don’t forget to take your ego on the way out.

Continue reading "Sackermanis: Cast out for being different" »

Mel Gibson may have had a few bad times recently, but let’s not forget that he’s still Australian. Let’s set aside the claims that he is sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and allegedly now a girlfriend-beater as well. He’s still the same lovable Mel Gibson who grew up in Sydney, who attended NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Arts), and who gave us Mad Max.

Surely he’s still the prodigal son of our land, making the nation proud.

Or maybe, now that he’s dragging down the Australian name, it’s time to admit that he’s a New Yorker and we don’t really have a legitimate claim to him.

Continue reading "Scientific proof Mel Gibson is no longer Australian" »

Linda McCartney was cool. She wore pale denim jeans, faded floral caftans and waistcoats and cut her perfect blond hair into a long mullet and spiked up the fringe.

She took photographs of the Rolling Stones, married the best Beatle and gave birth to four children.

It was the late 1960s; the beginning of rock star mania and bohemian chic and Linda nailed it. Not only that, she passed it on.

Continue reading "Linda McCartney, the bohemian queen" »

Another day, another tape exposing Mel Gibson as a wretch. In the latest recording his ex-girlfriend asks him what kind of man hits a woman with a child in her hands, “breaking her teeth twice in the face”. Gibson shouts back: “Oh, you’re all angry now? You know what, you f—king deserved it.”

Troubled artists are hardly a modern phenomenon but the ways in which their darker sides get exposed certainly are. Their worst character traits are amplified by “Hollywood enablement”, the destructive modern culture of the Thirty Mile Zone that allows stars to believe they can behave as they wish, supported as they are by coteries of flunkies and yea-sayers instead of actual friends. By the time this behaviour takes hold - as in the case of Gibson but also arguably in that of the much younger Lindsay Lohan - they have no fear of failure any more because their success is already secure.

In the best piece I’ve read on the affair since the first tape emerged, Tina Brown at The Daily Beast outlines how it makes a devastatingly strong case for celebrity leaks. She calls it a “high watermark in celebrity outing”, arguing the most unsettling aspect is not his racism - of which much has been made over his use of a particular word - but his vile misogyny. Amen to that.

Continue reading "Mad Mel Gibson and the stars we have to hate" »

In the video over the jump, as the judge orders a prison term, Lindsay Lohan appears to mouth the words “She’s jailing me?” to her lawyer and then the lip goes a-quiver in disbelief.

What did Lohan think was going to happen when she had a drink while wearing a court-ordered alcohol monitoring bracelet? A bracelet which, if you remember, she was ordered to wear after breaching probation - on charges of drink-driving and cocaine possession.

Surely she couldn’t have thought the judge would roll with another story like she told in May when she failed to turn up for a court appearance, which was basically that she had been stuck in France because a dog at the Cannes Film Festival ate her passport.

Continue reading "Yes Lilo, jail tends to follow violations of court orders" »

While she may be terrified of snakes (see video below), when it comes to smaller members of the animal kingdom, Salma Hayek just loves to eat them.

During an appearance on the David Letterman show in the US on Monday night, the Mexican born actress said “grasshoppers”, “fried ants” and “worms” are among her favourite bugs to munch.

“Ants fried are amazing – with a little guacamole. And the worms … there are many different recipes for those. The little grasshoppers have a smoky flavor to them. It’s the way they cook them, and it’s really good,” she said.

Mmmm, just in time for lunch. Hungry, anyone?

In The Wizard of Oz, the Great and Mighty Wizard is exposed as a fraud when Dorothy and Toto discover him hiding behind a curtain frantically manipulating levers and pulleys.  That moment reminds me of making television.  What viewers see on the screen is only a fraction of what’s really happening behind the scenes.

A few times, I’ve considered using this blog as a way of being more transparent about my own TV reporting.  A recent Lateline interview with the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has given me a good place to start: the compromises involved with celebrity interviewing.

Major stars usually only grant interviews when they have something to spruik, such as a new book or project.  But often what they want to sell has little to do with what the interviewer would really like to ask about.  Both sides have to make compromises, although on air, it’s meant to look like a spontaneous conversation that’s engaging both parties.

Continue reading "Well read-head: Getting stars off message in interviews" »

(Now with improved video!) Tom Cruise has appeared in character as Les Grossman, the dancing, ultra-foul-mouthed movie producer he played in Tropic Thunder, at the MTV Movie Awards. He appeared on stage with Jennifer Lopez.

