by Roxy Jacenko
The message was apparently being sent out to stop anyone else from foolishly wanting to work for me. ‘I hope this serves as a warning to all young publicists: Do not work for Jasmine Lewis. There’s a reason the staff turnover rate is as high as Snoop Dogg. And it’s also why it’s so bloody easy to get an internship there. When you walk into the office everyone looks like they’re ready to evacuate and not go back.’
Fan-bloody-tastic – what was Queen Bee, a feeder station to Lifeline? Apparently, making my staff almost suicidal wasn’t the worst of it. In fact, according to the person who had donated this bile to the answer phones of Sydney, the atmosphere was so toxic at Queen Bee headquarters that the Environmental Protection Agency regularly sent out a squad of men in breathing apparatus to ensure the noxious fumes didn’t travel far. The entire PR company was deemed to be an environmental health risk.
I was also accused of having callously stolen Michael from Belle Single, who truth be told gets through men just slightly quicker than it takes her nails to dry. Belle, bless her, has always operated on the principle that she’s not going to look young and sexy forever so she might as well make the most of it while she can. And she’s also a firm believer that you have to kiss an awful lot of frogs before you get to your prince; so the faster you get through all of them, the sooner you’ll find happiness. Michael was probably already so far down on her list of former boyfriends that she could scarcely recall having dated him.
I glanced at Lulu, who was so embarrassed at having to bring this sordid message to my attention that she could barely look at me.
‘It’s okay,’ I reassured her. ‘Just make sure that no calls are put through to me till I work out a strategy for dealing with this.’
My stomach was feeling as queasy as if I had sent out for a chicken sanger from one of our local cafes in Alexandria, Salmonella Central. The place was actually a godsend when I had to lose the last six kilos following Fifi’s birth – I lost most of it following just one takeout order. There was almost nothing safe to eat there – even the Vegemite toast might be smeared with a knife which had cut through rancid butter. Strangely, Salmonella Central was not yet on the government’s name-and-shame list, probably because the local health inspectors had their work cut out for them in this semi-industrial area.
It was just as well I decided to go silent, because soon everyone from gossip diva Luke Jefferson to Bernard Mealy, the head of News at Eight (the TV station where I was a regular guest on the morning show Breakfast of Champions) was trying to get through to me for comment. I wondered whether Diane Wilderstein was somehow behind it, but it wasn’t her style to take so much trouble. While she was certainly manipulative, for her it was all about instant gratification. Diane was so lazy she often didn’t turn up to her own clients’ events but dispatched minions to run them (such as me when I worked for her). Diane might have been co-opted into Toxic Message-gate, but she wouldn’t have been the mastermind. So who was the one who had started it all? The name Kelly Young kept coming to me from some of my contacts who had been helping get to the bottom of it.
Kelly Young, a former staffer, definitely had an axe and a half to grind with me because she was now the focus of a criminal investigation, brought on by yours truly. It all started after Kelly, whom I’d taken on at Queen Bee shortly after her arrival from California, came to me one day looking teary. She had to return home because her dad was ill. What to do? Kelly had been one of the most diligent of Bees. The clients loved her and so did the editors of some of the glossies, who admired her style. Funny how a warm and sunny American accent can compensate for what we discovered was a seriously compromised set of morals.
After Kelly told me her story, Lulu and I came up with the idea that Kelly could open a branch of the Queen Bee agency in San Francisco. We already had four clients who were based there and we were sure she could get more. So, armed with the company credit card and some powerful computer equipment, Kelly went home to ‘Frisco’, and for a while all went well.
But then Kelly was suddenly hard to find.
This didn’t make sense to me as I stayed up late at night, working to ensure she had everything she needed at the start of her business day. Meanwhile I was eagerly awaiting responses to some of my queries. I kept wondering why I was unable to reach the person who was on my payroll.
Then came the whisper that Kelly Young was working for Agosta and Lil, the internet store some fashionistas here were starting to become addicted to for distinctive dressing. I didn’t believe it but called their office anyway – and was put straight through to my employee, who was currently pulling a nine-to-five wage there.
