Kate Jackson wants to move to Australia

Suspicions that former Charlie's Angels actress Kate Jackson picked a fight with Ryan O'Neal as a way to revive her career have been put to rest by a portion of her story that has yet to receive widespread exposure in the Hollywood media: she is planning to leave the country.

Jackson raised a storm when she claimed last week that O'Neal and Alana Stewart had prevented her from visiting her dear friend Farrah Fawcett in the final weeks of her life. The uproar was kicked into hurricane status when she made a stunning reversal and backed Craig Nevius in his legal battle against O'Neal and Stewart over their commandeering of his and Farrah's cancer documentary. Jackson also suggested that O'Neal had coerced a delirious Farrah into signing over the rights to him.


As it turns out, the interview that appeared on RadarOnline.com was conducted by international journalist Dylan Howard, known recently for bringing further exposure and validity to the claims by Farrah's college beau Greg Lott that O'Neal prevented him from visiting Farrah, his recent, secret lover.

A version of the story also appeared in Australia's Woman's Day magazine, and in a sidebar, the 61-year-old actress reveals her surprise plans:

"I want to move to Australia. When I started acting school, I thought, 'Gee, I would love to go to Australia,' but then my life took off.

"I ended up going in the '80s for the Logies... and I think it is great there. Australia to me feels like America when I was growing up. It feels safe. Here, I can't let my 14-year-old son go ride his bike without supervision. You need to put a GPS chip in him to do that.

"I'll live in the city in the beginning, to meet people, and then move somewhere where I will be more comfortable.

"I'm too young to retire. I want to work and Australia is the place for me to do that."

Save the blobfish

Meet the blobfish.

The blobfish inhabits the deep waters off the coasts of the Australian mainland and Tasmania. Scientists warn that over-fishing by trawlers is threatening to make it extinct. The bloated bottom dweller, which can grow up to 12 inches, lives at depths of up to 800m, and is rarely seen by humans.

(Blobfish are found at depths where the pressure is several dozens of times higher than at sea level, which would likely make gas bladders inefficient. To remain buoyant, the flesh of the blobfish is primarily a gelatinous mass with a density slightly less than water; this allows the fish to float above the sea floor without expending energy on swimming. The relative lack of muscle is not a disadvantage as it primarily swallows edible matter that floats by in front of it. It can be caught by bottom trawling with nets.)

Secret will is latest twist in scandal surrounding the death of gay Australian music exec Peter Ikin

Looking for a juicy international scandal? Our mates in Australia tell us the dust still hasn't settled in the mysterious death last November of beloved music exec Peter Ikin, who dropped dead at 62 in a Paris hotel room-- possibly after a fall down a flight of stairs-- shortly after marrying a mysterious young Frenchman named Alexandre Despallieres who quickly cremated ole "PI" and poured the former evidence into an urn.

Now it turns out that young Alexandre not only got PI's ashes, he's also got his entire estate thanks to a "secret" will-- and his Aussie mates and journos alike smell somethng fishy.

Writes Sydney's Daily Telegraph:

"Despallieres, who told Ikin he was an internet billionaire dying from a brain tumour, has moved into Ikin's £3 million ($A5.8 million) Chelsea pad and emptied £2 million from his Channel Island bank accounts.

"Last week he was spending some of the money on a new Porsche for his personal assistant, Jeremy Bilien, home after a recent stint in London's famous celebrity Priory Hospital.

"Ikin and Despallieres had exchanged vows at Chelsea Town Hall on October 10. The executive died on November 12.

"Ikin's Sydney solicitor Peter Court, with whom he had lodged a 2002 will which did not mention Despallieres, only found out about the second will last month.

"It was signed on August 7, 2008 in Paris and not witnessed by a lawyer but by Mr Bilien and another friend of Despalliere's, Vincent Bray.

"Mr Court said he was deeply concerned to discover that the UK courts had already granted probate of the second will to Despallieres.

"In the 2002 will, drawn up by Mr Court, Ikin left his wealth to two Sydney charities, friends, his god children and his only blood relative, nephew Father Garry Perritt, a Sydney Catholic priest...

"The story of the millionaire showbiz identity, his young lover and their rock star life is one of passion and tragedy.

"Ikin was vice-chairman of the ARIA awards, joining Warner in 1975 and also working for EMI. Respected by the stars whose huge egos he managed to handle, including Fleetwood Mac, his friends knew him as warm-hearted and generous. He split his year between London and his Elizabeth Bay penthouse in Sydney.

"He loved travelling in style and always wore his signature gold Cartier bracelet and watch.

"When he first met Despallieres in 1988, Ikin had the money and the rock star contacts to make the world their playground, wooing the then 20-year-old in the heat of a Parisian summer and on the Californian coast in San Francisco.

"During their whirlwind romance, they met Ikin's friends who happened to be stars such as Elton John and Stewart...

"Taking delivery of the Porsche last week outside the Chelsea apartment in exclusive Cheyne Place, Despallieres, 42, laughed at the suggestion he had a brain tumour.

"He said he had been suffering from HIV for 23 years. Actress Britt Ekland, a friend of Ikin's through Rod Stewart's former manager Billy Gaff, has been helping care for him, taking him for short walks..."

Read the entire Telegraph story here.

Celebrity... money... gay marriage... disputed wills... and a cast of characters that spans the world.

Keep an eye on this one...

Python in Perth, Bruce: Australian film festival launches tonight; tickets selling fast for two screenings of The Seventh Python

The Revelation Perth International Film Festival launches today in Perth, Australia, along with great excitement for the two prime-spot screenings of The Seventh Python.

