James Weir: The unfair struggle of The Bachelorette

THIS is just foul play. As Ali prepares to hit screens on The Bachelorette, she’s forced to battle something incredibly unfair.

IT’S a cruel world when you can’t get drunk in Adelaide without being shamed nationally by a jilted ex.

That’s the unfair position facing incoming Bachelorette Ali Oetjen as her bitter ex-boyfriend, former Bachelor in Paradise intruder Grant Kemp, continues to dredge up details from her fun-sounding past.

Many tales surround Alison. My favourite fable involves a staircase. I’ve been told I can’t go into the details here but the story is very Googleable. Basically, Grant is jilted because, he claims, when they were together she came over to visit him in LA and he found her doing stuff with another guy on the stairs.

Regardless of the cheating allegations, it’s a terrific story. If Red Balloon sold it as an experience date I’d buy it.

Grant loves crapping on about all the things Ali has done.

In recent months, Grant has carried on to anyone who’ll listen about the alleged incident on the stairs in the hope of shaming Ali. He wants to humiliate her. What, because she’s a woman?

The boys on The Bachelor have it easy. No one pretends they have a perfect past. Tim Robards and Blake Garvey were both topless waiters before going on the series. But for some reason, the girls who sign on to star as The Bachelorette are expected to have a blank history.

Unsatisfied with his stairwell revelations, Grant came out again this week to tell everyone Ali is a messy drunk.

“I never actually saw Ali drunk until the first time I visited her in Adelaide and we had been wine tasting all day with all of her friends,” he told Who magazine this week.

(Predicting where this story’s going, I’d like to interject to note that most people self-medicate with alcohol upon arriving in Adelaide.)

Grant continued: “We ended up at a bar in Adelaide somewhere with one of her good friends and she was just getting really drunk. Then, all of a sudden in the middle of the bar, she just goes out of nowhere, ‘Hey, watch this,’ and I looked over and she had a glass with gin and tonic in her hand and in the middle of the bar she punches the glass out of her own hand and the drink flies on everyone and she just starts laughing like nothing is wrong … That’s pretty bad. I was completely embarrassed.”

Grant seems like a prudish grandma who should go home and iron his shawl. The only thing we need to take away from this anecdote is Ali sounds like a complete baller who we’d all be lucky to party and blackout with.

I just hope this is the Ali we get to see on The Bachelorette when it premieres this week. Not

the overproduced, non-offensive girl TV executives think we want.

So Ali climbed up on a bar, spilt her G&T on patrons and smashed a glass. Who hasn’t?

THE ONLY THING MORE CONFUSING THAN THE KELI LANE CASE

Perhaps the most punishing thing about this week’s Bachelor double-dump is the fact everyone wouldn’t stop crapping on about it and all we wanted to do was talk about that new ABC docuseries Exposed: The Case of Keli Lane.

It’s seriously thrilling. Investigative journalist Caro Meldrum-Hanna digs into the case of the elite water polo player sentenced to 18 years prison for the murder of her baby daughter — the body of whom has never been found.

Caro wears a lot of no-nonsense button down shirts and rattles around town in a beat-up Subaru with her glammed-up investigative offsider Elise Worthington as they knock on doors trying to find out what really happened to this baby.

The first two instalments have aired and we’re now waiting for the third. The story is addictive. I’m obsessed and I’ve fallen down a Keli Lane rabbit hole. Ask me anything. Just not where baby Tegan is.

The case comes with so many questions. How did everyone not know she was pregnant all those times when all she wore were swimsuits?

It’s mind boggling. But the biggest mystery of all is how reporter Caro gets any work done in her very messy office.

It’s as if someone broke in and tipped several rubbish bins on the floor. Piles of paper flood the workspace and novelty bric-à-brac lie strewn among the files. A random hair dryer is tossed in a corner — the cord tangled around all her Walkley Awards that are piled up behind the door.

Store-bought lunches, still in their packaging, stack up on her desk because she’s too busy running from scoop to scoop to eat them.

Sources close to the mess say it’s known around ABC’s Ultimo headquarters as the Cradle Of Filth. There’s a chance baby Tegan isn’t actually missing but just buried under the scrapheap in this office.

But because she’s so brilliant no one cares about the mess. In fact, the only reason there’s a mess is because she’s so good. Masterminds don’t have time for Dettol Surface Swipes. She can’t pause a twist or a turn just to spray and wipe.

A pinboard takes over an entire wall covered in overlapping photos of Keli and acquaintances and intel. It makes me want to have a pinboard in my office but the only thing I’d have to stick to it are the names of decent burger joints that deliver and unflattering pictures of people that annoy me.

As the mystery unfolds, the mess in her office gets bigger. A friend’s mum even noticed a roll of toilet paper sitting on the desk. At one point, Caro decides to add a bunch of flowers, as if they’ll distract us from the rubble they’re sprouting out from.

The final instalment airs on ABCthis Tuesday. See what other weird objects you can spot among the wreckage.

Can you spot the toilet paper?

THE SECRET LIFE OF MALCOLM TURNBULL

Malcolm Turnbull is still at large, running around New York footloose and hair-free.

This week, he told Lucy to get lost so he could go shoot the breeze at the salon and get some intimate waxing done.

Well, we shouldn’t assume it was intimate waxing. It could’ve been intimate IPL. He does seem like the kind of guy who’d have a “money is no object” approach to hair removal.

Either way, he was papped leaving a hair removal salon in Manhattan.

Of course, it may not have been for intimate hair. He could’ve just had a crazy eyebrow situation. No-one wants to go all John Howard.

Maybe he started following the bold brow trend that stars like Cara Delevingne have been sporting but then they got too out of control so he decided to tame those two dames.

Indeed, this is probably the reason.

Twitter and Facebook: @hellojamesweir

Malcolm, in Manhattan last month, looking particularly smooth.