It was eleven o’clock at night here when I found her out but I had a lawyer’s letter sent out to her by seven the following morning, advising that her access to all Queen Bee’ emails and networks had been severed. In the days that followed, the credit card company sent me a list of purchases made on the company credit card, from Banana Republic, Jeffrey Campbell Shoes.com, One Love Studios Ltd, LA Bond Inc, LuisaViaRoma.com, and Vintage Wheels – the last to the tune of twelve thousand dollars.
Of course, it was all classified by the credit card company as financial crime, and as such I wasn’t liable to pay them. But it caused Kelly some massive problems, including the possibility of being charged with theft if she ever set foot on Australian soil again.
If what my underground sources told me was true, this could be one of the reasons why she was now trying to have her revenge. Even more worrying, Kelly had kept in touch with some of the old Bees who had left the company in less than pleasant circumstances. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that it had to have been a group effort timed to upstage my wedding and the rebuilding of the agency.
Unfortunately, there was only one way to find out for sure who was behind this poisonous diatribe and that was to call in the lawyers and get them to track down the phone number. But first of all we had to ensure that none of the media organisations printed the contents of the call or, worse, put the audio on their websites. We needed to send them all a lawyer’s letter threatening defamation. Lulu was already one step ahead of me, and she had the call transcribed and recorded, ready to be sent out to Marshall Coutts.
So while half of the city was salivating over my perceived fall from grace, the other half – who had gleefully hit the button marked ‘Forward’ on this toxic recording – were suddenly in the position of having passed on information which had the potential to land them in a courtroom charged with defamation.
It took approximately ninety minutes to deal with the sordid residue of gossip, and then it was on to the next item on the jam-packed schedule: putting the finishing touches on Chelsea’s CD launch party.
The brief was to find a location that said old Hollywood glamour, and my clever Bees had managed to secure the rooftop of one of Sydney’s oldest and most gracious apartment blocks, the Atlas in Macquarie Street.
‘Tell me again how we managed to persuade the Atlas’s managing board to allow us to do this?’ I asked Lulu, still puzzled as to how she had pulled it off. You would usually have as much success with securing that space as you would in holding a Peter Alexander pyjama collection launch in the crypt of St Mary’s Cathedral. It was pretty much sacrilege.
Lulu beamed at me and I noticed for the first time she was looking a little bit rock star in her Alexander Wang maxi-dress teamed with the Givenchy ankle boots which she could wear for hours at a time without seemingly getting sore, when everyone else only wore their investment shoes from Cosmopolitan in Double Bay when we were being visited at the office by bona fide celebs.
‘Easy,’ she said. ‘You know the socialite Juliet Bassett-De Plassy – the former Paris runway model who married that French banker, Maurice De Plassy, who eventually left her for her best friend’s daughter?’
I nodded. It had been the lead item in Pamela’s column for two weeks. People couldn’t get enough of it. And when Juliet and her BFF, Belinda, showed up for Sunday lu
nch together at Catalina, there was almost a traffic jam on New South Head Road as word spread among the eastern suburbs social tribes.
Some of those who had been seriously gossip-deprived tried to get a table at Catalina just so they could gawp, analyse the body language and try to listen in. Luckily, Belinda’s daughter didn’t join her mother and Juliet for lunch or there would have been pandemonium.
‘Of course. Who could forget that spectacular divorce, which threatened to turn into a criminal trial because the girl was only fifteen years old when they met?’ I said. Breaking that juicy story had been one of Pamela’s best coups ever. In fact, if they gave Walkley Awards to gossip columnists, Pammy would have scooped the pool that year with the tale of betrayal, lust and forbidden sex.
‘But he swore they didn’t sleep together until she was eighteen,’ Lulu added helpfully. ‘And you know Juliet got the huge Atlas apartment in the settlement, but now he’s trying to prise her out of it, offering her less money than it’s worth. She wants to have the launch party on the roof using his name so that he won’t be at all popular with the Atlas’s board and they won’t be keen to have him back. The scandal of having a noisy launch party at the Atlas would be all too much: by the time they finish with him, he won’t want to know about his place.’
