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Delta & Brian battle it out in public

As Delta mourns the death of a dear friend, it’s clear her already strained relationship is at its lowest point, writes Sarah Blake.

A day after attending the funeral of her lifelong friend Liam O’Flaherty, Delta Goodrem and fiancé Brian McFadden met with friends for drinks at popular Sydney haunt, The Oaks Hotel.

The singer was deeply distressed, having given a eulogy for Liam — whose death at 24 in a motorbike accident has left her “heartbroken”. But rather than a quiet get-together, the afternoon session turned into a fierce public argument that saw the usually restrained Delta storm off, leaving Brian behind.

The shocking argument came just weeks after another emotion-charged incident.

A diner at upmarket Sydney restaurant Toko said onlookers were shocked to see the high-profile couple “screaming” at each other as an argument over dinner escalated.

Watch a video of the heated exchange in the player at the top of this page.

“Delta was really distraught and the word ‘jealousy’ was used,” the diner says. “She was upset and angry and waving her hands around and then she stormed off. Brian followed her looking like a belted-up love puppy.”

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Mel’s marriage is annulled … by his own dad

No wonder Mel Gibson is giving the thumbs-up. Full time has been called on his 28-year marriage to Robyn Moore.

The Pope didn’t give the order, though. That edict came from Mel’s 90-year-old father Hutton Gibson, and it paves the way for his son to marry his pregnant Russian girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva by Christmas.

Having had his request turned down by Catholic bishops, Mel, 53, pleaded his case in front of a tribunal of members from the Church of the Holy Family, his breakaway Catholic church in Malibu.

Hutton, who once studied for the priesthood only to leave before he was ordained, presided over the hearing. He granted Mel’s annulment request after his son presented evidence that his union to Robyn, 53, was never a true marriage — even though they wed in a Catholic ceremony in Australia in June 1980.

“Especially important was Mel’s description of how he felt pressured into the marriage in the first place because Robyn was pregnant,” a family insider says.

“Those feelings indicated to Hutton that it couldn’t have been a true marriage, and so he felt it must be invalid.

“After the discussion ended, Hutton pounded his fist on the table and said, ‘It is true that this union did not have what it takes to be a true marriage.'”

The family are at pains to keep the annulment, which took place a month after Robyn filed for divorce in April, a secret — but maybe not too secret.

“Mel hopes some of the bishops he has befriended recently can be persuaded to give him a proper Catholic annulment,” the insider says.

Either way, Mel is forging ahead with plans for a Christmas wedding to Oksana, 39, despite her cold feet over his recent behaviour, which includes gambling escapades in Las Vegas.

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Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O suspended

Controversial radio duo Sandilands and Jackie O’s breakfast program has been indefinitely suspended after a flood of complaints about their treatment of a teenage rape victim during a live broadcast.

The Kyle and Jackie show was cancelled on Sunday night, after the fallout from the lie detector stunt saw Kyle declare he was unable to go on air.

There have been calls for 2Day FM’s Kyle and Jackie O breakfast show to be axed by the station’s owners, Austereo, since Wednesday when a 14-year-old girl was strapped to a lie-detector and asked about her sexual history.

When the distressed girl replied she had been raped as a 12-year-old, Kyle said: “Right, is that the only experience you’ve had?” before the interview was brought to an end.

Austereo released a statement on Sunday evening saying: “Kyle Sandilands’ management has advised Austereo that he is unable to perform his duties on-air at this time.”

The shock jock’s future as a judge on Australian Idol also looks shakey, with Network Ten reportedly set to make an announcement this week.

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Warwick Capper’s changing looks

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Would you pay $1500 for a date with this man?

As former AFL star Warwick Capper launches his new career as a male escort, Jo Knowsley finds out just what his $1500 fee covers.

He’s as famous for his eccentric off-field antics as his AFL talent. Now Warwick Capper — freshly Botoxed — is entering a new arena: becoming a $1500-a-night escort.

“Usually it’s groups who hire me. But if it’s one woman, for a dinner, why not? I’ll make sure she has a good time.

I think it’s a good use of my talents. I like helping people to have fun.”

