Deadline: Melbourne actor’s coke run a bust

The actor who arrived at his dealer’s Dockland’s pad to find the fuzz and the hard line jihadist with a penchant for sex workers. The latest crime buzz with Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler.

The latest crime buzz with Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler.

Melbourne’s top crime writers Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with their weekly dose of scallywag scuttlebutt.

A BUZZ FOR THE FUZZ

The well-known actor might have been humming the J.J. Cale song made famous by Eric Clapton as he hit the buzzer button in a Docklands apartment block and asked to come up.

Whatever the reason, he didn’t realise that the gruff voice on the intercom was not his cocaine dealer.

Imagine our hero’s surprise when he steps off the lift and through the dealer’s door and finds “the man” in handcuffs with some very amused plainclothes police watching on.

How sweet it was for them to see his double take. How relieved he was to walk away with no offence detected.

And what a marvellous actor he is. When the Herald Sun called him about the little Docklands drama, he acted enormously surprised.

Cocaine caused headaches for a well-known Melbourne actor and a sports star. Picture: Stock image

A totally believable performance.

Not so sure-footed is the deadset slow learner sportsman who thought he’d host a cocaine party in the CBD very recently.

When security arrived to call last snorts there was a blizzard inside the room.

The host has some unsavoury friends, including a gangster from the organised crime circuit. Our slow learner really should stick to sport.

TELL LAURA I LOVED HER

Could the former fiances, friends and employees of Sean Buckley please form an orderly queue?

Another member of the fastest-growing club in the land has made herself known since hard man Anthony Swords went public over his spat with the UltraTune, Ultra Hair and Ultra Thoroughbreds big wig.

Her name is Laura Lydall, said by her self-described best friend Robbie Merritt to be an ex-fiance of Mr Buckley and now reportedly involved in another spat with him.

Sean Buckley and ex-partner Laura Lydall. Picture: Getty Images

The helpful Mr Merritt has supplied photographs of Ms Lydall, complete with the Law textbooks he says she is studying to help her cause.

Details of the dispute are sketchy but it apparently involves breast implants and ridiculously large diamonds.

Back when Ms Lydall thought she was going to be the next Mrs Buckley in 2016, says her friend, she had “12 cosmetic operations to make her breasts bigger to keep the UltraTune clients happy.”

She also used to lug around an 11-carat Harry Winston diamond bought in Beverly Hills for more $300,000 with an additional $120,000 of diamonds added in Sydney “as Buckley felt it wasn’t big enough.”

Poor Laura was clearly at risk during the ill-fated relationship … if she’d fallen into the Yarra she might have drowned with all that hardware on her fingers. Luckily, she keeps it in a safe place now she no longer globetrots with Mr Buckley.

There are more stories in the Buckley saga.

Top of the list is the UltraTune advertising model who won a Buckley-sponsored boxing “title” under the name Parnia Porsche.

NO REFUNDS

Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Which is why a lot of people shelled out perfectly good cash for paintings straight from the “easel” of the late Mark Brandon Read, the earless artist better known as Chopper.

The founding member of Pentridge Prison’s van Gogh Club did his best work in the backyard of the house in Collingwood he shared with his second wife, Margaret.

He sat works in progress on the sloping roof of the dog kennel occupied by his bull terrier cross, Kayser.

One keen buyer who dropped in to pick up a picture fresh from the brush is now sad because the paint is flaking.

Plenty of people shelled out perfectly good cash for paintings by Chopper Read.

Well, what did he expect? Chopper must have used budget brand house paint, not the long-life Dulux.

The buyer recalls that Chopper treated him well but that a small boy hanging around tried to lift his wallet, artful dodger style. Nothing personal.

As Chopper said of his painting phase, it wasn’t illegal but it was certainly daylight robbery.

DIFFERENT STROKES

There is a jihadist who teaches a hard line against all forms of sex outside the Koran’s strict prohibitions.

Which is surprising, given how often surveillance police have seen him soliciting the services of transgender sex workers.

Deadline thought this should be the start of a limerick writing competition, but twitchy lawyers did not agree.

One Deadline contributor knocked up a sample entry on the back of a beer coaster which began with the words:

There’s a Muslim hardliner called Tony …

(Whoever finishes it best wins the beer coaster).

U R DEAD TO US

Message to motorcyclist seen gawking at his mobile phone while drifting out of his lane on the Western Ring Rd: Don’t bother with a long-term phone plan …

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