Trials,triumphs and tantrums:PS has its farewell fling

Please excuse the indulgence,but today’s Private Sydney is a particularly momentous one.

This is the last Private Sydney column in theHerald,but rest assured it is not the last you’ll read from me.

After 18 years and about 1300 columns featuring just over 6000 individual stories and,as accurately as I can estimate,about 35,000 bold-type names,the time has come to lower the curtain on what has been a rollicking ride each week through the trials,tribulations and triumphs of the social fauna that makes up the great theatre of Sydney life and beyond.

I’ve had a blast. What other job would get me intoHugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion for his private July 4 party,let alone marquee hop at the Melbourne Cup and become pals with the likes of everyone fromCarla Zampatti toMaria Venuti?

Some will welcome this news with enthusiasm but I am also aware that many loyal readers will be disappointed their regular snapshot into worlds often kept out of the public eye is coming to an end.

This has not been a decision made lightly. Inspired by my upcoming long service leave and some personal and professional reflection after discussions with my editors,we have agreed the opportunity has presented itself to usher in a new era and approach to how we do certain things at theHerald.

The stories will still come,we’re just going to do them differently.

I’ll be returning in mid-October as a senior writer,with a brief to continue writing stories about the people and events that help frame Sydney’s unique character,but in a way that allows me to dive deeper into some broader topics,unshackled by a relentless,immovable column deadline every week.

A lot has changed in the near two decades that PS has existed,but it ends on a high. Online and print readership has remained consistently strong throughout the column’s extraordinary lifespan.

Changing times

In 2005,from the ashes of itsHerald predecessors Sauce and Spike,we coined the name Private Sydney. It was a fitting moniker for a fresh style of broadsheet back page banter with a wider lens on life in Sydney.Paul Keating,who was a frequent correspondent whenever his name appeared in the column,once described it as “tittle-tattle”. I was chuffed.

PS came to life well before the advent of the iPhone,when people were still marvelling at the tiny,blurry photos they could send via MMS on their Nokia 7650.

Back then tablets were still things you swallowed and trolls lived under bridges in children’s fairytales. PS entered the world before Facebook,Snapchat,Twitter,Instagram,TikTok and whatever other social media platforms have come and gone.

That first official PS column in December 2005 is something of a time capsule,complete with a fresh-faced image of me (I miss those curls) along with newlywedsBec andLleyton Hewitt. It also featured an exhaustive rundown of who was renting houses in “Balmy Palmie” for the summer,with the likes ofJohn Cleese,Kerry Packer and Nicole Kidman often found on the golden sands of the northern beaches over the Christmas period.

Indeed,Bec and Lleyton were the reigning Aussie celebrity newlyweds. I spent much of their 2005 wedding sitting on the late billionaireRichard Pratt’s monogrammed bedspread in his luxurious Sydney penthouse peering out the window with a pair of binoculars. The boudoir afforded a clear view of the rooftop cocktail bar where the couple were hosting their pre-wedding celebrations,but I’ll save how I ended up on his bed for another day.

Looking over PS’s lifetime the roll call of featured names is many and varied,and yet all of their stories have shared something in common:genuine,unscripted intrigue.

For better or worse,it would not have been PS without those names,like the impresarioHarry M. Millerwho was behind too many stories to count,or the powerful perfumed PR queensRoxy Jacenko,Naomi ParryandDeeta Colvin,who ended up having more in common than they could ever realise.

I’ve kept tabs on society blue bloodsSkye Leckie, Lady Susan Renouf,Eileen “Red” Bond andLady Sonia McMahon,seen the arrival and departure ofWendi Deng,Jerry Hall and,at various stages,all theMurdochsfrom Rupertdown.

PS has endured the endless travails ofKarl Stefanovic,the polarising foodiePete Evans,the gossip trinity ofLara Bingle,Michael ClarkeandPip Edwards,and the disgraced game show host Andrew O’Keefe,as well as the sad demise ofCharlotte Dawson,Bert Newtonand more recently Barry Humphries andDiana “Bubbles” Fisher.

Three generations ofPackers have featured prominently,in particularJames,who split with first wife Jodhi Meares,married his second brideErica Baxter in one of the most extravagant weddings ever (which I spent clinging to a rock on the Côte d’Azur),and fathered three children. Sadly,the promisedMariah Carey extravaganza never materialised,and I’m still bewildered by the short-lived comeback from seeming social oblivion of his ex-fiancéeTziporah Malkah(formerly known as Kate Fischer).