‘Fantastic, Lulu,’ I said, thinking that with my number one Bee, at last I had someone prepared to go even further than me when it came to putting together the right event for our clients.
This party was going to be gorgeous – the Atlas’s rooftop reeks of old Hollywood grandeur but with a backdrop of the Sydney Opera House and the lush, velvety green of the Botanic Gardens. The images would go right around the world. I could almost envisage them on the opening page of the Daily Mail website.
But its success would also come down to the guest list. We definitely had to bring the A-list, not the desperadoes who wanted to be seen out at all costs.
‘Who do we have?’ I asked Lulu, taking the list from her. ‘And why does Raelene Bax have a question mark next to her? Isn’t Josh in town as well? Surely he could make an appearance. After all, he’s one of Chelsea’s mates?’
Raelene and her fiancé, the actor Josh Sweetwood, had not yet set a wedding date but Raelene was already thinking big. Despite the fact that under her own steam she only released a capsule collection of knits once a year (she was too busy travelling on set with Josh the rest of the time), she had already employed her own ‘manager’ to look after her social engagements. Or had she? As I’ve mentioned, the mysterious Sharon had never been sighted or spoken to but was flat out issuing badly written emails to publicists, magazine editors and TV producers, laying down the law on her requirements for Raelene’s personal appearances. In her emails – which sounded eerily similar to the way Raelene spoke – Sharon insisted that Raelene could only be assisted by the top makeup artists and hairdressers, and that only the most exclusive European labels could be sourced for her to wear. She was the full on publicist’s nightmare. In complete contrast to this regal and difficult mindset, Josh was the all-Australian bloke who had found international success partly because he always played up his down-home charm.
‘So what’s Raelene’s issue with attending Chelsea’s launch?’ I asked. Surely Josh and Chelsea got along famously from hanging out in West Hollywood. They had been photographed in the same group of celebs, attending a birthday party for Hollywood producer Nad Coleman at Sur. Raelene had been there as well and had seemed to be very happy in Chelsea’s company.
‘No, that’s not the issue,’ Lulu responded. ‘Sharon is demanding that Raelene and Josh are only snapped for the social pages of Harper’s Bazaar and not for the daily or Sunday papers.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ I snorted. ‘We need all that publicity now, not when the magazines come out in three months’ time. And if they’re serious about it I’ll have to get an extra security detail just to keep the photographers away from Raelene and Josh. We’d have to smuggle them in and out of the event, which would defeat the purpose of having them there in the first place. Who else has confirmed they’ll be there?’
‘Three former Miss Universe Australias, that complete nutter Lillian Richard–’ began Lulu, reciting the list in her best singsong voice.
‘Do you think we should offer Lillian a free blowdry by Leonard at her office?’ I interrupted. Lillian was the editor of Eve Pascal magazine. ‘All that hair of hers blowing free and wild on the roof as she bears down on Chelsea could scare the crap out of her. It could even be an accident risk if it got caught on one of the props. And Lillian always looked so much more elegant in an up do.’
‘Copy,’ said Lulu. ‘Lillian has already put in a request for Chelsea to appear nude on her magazine cover, artfully shot of course.’
‘Of course. Having a nude celeb on the cover is her go-to initiative when she has no other ideas. Who else do we have?’
‘Allison Palmer, Samantha Priest, Tom Reynolds, gorgeous Dalia Goodman who is in town to film an Australian Tourism commercial and may bring some of her celebrity mates with her, but we don’t know their names yet. Then there’s the dreaded Matt Ashley, the A-grade cricketer who’s a chance to surpass Warnie.’
‘Of course,’ I agreed. ‘But we also need some really big names besides the local television fodder. And we must have someone to run the red carpet – I don’t want all those tragic models thinking they own it.’
