She may have been booted out of the country on Tuesday, but right-wing motormouth Katie Hopkins looks set to laugh all the way to the bank back in Dear Old Blighty.
Thanks to a “pay or play” clause in Hopkins’ contract with Big Brother production company Endemol Shine, which creates the show on behalf of the Seven Network, Hopkins is due to pocket all of the estimated $200,000 fee for which she had signed on, despite her aborted appearance.
Katie Hopkins mocking the safety rules upon her arrival in Australia. Credit:Instagram: @_katie_hopkins_
A spokeswoman for Big Brother declined to comment on Hopkins’ contract, or even confirm she was going to appear on the show.
Such “pay or play” provisions are common for actors. They provide for the “talent” to be paid in full even if they are terminated before the gig is up, or in Hopkins’ case, before it had even begun.
However, it is also now common for such contracts to carry clauses rendering them null and void if the “talent” breaches social media rules that bring them or their show into disrepute, but as one insider told PS this week “no one can shut Katie up, that’s the whole point of why she was hired”.
On top of her fee, Endemol and Seven are also up for covering the inflated airfares – business class – for Hopkins, which have reportedly hit $60,000 and more for her London-to-Sydney return trip since COVID arrivals caps were reduced a fortnight ago.
Add to that the cost of covering her quarantine expenses during her shorter-than-planned stay at the Meriton apartments on Sussex Street.
However, while it was the same authorities that granted Hopkins her “critical skills visa” and then expelled her following boasts she was not adhering to Sydney’s quarantine rules, Seven executives had already been growing increasingly nervous about the impact the controversy was having on its big advertisers after social media activist group Sleeping Giants Oz got involved.
Previously described by arch-conservative commentator Janet Albrechtsen as “the online Stasi for the 21st century”, Sleeping Giants is run by a loose collection of anonymous individuals and has nearly 44,000 followers on Twitter, who are regularly called into action to boycott and target advertisers on shows that are deemed to promote racist, bigoted, misogynistic and anti-environmental views.
Sleeping Giants was one of the key factors leading to the departure of Alan Jones from 2GB.Credit:Louise Kennerley
Sleeping Giants was one of the key factors leading to the departure of Alan Jones from 2GB, part of Nine Entertainment, which also owns this masthead. Advertisers on Jones’ show were pressured to stop advertising after he was accused of bullying Sydney Opera House chief executive Louise Herron in 2018.
Jones later apologised for his comments about Herron, however it was only after he left the airwaves last year that several of the advertisers targeted returned to 2GB.
Following Hopkins’ rants, Sleeping Giants singled out Seven’s top-tier advertisers including Woolworths, Optus, Toyota and McDonald’s. Those companies are also heavily invested in the network’s Tokyo Olympics telecast, which is already facing challenges because of the pandemic and fears it will impact viewing.
Sleeping Giants also singled out Seven’s big name stars, including Big Brother host Sonia Kruger, Sunrise co-hosts Natalie Barr and David Koch, along with newsreaders Mark Ferguson and Michael Usher, demanding they protest against their network’s sponsorship of Hopkins, who was already famous for making divisive, racist and inflammatory comments in Britain long before setting foot in Australia.
No doubt watching it all unfold from her neighbouring suite at the Meriton has been Caitlyn Jenner, who has also been flown into Sydney for the Big Brother series, along with the Duchess of Sussex’s half-brother, Thomas “rent a quote” Markle jnr.
Caitlyn Jenner is in Sydney for Seven’s Big Brother.
Unlike Hopkins, Jenner has been a good girl in quarantine, only posting on social media about her bid to become Governor of California since arriving in Sydney, which is odd in itself, given she has opted to quarantine and then shoot a reality TV series halfway around the world rather than campaign.
The key omission from Leckie tributes
Even as the tributes and accolades flowed for the irascible but disarmingly endearing TV boss David Leckie following his death early on Tuesday morning, one bridge remained in a state of disrepair: his one-time friendship with billionaire James Packer.
