This was published 6 years ago
Shari Lea Hitchcock's vision blurry after alleged attack
By Andrew Hornery
Nearly a week after she made accusations on social media against a man she knows of beating her up, Shari Lea Hitchcock is expected to seek medical attention for the ongoing pain she says she is suffering in her deeply bruised eye socket.
"My vision is blurry, like I'm looking through water ... it has gotten worse. Initially I thought it was just bruising," Hitchcock confirmed to PS this week.
The socialite and formerly Australia's best known mistress published shocking images of her bruised and bloodied face on social media late on Monday night following an incident in Vaucluse.
On Wednesday she made a full statement to Rose Bay Police. A police spokeswoman told PS investigations were continuing but no charges had been laid.
Shari Lea Hitchcock has spoken to police after claiming she was assaulted.
On Tuesday, Hitchcock told PS: "I am just too upset to even talk about it, it really is just so, so horrible."
On social media Hitchcock – who came to national attention 20 years ago when it was revealed she was the long-term mistress of late cardboard baron Richard Pratt and mother of his youngest daughter, Paula – named the man she has accused of allegedly assaulting her at the Vaucluse property.
"What a prize he is," Hitchcock wrote on Instagram.
Hitchcock claimed she "ran to help" another woman: "I promised I would not call the police! He's an abusive man."
However by Wednesday Hitchcock had a change of heart and was pursuing the matter with police.
When PS called the woman in question she denied her partner had hit her or Hitchcock, saying: "I really don't know what went on last night ... but he did not hit anyone ... not me and not Shari Lea."
Rose Bay police were called to a home on Fitzwilliam Road, Vaucluse, after reports of an alleged assault on Monday night.
Officers from Rose Bay Local Area Command confirmed they found a 47-year-old woman with scratches to her face and bruising.
While most of Hitchcock's friends have rallied around her this week, she has not heard from the woman identified on social media as the partner of the man she has accused of assaulting her.
Meanwhile Hitchcock herself is due to face court in September for a hearing into assault charges she faces after she allegedly bit a police officer following a long lunch at Paddington's Centennial Hotel last year.
Court appearance: Shari Lea Hitchcock is facing assault charges for allegedly biting a police officer.Credit: AAP
Rebel Wilson's 'ghetto' only packed with evangelising teens
Ah, the mean streets of Castle Hill.
Well, according to Rebel Wilson, the leafy Hills District is Sydney's "ghetto", a claim that has been scrutinised closely during her sensational defamation trial against Bauer Media and Woman's Day magazine, which she accuses of portraying her as a liar who deliberately fabricated her background.
Rebel Wilson heads to court on Monday.Credit: AAP
But as Wilson told American talk show host David Letterman a few years ago, she grew up in the "ghetto". Her statement, she insisted in court, was said as a joke and Letterman's audience had responded with a laugh. But it was that same word that echoed again in the Victorian Supreme Court.
While many scoffed at the idea Castle Hill could ever be a ghetto, on Thursday PS discovered a mob called the Bad Machine Brotherhood – a "gang" started by three teenage brothers, according to The Daily Telegraph – who all wear branded black hoodies with the initials BMBH .
Actor Rebel Wilson once called the Hills District a ghetto.Credit: Transport for NSW.
On Tuesday morning police officers from the Hills Local Area Command seized a replica pistol, knives and drugs (believed to be cannabis, ecstasy and methamphetamine) and prescribed restrictive substances (steroids) from a Castle Hill home. Ye gads!
But there wasn't much other evidence of Wilson's "ghetto" when PS visited the prosaic arcades of Castle Towers shopping centre this week.
The Piazza at Castle Towers.Credit: Geoff Jones
Indeed PS spent several months many years ago writing for one of the local rags during the early 1990s, around the same time Wilson called the hood home.
Back then it was pretty much farms and a modest suburban shopping centre brimming with little old ladies with mauve hair and twin sets jostling for window seats in the David Jones cafe before the daily senior's special ran out. Scary stuff.
Since then more McMansions have been built around the area, the huge suburban bunkers with their triple garages, rumpus rooms, neurotically clipped topiary balls and in-ground pools making the manicured cul-de-sacs no-go zones for anyone with a taste for good architecture.
And the only gangs PS saw around today's Castle Towers mall, which has now pretty much swallowed up the old suburb, belonged to the HSH, or rather the Hillsong Hoods, the fresh-faced teenagers, in designer pastel hoodies, evangelising all over Sydney's answer to the Bible Belt.
It was enough to scare the bejeezus out of a godless soul from the inner city.
Mullet coming into fashion
Forget about those elegant three-piece Zegna suits and throw away your Ferragamo brogues, the Italians are about to be hit with an onslaught of Australian men's fashion.
But exactly what they will make of our post modern mullets and pantaloons?
A model strikes a pose at Ten Pieces show at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. The collection was shown at Icebergs in Bondi.Credit: Brendon Thorne
Eight Australian menswear labels are about to hit Florence to represent us in the world's biggest menswear fashion event, the annual Pitti Uomo, which kicks off on June 13.
With more than 30,000 visitors and around 20,000 buyers, Pitti Uomo is the men's fashion grand prix, and each year a guest nation is invited to showcase it's finest with their own pavilion dedicated to their sartorial splendour. In past years counties like Singapore, Japan, Korea and Brazil have wowed the Italians in the fashion version of the Eurovision song contest.
