McLachlan takes on court of public opinion with explosive video diaries

After three-and-a-half years with no gigs and facing a multimillion-dollar legal bill, actor Craig McLachlan wants to get back in front of a camera or on stage and is “open to anything”.

The one-time heartthrob and former plumber’s assistant from the Central Coast, who won a Gold Logie and became world-famous thanks to Neighbours, was acquitted of indecent assault and assault charges in December.

Craig McLachlan and his partner Vanessa Scammell following his acquittal in December.Credit: Janie Barrett

But now it is the court of public opinion he appears determined to win over, though the jury is out on whether a series of emotional video diaries in which he appears composed, dishevelled, enraged, calm, indignant and ultimately triumphant, will play in his favour.

“I want the world to know that I am sitting here today 100 per cent acquitted. I’m an innocent man,” he tells viewers. “Distorted, twisted half-truth, that’s all you need,” he says, staring into the lens as though it were his only friend, before angrily exploding when he talks about what he had been accused of doing during The Rocky Horror Show “to my friend!”

“I was public enemy number one, the vultures and the jackals all crying for more,” McLachlan says. “It didn’t happen.”

Craig McLachlan in one of his more emotional video diary entries.Credit: Seven/Spotlight

His comments sit uncomfortably with Melbourne magistrate Belinda Wallington’s findings, which described McLachlan this way: “Overall, he was not an impressive witness.”

Throughout the criminal proceedings and in the ongoing defamation action McLachlan has launched against the ABC and the Herald, he has argued there had been collusion between the complainants motivated by a desire to make money or gain publicity.

Wallington rejected this, saying she was “not persuaded that there was evidence of collusion ... or that the complaints were made for reasons of career ambition or for any other reason”.

Craig McLachlan looking dishevelled in one of his video diary entries.Credit: Seven Publicity

Wallington said the “four complainants were brave and honest witnesses” and almost entirely accepted their evidence that McLachlan did what they said he did. However, on at least one charge she couldn’t rule out the possibility that in his “egocentric state of mind, encouraged by some amount of adulation amongst some sections of the cast and management, in combination with the lack of any checks and balances on his lewd behaviour” he wasn’t aware there was no consent.

In her final comments, she noted the law regarding consent in indecent assault cases in Victoria had changed since 2014, the time at the centre of the claims.

“Were the current law applicable, it is possible that the result may be different,” she determined.

A team of lawyers, producers and journalists, led by veteran newsman Mark Llewellyn, at the Seven Network’s Martin Place bunker are going through the many hours of video diary footage shot by the actor.

The broadcaster reportedly paid McLachlan more than $200,000 to air the diary later this month, along with an exclusive interview.

McLachlan’s media manager Grant Vandenberg said overseas broadcasters were “keen” to air the footage, especially in the 130 markets where his last television series The Doctor Blake Mysteries aired.

“He’s ready and willing to get back to work as soon as possible,” Vandenberg said.

Stefanovics’ new pad

It ain’t the grand castle one might expect, but PS can confirm after years of moving between rentals Today co-host Karl Stefanovic has finally found a new place for his family to call home, dropping more than $3 million on what neighbours have described as a “fixer-upper” in Castlecrag.

Stefanovic, wife Jasmine and baby daughter and resident “Princess” Harper, who is being christened on Saturday and turned one last week with a professionally catered and styled party, won’t move into the new abode for several months.

The Stefanovics have found a home: Today co-host Karl, Jasmine and baby Harper have bought in Castlecrag.Credit: Instagram

Last June the Stefanovics spent $3.6 million on a holiday home near Noosa.

The new Castlecrag digs are a somewhat more humble affair than Stefanovic’s previous marital home in Cremorne, which he briefly shared with former wife Cassandra and their three children.

That property sold in 2019 for $9 million following their much-publicised split.

A reprieve for Sarris

Stan and Judy Sarris at a social event in 2019.Credit: Estaban La Tessa

Gourmet Traveller Wine magazine lives to see another edition after creditors voted in favour on Monday of owner Stan Sarris’s schedule of payments to cover the more than a million dollars worth of debt that has crippled the publication, which is edited by his wife Judy Sarris.

