Grist For The Mill(s)

Kerry Packer's Call Girl

It's old news that there are allegations that Heather Mills was a call-girl. The new bit is that Kerry Pack may have been one of her clients, as well as Adnan Kashoggi.

A new documentary outs Kerry Packer as a "sugar daddy" of Heather Mills when the ex-wife of Beatle Paul McCartney was working as a high-class call girl, according to London's Daily Mail.

Denise Hewitt, who says she worked as a £10,000 escort with Ms Mills in the Eighties, makes the claims in a program to be aired on the UK's Channel 4.

Ms Hewitt, 44, is quoted as saying: "We went into high-class prostitution behind closed doors and nobody knew about it...[billionaire arms dealer Adnan] Kashoggi, Kerry Packer and one of the Royal princes of Saudi, they were the big fish and there were a couple of others that were classed as Heather's sugar daddies.

"We used to get a lot of jewellery as gifts - rings, watches, Bulgari bracelets, cars. The world was our oyster. We enjoyed it.

"No one knew what we did and we didn't expect it to come out. I don't look on it as sleazy."

Hooray for the freedom of press. This woman does attract a lot of vitriol. Down in the page concerning her public image on Wikipedia is this paragraph:

Criticism of the press coverage
The extent and nature of the British press coverage of Mills has been criticised. Publicist Mark Borkowski writes in the Independent on Sunday that, "Not since the cult of Myra Hindley have we encountered so much vitriol aimed at one woman."[55]. Feminist writer Natasha Walter has compared the coverage to that of Britney Spears.[56]while Kira Cochrane, writing in The Guardian, has said that "every misogynist epithet available" has been used against Mills. "She has somehow become the vessel through which it is acceptable for both pundits and the public to express their very worst feelings about women."[56]

It may be true, I don't know. When I quickly think about it, she strikes me as the archetypal 'Second Wife'. She seems to bask in the light of publicity yet we're not entirely sure how she came to prominence in the first place but for her looks. She's earned some kind of credibility through losing a leg and still insisting on her largely appearance-driven celebrity-hood, which is odd. Then she marries a Beatle for money, and insists on a huge settlement in the divorce - a demand the judge laughed out of court; then her ex-lover comes forwards with sordid stories of electric dildo collections. What's not to dislike?

What I find interesting is how of all these famous people with whom she brushed shoulders, none of them have really defended her except Sir Paul during their marriage. Which got me to ponder this question: Is a night with Heather Mills at the peak of her beauty worth AUD$25,000? For $25,000, you could perhaps do a lot more different things than shag Heather Mills in her 2-legged-phase of her *career*. It is distinctly possible that people simply do not like somebody who so blatantly can put a price on themselves - which is essentially what prostitutes do - which makes them uncomfortable in accepting her.

Never Meet Your Heroes

Over the years I've liked John Cusack. I admire his work greatly. He's got a charming presence on the screen which is hard to dislike, and he has a way of saying things in a way that we would all like to say them with much charm as we would take a tilt at hypocrisy or social mores. He's a Gen-X phenomenon all on his own, managing to mix a weird kind of conceit with a self-effacing humour. In a perfect world, we'd all like to be characters that John Cusack plays and deliver lines to our lives with much charm and sardonic wit.

So it comes as a bit of a let down to find out that he's a total and utter prima donna, who is insufferable and dislikeable for being so unlike his screen persona.

Travelling to oversee the Canadian production of The Factory with fellow writer Morgan O'Neill last year, Leyden said the American star cost the production with his diva antics and lateness.

"John Cusack was one of my favourite actors until I met him," Leyden said yesterday.

"I have to say one thing - and this is my favourite line when people ask me what I think of John Cusack - he plays nice guys on film. So, read between the lines."

Prodded by a radio interviewer to dish more dirt, Leyden accused Cusack of often arriving "hours late" for work.

"He cost us a lot of money and he was getting his biggest pay day on this film.

"He was getting paid a lot of cash and he would just be two hours late to set, wouldn't apologise for keeping everyone waiting in the snow . . . a real prima donna.

"Everyone thought he was a really nice guy (prior to filming) and all I can say is that it was a really nice day when he wrapped," Leyden said.

There you go. He's certainly not the first star not to live up to his screen persona, and you do take this stuff with a grain of salt. The lesson of the story? NEVER meet your heroes.

The Oldest Profession In The World

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Headlines

Bernie's Last Time Around
It's kind of sad to see, but Bernie Williams is done as an everyday player.
The Yankees offered him arbitration in the understanding that he won't accept. Bernie is looking to come back for 1 more year as a Pinch Hitter/DH reserve outfielder.

"We've defined the role," Cashman said at the winter meetings. "Now we have to define the economics of it. It doesn't mean we're going to go anywhere with it. It just gives us more time. I think this is a signal that we are both agreeing at some point we want to get something done to bring him back for one more year."

Which would be good as it wwould mean Ruben Sierra should be 'done' as any kind of MLB player full-stop.

NJAS...


