By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
On Monday, this masthead reported that embattled neurosurgeon Charlie Teo, last spotted breaking bread with Melbourne’s most famous industrial mediator, Mick Gatto, had joined the celebrity speakers’ circuit, hoping to tell the “truth” about how mobile phones cause brain cancer.
With Saxton Speakers offering up Teo for a reported fee of $10,000, the surgeon will hopefully no longer need to resort to driving an Uber to pay the bills, a sob story he recently told The Daily Telegraph.
Charlie Teo has joined the celebrity speakers’ circuit.Credit: Nick Moir
This isn’t Teo’s first foray into the celebrity speaking world. After all, this is a bloke who for years had his ego fattened by breakfast TV hosts and tabloid scribblers, until other journalists started asking uncomfortable questions. No wonder he’s done a few corporate motivational gigs.
A profile bearing Teo’s face still shows up on the website of Claxton Speakers International, which advertises itself as “Australia’s foremost speaker talent agency”.
Mind you, it’s just Teo’s face. There was a full profile, listing a fee range of $5000-$10,000, which according to the internet archive was removed some time in the past two months.
Teo recently faced an eight-day disciplinary hearing before the Health Care Complaints Commission’s Professional Standards Committee, the outcome of which is still to be determined.
We asked Claxton about the removal of the profile but the firm told us they hadn’t worked with the surgeon for many years, and couldn’t explain why his profile was mysteriously removed.
The lack of adoring words is a shame because Teo’s bio on the site was a masterpiece in the kind of self-promotion that made him an untouchable media darling. We hear about operations soundtracked with John Denver, Elvis and Abba, and the Buddhist ethical code that governs Teo’s interactions with patients.
“Unlike his more formal colleagues, he calls patients by their first names and invites them to do the same,” the profile reads. “He throws his arms around them, supports their personal religious beliefs, advises on diet and meditation and sometimes takes them home for dinner.”
Fortunately, Teo’s new profile with Saxton features a bio that’s almost identical.
BOOKED OUT
Write on: Niki Savva.Credit: Shakespeare
Political journalist turned publishing juggernaut Niki Savva just keeps trucking. Her latest forensic dissection of the sorry tale of nine years of Coalition rule – Bulldozed – tells the story of the decline and fall of Scott Morrison’s government and has won the prize for best general non-fiction effort in this year’s Australian Book Industry Awards.
Savva beat out some well-known names – including Chloe Hooper, Indira Naidoo and Brigid Delaney – to take top spot in the category, the second time the Herald columnist has won the award.
The first time was in 2017 for The Road to Ruin – Savva’s account of the short-lived but eventful prime ministership of Tony Abbott and the role played by Abbott’s chief of staff Peta Credlin – which electrified the political-media bubble when it was published.
Both books – they form the beginning and end of a trilogy with Plots and Prayers, the story of Malcolm Turnbull’s downfall sandwiched in the middle – were commercial as well as critical smashes, indicating a surprising degree of public interest in the topic of political mismanagement.
Looks like Scott Morrison has been paying attention too, with the former PM striking a publishing deal with Thomas Nelson Books, a US-based Christian offshoot of the Murdoch family-owned Harper Collins, to write “a series of reflections”. Will the former PM’s literary effort be a prizewinner too? Can’t wait to find out.
DON’S PARTY
Former NSW arts minister Don Harwin lives the charmed life of a former politician in the picturesque Central Coast hamlet of Pearl Beach.
Current responsibilities include sitting on the Australia Council board (unlike Tina Arena, he’s actually showed up to every meeting) and fulfilling presidential duties at the Potts Point-Elizabeth Bay branch of the Liberal Party.
But that second gig has put a few noses out of joint, given the Pearl Beach home – where Harwin controversially fled during the first COVID lockdown – is more than 100 kilometres from Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
While the ex-minister hasn’t lived in Elizabeth Bay since selling his apartment there in 2020, his presidency is allowed under Liberal Party rules, whereby people who joined a branch before a decades-old constitutional change are entitled to retain membership even if they’ve changed postcodes.
CBD understands Harwin, who’s been a member of the branch for more than 30 years, is thrilled to be giving back to his friends there, who supported him throughout his career.
It’s more a social than a political thing apparently, which is a pretty fair description of the Liberal Party in the eastern suburbs these days.
BATTLE OF THE BANDS
Family and friends of Danny Estrin, frontman of West Australian synth-metal outfit Voyager, which represented the nation at this month’s Eurovision song contest, were delighted when Australian Financial Review cartoonist David Rowe had a Euro-riff for one of his works.
The ’toon depicted Opposition Leader Peter Dutton as a hapless contestant in the “NeoLib Live song contest”, in an outfit not unlike the one worn by Estrin on the big night, with Dutton tapping the mic and asking “is this thing working?”
The irony wasn’t lost on those who know Estrin, who in his day job as an immigration lawyer “worked for many years challenging decisions made by Peter Dutton when he was immigration minister,” according to the rocker’s wife Halinka Lamparski.
Lamparski told us Estrin was “super-stoked” to get back from the band’s Eurovision adventure to be confronted with “this crazy intersection of worlds”.
Needless to say, she’s quite keen on a copy of the Rowe effort, so we’re just going to have to try to get her one.
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