Others who have swum – sometimes floundered – in the Sydney fishbowl have filled countless columns includingLisa Wilkinson,Kerri-Anne Kennerley,Nicole Kidman,Cate Blanchett,Rodney Adler, Ita andRichard Buttrose,the infamous Pratt mistressShari-Lea Hitchcock,Samantha Armytage,John Singleton,Maggie Tabberer,the Keatings,style queen Karin Upton Baker,King of the CrossJohn Ibrahim,the always reliable radioman Kyle Sandilands,society snipper Joh Bailey,Alan Jones,Shane Warne,Elle Macpherson and perennial favourites,theWaterhouses.

And sometimes things unintentionally went awry,like my mishandling ofRebel Wilson’s new romance,a story which even triggered the condemnation of two personal idols:Whoopi Goldberg andCher.

PS has long had a place for our eccentrics too,like the free-wheeling artistCharlesBillich and his party-loving wifeChrista,the over-bedazzled businessmanGeoffrey Edelsten,the beloved Jeanne Little,makeup maestroNapoleon Perdis and his huge designer handbags,legendary magazine queenNene Kinghollering down the line and the misplaced grandiosity of former deputy mayor of AuburnSalim Mehajer.

Some names have appeared far more than others in PS.James Packer had 445 mentions,and even I was surprised to seeRoxy Jacenko notch up a comparatively modest 114 hits,though her “story arc” remains unrivalled in sheer breadth and drama. We’ve gone from sworn enemies to WhatsApp buddies.

Gossip through the ages

PS hardly reinvented the wheel when it comes to “gossip columns” in theHerald,a term which still attracts mixed reactions from readers and other journalists. Although I can assure you some of the most powerful journalism can be traced back to someone spilling the beans about someone or something.

And writing PSin the “defamation capital” of the world means just as much journalistic legwork goes into stacking up a four-paragraph “zinger” as it does for the longer pieces.

The Herald started a weekly feature, A Page for Women,in September 1905. The fabulously namedTheodosia Britton was appointed editor and the first issue contained jottings on fashion,gardening,table decoration,shopping in Paris,Australians in England and women artists in Sydney. There was also advice fromEthel Turner on suitable literature for girls.

The lateDavid McNicoll,one of Australian journalism’s luminaries of the 20th century,began his career in 1933 when he joined theHerald as a cadet. He has since been described as the paper’s first gossip columnist,writing mainly social paragraphs,often with a slight barb,under the pseudonym “Jack Meander”.

TheHerald’s then proprietors,the all-powerful Fairfax family,responded to the rival Packer family’s launch ofThe Australian Women’s Weekly in 1933 by publishing a 24-page weekly insert “women’s supplement” every Thursday,much of it devoted to the comings and goings at the city’s hotspots including the infamous Prince’s and Romano’s.

One of the early “women’s editors” wasConnie “Sweetheart” Robertson,an institution who stayed at theHerald for 28 years until her retirement in 1962.

According to her biographer,formerHerald journalistValerie Lawson,Robertson would famously “stand at the top of the stairs at Romano’s looking down on the crowd,tapping her teeth with her pencil,and choosing the favoured ones for portraits”.

I’ve had a few of my own “Connie” moments over the years. Fawning portraits were not on the agenda when I had to help rescue a pair of married celebs (but not to each other) who somehow got locked inside a portaloo out the back of Flemington’s Birdcage enclosure during one Melbourne Cup.

Nor was the prose gushing when I was cornered by a couple ofLeonardo DiCaprio’s bodyguards as I tried to chat with the Hollywood star during his stay in Sydney while filmingThe Great Gatsby. The great wall of muscle only parted when a couple of hand-picked models were presented to him.

Sadly,social media has turned coverage of such stories into a somewhat more prosaic,detached affair,and often consists of reporters scrolling through social media feeds sifting through carefully orchestrated images hunting for something remotely interesting.

Eye-popping tales

The artifice of social media will never measure up to a genuine story.

I’ve certainly been involved in some eye-poppers during my time on PS,like the time the press officials at Copenhagen’s Amalienborg Palace went into meltdown when I inquired about the freshly mintedPrincess Mary of Denmark who was about to announce she had a royal bun in the oven. This news had inconveniently reached me in Sydney well beforeQueen Margrethe II’s subjects in Denmark.

Or the international diplomatic debacle I somehow set off in 2012 when reporting on the former First Lady Of Malaysia Rosmah Mansor – now on bail and appealing a 10-year prison sentence over corruption convictions – who had dropped a bucket load of cash on a huge haul ofCarl Kapp designer gowns during a trip with her husband to Sydney.

