The rise and fall of Elsternwick’s The Daily Planet
Before famous Elsternwick brothel The Daily Planet was raided by police, the world’s first publicly traded brothel was a “six-star bordello” once visited by Hollywood identities.
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In 2003, the world’s first publicly traded brothel, The Daily Planet, opened with a bang.
Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss was given the title of “international ambassador”, joining owners John Trimble and Andrew Harris before a packed media in Elsternwick’s appropriately named Horne St.
Heiss declared before stock started trading on the ASX, “Obviously, the price is going up.”
Named after the newspaper where Superman worked as reporter Clark Kent, the receptionists went by the name of Lois Lane.
The lobby featured a telephone booth. Rooms were available with two or four-person showers.
There were eight-person mirrored spa baths and beds where “your deepest and most sought-after desires” could be met.
“It’s sex,” swooned Fleiss, who once served a jail sentence for tax evasion. “Everyone knows sex is a smart investment.”
But as the ol’ Johns from those heady days would tell you, what goes up must come down.
This week, police were pictured carrying what looked like a Breaking Bad-esque meth cooker out of the former “six-star bordello”.
The Daily Planet had 18 rooms with different themes. The Grecian and Roman orgies were popular.
The brothel was sold in 2016 after Trimble’s company Planet Platinum went into receivership.
Trimble’s name used to have an “o” in it, just like his late Calabrian mafia boss uncle Robert Trimbole.
Trimble changed it years ago and says he’s tired of people constantly asking him about it.
“I’ve got nothing,” he told Page 13 yesterday. “Fifty years down the drain. I’ve lost my home. I’ve lost my farm. I’ve lost my business.”
Trimble moved to Queensland to look after his sick mother after The Daily Planet and his King St strip club, Showgirls Bar 20, went bust after the liquidators got their hands on it.
After selling it “for a steal”, the former brothel was supposedly turned into a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility under the name of The Wellbeing Planet.
It kept most of the old bordello furnishings including the spa baths and what were known as “duress” buttons. A police source said some of the new clientele looking to dry out found it all a tad “triggering”.
Thankfully for Trimble he postponed the visit as cops swarmed the premises and arrested a man who had been allegedly hiding in the ceiling for two days.
“It used to be considered an icon and now its considered as notorious,” Trimble reminisced.
“They see dirty and they think dirty.”
Dirty doings done dirt cheap!