Warwick has posed for Australian Penthouse, was famously ejected from Celebrity Big Brother for full frontal exposure, worked as a scantily-clad Gold Coast “meter man”, and more recently created a 69-minute porn movie with a 26-year-old stripper girlfriend.

Today he’s dressed for a date — in an Ed Hardy T-shirt featuring the words “True Love”, and dazzling silver trainers.

His face is surprisingly line-free thanks to Botox injections and $10,000 worth of surgical enhancement, including an operation to remove fat from his eyelids and liposuction under his chin.

He rolls up his sleeve to show off his biceps. “It’s pretty good for 46, huh? Someone said the other day I looked 38. I work out five days a week. What do you think?”

Warwick’s nightmare date, he confides, would be one of the drunk girls he sees on hens’ nights “falling down and spewing up”. His dream would be dinner on a faux gondola on the Gold Coast where he can have sex on board — a feat he claims to have accomplished.

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*Rafters* star Allison Cratchley’s real life baby surprise

The actress was all ready to leave for LA when news of baby Diesel changed her mind. She talks to Jacqui Lang.

A prosthetic belly wasn’t required when Allison Cratchley agreed to play a pregnant lesbian on Packed To The Rafters.

By happy coincidence, Allison really was pregnant. And on May 9 — a few weeks after she completed filming her guest role in the Seven Network smash hit — little Diesel Alexander John Williams made his big entrance into the world.

“He’s the most wonderful baby,” Allison, 38, coos as she cradles him at her Sydney home.

Proud dad Paul Williams, Allison’s husband of nearly six years, is also delighted, and in more ways than one.

“It’s good to have another male in the house,” he says. “As much as I love our little girl, it will be great to have someone to kick the footy around with!”

Yes, but what about the name? Allison and Paul only came up with the moniker the night before Diesel’s scheduled caesarean birth.

“We just couldn’t agree on anything,” she says. “Then we were out at dinner, I looked at the writing on Paul’s shirt and said, ‘What about that? Diesel?'”

Problem solved.

“The rest of the family is still getting used to it,” she says. “My 94-year-old grandfather, a former diesel engineer, was a bit taken aback. He said, ‘A boy named after an engine?’ But they’re all slowly coming around.”

Allison readily admits Diesel was a “complete surprise”. She learnt she was pregnant as she prepared for a move to the US to try her luck in Tinseltown.

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A little girl hungry for love

The nation was horrified by the 2007 starvation murder of a little red-haired girl we now know simply as Ebony. Glen Williams went in search of the tragic girl nobody knew.

No-one around the tranquil holiday hamlets of Hawks Nest and the adjoining Tea Gardens on the NSW Mid North Coast remembers ever catching a glimpse of little red-haired Ebony.

In fact, neighbours in her idyllic street, with the magical beach at one end and the river flowing at the other, didn’t even know she existed.

They didn’t know that inside the holiday house rented by her family, behind the bedroom window with its constantly closed curtains, a young girl lay, locked up and ignored.

Weighing just nine kilograms when she died, she’d been left to starve on a mattress stained with her tears and waste.

Some recall her father.

“He was a homeless-looking bloke who had nothing to do with any of us,” a local, not wishing to be identified, tellsWoman’s Day. “He’d play the pokies at the golf club. No-one saw his wife. We didn’t know they had kids. They weren’t part of the community. They were only here eight weeks.”

Ebony’s loveless nightmare ended in her faeces-soiled bedroom on November 3, 2007.

Over a period of weeks she had been starved to death while her family went about their business, emotionally immune to the girl slowly dying behind her locked bedroom door.

Ebony’s father didn’t call an ambulance until six hours after her death. He told police his wife hadn’t attempted mouth-to-mouth because of “black vomit and bull ants coming from her mouth”.

After Ebony’s death, her older sisters were taken into care. Her Valium-addicted mother was found guilty of her murder and her father found guilty of manslaughter.

Both are due to be sentenced this week.

What do you think should happen to the house where Ebony died? Leave your comments below.

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I’m a 100 year old pentathlete

Ruth Frith asked for a home gym for her 96th birthday. This month she turns 100 ? and is the world’s oldest competitor in the Weight Pentathlon. Jo Knowsley reports.