James Packer and David Leckie face off in 2009.Credit:AFR News
While the likes of former News Corp boss John Hartigan, ex-senator Graham Richardson, Nine boss Mike Sneesby and Seven’s billionaire proprietor Kerry Stokes all waxed lyrical about “Dave The Wave”, it was Packer’s deafening silence that spoke volumes about relations between the two.
They had once enjoyed a close bond, with the younger Packer “mentored” by Leckie when he ran Nine.
But it was during the birthday celebrations of another Australian television powerbroker, the late Sam Chisholm in 2009 at the Sydney Opera House, when the bad blood between Packer and Leckie erupted in full public view.
At the time Leckie was chief executive at Channel 7, years after being fired from the same job at the then Packer-owned Nine in 2001.
When Leckie saw Packer at Chisholm’s party he went over to say hello, only to watch as the billionaire’s face turned a deep shade of crimson and his hands trembled with rage. Packer told Leckie to “f--k off!“, his booming voice causing the VIP-packed room to momentarily fall silent.
Word was that Packer had taken umbrage at how Leckie’s Seven network was reporting on his business affairs.
Skye and David Leckie, then CEO of Channel Seven, at the opening of The Star in 2011.Credit:Andrew Quilty
It was but one of many chapters in the life and times of Leckie, who was farewelled in a private funeral by his immediate family, including second wife Skye, their two sons Harry and Ben, and his eldest son Tim Leckie, from his first marriage.
Tales of Leckie’s larger-than-life personality don’t get much better than one from the late 1990s when he arrived at the annual cocktail party Nine had traditionally hosted at the swanky Carlton hotel in Cannes during the television industry’s annual love-in.
Among the guests were Prince Edward, a slew of high-powered American and European studio bigwigs and the mayor of Cannes.
Leckie took to the stage to address the crowd, starting with: “Welcome freeloaders and dinosaurs ... This is my first visit to Cannes and it’s going to be my last. The place is a dump! Reed Midem [the organisers] have been ripping us all off for years, as have the hotels and restaurants, and we’re sick of it.”
He joyfully added that the “Poms” had the worst television in the world and were “totally up themselves”, before finishing his 15-minute expletive tirade, but not before the mayor of Cannes had stormed out.
But it was his beloved “Skysie” who could see through the curmudgeonly act.
The then Skye Macleod was working as David Jones’ glamorous public relations boss and would later recall how during a boardroom lunch “this big, cheeky guy” walked in and the proverbial fireworks went off. In 1995, while visiting New York together, Leckie asked her to marry him. Luckily she said yes, as he’d secretly taken care of all the preparations and paperwork before leaving Sydney.
Hair of the Bod
Elle Macpherson and Andrew Wakefield.Credit:Twitter
Elle Macpherson’s boyfriend, the notorious anti-vaxxer Andrew Wakefield, continues to cause headaches for health officials around the world battling COVID, with his latest promotion of an anti-vaxxing documentary now carrying official fact-check warnings on Instagram after it erroneously claimed several world leaders had gone missing since denying the pandemic’s threat.
Meanwhile Elle has been promoting the benefits of her magic green powdery supplements on her trademark mane of hair, though some of her less-kind fans have also pointed out she has also benefited from the magic of hair weaves and extensions.
The Block goes to Byron?
It’s still some way off but PS can confirm producers of The Block have been scoping out potential sites for a future series of the show in Byron Bay.
Byron Bay bound? Scott Cam from The Block.
While one horrified local claimed his former house, which he’d spent hundreds of thousands of dollars renovating, was soon set for the wrecking ball in order to shoot the series, no deals have been signed. The show’s bosses have to weigh up the costs of moving production, which has been based in Melbourne for years, to the holiday resort town to see if the idea is viable. Nor is Byron Bay the only place outside of Melbourne they are investigating.
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Andrew Hornery is a senior journalist and Private Sydney columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.
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2021-07-23 19:00:00Z
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