TV Logies: Stars shine in night of fights

Illustration: Peter Nicholson

Even if his talent hadn’t fared too well, Nine boss Hugh Marks had reason to feel good as the Logies television awards night wrapped up on his main channel around midnight.

A threatened earbashing by ABC’s new managing director Michelle Guthrie didn’t happen. We’re told the pair didn’t exchange a word at the event at Crown Melbourne’s Palladium room.

Waleed Aly’s Gold Logie meant the Nine televised event had great talkability for the morning shows, even if the award went to a rival network.

And then Seven — or at least actor Malcolm Kennard, who played, of all people, Ivan Milat in Seven’s Catching Milat — got involved.

It would seem Kennard is something of a method actor.

Our spies thought he looked a bit weathered when they bumped into him about 1.30am at Seven’s after-party at Crown bar JJ’s.

From there he went to Nine’s after-party at Shane Warne-backed Club 23. He wasn’t on the list for Nine’s function, but he got in.

Two hours later, one of Nine’s invited guests, Bo, the brother of model Lauren Phillips, was being treated by paramedics after an “altercation” with Kennard on the bar’s balcony.

“It was a disgusting thing to have happen at our private function by someone who was not invited to our event,” a Nine spokesman told us.

Victoria Police were not called. It is not clear if charges will be laid about an incident whose violent details remain vague.

It’s likely all could be revealed by Crown’s CCTV footage, the same broadcast that only two years ago solved the riddle of a near naked Grant Hackett and his almost lost son. Honestly, one of the commercial networks should live-stream those things.

Hot-tub time machine

It’s one of our favourite investment banking renovations: Greenhill managing director Peter Wilson’s Woolloomooloo conversion.

And it’s just become even more interesting.

Wilson and his partner barrister James Emmett bought the inner city Sydney pad in 2013 for $2.2 million.

The conversion costs are estimated at $2.8 million. That’s according to numbers given to council, which are always conservative lest the neighbours get anxious.

Features include a whole floor of art storage, a ground floor garage and, our favourite detail, a rooftop jacuzzi.

And it’s the hot tub that has just got more exciting.

We can reveal that Wilson’s architect has proposed a mosaic portrait of Emmett to line the jacuzzi. It’s a design flourish worthy of a Roman bath house.

In the drawings, the barrister’s smiling visage looks up the skirts — if you’ll forgive the image — of the taller. neighbouring buildings.

Even Grand Design’s Kevin McCloud would raise an eyebrow at that one.

Sadly, we must also reveal that the mosaic design has since been scuttled.

“It’s not part of the final plans,” said a source familiar with the jacuzzi. “It was an earlier concept.”

Diggers and Dealers

As Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull keeps telling us, the Australian economy is “transitioning from the investment mining boom”.

And more proof is just in.

Alan Joyce’s Qantas is threatening to pull direct flights from Sydney to Kalgoorie for this country’s annual festival of mining, Diggers & Dealers.

“We understand delegates are making flight bookings later than normal,” a representative from the mining conference has written to would-be attendees.

Diggers & Dealers — which this year runs from August 1 to 3 — is perhaps best known for its hordes of attendant “skimpies” (Kalgoorie-speak for almost-naked barmaids), second-tier mining executives plotting mergers at Ashok Parekh’s Palace hotel and drunken journalists climbing up light posts.

If these boom-time traditions are to continue in these leaner times, bankers, brokers and various mining hangers-on are advised to get on to Joyce’s airline pronto.

My lounge is better

Staying with airlines: there were brave words from former Qantas domestic chief executive Lyell Strambi as he basked in the sunshine momentarily illuminating Etihad Airway’s stunning new lounge at Melbourne Airport yesterday.

Strambi, now the boss of Melbourne Airport, described the Middle Eastern carrier’s new 800sq m pad of luxury, the airline’s largest Premium Lounge outside Abu Dhabi, as “certainly among the best, if not the best’’ at the airport.

“If it is not the best at Melbourne airport, it is certainly one of the best in the world full stop,” he added.

We wonder what his former boss Alan Joyce and Emirates chief executive Tim Clark thought of the comparisons to their plush establishments down the corridor.

Certainly none boast the same sculptural showcase bar. The thing of beauty is stocked Victorian wines, along with more than 70 premium spirits and a bespoke cocktail menu with destination-inspired names like “Melbourne”, “Sydney”, “Paris” and “New York” (strangely, no “Kalgoorie”), and mocktails called “Abu Dhabi”, “Controlled Airspace” and “Winglet”.

Strambi suggested one of his own, ‘’Heavy Landing’’. Sadly, it didn’t make the cut.

Mother’s Day

Things seem to be looking up for Shari-Lea Hitchcock, the former mistress of late cardboard box billionaire Richard Pratt.

Whether they spent Mother’s Day together isn’t clear to us. But we can reveal Hitchcock is again on speaking terms with her 18-year-old daughter Paula Pratt. Time seems to have healed a rift that grew out of the pair’s settlement in mid-last year with the billionaire’s widow (and online Scrabble addict) Jeanne, seven years after Pratt died in 2009.

The friction caused by the long-running legal battle over the estate is believed to have prompted Paula to ask her mother to move out of their Watson’s Bay home, a place bought for the teenager by her late father.

The teenager is believed to have spent considerable time over summer away from Sydney, while in January, Hitchcock paid $5 million for a home in nearby Vaucluse.

This followed a turbulent period with her abseiling window-cleaner boyfriend Dallen Alexander, which culminated in Hitchcock taking out an AVO against him in the Nowra court in December.

Think of the children

For more than two decades Freedom Foods has made its name selling products that are said to be ‘”free from” gluten, nuts, wheat, dairy and artificial colours, flavours and additives.

But no longer. Which is said to have perturbed a few people internally at the listed food group, which counts billionaire Tony Perich and his Western Sydney gaggle as its biggest shareholder.

Last year Freedom bought the Melbourne-based Popina foods, a big maker of Oat Bars, Oat Muesli and Oat Cluster based Cereals and snacks that can contain wheat, barley and — hide the children! — nuts.

Freedom has a press release on its website stressing the new range will clearly communicate on front of pack the following: ‘This product is made in our new facility in Victoria. Our existing product that have NUT FREE claims are made in our NUT FREE facility in NSW.”

There have also been a few losses from the executive ranks of late, including US head Michael Bracka and recently appointed general manager of Freedom’s Commercial Pactum Dairy, Noel Ayre, a former director of Tetra Pak who was hired by Freedom as something of a China expert. We understand the departures are not nut-related.