In February 2020 creditors accepted a deed of arrangement to be paid 10 cents in the dollar, the terms of which were extended because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Cameron Gray and Anthony Elkerton of DW Advisory were appointed administrators of GT Wine Pty Ltd in December 2019.

Sarris is due to start paying the more than $227,000 owing to creditors under the deed in eight monthly instalments of nearly $19,000 each, culminating in a final payment of nearly $76,000 on February 28, 2022.

Vale, Sue Gallie

Sydney lost one of its original Bondi Babes, Sue Gallie, last month.

Crowned Miss Australia 1966, Gallie went on to forge a career in modelling and television before taking on the corporate world and carving out a career as the head of public relations for the then newly opened Hilton Hotel in Sydney.

Feted at the time as one of Sydney’s great beauties, Gallie never married despite having been courted by some of the city’s most eligible men. She remained life-long friends with the late Kerry Packer, with whom she would regularly dine at the Hilton’s San Francisco Grill.

Sue Gallie was named Miss Australia 1966.Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald

Friends told PS Gallie never recovered from a broken heart she suffered in the late 1960s while working as a weather girl on what was then known as ATN Seven. Gallie had fallen in love with the channel’s star newsreader, the late John Bailey, but was devastated when she read in The Daily Mirror he was marrying another television personality, Tanya Halesworth.

Having been in floods of tears for hours, that night Gallie composed herself and fulfilled her duties to read the weather forecast with Bailey just metres away, viewers none the wiser at the drama unfolding behind the scenes.

She quit her television role soon after, telling friends she felt as though “the whole of Australia was laughing at me”.

After several years of battling dementia, Gallie died on April 15. She was 76.

A new headache for Mustaca

The $3 million leaking roof at United Cinemas boss and luxury car enthusiast Sam Mustaca’s Bellagio apartment complex in Collaroy is not his only headache right now.

Mustaca’s family business, founded by his father Roy, has put its hand up for a $6 million bushfire relief grant – the ones being overseen by NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro – so he can build a new cinema complex in Queanbeyan (in Barilaro’s seat of Monaro) even though the cinema did not exist when the fires hit.

Roy and Sam Mustaca, owners and operators of the United Cinemas chain.Credit: Steven Siewert

The DA was approved for the complex in 2018 and demolition at the still empty site was completed months ago, but Mustaca told PS yesterday the ambitious development would not be viable without the grant.

However, United Cinemas, which is still teaming up with Hollywood actor Mark Wahlberg to bring his Wahlburgers fast-food chain to Australia, has had a tough year thanks to COVID, with several similar projects yet to materialise years after being announced, including cinema complexes in Port Macquarie and McGraths Hill in NSW, Gungahlin in the ACT, Indooroopilly in Queensland, Victoria’s Wodonga and Eaton Fair shopping centre in WA.

1960s radicals reunite

It was more peppermint tea than pepper spray at Thursday night’s launch of Meredith Burgmann and Nadia Wheatley’s excellent new book Radicals: Remembering the Sixties at Stanmore’s Cyprus Club on Thursday night.

Meredith Burgmann, Nadia Wheatley and Patricia Amphlett (Little Patty) at the launch of the book Radicals: Remembering the Sixties.Credit: James Mohr

The crowd of 200 polite hellraisers included Australia’s first draft-card burner Wayne Haylen, QC, (now a judge); the first woman elected to federal parliament from NSW, Jeannette McHugh; Judy Mundey, the first female president of the Communist Party of Australia (in fact, first woman president of any political party in Australia) and wife of the late Jack Mundey; and Jim Boyce, one of the seven Wallabies who refused to play South Africa’s all-white Springboks in 1971.

A great reunion took place too, of 1965 Freedom Riders Brian Aarons and Gary Williams who memorably broke the colour bar at the Bowraville Hotel and were photographed by the Herald at that time.

Brian Aarons and Gary Williams have a drink at the Bowraville Hotel in northern NSW during the Freedom Rides in 1965 and, right, the two celebrate 56 years after the original ride.Credit: Ted Golding/James Mohr

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