If you aren’t familiar with Les Grossman, you’re missing out. Some of the dialogue scenes are too foul to put even on The Punch (no, really) but here’s the credits scene for Tropic Thunder as an introduction.

Continue reading "Tom Cruise is back as the great Les Grossman" »

What goes up must come down.

Two reports out of the United States today show that botox, the treatment once celebrated for its ability to plump and de-wrinkle a persons face, has joined the list of things now best avoided.

Well, only if you a) want to be able to recognise yourself in the mirror and b) value your natural ability to show emotion and expression.

Sharon Stone told More magazine that she’d turned to botox following her divorce to make herself feel better, but it all ended badly:

“(I thought) nobody loved me - ‘I’m 103. My life would be better if I had better lips.” 

But, she added:  “(I looked) like a trout.”

And The Daily Telegraph reports Private Practice star Amy Brenneman was put off the treatment for life when she realised she couldn’t move her face.

“What I found bizarre about it was not being able to move my face. And I literally had this thought. If you were a model or socialite, it might work, but I’m literally paid to express complex feelings with my face. So that (Botox) really wasn’t for me.”

There’s been a lot of talk in the last few days about how Jessica Watson overcame the knockers, particularly internet-dwelling knockers, when she sailed three hours late into Sydney Harbour on Saturday.

Well, I have to admit I was one of those lazy, desk-bound cynics who laughed (once we found out she was OK), when she ran into that tanker last year about four hours into her rehearsal run down the East Coast.

I was also pretty taken aback at the time that her parents thought it was hunky dory to send her off around the world knowing there was chance she wouldn’t come back. But amid the staged-managed hysteria on the Opera House forecourt on Saturday Jessica looked like the calm amid the storm.

Continue reading "Why knocking Jessica is so 2009" »

Amidst all the manufactured excitement attached to the arrival in Sydney of round-the-world sailor Jessica Watson consider this: Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister who condemned the work of Bill Henson on the basis of its alleged exploitation of teenage girls and taxed alco-pops for the binge drinking they “encouraged” among the same, is now turning up to celebrate the fact that a teenage girl was allowed to risk her life by sailing round the world for no better reason than to “break a record”.

It is just one absurdity among many in the Jessica Watson saga, a story that every day feels more and more like an episode of Chris Lilley’s We Can Be Heroes.

Adventure is on hard times. Once, those journeying into an untamed wilderness further than any man (or teenage girl) before them excited the public imagination not merely because what they were doing was dangerous but because they wished, to quote Tennyson’s words carved in memorial to Robert Scott, “to seek, to find and not to yield.”

Continue reading "Jess’s journey a dangerous, narcissistic indulgence" »

OK, so that’s a slight exaggeration of what she actually said, but everyone else is swearing this week. And it’s also not that far off the sentiment of Sharon Osborne’s (wife of wild-man Ozzy) latest outburst, that was aimed directly at us.

Today’s Courier Mail reports that Osborne, while appearing as a judge of US show Celebrity Apprentice, wasted no time in voicing her opinion of Aussie chef Curtis Stone and then Australians in general.

Here’s how it happened:

Donald Trump to Sharon Osborne: “What do you think of Curtis Stone.”

Sharon Osborne: “He’s very smug.”

Cyndi Lauper: “He’s Australian!”

“Yeah, I know,” Osbourne responded. ‘Put another shrimp on the Barbie” . He is too smug for me”.

“Are all Australian’s like that?,” a surprised Ivanka Trump asked.

“Yeah, usually, yeah,” Osbourne responded.

Sharon could be pining for the good old days of colonial rule and would like to see us Aussies put back in our place. But I think she’s just plain rude.

What about you, what do you make of what she said. Are we smug?

I love the Logies. Not for the Awards of course. Like most women, I live for the red carpet arrivals at these events. Who’s wearing what, who’s hot, who’s not.

The Logies, more so than any other event in the world, is bound to have the most interesting outfits, purely because the concept of employing a personal stylist hasn’t yet taken off with our celebrities. And that is a fashion blogger’s paradise.

MOST LIKELY TO BE AUDITIONING FOR A SHIRLEY TEMPLE MOVIE: BRYNNE GORDON

Continue reading "The Logies 2010: Best and Worst Dressed" »

Is it just Tracey Spicer, or are there a lot of people referring to themselves in the third person these days?

