Hamish Blake buys swanky Grand Designs Australia house in Rowena Pde, Richmond

WHICH multimillion-dollar mansion would you pick? The bells and whistles with roof deck and pool or the charming, graceful historic home?

Hamish chooses the swanky option

WHICH multimillion-dollar mansion would you pick?

Both in inner Richmond, both with price tags nudging $5 million — a record for the suburb.

Would you choose all the bells and whistles of a new build, including internal elevator, roof deck and swimming pool? That’s the Rowena Pde house featured on Grand Designs Australia and built on land once owned by former senator John Button.

The swanky Rowena Parade home.

The historic Lennox Street home.

Or would you be tempted towards one of the biggest and oldest historic homes in Richmond’s Lennox St, with all the charm and grace of a bygone era, complete with historic stables and enough land for an orchard and four-car garage?

That was the dilemma facing high-profile comedian Hamish Blake, who had the pick of both. And the answer is ... the swanky new Grand Designs house in Rowena Pde.

Blake, 33, has plenty to smile about these days.

He is now holidaying with his wife, Zoe, and toddler, Sonny, in the Maldives. This followed a daunting three-day pro-am bike ride through Italy’s Dolomites, the 2015 Trois Etape Giro, which he completed to raise awareness for charity Soldier On.

Blake and fellow scallywag Andy Lee are rumoured to be the highest-paid FM radio hosts, set to net well above a million dollars each a year when they return to the airwaves early next month to help drive lift the spirits of Southern Cross Austereo.

Best friends and wingmen, the hot radio duo can soon call themselves neighbours, with Lee just
a hop, skip and a jump away in Richmond.

SERVING IT UP

FIRST Pete Evans served up his day on a plate, pontificating on activated almonds. Then Jodhi Meares in all her Zen-ness mused that her typical day involved having a good dose of vitamin C, administered intravenously of course, before she jumps on a plane.

Now Lleyton Hewitt has offered some sage advice to the UK news on what he gets up to in “My Kind of Town: Melbourne”.

C’mon, when was the tennis champ last doing Chap laps with Bec? Forget the designer clothes, Hewitt says Chapel St is, erm, “where you’ll find something quintessentially Australian like a boomerang”.

 

TOUGH LUNCH BREAK

A COUNTY Court judge was forced to take shelter this week after an angry mob rioted outside his court.

One woman even stripped down before riot police and about a dozen PSOs were forced to step in.

But they were nowhere to be seen when the crowd mobbed, heckled and abused judge Mark Dean as he left the court for lunch.

He was later seen taking shelter at the Magistrates’ Court across the road, demanding PSOs remove the protesters before being ushered through a back entrance flanked by security. The judge, who has presided over the riot-invoking matter for five weeks, called lawyers involved in the case to appear before him immediately.

 

GOOD VIEWS IN FLORIDA

PERHAPS Woolies, in their fresh global search for a head grocer after boss Grant O’Brien gave himself (and 1200 others) the axe this week, should look no further than Ian McLeod.

The former Melbourne-based Coles chief left in January.

Only problem? He seems to be enjoying the green US pastures as Bi-Lo CEO, snapping up an ocean-fronted Florida estate last week for $8.2 million. Wonder if his ex-Coles comms manager Anna Kelly, who also left for the States earlier this year, has had a chance to take in the view?

Judy Moran leaves the Supreme Court.

 

MORAN IS THE NEW BLACK

IN jail for the murder of her brother-in-law, “Tuppence” Moran, and suing the Victorian Government for two alleged assaults, Judy Moran is finding jail time is hard time.

The crime family matriarch, whose husband and two sons were murdered during Melbourne’s gangland killings, tried to jump the queue at the medical centre at the Dame Phyllis Frost women’s prison at Deer Park this week, but was told she needed to take her turn with the other prisoners.

“Judy was furious,” says our snitch. “She’s finding jail very tough and has many health problems. It felt like the final straw.”

Moran, who is in a wheelchair, thought she had a special pass. Then came a showdown with the prison governor. Aunty Judy, as she is affectionately known to some of the prisoners, wants to go back to her comfortable, low-security unit in the jail.

She was sharing with three other prisoners in a jailhouse version of MasterChef. They had a weekly budget to cook their own food, but after a fight broke out earlier this year Judy was moved.

During the meeting with the governor, also attended by four senior staff, Moran complained guards were using “standover tactics” on her on a daily basis, making her stand when she got out of bed at 8am instead of doing her exercises.

The governor told her she wasn’t able to look after herself in the shared unit and would remain in the high-security single cell. Let’s hope Aunty Judy’s got plenty of wool for her knitting needles to pass the time.

WILL PET BE ALLOWED ON THE BLOCK?

THE Block’s been thrown into turmoil after sexually explicit pictures surfaced of one of its latest contestants.

It is understood producers from the Nine renovating reality show are in a spin on how to handle the raunchy images and whether to keep the woman as a contestant.

The racy pictures hail from the 1990s, when she featured as a Penthouse Pet of the Year dressed scantily in white lacy lingerie.

Filming is well under way on the 11th series at South Yarra’s Hotel Saville — the site of the notorious “vampire gigolo sex attack”. While contestants on the latest season of The Block have yet to be revealed to the public, it appears our girl already has quite a loyal fan base.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE ...

CORANGAMITE MP Sarah Henderson might apply a little extra scrutiny when selecting campaign volunteers in her marginal federal seat at the next election.

An embarrassing photo exists of Ms Henderson out on the hustings alongside travel agent Jordan Dittloff, who has been charged with 36 counts of theft after allegedly ripping off dozens of clients.

Next to Dittloff is Aaron Lane, an ex-Liberal candidate, who was forced to quit weeks out from last year’s Victorian election over a series of homophobic tweets. Completing the rogues gallery is young Liberal Scott Harrison, a former Neo-Nazi who claimed in 2010 that the Port Arthur massacre was a Jewish conspiracy.

Sky News reporter Laura Jayes. Picture: Instagram

MIDWINTER BELLE

All “ayes” were on Sky News political reporter Laura Jayes’ entrance at the pollies’ annual Midwinter Ball on Wednesday night, with one spy telling us “it was the most exciting thing that has happened in Canberra since the Dismissal”.

SAY WHAT?!

“The trouser bandit sits over there”

SCOTT Morrison points to Bill Shorten during Question Time, but does the Social Services Minister know the, er, slang meaning is flamin’ different to the Labor leader having a pocket full of cash?

JUST SAYIN’

HOW hard is it to say thank you to one of the greatest players to pull on a boot for Carlton? The club’s diminishing membership should put the question to chief executive Steven Trigg, whose only mention of the Juddmeister in his latest newsletter was to announce he was a member of the selection panel to find a coach. Trigg asks the Carlton “tribe’’ to “please stick with us’’ as the once famous, old dark Blues languish as the AFL’s cellar dweller. Whether Trigg has been accepted as a member of the “tribe’’ after arriving last season from Adelaide, where, like Carlton, he was guilty of salary cap cheating, is another question.

JUST ASKIN’

Which famous foodie might yet get caught up in the unravelling Fiat Chrysler scandal? He was a business partner of a mate of Clyde Campbell, the former Fiat boss accused in a Federal Court writ of misappropriating $30 million from the auto giant.