Annette Sharp: Kerri-Anne Kennerley wins no fans on I’m a Celebrity

Kerri-Anne Kennerley sang the praises of her male co-stars during her short stint on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here — much to the ire a fellow female contestant and ex-MAFS star, writes Annette Sharp.

Just when some of us were starting to suspect Kerri-Anne Kennerley had been quietly cryopreserved and entombed — along with Kerry Packer’s favourite pets — in the concrete foundations of the vast new residential development that now occupies Channel 9’s old Willoughby studios lot, along came a desperate reality show casting exec with a chequebook and a honeyed pitch to entice her back onto the small screen.

It turns out Kennerley is still very much among the living and is still clamouring for public affection.

Her latest attempt at a TV comeback, on Ten’s I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here, doesn’t appear to have enhanced 69-year-old Miss Kennerley’s popularity.

In fact, she may have blown herself up completely this week.

This self-detonation took place on Thursday after she refused to participate in a food trial and said no to eating a kudu testicle, a task that would have benefited the entire cast.

MAFS alumni Domenica Calarco (right) made her feelings about fellow I’m a Celebrity contestant Kerri-Anne Kennerley crystal clear.

First she was called a “self-centred bitch”, “literally with no decency, no respect for anyone else” on the program by fiery straight-shooting millennial Domenica Calarco.

The charge was denied by Kennerley, who said it was unfair she was given three challenges in a row.

Kennerley was then broadly scorched by online media platforms targeting young audiences.

Some media claimed she was distorting the situation in an attempt to win public sympathy.

Others would brand her a quitter, something that won’t sit well with the veteran entertainer.

Far from reviving her career and making her relevant to a younger generation, as she may have hoped, the episode served only to expose Kennerley’s tough-as-nails, uncompromising nature, the legacy of a 50-year television career.

Kennerley’s TV career has spanned five decades.

Ten executives would have known who they were casting.

No amount of sanctioned make-up (another irritation for Calarco) can obscure these character traits.

Ten was, after all, the network that first launched Kennerley to national prominence as the co-host of Good Morning Australia in the eighties.

After stints at both Nine and Seven, Kennerley returned to Ten in 2018 when she signed on as a part-time panellist on morning show Studio 10.

But, while she shone at Ten in the male-dominated eighties, by 2018 the world had become a very different place.

For starters, her conservative, hardline, old-school values were by then out of step with climate change proponents.

In 2019, she upset young and old alike when she advocated using climate change protesters participating in the Extinction Rebellion as “speed bumps” and having them thrown into jail and starved.

The comment drew widespread criticism and Ten later was forced to clarify the provocative statement had been uttered in jest.

The following year, after a series of comments from Kennerley upset minority groups, she drew new fire after she took a shot at journalist Antoinette Lattouf, with whom she was sharing the Studio 10 couch. Lattouf’s mistake? To wear a short playsuit.

“Did you forget your pants today?” Kennerley said, a remark that sounded more than a little like “slut shaming”.

Kennerley would later privately apologise for the remark.

Like many female TV personalities of her era, Kennerley has long appeared more at ease with men in the media than women.

That’s because it’s men who traditionally do the employing in the industry, even the ones who sometimes sexually harass you and unzip your dress without your permission, as she repeated in the African jungle last week — though, again, she’s yet to identify or shame that man.

A teary Kennerley back at camp, after the trial. Picture: Channel 10

When this writer reported in 2013 that Kennerley was “out of contract” with Seven, she seized the opportunity to lash out at me across four pages of the Australian Women’s Weekly – though had not one negative word for the Seven executives who had failed to renew her contract.

Having last week identified Calarco as one who had “abused” her, Kennerley was soon singing the praises of the men in the I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here camp.

“I loved being in camp with everybody … (My) favourite moment, besides meeting and talking to every single person in there, there was a Q&A with Woody, Peter (Helliar) and Harry (Garside).

“To spend that time listening to three fabulous men of varying ages from 48 to 25 … it was truly one of the most magical times listening to those boys.”

Calarco 1. Kennerley 0.

‘BUBBLES’ FISHER ESTATE A GLIMPSE OF A CHAMPAGNE LIFE

Two months after her death, the estate of the late royal correspondent and social commentator Diana “Bubbles” Fisher is set to go under the hammer.

Auctioneers Theodore Bruce have catalogued 102 lots of fine art, furniture, homewares, decorative art, and what they call “champagne memorabilia” — the contents of Fisher’s tidy Woollahra home, which is expected to also soon go to market — for April 17 auction.

Royal watcher Fisher died in January, aged 91, after finally succumbing to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Diana Fisher, who was known and loved as ‘Bubbles’.

The vivacious journalist, who married but had no children, was active well into her final year, the proud British-born “Bubbles” even picking up the best small garden honour in the 2022 Woollahra Garden Awards in November.

The relatively humble contents of Fisher’s home — including a collection of Victorian-styled mahogany furniture, some silverware, dinner services by Royal Doulton and Villeroy & Boch, a Harrod’s ice bucket and cut-glass decanter commemorating the coronation of King George V in 1911 — have, for the most part, been given an auctioneer’s estimate of under $100 per lot.

Some exceptions include a John Olsen Giclee print, Spoonbills & Frogs (estimate $2000-$4000); a Jules Francois oil on linen painting, Pont Neuf (estimate $1500-$2500); and Paul Osborne Jones watercolour, Blue Waterlilies (estimate $800-$1200).

Undoubtedly one of the most unique lots in the auction is 2547, “Diana Fisher’s Visitors Books”.

The two leather books — one dated 1959 to 1992, the other from 1981 to 2022 — feature signatures, comments and sketches from some of Fisher’s celebrated and pampered private household guests.

Among them are English archaeologist and writer Jacquetta Hawkes, who championed gay law reform and campaigned for nuclear disarmament, and her husband John Boynton Priestley, the English novelist and playwright.

Inscriptions on a page dated March 27, 1966 — when Fisher and her husband Humphrey had returned to London for a spell — include those purported to be of playwright Noel Coward and actors Larry Olivier, Sybil Thorndike and Errol Flynn, who observed “You’re very good at it Diana!”

History doesn’t relate what “it” was, but entertaining is assumed, as she was renowned for her dinner parties.

Bidding on Fisher’s treasured visitors books was at $140 on Friday.

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