Illeists abound in sport, politics and entertainment.

Michael Clarke, Andrew Bogut and Jeff Fenech use it as a form of self-aggrandisement; for Silvio Berlusconi and Richard Nixon, it’s an attempt to distance themselves from controversy.

Continue reading "What does Tracey Spicer think of this column?" »

These days no self-respecting or self-preserving celeb is seen without a malnourished child, developing country or war zone.  Make up removed, with a shawl or ethnic beads for decoration, the ‘saving the world’ photo shoot is a must-have for their portfolio. 

This week Lindsay Lohan joins the fray as she fronts Lindsay Lohan’s Indian Journey, a BBC3 documentary about child trafficking in India. 

It’s heavy stuff.  The country’s economic boom has seen traffickers head to India’s poorest regions in search of children who end up working long hours in inhumane conditions, with some forced into prostitution. 

Continue reading "Lindsay Lohan’s stupid celebrity quest to save India" »

The media storm surrounding Lara Bingle and that bloke who plays cricket has got me thinking about the pressures of celebrity and whether we should give a bugger about putting famous people under such intense scrutiny. It also got me thinking about my own brief, shameful experience with harassing a star.

Several years ago I went to dinner at a posh Chinese restaurant. This may sound perfectly benign, but I’m a squeamish vegetarian. Being surrounded by living things swimming in tanks meant the only thing on the menu that looked vaguely appetising was the beer. Two slabs later, while my friends were still picking at their entrees, I decided I needed to make a phone call.

I staggered down the restaurant stairs like a drag queen post-Sleaze Ball and off to the phone box outside. In the middle of this drink-and-dial episode I spotted a large man sheltering a smaller man in a way that made him look important. So I dropped the phone and tottered over to see who the smaller man was. It turned out it was the actor John Cusack. Being a self-anointed film critic I proceeded helpfully to tell him who he was. “You’re John Cusack”, I slurred.

Continue reading "Maybe celebrities deserve our sympathy, not our scorn" »

Whitney Houston arrived in Australia with an airport controversy and now there’s backlash surrounding her first concert in Brisbane and her Sydney show last night.

By some accounts it doesn’t appear the shows were a resounding success. All I can say is: the poor unfortunate. I’ve never really followed her but I can empathise with anyone who has a bad night on stage.

She’s 46 years of age, has a well documented history of an excessive lifestyle and now she’s back on the road trying to recreate the magic of her hits. It’s a tough undertaking and will take a lot of strength and character.

Continue reading "Whitney’s bad reviews will be a real test of character" »

In Adelaide today Miranda Kerr was asked what three things she would take to a desert island. She said: “My Kora rosehip oil because it is multipurpose, definitely my boyfriend and maybe my little dog.”

Maybe she means “multipurpose” as in it helps you build a shelter and possibly even a boat. I’m not sure what use Orlando Bloom would be but perhaps you could eat the dog.

Tors would take sunblock, waterproof matches and Bear Grylls. I think my list would be a Swiss Army knife, an iPad - and Miranda Kerr. Anyway, it’s obvious what comes next: what would you bring?

It’s a sad sad day in fashion. One of the most brilliant designers of our time, Alexander McQueen has committed suicide and left behind a style world in mourning. For those of you who aren’t in fashion, this probably doesn’t mean a lot. Big deal, another poncy designer bites the dust.

But this is a big deal. It reminds me of when Gianni Versace was killed, though I was probably too young to be sad then. This time round, when one of the greats is and it has left an empty hole on the catwalk.

See, there aren’t many greats in the fashion world. That’s why they’re revered. Sure, there are lots of people who call themselves designers, but as Kate Moss said recently, rebuffing the remark that she was a designer to UK Harper’s Bazaar journalist Glenn O’Brien: “Um . . . I’m not really a fashion designer, I just love clothes. I’ve never been to design school. I can’t sketch. I can’t cut patterns and things. I can shorten things. I can make a dress out of a scarf.”

Continue reading "Alexander McQueen’s death leaves a hole on the catwalk" »

Get your exclamation marks at the ready – Naomi Robson’s new online love and relationships internet show went live this morning and it’s offering some tired and hackneyed advice on a website near you!

There are some odd assignments on The Punch but so far none has been as left-field as getting up at the crack of dawn on a Monday to listen to Naomi Robson talking about sex. But tally-ho.

