PRIVATE SYDNEY
Private Sydney: Elton eyes up Oz talent
Elton John has been eying up works of art from Sydney talent and promises to buy up big in the new year. Andrew Hornery looks at other Sydney stories. WARNING: Video contains nudity, some viewers may find offensive.
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THERE'S nothing like the sight of a bunch of rich boys and their toys.
The Sydney property developer John Boyd, who has a habit of wearing fancy dress outfits, threw himself an almighty bucks' party in Watsons Bay on Friday, complete with a putt about the harbour on mate Anthony Bell's superyacht Ghost, one of a flotilla of luxury craft for the festivities.
The ''gentlemen's lunch'' ended up colliding with the 40th birthday celebrations of the Watsons Bay Hotel's new co-owner, Stu Laundy. Also in the mix were billionaire Paul Ramsay, Denis O'Neil, David Coe and David Leckie.
Quite the spectacle ... John Boyd and his bride-to-be, Marly Calladine. Photo: Supplied
PS hears Boyd's bride-to-be, Marly Calladine, who at 26 is less than half his age and younger than several of his children from his first marriage, once worked as an assistant at his property development company. Most recently she has been his personal decorator.
Calladine has been busy preparing the couple's new love nest, the penthouse above his 46-storey, $900 million office tower at 161 Castlereagh Street.
Boyd doesn't do things by halves; he has installed an express elevator to the penthouse.
Calladine had a hen's weekend on the Gold Coast recently, pampering a gaggle of girlfriends with bubbly and spa treatments.
The wedding should be quite a spectacle next weekend in the southern highlands, with one source reporting construction of a special Balinese mega-home-meets-French chateau folly on Boyd's property for the ceremony.
A famous face just looking for right frame
THE phones were ringing hot at a few selected art galleries around town, as word spread that one of the world's greatest art buyers was ready to drop some serious dough to add to his already enormous collection.
Teams of security guards would lead the way, and before long it was evident that the mystery collector was Elton John, who managed to squeeze a day of gallery-hopping on Wednesday into his tight schedule.
But unlike previous trips, this time John was more discerning when it came to which emerging artists would be destined to hang on his walls.
Instead it was baby Zachary who held the most appeal for John, friends describing the 65-year-old entertainer as a ''doting father'' who would sing the theme song to Bonanza as his little boy sat on his knee, thoroughly enjoying his private performance.
John also managed several visits to a friend in St Vincent's Hospital, as well as helping out a raft of local charities, all done with the upmost discretion and without fanfare.
But PS is informed that when it did come time to inspect Sydney's offering of contemporary art, John was most impressed by the work of photographer Duncan Dupain, the grandson of celebrated photographer Max Dupain. John met Dupain this week and by all accounts the pair hit it off.
The entertainer also visited Roslyn Oxley Gallery, and Glebe's Glass Artists' Gallery where he was taken by the work of founder Maureen Cahill.
While his outlay this time was not quite on the scale of John's 2008 trip to Sydney when he dropped $200,000 on works at the Sherman Galleries, PS hears John intends to spend some serious money on art when he returns next year to play his final concerts at the Entertainment Centre before it is ripped down.
Art was not the only inclusion on John's shopping list, as PS hears he also managed to secure the services of one of the Packer family's army of butlers while he was in town.
Apparently the relationship between John and the Packers is strong. Having performed at James Packer's first wedding to Jodhi Meares, he is apparently held in high regard by the family, even to the point of dispatching their top butler when he's in town.
John flew out of Sydney on Thursday morning aboard his private jet, bound for China where he will meet his husband, David Furnish, who has been in Shanghai on business, leaving this Australian trip to John and baby Zachary.
Ten's shock jock blames departure on bad timing
DESPITE being axed from Channel Ten, failure is not a word which tumbles easily from controversial television personality Paul Henry's lips.