This year Sydney restaurateur turned fashion impresario Maurice Terzini and his Ten Pieces label will join other local labels such as Double Rainbouu, Strateas, Carlucci, Chris Ran Lin, Comma, Sener Besim eyewear, Ex Infinitas and socialite Pip Edwards' activewear brand PE Nation, which will unveil its first men's range.
Maurice Terzini, the man behind Sydney’s Icebergs, has now also moved into the fashion space with a collaboration that sees him work with Ten Pieces.Credit: Graham Denholm
Yoga tights for men?
Terzini and his co designer Lucy Hinckfuss' label Ten Pieces caused quite a stir at last months' Australian Fashion Week when they presented models sporting seriously outre mullets, reflective sunglasses, pantaloons and high tops.
And they weren't joking either as the models strutted around Terznini's Iceberg's restaurant in the odd-ball get ups.
Apparently Terzini and Hinckfuss wanted to draw references to the Sharpies, the youth gangs who haunted suburbia throughout the late 1960s and 1970s.
Hopefully nothing will be lost in translation when they hit Florence.
Bonnie Tyler remains comfortable on stage
A middle-aged mosh pit and an '80s pop icon – what could possibly go wrong?
Absolutely nothing!
Indeed, it was the most polite mosh pit PS has ever been in as a stampede of 40 and overs surged towards the stage at the Enmore Theatre on Thursday night as Bonnie Tyler started singing her iconic hit Total Eclipse of the Heart.
Still touring: Bonnie Tyler says she'll never retire. Credit: Getty Images
The trademark raspy voice was as fabulously hoarse as it was back in 1983 when Tyler first released Total Eclipse, her most successful song by a country mile which went on to sell over 6 million copies worldwide and made her the first and only Welsh singer to reach the top spot of the US Billboard Hot 100.
And while Bonnie's thick and luxuriant hair was super "swishy", the big, "scrunched" curls of yore have been tamed over the years, as has her overall "look" – which these days is mostly discreet sequins, a leather biker jacket your mum would wear on a coffee date at Gloria Jeans and comfy shoes, rather than wind machines, smoke bombs and glowing eyeballs.
But what she may have lacked in special effects were more than made up for by her on-stage banter which kept her adoring fans enraptured for her 90 minute routine, which included a few covers along with her other hits, It's A Heartache, Holding Out for a Hero and Lost in France.
Bonnie Tyler sporting her famous 1980s look. Credit: Universal Pictorial Press Photo
And for a few brief minutes PS was caught up in Bonnie's celebrity slipstream back stage, tagging along on the coat tails of the Herald's arts writer Sarah Thomas for a meet and greet.
As we wound our way through the labyrinthine corridors past the green room we eventually made it to Bonnie's closed dressing room door. Her manager gave a discreet knock and seconds later Bonnie materialised in all her blonde, bedazzled glory, though she was much smaller than any of us had imagined (aren't they always?).
It was evident she had done this before. With little time for idle chit-chat she set the ground rules quickly and got down to business booming in her Welsh accent: "Ooookay, who wants a photo then? Everyone get your cameras ready and line up!"
And so we did, with a round of flashes going off around her she quickly wrapped up proceedings and disappeared back into her dressing room bidding us a fond farewell, packing her bags for her next stop: Santiago. Basking in the glory, we'd left happy, having been thoroughly Bonnied.
Court in awkward spot
Given that Margaret Court has announced her boycott of Qantas because it has publicly supported marriage equality and its boss, Alan Joyce, is an openly gay man in a long and committed relationship, PS can only hope the once great tennis champion has avoided any recent copies of the in-flight magazine.
Margaret Court has said homosexuality was an ungodly 'lust for the flesh' and that LGBT tendencies in young people were 'all the devil'.Credit: AP
In this year's January issue there was an unfortunate – well it would have been for Margaret's tastes – placement of a profile on the tennis legend that was opposite an ad for Beau Brummell, a dating agency for gay men.
The Beau Brummell ad featured a couple of good looking gays thoroughly loved up, though when the magazine was closed they were face to face with Margaret's rather more stern-looking visage. Talk about awkward!
David Jones super-sizing
David Jones' plans for its Elizabeth Street flagship store have been getting the once over at Sydney City Council since the retailer lodged a development application for the massive $200 million project a month ago.
Big plans: Department store David Jones is looking to open a flagship store in Elizabeth Street.Credit: Paul Rovere
PS understands the new enlarged store, which will become the iconic retailer's sole premises when the old menswear store finally closes in about two-and-a-half years, will include a new, much larger food hall, possibly in the basement, a giant luxury ladies shoe department in the current ballroom on level seven, a massive new Neil Perry restaurant and champagne bar on the mezzanine overlooking the ballroom where the band once played, three floors of women's fashion, two floors of men's fashion and the entire ground floor potentially given over to luxury retail concessions.
No word on where the store's popular grand piano (which this column helped save years ago) will be positioned, though PS hopes it will be in a prominent spot.
Meanwhile down on Pitt Street Mall, rival Myer is about to unveil its own in-store ice skating rink next week on level six.