The Naomi Show clips open with the sound of an audience golf-clapping politely, followed by some whoops building to a cheer. Then Robson’s on screen, staring into the camera with that customary, hyper-professional glare that makes you believe she’d be delivering those lines even if, striding to her seat seconds beforehand, she trod on a puppy.

Continue reading "Where is the Naomi Robson we love to click on?" »

Certain flaws are necessary for the whole.  It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.  ~ Goethe

It’s amazing how you can carry something around with you. Tic-tac teeth for instance.

A number of years ago somebody referred to me as tic-tac teeth on National television and since that point I’ve carried the comment everywhere I’ve gone.

Continue reading "Strength and comfort from being honest about flaws" »

UPDATE 9am: Ah, Hollywood. Entertainment news sites in the US cite sources close to the couple denying Angelina and Brad are breaking up. “It’s B.S.” was the quote to TMZ. No denial that they’ve seen a lawyer, but maybe the fairytale isn’t finished yet.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are reportedly set to break up. Without wanting to be too facetious about it, how could any couple survive with all those kids, money, and fame?

Dysfunctional, doomed relationships are the rule rather than the exception among Hollywood’s megastars. Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore seem pretty happy together but with a relationship that smacks of a public relations power play as much as theirs, it is hard to see them growing old happily together, him in his 50s lovingly tending to both a vegetable patch and the needs of his septuagenarian wife.

“Brad Split” and “Pitts all over” was how the UK’s News of the World broke the news that the world’s best-looking couple in Hollywood had been to see a top divorce lawyer to negotiate their separation (they’re not legally married). There have been rumours for a long time now that their marriage had become difficult following the death of Jolie’s mother. Repeated public claims that a relationship is doomed must start to create a sense of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Continue reading "And they lived happily ever - wait, no, this is Hollywood" »

“She is DEAD! F*CKING HAVE RESPECT FOR HER!” - Part of Tila Tequila’s tweet stream.

Hollywood has responded to the tragic death of 30-year-old heiress Casey Johnson in the only way that Hollywood can; by turning the attention away from the departed and on to themselves by outpouring their grief and sympathy - in 140 characters on twitter. The celebrity obsession with the micro-blogging site seems to be more addictive than prescriptive medication in LA.

Lindsay Lohan, DJ Samantha Ronson, Paris Hilton and Tila Tequila have all tweeted about the heiress’s death.

Continue reading "Tila Tequila and the end of grieving in private" »

Kate Moss, who has made millions of dollars from being pretty skinny, has said: “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” You can read the news story here.

Cue outrage! How dare she actively encourage young women to starve themselves! She’s a role model! You can read the hundreds of condemning articles here.

Seriously? Do we really expect a woman who once devoted quite a bit of time to Pete Doherty to be a pin up for healthy living? Relying on the likes of Moss to guide our girls is dooming ourselves to perpetual disappointment. And putting too much store by what she says derails the body image debate.

Continue reading "We expect too much from our celebrities" »

A few grouches have been rolling their eyes this week at the hysteria around Tiger Woods playing at the Australian Masters. I must admit to being a bit taken aback by the extremity of the hype but then you watch him go around this morning, sinking three birdies on the back nine to lead the field in the clubhouse and you remember.

The guy’s a freak.

Granted, he’s a freak with not much personality, but then for all their colourful trousers golfers are an unexciting species. The closest thing golf has produced to a John McEnroe or Diego Maradona is John Daly who likes to do a lot of eating, drinking and even (gasp!) smoking. Maradona, by contrast, was busted for cocaine use, spent time in hospital after overdoses and had to have his stomach stapled because it was the only way to stop him becoming morbidly obese.

Continue reading "What all the fuss is about" »

Whoa whoa whoa! Australia, hold up. Let’s tread carefully here… do we really want to induce another Britney Spears meltdown?

Because that’s what we’re skirting with this teacup tempest over the somewhat faded pop star’s decision to lip synch the bulk of each stop on her current concert tour.

Since kicking off the Australian leg of her 60-date comeback roadshow at Perth’s Burswood Dome last week, Spears has faced a page one Daily Telegraph hitpiece, reports of WA fans demanding refunds (a claim the venue denied in a statement) and the sort of media harassment usually reserved for Dennis Ferguson.

