Deadline: Slow social media learners at Hayden Burbank’s party

A stint sharing a Perth jail cell with a bikie boss should be enough to teach some social media humility — not so for the mates of grand final border hopper Hayden Burbank.

Hayden Burbank seems a slow learner when it comes to social media.

Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.

BURBANK BUBBLES OVER

Some people never learn about the perils of social media.

Deadline has been told that lack of awareness was again, briefly, on show at the recent welcome-home shindig for Covid border hopper Hayden Burbank — the same turkey who, incidentally, has form for skiving his way to Mt Buller during lockdown earlier in the footy season.

One of those at the party filmed the guest of honour swigging from a champagne bottle as the party warmed up.

Whichever genius did the filming then posted it to Instagram — where it was torn down soon after.

Guests arrive at Burbank’s house for a gathering. Picture: Tony Gough

As one observer remarked, the cheeky tone of the footage might have been a bit jarring given Burbank’s elaborate displays of remorse for the behaviour that landed him in Perth’s Hakea Prison for a few months.

Doing time in the big house was no doubt a culture shock for the well-connected Toorak bar-owner, who disgraced himself by faking identity documents to get into Western Australia to attend the Demons’ grand final game in Perth. And then to shout himself a nice holiday at Margaret River.

Sam Newman last week told his podcast audience that Burbank shared a cell with the West Australian boss of the Comanchero outlaw bikie gang, which makes it an example of a chardonnay Demon bunking in with the real thing.

Burbank and the bikie wouldn’t have been the first odd couple among jail buddies.

Without revisiting bad-taste jokes with punch lines such as “Lester Piggott’s cellmate” and opening lines like “Let’s play mummies and daddies”, there’s a long history of interesting jail mates.

The one-time head of Coles Myer, Brian Edward Quinn, comes to mind.

Former Coles Myer boss and jailbird Brian Quinn.

James Bazley stood over Quinn in prison.

After he was jailed in 1997 for defrauding Coles of $5m to renovate his house, Quinn found cellmates were nearly as domineering as his ever-loving wife, who had done a fair imitation of Marie Antoinette in wasting millions of company cash on the Quinns’ 100 squares of bad taste in outer suburbia.

In his two and a bit years at Loddon Prison, Quinn’s “personal trainer” was the late hitman James Frederick Bazley, also known as “the Iceman” or “Machine Gun”. Put simply, while Quinn’s family put serious money into Bazley’s account outside, Quinn would be looked after on the inside.

Bazley was old by then — his most recent murders were in the 1970s — but he still had enough clout to stand over the likes of Quinn. And to stop others doing likewise.

By contrast, when jailhouse predators tried standing over billionaire scoundrel Alan Bond in Western Australia, a quick phone call to a certain Sydney identity was enough to fix it overnight.

Compared with Bondy the global corporate pirate, Quinn was just a henpecked husband from the ’burbs.

ESCAPERS DO NOT PASS GO

The earthworks contractors building the new prison near Lara, among their other big government jobs, are getting very good at following complex diagrams.

One reason for this is the construction of massive underground pipework of a size big enough for a man to walk through. But someone in the government planning department has done their homework — or watched jailbreak films — and realised that perhaps a man-sized pipe shouldn’t be running under a prison unless they want it to become a ready-made exit tunnel.

And so, at great expense, a two-metre diameter pipe divides into 72 small pipes at the point where it hits the prison perimeter. That’s what you call forward planning, much like the precaution of avoiding open tennis courts that can be used as helicopter pads.

There will be no Shawshank Redemption moment at Victoria’s new prison near Lara.

WE SMELL A RAT

Rapid antigen tests are as hard to find as rocking horse manure at the moment — they are so sought after there are even websites devoted to helping consumers track them down.

But, as with many internet-related things, it pays to check the veracity of what’s on offer.

Rat tests supposedly on offer from Loddon Prison.

Deadline was tipped off to one site stating that the tests were available from an unlikely rural location in central Victoria.

Five RATs for $85 sounded like a fair price in the current circumstances. But it’s really not worth driving to an address near Castlemaine to find out you’ve been had.

That address being Loddon Prison, which apparently houses dishonest inmates only too ready to defraud a gullible public.

And, no, it’s not Brian Quinn getting up to his old tricks. He died in a very nice Queensland address a few years ago.

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A FEW SLICES SHORT OF A LOAF

A while back we featured a long-lost chat between two visitors at Carl Williams’ luxury apartment at the height of the gangland wars.

The exchange was taped by police as the two heavy crime figures — one on the toilet — discussed defecation difficulties in the midst of a drug binge.

Here is some more sparkling repartee from two other visitors Bill and Ted (not their real names), this time about bread.

Bill: “Hey, you know what we need — we need bread.”

Ted: “Uh?”

Bill: “We need bread.”

Ted: “What? What do you want?”

Bill: “Bread. We need bread, I said.”

Ted: “What for?”

Bill: “For f---ing eating. Go buy some.”

Ted: “No, I can’t be f---ed”

Quentin Tarantino, eat your heart out.

THE LADY IS A CHAMP

She’s now a respected and respectable middle-aged senior police officer with grown-up children. But, with the passing of legendary sports reporter Scot Palmer, it is time to reveal that she has an interesting past.

This person we’ll refer to as “Shaz” to preserve her privacy — stripped down to a bikini to model as one of Palmer’s Punchliners in his punchy Sunday column.

In those less enlightened times, flimsily dressed photographic models were a popular feature of the Punchlines column.

Deadline has been unable to find the relevant edition of Punchlines for which Shaz swapped a crisply ironed blue uniform for a swimsuit the size of a police necktie.

Palmer was chivalrous enough to report that the curvaceous constable was from a suburb other than the one in which she lived.

The late Herald Sun sports reporter Scot Palmer.

A FAREWELL FIT FOR A KING

He skipped bail many years ago and made his final appearance in Melbourne a while back.

Unfortunately, the return appearance was for his own funeral, marked by the kind of opulent farewell many more worthy recipients don’t receive.

This fellow was well connected in the bikie and Middle-Eastern organised crime drug distribution networks.

We won’t name him for the sake of blameless loved ones, not that he had any respect for others when there was a buck to be made.

The deceased was for years a player in the methamphetamine market which has been such a scourge on other families in our state.

PRACTISE WHAT YOU PREACH

Memo to the fellow with the pro-racial harmony T-shirt in a CBD Woolworths the other week: There are probably better ways to flaunt your human rights credentials than abusing security staff, one of African and the other of Asian heritage.