She was so impressed with Kapp’s creations he was invited to bring his wares to her and then Malaysian prime ministerNajib Razak in their luxury,$20,000-a-night penthouse suite at The Darling hotel atop the Star Casino. The then PM was dressed in a bathrobe.

Sydney has hosted some truly biblical society feuds over the years too,but none had quite the ending like the one PS revealed when the late charity queenMarie Sutton rescued her bête noire,Skye Leckie. Leckie had collapsed midway through delivering a talk to a gathering of well-heeled ladies in bullet-proof bobs at the now defunct temple of gastronomic decadence Level 41 back in 2007.

Sutton – the woman credited with bringing a newly singlePrincess Diana to Australia for the Victor Chang dinner in 1996 – leapt to the aid of her old foe.

Sutton had harboured a grudge against Leckie for years,claiming her hard work in bringing Diana to Sydney had not been properly acknowledged and that the princess’ visit had been hijacked.

“I was treated shabbily by people who were friends of Skye’s … so it was difficult between us,” Sutton told me,though to this day Leckie maintains she was blissfully unaware of Sutton’s epic turmoil.

Sutton cleared Leckie’s airway,but denied the society blue blood had involuntarily bitten her finger as she regained consciousness.

And who could forget the Bondi biffo between James Packer and his former best man and friend,one-time Channel Nine bossDavid Gyngell?

I spent an entire day and most of the night sitting outside Packer’s Bondi Beach driveway in 2014 after he was photographed in an ugly dust-up with Gyngell.

I’d been tipped off about the fight,and then to the existence of a set of clandestine images that showed the pair throwing and receiving punches before eventually falling to the ground rolling about wrestling in full view of gobsmacked locals.

It was an extraordinary day,with a series of fascinating visitors to Palazzo Packer includingLachlan Murdoch (whose editors ended up buying the shots),his palKarl Stefanovic,former Labor power playerMark Arbib,Kerry Packer’s old poker buddyBen Tilley and then Deutsche Bank high-flyerRob Rankin, who would later become one of Packer’s key lieutenants.

As the photos were splashed across the country,the men released a joint statement,sheepishly telling the world:“We have been friends for 35 years and still are. In that time,we have had our fair share of ups and downs. We respect each other and neither of us will be commenting further.”

But the cherry on the proverbial shiner emerged when Packer left his lair sporting a very noticeable black eye. As we say in the business,it was the sort of story that “writes itself”.

Of course covering such sensitive topics comes with consequences,and I too have been on the receiving end of Packer’s rage. I was showered in Packer spittle and expletives as his hulking frame towered ominously over me shouting “f--- off!” at the Melbourne Cup in 2012. And again years later my Sunday dinner was interrupted by a raging Packer on speaker phone from his superyacht during what was meant to be a romantic cruise with his then-fiancéeMariah Carey.

These days we’re email buddies,though I’m still waiting for our promised coffee date.

Fairweather friend

The third wife ofSir Warwick Fairfax,the socially ambitiousMary,took a particular interest in the early years of PS and how such matters were covered in “her paper”,even long after the last Fairfax had left theHerald building.

In her prime,Lady Mary Fairfax’s house parties at the old Point Piper pile Fairwater were legendary,featuring everyone fromImelda Marcos toLiberace,and famous for her kangaroo ice sculpture,its pouch overflowing with caviar.

Admittedly,Fairwater and Lady Fairfax had seen better days by the time I managed to get an invite,but it was still an incredible scene as guests shuffled past the giant Rodin bronze sculpture in the foyer,and the mantle heaving with photos of the hostess with everyone fromPope John Paul II toNancy and Ronald Reagan.

The mansion had barely changed in decades:the drapes a little faded and dated,with many of the same staff still there,though the ice kangaroo had long melted. It felt like stepping into a scene from Are You Being Served meetsFalcon Crest.

When I was presented to Lady Fairfax,she told me something which has been ringing in my ears as I write today’s swan song,and largely underpinned the way I have written PS over the years.

She confided she was still a keen reader of theHerald,and in particular enjoyed the “jottings” of PS,especially a piece I had written featuring Melbourne Cup attire over the years,fromBrynne Edelsten’s “the frock that stopped the nation”,Maria Venuti’s “continental shelf” and the hilarious lateLillian Frank wearing a birdcage on her head,complete with tweeting automaton Budgie swinging on a perch.

“I felt like I was right there with you,” she whispered to me.

Mission accomplished.