Continue reading "Let’s not give Britney another nervous breakdown" »

Life’s about film stars and less about mothers. It’s all about fast cars and cussing each other. But it doesn’t matter cause I’m packing plastic, and that’s what makes my life so f***ing fantastic.

And I am a weapon of massive consumption and it’s not my fault, it’s how I’m programmed to function. I’ll look at the sun and I’ll look in the mirror I’m on the right track, yeah I’m on to a winner. - Lily Allen.

The body image issues that plague so many women in our society are very real and are, in their essence, rooted in fear.

Continue reading "The fear making mothers invisible" »

In an interview on Sixty Minutes on Sunday Tara Brown asked Michael Buble why he became a singer.

He responded with ‘You want the truth or do you want a good story?’ 

Brown wanted the truth (being a journalist what else could she say?) and he gave it to her: ‘I wanted to get laid.’

Continue reading "The sad truth of celebrities is many of them are just dull" »

Remember Buck Rogers and the 25th Century, where the women all wore space age silver outfits and zipped around in metallic all-in-ones with sharp shoulders, bubbles on hips and weird shoe contraptions?

Well it appears the 25th century has come early, and I’m not entirely sure I’m happy about it.

It started last year with Balmain and The Shoulder, as it’s now referred to in fashion circles, which became an accessory all on its own. The Balmain jacket which featured The Shoulder, cost over $11,000 sold out in one week.

Continue reading "Is the future of fashion here?" »

When my little cousin waltzes into my room and asks me for nail polish, it doesn’t really bother me. Perhaps her decision to forego my sexy reds and vixen blacks for the playschool razzle dazzle of my fluro pinks and purples fills me with a little confidence that her safe and happy childhood is very much intact.

Then there are the other times, when she waltzes in my room wearing blue eye shadow and shiny pink lip gloss, and asks me for help in adding more artificial crap to her face.

Those are the times I know we have a colouring-outside-the-lines situation – and not just because she misses the outline of her lips.

Continue reading "Lambs dressed up as mutton" »

The fact that our Prime Minister is happy to talk about who he would turn gay for on Rove, but won’t answer a serious question about gay rights on Q and A should be a warning sign to us all. 

Whilst Kevin Rudd works hard to cultivate the image of a lightweight talk show host, we should remember he is actually a player in the most ego driven business in town – the perfect storm of parliamentary democracy. 

In fact, his title awards him status of biggest and best on field in a ruthless industry which demands people with large egos, plies them with attention to feed their distended self-esteems and treats them like royalty as they make laws and spend our money on our behalf.

Continue reading "In politics, chutzpah is just a polite word for hubris" »

This is Vanessa Hudgens, one of the teen stars to come out of Disney’s insanely successful High School Musical trilogy.

She’s also the girlfriend of the most lusted after young male star in the world, Zac Efron (he even eclipses Twilight’s Robert Pattinson as the love object du jour), is currently starring in a successful new movie, Bandslam, has a coveted cosmetics contract with Neutrogena and … she has just come through another nude photo scandal.

Yes, another nude photo scandal. Great achievement, non? All by the ripe old age of 20.

Continue reading "Sexifying young Hollywood" »

I’ll be out door-knocking in Bennelong this weekend, talking to real people and listening to their stories. Nothing beats it for direct feedback on a range of fronts. Every time I do it I come away with a couple of reaffirming anecdotes – usually about people’s resilience, ingenuity, wisdom, and humanity. Real human interest stories aren’t hard to come by. You just have to listen. 

The last thing I’ll be doing this weekend will be switching on the television. I’m trying to avoid becoming an unwilling passenger on Michael Jackson’s final journey home to Neverland.

Despite my best efforts I suspect that, like death and taxes, celebrity death coverage will still prove to be inescapable. As we’ve seen across last week’s media landscape, dead celebrities are the undisputed rulers of the news cycle.

Continue reading "Drop the dead celebrity, I’ve got a good news story" »

Gifted comic Sacha Baron Cohen has shown misplaced restraint by snipping an inoffensive Michael Jackson joke from his upcoming moneymaker Bruno.

[Bruno in the early days. Clip contains strong language]

So what do we deduce from this? A public figure’s ripe for a skewering as long as they’re alive, but become off-limits on death?

When can we start forwarding those corny text message jokes about Jacko’s plastic surgery and questionable private life? How soon is too soon?

