The Rundown: Love Island star swears off AFL bad boys; Sam Pang’s 3AW match

A Ballarat fashion student has confessed to hooking up with 10 AFL players but has branded them bad boyfriend material.

Phoebe Spiller is ready to broaden her dating horizons from AFL players.

A fashion student from Ballarat with an affliction for AFL players looks set to be one of the breakout stars of the news season of Love Island Australia.

Phoebe Spiller, 24, who is now based in Bondi, has bounded into frame on the fast love Channel 9 series with the attention-grabbing claim about her AFL fixation.

“I do have a little thing for AFL boys,” Spiller spilled on the show.

“I am going to say 10+ that I have gotten with.”

But having been with more than 10 AFL players, she said she was ready to broaden her dating horizons on the show.

“No more AFL players, maybe another sport,” Spiller cooed.

“My number one thing is finding someone funny. I’m such a chilled, relaxed, laid-back person. I’m also trying to go off my usual pattern. I usually go for athletes, a very stereotypical type of athlete, AFL footy players. I think I want to try out different types.”

According to Spiller, AFL players are not good relationship material.

“I don’t think they are datable,” she said.

“I will have a bit of fun with them, but with none of them I have really gone, ‘you are going to be my boyfriend’.”

Just how long her resistance to type will last is debatable.

Conveniently, one former AFL player Mitch Hibberd, who was on Love Island last year, is part of the show’s dating action later in the series.

Expect sparks to fly between these two.

Reasons to love Pang for AW

With Sam Pang not tied to Nova FM next year could this mean he is heard occasionally on 3AW?

Pang has friendly ties to Melbourne’s number 1 radio station and is great mates with AW’s breakfast king Ross Stevenson.

He has taken part in Stevenson’s Love Letter to Footy lunch and in August was a guest speaker at Stevenson’s Rumours Feast fundraising lunch at the Regent Plaza Ballroom.

Landing him as an occasional guest on one of the AW shows would be a joy for listeners.

Sam Pang would be a perfect fit for a spot on 3AW. Picture: Tina Smigielski

Just what Pang’s next move will be in radio is still unclear. He is one of the most popular radio and TV performers in the country, but part of his appeal is that he commits to very little – quality over quantity?

He has TV covered with Have You Been Paying Attention for Channel 10 and The Front Bar with Channel 7.

It was at that Rumours Feast event, in front of several hundred guests, that Pang gave a cheeky shout out to Nine’s head of radio content, Greg Byrnes.

“Greg, obviously you are very important. I’m just letting you know I am out of contract at the end of the year,” he said.

It was also at that event that Stevenson asked: “You will head back to AW eventually, won’t you?”

Pang started his radio career at Triple R, but his first paying job was as a producer at 3AW where he worked on Sports Today with Clinton Grybas and Dwayne Russell.

Kylie’s ex races away with best dressed

You have to love someone who gets the dress code memo and nails it.

Monarch star Joshua Sasse, in a morning suit and top hat, raced away with the best dressed title in the Paramount marquee on Melbourne Cup Day.

Sasse, who once was engaged to Kylie Minogue, and his wife Louisa were in Melbourne for a couple of days last week from their Byron Bay base, with the well-spoken English actor, writer and poet keen to work more in Australia.

Joshua Sasse smoked up the Birdcage with wife Louisa Ainsworth. Picture: Channel 10

“I have just signed on with an Australian agent and I would really love to do some work here,” Sasse said.

“I have a couple of films booked in for the beginning of next year and then hopefully a second season (of Monarch) starts in April (it films in Atlanta).

“I’m really keen to work with Australian filmmakers. I feel Australian now, I have been here five years, these are my roots.”

Reality couple to watch

TV lovebirds Elliot Isles and Madeline Cowe made their social debut as a couple on Derby Day at Flemington.

The pair fell for each other while filming the Paramount+ series The Bridge.

“We finished filming in February, so we had to keep it a secret, a lot of flying back and forth between Brisbane and Sydney and not being seen together,” Isles said.

The couple did not rule out doing another reality show.

“I’d love to do something together like The Amazing Race,” Isles said.

Cowe is a former Miss World Australia and Miss Universe Australia contestant. Both she and Isles are models.

Elliot Isles and Madeline Cowe met while filming The Bridge. Picture: Getty Images

Hugh Jackman's first onscreen kiss with Rebecca Gibney, Picture: Supplied

Gibney scores the kiss quinella

Gold Logie winner Rebecca Gibney’s romantic interlude with Hugh Jackman, the husband of one of her dearest friends, Deborra-lee Furness, has been revealed.

Gibney was the subject of Jackman’s first on-screen kiss in an episode of Halifax FP in 1998.

In the same episode, Gibney’s character was also the object of unrequited desire for the character played by Furness.

The trio shared the on-screen love triangle tail during Gibney’s This Is Your Life episode which aired on Channel 7 on Monday.

The special drew 581,000 overnight metro viewers and was just pipped by the Australian Story profile on Tim Minchin which had 585,000 overnight metro viewers.

One of the joys of the show was seeing some of Australia’s most wonderful screen stars – Furness, Sigrid Thornton, Kerry Armstrong and Jane Hall – supporting and celebrating Gibney.

There were some lovely moments featuring those brilliant, clever, talented, sophisticated women.