Controversies, courtrooms and lessons learnt

What a year! In fact, 2022 has been like no other in my 33 years in the news business, much of it dedicated to reporting on the great theatre of life – warts and all – as it is played out on these pages week after week.

This year I’ve written just shy of 350 individual stories, featuring around 1500 names, some several times over. This is my 17th year in review and for many 2022 is a year they would like to forget.

Stormy weather

Kyle Sandilands and Jacqui O at Kyle’s 50th birthday party.Credit: instagram

When people ask how I deal with the inherent hazards that come with writing a gossip column and having to ask awkward questions, my standard retort is: “Well, I don’t write about the weather.”

For me, humans are far more fascinating than isobars. And yet the publicity storms came thick and fast for many in 2022.

Enter stage left FM radio’s untouchable cash cow Kyle Sandilands and his appalling monkeypox comments, Craig McLachlan’s aborted defamation trial, John Barilaro’s links to an intriguing Sydney property developer, Brian and Bobbie Houston being excommunicated from their beloved Hillsong church, and Francesca Packer Barham buying up Melissa Caddick’s ill-gotten bling.

Then there was the fallout from Lisa Wilkinson’s Logies acceptance speech mentioning Brittany Higgins, which led to her quitting one of television’s most plum gigs citing a toxic media culture.

Andrew O’Keefe leaves Waverley Court in November after making bail for an alleged breach of bail.Credit: Dean Sewell

Add to that Andrew O’Keefe’s ongoing legal dramas, Julie Bishop’s “revenge dress” and her much-too-scrutinised romances, Chris Smith’s career-ending Christmas cracker and even squeaky clean Nicole Kidman copping a Balenciaga-designed reputational backlash.

All of them landed in the centre – or in some cases at the bottom – of the year’s biggest mainstream and social media pile-ons.

Fame by proximity

Some of the most interesting PS stories of the year have involved people who were in the orbit of someone famous, such as emerging Australian hip-hop sensation The Kid Laroi, or Charlton Howard to his mum.

The Kid Laroi with his mother and manager, Sloane Howard.Credit: Twitter

As the global pop star arrived in May ahead of his first major Australian tour since cracking the big time, PS revealed his hip-hop “stage mum” Sloane Howard has been making waves of her own: turning herself in to Sydney police over an outstanding arrest warrant just days after returning to her former home town.

Howard, 51, pleaded not guilty to fraud charges after she allegedly used a man’s credit card to purchase cosmetic services worth nearly $850 at the Laser Clinic in Marrickville in 2018.

A hearing has been ordered for February.

Elon and Nat

Blink and you would miss her in Elvis playing Dixie Locke, the rock ‘n’ roller’s pre-fame girlfriend, but Australian actor and former SCEGGS girl Natasha Bassett ended up receiving an inordinate amount of media attention in the first half of the year for her dates with one of the world’s richest men, the king of Tesla, prodigious procreator, Twitter tyrant and space nut Elon Musk.

Close ties: Natasha with her mum Jenny Bassett.Credit: Facebook

Despite the two-decade age gap, Musk and Bassett have been quietly dating. The pair were photographed trying to enjoy a private lunch in St Tropez after Bassett’s red carpet appearance at the Cannes Film Festival for Elvis.

Bassett and her mother – former Sydney socialite Jenny Bassett, who once dated millionaire car dealer Neville “Croaky” Crichton – have been living in the United States for more than a decade. Friends inform PS that recent media coverage of the Musk relationship has left the mother and daughter a little wary about addressing the topic. There have even been claims of phones being tapped.

Marcos’ legacy

Some of 2022’s best stories have been sitting in plain sight, unnoticed for years – as PS revealed in May, about how Analisa Corr, the Sydney daughter of the late Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos, who had somehow managed to fly mostly under the radar for the past 51 years.

Analisa Corr, the daughter of the late Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos.Credit: Facebook

A horse lover who has indulged her passion for dressage, she most recently lapped up the luxury of private villas in Bali, playfully enjoying poolside cocktails and hitting the day clubs with her new husband, former soldier Jimmy Corr, and her teenage daughter Tahni in tow.

She also bills herself as an “international” interior designer and has a side hustle in “boudoir photography” – essentially titillating nudes shot in her Gold Coast studio. She also poses in her own racy shoots.

This year’s victory of Analisa’s half-brother Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos jnr, now the president of the Philippines, means her days in relative obscurity have come to an abrupt end.

Analisa’s mother, the former Sydney model Evelin Hegyesi, who once posed in a mink bikini, was also clearly enjoying the high life in 1969 when she appeared in a Playboy magazine spread entitled Girls of Australia. The story goes – and it’s one Hegyesi has never spoken about publicly – that she met Marcos while working as a model in Paris in 1970.