Speaking for the first time about his dumping from Ten's overhyped and underperforming foray into breakfast television, Henry admitted he was ''very disappointed'' by the network's decision to dump him, arguing all he needed was ''a little more time''.
However, with a contract personally overseen by Ten director Lachlan Murdoch, and rumoured to be worth $1 million, and without an audience to justify it, Henry has been shown the door, along with 100 colleagues at the beleaguered network.
It has been one of the ugliest bloodlettings at the network in years.
''But I don't think anything specifically went wrong,'' he insisted to PS, with still a week to go before his final sign-off next Friday, choosing to blame market conditions rather than a lack of viewer warmth to his outspoken and often abrasive TV persona.
In fact Henry was so confident of his success here he bought a house in Balmain and his three daughters were regularly coming to stay. Henry admits he ''fell in love with Sydney, it really is such a cool city''.
''No one had predicted the downturn in the advertising market … It was almost the perfect storm. It was a huge ask from the beginning. This was a major thing for Ten to take on,'' he said.
But Henry, who says he will return to New Zealand to host a new prime-time program in August, admits the cultural differences between New Zealanders and Australians was something he was not fully aware of when he crossed the Tasman.
''I think Australians are much more aligned with the US than New Zealanders, who are more socially aligned with the British. Perhaps there is a little more conservatism in Australia than there is in New Zealand,'' Henry said.
However, within Ten's Pyrmont studios, Henry is unlikely to be missed at Ten's Pyrmont studios, nor by others who were unceremoniously dumped this month, among them news anchors Ron Wilson, Bill Woods and Henry's co-host Kathryn Robinson, the wife of Channel Seven news gun Chris Reason.
PS hears lawyers have been consulted and a potential legal bunfight between the network and some of its former stars is brewing, as established personalities are replaced with new blood such as Hamish Macdonald and weather girl Magdalena Roze.
NUDE ENCOUNTER
The Sydney artist Charles Billich is famed for his nudes, both painting them and using them as ornamentation. On Thursday night guests at a champagne soiree, which he and wife Christa hosted in their gallery, copped an eyeful when two naked men and two naked women strolled through the party before Billich proceeded to sketch them. PS hears two of the models were guests who volunteered after life models had to cancel at the last minute.
LEWIS'S LAMBO
For sale: 2010 alpine white convertible Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder, which once belonged to an owner with a complete - and very colourful - history. Anyone in the market for a cheap, high-end sports car should take a look at Clayton Bespoke in Rose Bay, where the car with a unique past is on offer. Until recently, it was owned by 41-year-old playboy Justin Kennedy Lewis, who was in the witness box last week during the Independent Commission Against Corruption hearing on Eddie Obeid's land dealings in the Bylong Valley. The ICAC is investigating the Obeid family's purchase of a farm in the area in 2007, and allegations a subsequent mining tender that produced millions of dollars of profits for the family was engineered by Eddie Obeid and the former government minister Ian Macdonald. The corruption inquiry heard Lewis had been told by Obeid's sons to buy a neighbouring farm in 2008 because he would be able to resell it to a mining company at a profit. In November that year, Lewis executed contracts to buy the $3.5 million Coggan Creek farm which compelled him to pass 30 per cent of the profits he made - when he sold it - back to the Obeid family. And where does the Lambo come in? It was bought by Lewis after he received a multimillion-dollar windfall from Cascade Coal for an option over the property. Appearing at the ICAC inquiry last week, Lewis said he had sold the car … and there it is, on offer for the bargain price of $289,000. It appears Lewis doesn't make a profit on all his deals.
MORE CAR SALES
Further perusal of the Clayton Bespoke website is certainly an illuminating experience. Along with Lewis's old ''Lambo'', there are two Rolls-Royces which were once driven by the flamboyant property developer Albert Bertini, pictured, a one-time business partner and friend of Russell Crowe and Peter Holmes a Court, before his empire hit on hard times. Bertini has not been seen around Sydney of late, with reports he is spending more time in Fiji.
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