There was a guy who used to sign off at Baseball Primer as 'NJASDJDH'. A petty cool handle: It stood for the initials of Nick Johnson, Alfonso Soriano, Derek Jeter and Drew Henson. The names were supposed to be the future Yankee 'infield of dreams, circa 2005'. This was way before it turned out that Drew Henson was a total unmitgated bust and moved to playing gridiron; Nick Johnson got traded to Montreal/Washington for Javier Vazquez and most famously, Alfonso Soriano got traded for A-Rod.
Now today we find Washington Nationals have at least assembled half of the 'infield of dreams 2005' by trading for Alfonso Soriano.

All-Star second baseman Alfonso Soriano was traded by the Texas Rangers to the Washington Nationals on Wednesday night for Brad Wilkerson, Terrmel Sledge and a minor league pitcher.

The deal was pending physicals, according to a baseball official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the swap had not been finalized.

With a rare combination of power and speed, Soriano has been one of the most productive infielders in the majors the past four years. He hit .268 with 36 homers, 104 RBIs and 30 stolen bases last season, when he earned $7.5 million.

Brad Wilkerson is a handy player; a player that the current Yankees could really do with, but I guess the lesson here is that you can't have everything. On the other hand, all Washington need to resurrect NJASDJDH is to bring back Henson to baseball and trade for Jeter... :)

Tony Woe-mack Is Flung At The Reds
This is addition by subtraction. In exchange for Womack the Yankees scored 2 minor-leaguers, one of whom was listed as the top Rule 5 draft candidate this year.

Not only have the Reds agreed to take Womack and his $2 million salary off the Yankees hands for 2006, but they've sent, not one, but two able-bodied young men back to the Bronx for the privilege. Were these kids ticket takers or pretzel vendors (seriously, the Stadium is in dire need of more pretzel vendors, I can never get a pretzel without having to retreat into the concourses) it would have been a steal, but they can actually play baseball.

The lesser player, outfielder Ben Himes, is too old for his league, having failed to advance beyond A-ball at the age of 24. But he did hit .320/.372/.533 for Sarasota in the Florida State League last year. Himes is a fourth outfielder at best, but given that strong showing and the fact that he got a late start (he was drafted out of college in 2003), there's no reason to write him off just yet.

Kevin Howard, meanwhile, was ranked by both Baseball Prospectus and Baseball America as the top player available in today's Rule 5 draft. A 24-year-old, lefty-hitting second baseman who spent all of 2005 in double-A, Howard doesn't have a whole lot of power, but gets his hits and knows how to draw a walk (his .296/.346/.428 line in Chattanooga last year is fairly representative of his abilities at the plate). Howard played 3B in college and returned there in October in the Arizona Fall League where he crushed to the tune of .409/.475/.557, winning the AFL batting crown. A left-handed hitter, Howard's never had a great defensive reputation, but his offensive skills and ability to play multiple positions (it's thought he could also be used in the outfield) could make him a useful utility player as soon as the latter half of this year, which means he's probably already more valuable than Womack. Best of all, the Yankees got him without having to keep him on the 25-man roster all year.

That's a hell of a take for a player who is almost guaranteed to cost the Reds both wins and a couple mil. Indeed, between this trade and the list of players not offered arbitration last night, the Yankees have drastically improved their ballclub in the last 15 hours simply by deleting deleterious players. Check out the dearly departed and their 2005 VORPs:

John Flaherty -9.6
Kevin Brown -9.5
Tony Womack -8.9
Darrell May -8.5
Tim Redding -5.4
Alan Embree -4.8
Matt Lawton -3.5
Ruben Sierra -2.3
Mark Bellhorn -1.0
Rey Sanchez -0.5
Mike Vento -0.5
Russ Johnson -0.3

No, those aren't dashes, those are negative numbers. If the Yankees can replace those twelve men with replacement level players--the sort that can be acquired via the waiver wire or promoted from the minors--they stand to improve by nearly 55 runs in 2006, that's five and a half wins. For example, John Flaherty's replacement, Kelly Stinnett, had a VORP of 5.3 in 2005, that's a net improvement of 14.9 runs, or a win and a half in the back-up catcher slot alone. Oh, Glorious Day!

And there was much cheering.

What It Means To Get A Public School Education In Australia


This is sort of interesting. It's about rural sex workers in NSW.

MANDY* is 36, a wife, a mother and a woman who doesn't want to reveal too much about herself because she is a sex worker who lives in a country town somewhere in northern NSW.

She services clients aged from 18 to 80, finds herself talking about the weather a lot because many of them are farmers, and her husband sees her job as "a valid occupation and useful addition to the household income".

Oka-a-a-ay... Then it goes on to say a lot of things, but I found this interesting:

Scott says women with husbands and children are prepared to risk conservative community scorn and work in the rural sex industry because they are ambitious.

"They want to send their kids to private schools and have a good future," Scott says. "If you can earn $500 in 15 minutes, that's very tempting."

Taunts of "Yo' mamma worked on her back to send you to Private School" sprang to mind.
Is this how much public schools are reviled? Like, "I'd rather work as a sex worker than send my kids to a public school!"
Aah, the bush.