Continue reading "Bruno cuts Jackson scene - who’s the biggest loser?" »

I was bunkered down in 1997 finishing a book called Gotcha: Life in a Tabloid World when I was disturbed by a phone call. Something about a woman called Diana who’d died in a car crash the day before. I had no clue. The journo on the other end of the phone thought she’d accidentally called Mars.

Having lived through both the OJ trial and the Lewinsky/Clinton affair in New York I thought I knew what the eye of a celebrity death, sex or scandal storm looked like. I spent the next week fielding questions from the media about why the media couldn’t stop asking people questions about Diana.

The highbrow journos were all in deep shock about the public interest in a woman they saw as a dim blonde who liked disco dancing, enemas and psychics.

But they were equally transfixed by the level of public grief at her passing The only journalists who really understood what was going on were tabloid reporters – hacks in the minds of the ABC-types who’d previously seen themselves as gatekeepers of the news agenda.

Continue reading "Jackson’s death a study in tabloid human instincts" »

You get kicked in the head, are bleeding and think you probably need the cops, what do you do?

A: ask someone nearby to call the police

B: use your mobile phone to call the police

C: use your mobile phone to log onto Twitter and tell your 1,030,000 followers to call the police for you.

Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton might not live in the real world with the rest of us, but they were allegedly real bruises he was sporting last night - and real police officers required to sort out what happened after he chose option C.

Continue reading "2009 personified: “I’ve been bashed” in 140 characters" »

The other week I got hit on, rather aggressively, by a woman. So what, right? I thought so too, but when I relayed the story to my male friends, their response was uniform: “Were you wearing this purple nailpolish at the time? Of course you got hit on by a woman! Those nails are screaming out that you like it kinky!”

Excuse me? Really? And here I was thinking I was just being fashionable. On further investigation (read: insightful office polling and questioning others via email), turns out that you can, indeed, give off the wrong message with your clothing. Tight white jeans? You want some. Florals? You’re a prude. Yellow? It scares men away.

To allay any confusion and make sure you don’t leave the house broadcasting unintentional signals, I’ve had a go at translating what celebrities are saying with their outfits. Shouting, in most cases. Here, let me demonstrate:

Ashley Tisdale

“I’m so ridiculously young, famous and good looking that it doesn’t matter if I’m wearing something that looks like I nicked it from Maria Sharapova’s wardrobe. I’m allowed to wear a tennis outfit with fringed, slashed, suede ankle boots if I want to. You know why? ‘Cause I’m the best thing to come out of the most publicized movie of 2009 and as long as my hair is done and I have all this arm jewellery, you’ll still love me. And 15-year-old girls will copy me.”

Continue reading "If clothes could talk, here’s what they’d say about you" »

There are new kids on the celebrity block. New sheriffs in the town of fame. They’re not captains of industry or masters of any particular discipline. They’re not even particularly good at anything. They are the people who are famous for no other reason but that they were fortunate enough to exist at a time where minute details travel faster and further than large-scale ideals, and there ain’t a damn thing any of us can or seem to want to do about it.

These new celebrities are your Paris Hiltons. Your Corey Worthingtons. Your Axel Whiteheads. Anyone who decided that there was a future in the media after being evicted from the Big Brother house. Their fame is fame, and they want to live forever.

But until now these rampant fame whores have almost been taking the piss out of the famous-for-nothing genre. Even though their accomplishments and hills of beans are pretty much of equal proportion, they still possess even the slightest trace of talent for something. They’re not truly connected to the source of nothingness, and like devout disciples of insignificance, have been waiting for their mundane Messiah to return and show them all the bland, dim light. Well, Hosanna in the lowest has arrived, and the saviour’s name is Arthur Kade.

Continue reading "Touching the void - the new celebrities of nothing" »

1. It will not change your life

Going on a reality TV show may not be the life changing experience you thought it was going to be. The number of people auditioning for MasterChef Australia who thought getting into the top 50 was going to change their lives was mind boggling. Chances are you will be back in your day job flipping burgers before the credits have even rolled.

Even winning a show is no guarantee of success. Eboni Stocks, the winner of season 2 of Australia’s Next Top Model was last sighted working in a café, and Australian Idol winner Casey Donovan was spotted busking at Rozelle Markets.

Tip: Keep your expectations real. If you are wanting a career change maybe a TAFE course may be a better option

Continue reading "Ten things you need to know before going on reality TV" »