When Ruth Frith turns 100 later this month, she won’t be blowing out candles surrounded by loving family and friends … she’ll be trying to break her own world records at an athletics meet.

For this great-grandmother of 11 has an unlikely pursuit. Ruth is the world’s oldest competitor in the demanding arena of the Weight Pentathlon.

Indeed, this year’s World Masters Games ? open to anyone over the age of 25 ? has had to create a new age category to cater for the lively centenarian when she competes at the Sydney event in October.

“I don’t know why everyone is making such a fuss,” says Ruth, who lives in Brisbane with her daughter Helen Searle, 70 ? an Olympic high jumper and long jumper who competed for Australia in the 1960 and 1964 Games.

“My eyesight’s degenerated, although I don’t wear glasses. And I’m too independent to use a support like a stick. I still feel like the freckle-faced redhead I was at 98.”

The modest mother of two daughters, and grandmother of six, holds world records in discus, shot-put, javelin, hammer and weight throw ? the disciplines which combine to make up the Weight Pentathlon. Her bests are 9.85m in the discus, 4.72m in the shot-put, 11.27m in the hammer, 9.03m in the javelin and 5.16m in the weight throw.

“Yes, I hold those records ? but let’s be honest, I’m the only competitor in my age group,” Ruth says with a laugh.

“I have medals and I have travelled to Games in Finland, Italy, Japan, the US, South Africa and England. But the records don’t mean much to me. It’s the sport that I love. It’s my life and I just love it. I don’t have any other hobbies.”

Do you know someone who is as inspiring as Ruth? Leave your comments below.

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‘Octomum’ finally admits: “It was a mistake!”

Single mother Nadya Suleman shocked the world earlier this year by giving birth to eight babies after deliberately having multiple embryos implanted — despite not having a job, a partner or even a home of her own.

After initially brushing off criticism of her choice to do so, now the mother of 14 has confessed that it was “a mistake”.

In a stunning Australian exclusive interview, Nadya talks in detail about her feelings of guilt over bringing kids into the world without a father figure, her despair at not feeling able to give enough time to each of her children, and her loneliness in the face of her realisation that she might now never find a partner.

Nadya says she is tortured by fears that she isn’t providing enough individual attention to each of her 14 kids: Elijah, 8; Amerah, 6; Joshua, 5; Aidan, 4; twins Calyssa and Caleb, 2; and octuplets Josiah, Makai, Jeremiah, Nariyah, Jonah, Noah, Maliyah and Isaiah.

She also reveals her mind-boggling daily routine, and what it takes to keep her enormous brood of children fed, clean and happy.

Feeling forced by money worries to put her kids in a reality TV show, she insists they will not be exploited.

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Princess Beatrice turns 21

The Duchess of York opens her photo album and writes exclusively for Woman’s Day as Princess Beatrice turns 21 this week.

“I felt very clearly this overwhelming love the minute Beatrice was placed in my arms — such joy to hold this incredible, beautiful being.

Beatrice was born on the 8th of the 8th in 1988 at 18 minutes past eight. They say eight is the luckiest number. I believe I am the luckiest mother.

Like any first-time mum, I wondered what the world would have in store for her.

I had all of the hopes and fears of any new mum. I am so proud of Beatrice. I believe she is an example to all young women in the world.

From very early on it was clear who Beatrice was — so inquisitive and engaging, even as a baby, Beatrice stood for good. Her sense of duty to the universe, to make a difference, to stand for discipline, dedication and commitment to her core values, these things were evident even as a young child — and it was so wonderful to see these qualities in a child.

Beatrice is steadfast to what she believes to be good. I am truly blessed Beatrice chose me to be her mother. We must not forget Beatrice also has my sense of humour and fun, and all throughout her life we have laughed a lot. We also play a lot and we work a lot.

I am very proud of Beatrice, and my only wish for her is to continue to follow her heart. Prince Andrew and I believe in co-parenting, and never bringing our problems to our girls. Both Beatrice and Eugenie have been brought up with many principles, and three of my core values are the three Cs — communication, compromise and compassion — on all levels of life.”

For more photos see this week’s Woman’s Day, on sale Aug 03, 2009.

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