The Saturday, July 4th presentation of the acclaimed, award-winning documentary about legendary pop satirist, wit and Monty Python cohort Neil Innes will be the Australian premiere of the film from our pals at Frozen Pictures that's received accolades and standing ovations as its made its way across America through film festivals, special event screenings and Beatles fan conventions since its premiere at the American Cinematheque's Mods & Rockers Film Festival last summer.

The 12th annual Revelation Perth Fest is perhaps the most respected film festival in all of Australia. One film reviewer writes: "Under the curatorial leadership of author Jack Sargeant for the second year running, Revelation aims to bring new, weird, interesting and unusual features and documentaries that wouldn't otherwise get screened in cinemas to Perth audiences."

There's particular excitement about The Seventh Python-- enough that the musical comedy doco is getting two screenings at prime times. Along with the Saturday, July 4th showing at 7:15 pm, The Seventh Python will also be screened on Friday, July 10th at 7:15 pm.

click photo to enlarge

One reason for the buzz Down Under can be found on the Festival website: "Alongside many interviews The Seventh Python features numerous versions of Innes’ songs including the Australian version of The Philosopher’s Song."

Australian readers, click here to get your tickets.

Sydney's Daily Telegraph honors Steve Dunleavy

The Daily Telegraph

Steve Dunleavy,
hard-nosed legend
with ink in his veins

By Piers Akerman
September 30, 2008 12:00am

LATER this week a special edition of The New York Post will mark the retirement of the last of the great journalists of the pre-electronic era - the Australian Steve Dunleavy.

Dunleavy, or as he occasionally introduced himself, Steven Patrick Francis Aloysius Dunleavy, is that rare thing in these times of five-second celebrities, a genuine legend.

To put his 70-year-life and 55-year career into some perspective, Dunleavy's name was known from Hong Kong to Halifax, Melbourne to Miami, in a period pre-dated computers and fax machines and the now ubiquitous mobile phone.

When he began as a cadet on the old Sydney Sun, many homes didn't even have a telephone, and calls were made from coin-operated telephones found in quaint weatherproof boxes generally located on street corners.

Interstate telephone calls had to be booked in advance from operators who worked for the Postmaster-General's department in each capital and newspapers relied on banks of telex machines for their national and international news stories.

Reporters didn't go to Google looking for stories, or to idiot-traps like Wikipedia for their "facts".

Newsrooms were packed with experienced professionals who had learnt their craft after progressing through a series of rounds designed to instil in them a love of words and a reverence for truth.

The sub-editors' desk was a repository of collective memory and institutional wisdom, experts could be found there on almost every topic, and most were willing to take likely beginners through their stories, word by word, paragraph by paragraph to help them get it right.

Good editors knew what a story was, knew how to campaign, and didn't need to sit behind one-way glass listening to focus groups fantasise about visions and perfect worlds.

There were no media studies degrees and no courses in journalism in Australia, and when they did emerge, they were largely staffed by those who hadn't been able to make it in a professional news organisation.

If anyone did appear with a qualification in journalism, it was assumed they had not made their name on the road.

There was probably the same ratio of misfits and malcontents attracted to the media as there is today, and the bars near newsrooms had their share of psychologically damaged souls who had never heard of stress counselling. Alcohol and mateship carried those who had seen scenes they would never wish upon anyone through their torment.

In this world of clattering typewriters, ringing telephones, and cigarette-etched desks, Dunleavy was king.

He had a nose (quite a feature of his handsome face, actually) for a story. He had charm and personality to spare.

If he could get through on a telephone, he had the story half-written, if he could get his foot in a door and speak face-to-face with his subject, the story was on its way to the presses.

While some reporters began their day with a prayer which started: "Lord, forgive us our press passes", Dunleavy's began with cold beer.

He would pounce on a telephone as soon as it rang, in case there was someone with a story to tell. He was a great listener, and a great charmer, and the stories of his extraordinary success with women are all true.

He did have his ankle broken by a passing mini-van when he was making love on a drift of snow formed between some parked cars (he spread his coat on the snow as a blanket for his friend) across from Elaine's nightclub during a New York blizzard, and such was his devotion to the moment that he didn't realise what had happened till he was dancing later that evening.

He did romance one of Ted Kennedy's "boiler-room" girls to get the inside story on the events that led to Mary Jo Kopechne's tragic death in Ted Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick in 1969, and his then-wife, Yvonne, did co-author The Happy Hooker with Dutch madam Xaviera Hollander.


While he graduated from the university of hard knocks, he knew his way around enough to guide me on my first visit to Harvard more than 30 years ago. That we were en route to the maximum security Walpole prison to visit the Boston Strangler, Albert de Salvo (above), is another story.

He later wrote a weekly column, This I Believe, which ushered in the Reagan era and the restoration of American pride, and he became a star of a tabloid television show produced by another old Sydney reporter, Peter Brennan.

He stood up for cops and firemen and servicemen and women, and he wrote of his pride and tears when his own son, US Army Captain Peter Dunleavy, went to Iraq in 2004.

Tomorrow night, Australia's global media giant Rupert Murdoch, the editor-in-chief of the NY Post, Col Allan, and a galaxy of media greats will stand up for Steve as he turns in his NYPD press card.

Big drinks will be taken, even bigger stories will be told, and the final paragraph will be written on the reporting days of a man who fiercely burnt the candle at both ends and in the middle, living the life he loved.

Steve Dunleavy Tabloid Master Class Part 4

We continue our special presentation of journalism legend and cultural icon Steve Dunleavy's master class on tabloid journalism.

This morning's lesson:

Aussie rhyming slang.

Steve's being feted by Rupert Murdoch at a retirement party tomorrow night.

This is the place where we're cutting through the jealousies and politics show why Dunleavy is so influential. And so good.

More lessons to follow. Stay tuned here.

(From the Tabloid Baby-Frozen Pictures production: Steve Dunleavy: The Man and His Music).