Queen Bee had been the first agency in Sydney to instigate a red carpet bitch for our events. We needed someone strong at this event, because some of the more relentless partygoers out there had absolutely no shame. Fortunately, Susie Solomon had just returned to town from LA where she worked for a film company helping to organise film premieres, and she was ruthless about who she would and wouldn’t let onto a red carpet.
Everything seemed to be falling into place.
14
In this town personal trainers think they’re the new soapie stars. No, scrap that, they think they’re Leonardo DiCaprio fresh off the set of The Great Gatsby. TV stars are far too low down in the food chain for them.
I should have been trying to spend my spare time catching up on my sleep and playing with Fifi but, since I had so much stress in my working life (ah yes, that would be the Russians, the vile phone messages, Chelsea’s CD launch and, of course, Tod Spelsen’s beauty launch), I seriously needed a serotonin boost and to firm up a little more before the wedding. But with Noah, my Israeli personal trainer on vacay in Tel Aviv, who to go with? The last thing I needed right now was to put my back out.
Lulu saw John Warren-Smith but in a group class, and the reports weren’t encouraging. He sounded as though he had a bigger ego than Seal’s.
‘He’s driving me crazy,’ Lulu complained. ‘His “Six Weeks to Sublime” boot camp is the Hollywood fitness regime from hell. All those solarium sessions of his must be melting his brain.’
‘Come on, Lulu, it can’t be that bad,’ I said, studying her slender frame. Lulu did have a good appetite, especially when the Cupcake Queen came to call, but you would be hard pressed locating her tummy. Maybe she had a tiny one hidden under her armpits?
‘You wouldn’t believe it. I’ve spent gruelling Saturday mornings running on the soft sand at Bondi at quarter to six and doing hill sprints up to St James Park but he doesn’t pay any attention to my specific body issues at all. He just regards our boot camps as an opportunity for him to flirt with the prettiest girls in the group and not us fatties who need to do the most work.’
‘Fatties?’ I spluttered. ‘Seriously, if you think you’re fat, what hope is there for the rest of us?’
‘Look, if he “helps” Lizzie out with her hamstrings by stretching her into a compromising position one more time, then I might throw a kettle bell at him. While you were away, I was following his strict no-carbs/paleo diet – the meat, veggie and no-fun diet – when I received a little update in my inbox at Monday lunchtime. Yes, just while I was tucking into my chicken salad – hold
the oil, hold the mayo, hold the avo, and defs hold the flavour – up pops a picture of Jessica Alba’s arse and a reminder to watch what I eat at lunch. That was on top of the end of winter email warning me not to ruin my training by stuffing something bad in my face during the last of the cold snap. Honestly, it made me want to dive into a vat of chocolate fudge then and there.’
Okay, so John Warren-Smith was definitely out, because the last thing I needed was a food Nazi stalking me as well as all the other weirdos.
Shelley wasn’t having much more joy with her PT, yet another celebrity trainer, Shane Pongrass, whose claim to fame was that he’d had three training sessions with Megan Gale before she relocated interstate. Shelley was really peed off because Shane had made her do burpees for being five minutes late. She’d waged war with him via email over this, threatening to leave, but by all accounts he won because he had attitude right up the wazoo.
Shell, this discussion is really boring me, began one of his emails back to her when she had complained about being punished for turning up late (after all, she was the one who was penalised for having to pay him the same amount whether she was early on late). The rules are simple. You’re late, you do the burpees. You carry on about it and refuse to do them, you go and train somewhere else. Two rules, it’s an easy equation. The fact that we now have over ten emails about this is pissing me off enough as it is. Either turn up tomorrow morning for your training with the right attitude, or don’t turn up.
Of course Shelley packed it in. Who wouldn’t? The thing about having a trainer is that you want them to be a partner with you in your health and fitness, not some power crazy, retarded former sports teacher who wants to make you pay for subordination. But Shell did not give in without a fight. She wanted a refund on the money she had already paid upfront. And she got it, eventually.
I sure didn’t have the time or the energy to fight with any trainer, so I resorted to the tried and trusted old-fashioned method. I did it myself.