Sebastian’s betrayal

In November pop star Guy Sebastian’s former manager and confidant Titus Day was jailed for four years by the District Court after a jury found him guilty of fraudulently embezzling $624,675 of Sebastian’s earnings, including royalties and performance fees, between 2013 and 2020.

Guy Sebastian (left) and former manager Titus Day. Credit: SMH

In Sebastian’s victim impact statement handed to NSW District Court Judge Timothy Gartelmann, the singer wrote: “I am not the same person I was”.

“I wish I could still view the world the same way but every day I fight through negative thoughts and I have to remind myself that not everyone is capable of doing this. I have struggled through anger and resentment and I’m not even close to being healed yet.”

Sebastian said, as a result of Day’s “sustained deception” which had led him to the “darkest points” in his life, he struggled “to not put most people I do business with in the Titus basket”.

He was managed by Day for a decade from 2007, starting at agency 22 Management before joining Day’s venture 6 Degrees as a marquee client.

“Uncovering the depth of the lies from a man I considered a brother has forever changed my outlook in certain situations and my ability to trust in the innate goodness of people,” Sebastian said. “Having someone so close to me and my family be so treacherous has pulled the rug out from under the belief systems I had held up until that point in my life.”

Divided dynasties

It was a year of mixed fortunes for Sydney’s two great family dynasties – the Packers and the Murdochs.

Sarah and Lachlan Murdoch.Credit: Darrian Traynor

Sarah and Lachlan Murdoch marked up another year in their Bellevue Hill mansion with their three children all settled into school and Sydney life. No sooner had PS revealed the family was about to take delivery of one of the most elegant yachts on Sydney Harbour, the meticulously refurbished mid-century $30 million masterpiece Istros, and the paparazzi drones and news choppers were out tracking their every move.

The cameras were also trained on family patriarch Rupert Murdoch following the 91-year-old’s “shock” decision to part company with his fourth wife, former supermodel Jerry Hall.

Hall reportedly leaves the marriage with tens of millions of pounds and an £11 million Oxfordshire mansion as part of her divorce settlement, which was finalised in August, less than two months after they separated.

In July James Packer made contact with PS to let the world know his troubled life had taken a turn for the better, and that he was about to finally embark on an ambitious new business opportunity with his friend Robert De Niro – building a new luxury resort in Barbuda.

After years of painfully public health and business battles, Packer told PS from his suite aboard his $250 million luxury “gigayacht” IJE that he was “feeling really well and happy”.

His good mood came three months after he reportedly stopped taking “seven different mood-altering drugs prescribed to me by my doctors”.

Packer, who offered no details on how he was now managing his mental health, was adamant “my mental health is the best it’s ever been”.

He’d also lost 33 kilograms in three months, going on a strict diet and exercise regime. Packer said his self-discipline is “pretty good right now”, and he hasn’t had a drink since April 9.

He revealed intentions to return to Sydney – albeit temporarily – in March.

Barbie wants to party: Francesca Packer Barham on the way to her 28th birthday party in Potts Point in November with her new beau, controversial entrepreneur Robert Bates.Credit: Matrix

It remains to be seen if his headline-making, diamond-collecting niece Francesca Packer Barham will still be in town.

The late Kerry Packer’s oldest grandchild, now 28, has been getting plenty of attention thanks to her latest beau: controversial former AFR Young Rich Lister Robert Bates.

The couple made their debut at the heiress’s Barbie themed, all-pink birthday party in Potts Point last month and have been inseparable ever since. Wonder what Uncle Jimmy will make of him?

Rebel with a cause

Today is PS’s 17th year in review. Looking back, for many of those years it has been challenging to pinpoint a moment or theme which marked one year as being terribly different from the next.

2022 was not one of those years.

Indeed, there was one topic which had the greatest impact, both personally and professionally: the story behind the story of Rebel Wilson and her new girlfriend Ramona Agruma.

Ramona Agruma and Rebel Wilson at World Pride Polo in Florida in May.Credit: Instagram

Never before has one of my 300-word celebrity romance stories – in which I mistakenly vented my frustrations at trying to get someone to talk – caused such a backlash.

Clearly, I got it wrong and hadn’t read the room.

It gave me pause to reflect on what I do, and how I do it in 2022. I apologised to Wilson and Agruma for being churlish and causing them distress, and the Herald deleted the story.

My ill-fated attempt to pull back the curtains on the inner workings of celebritydom resulted in two of my childhood heroes admonishing me: Cher and Whoopi Goldberg. Gulp.

I have emerged more circumspect when it comes to the journalistically opaque world of reporting on celebrity lives amid the artifice of the social media age.

Rebel Wilson at the 2022 AACTA Awards.Credit: Getty

Happily Wilson and Agruma have gone from strength to strength. They’ve collaborated on their own range of designer tracksuits, travelled to the world’s best resorts, welcomed a baby girl via surrogate, made movies and partied with the rich and famous, from Paris Hilton to Julia Roberts. And I genuinely wish them both a happy new year.

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