Aussie Eurovision star thrilled to be in the frame with Peter Dutton

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Family and friends of Danny Estrin, frontman of Voyager, the West Australian synth-metal outfit which represented the nation at this month’s Eurovision song contest, were delighted when cartoonist David Rowe of The Australian Financial Review, our stablemate, had a Euro-riff for one of his works.

Rowe depicted Opposition Leader Peter Dutton as a hapless contestant in the “NeoLib Live song contest”, dressed in an outfit not unlike the one worn by Estrin on the big night, with Dutton tapping the mic and asking, “Is this thing working?”

The irony wasn’t lost on those who know Estrin, an immigration lawyer when he’s not rocking out with his band and who “has worked for many years challenging decisions made by Peter Dutton when he was immigration minister,” according to his wife, Halinka Lamparski.

Lamparski told us Estrin was “super-stoked” to get back from the band’s Eurovision adventure to be confronted with “this crazy intersection of worlds”.

Needless to say, she’s quite keen on a copy of the Rowe effort, so we’re just going to have to try to get her one.

TILED UP

Hallooooo, Frank Walker from National Tiles – the bloke on those radio ads – is keeping busy in the real estate market. The pile he owns with wife Rhonda Walker in Toorak is on the market and expected to fetch upwards of $25 million.

It’s the sort of price tag where you would rightly – and correctly – expect the Myer family and Toll Holdings squillionaire Paul Little to be neighbours

The Walkers have also listed some seaside property, putting two houses in Prescott Avenue on the market in an area of the Mornington Peninsula’s swanky Mount Martha that the real estate agents call “the Golden Triangle” . The price guide there is a tick under $8 million.

Our attempts to chat with the Walkers went unanswered on Monday, so the grand strategy behind the real estate plays is unclear, but we’ll keep you updated on how they go, and what sort of prices are achieved “per meetaaaaah!”

Charlie Teo arrives at a disciplinary hearing in Sydney in March.Credit: Nick Moir

SURGICALLY REMOVED

This masthead reported on Monday that embattled neurosurgeon Charlie Teo, recently spotted breaking bread with Melbourne’s most famous industrial mediator, Mick Gatto, had joined the celebrity speakers’ circuit.

With Saxton Speakers offering up Teo for a reported fee of $10,000, the surgeon will hopefully no longer need to resort to driving Ubers to pay the bills.

This isn’t Teo’s first foray into the celebrity speaking world. He’s done a few corporate motivational gigs in the past and a profile bearing Teo’s face still shows up on the website of another operation, Claxton Speakers International, which advertises itself as “Australia’s foremost speaker talent agency”.

But it’s just Teo’s face. There used to be a full profile, listing a fee range of $5000-$10,000, which was last live in early March, according to the internet archive. At some point since then, it seems to have been removed and Teo is no longer searchable on Claxton’s website.

Weeks earlier, Teo had faced an eight-day disciplinary hearing, the outcome of which is still to be determined.

We asked about the removal of the profile and the firm told us it hadn’t worked with the surgeon for many years, and couldn’t explain why his profile was mysteriously removed.

BOOKED OUT

Political journalist turned publishing juggernaut Niki Savva just keeps trucking. Her latest forensic dissection of the Coalition in government, Bulldozed, which tells the story of the decline and fall of Scott Morrison, has won the prize for best general non-fiction effort in this year’s Australian Book Industry Awards.

Niki SavvaCredit: Alex Ellinghausen

Savva beat some well-known names, including Chloe Hooper, Indira Naidoo and Brigid Delaney, to take top spot in the category, the second time The Age columnist has won the award.

The first time was in 2017 for The Road to Ruin, Savva’s account of the short-lived but eventful prime ministership of Tony Abbott and the role played by Abbott’s chief of staff, Peta Credlin. The book electrified the political-media bubble when it was published.

Both books – they form the beginning and end of a trilogy with Plots and Prayers, the story of Malcolm Turnbull’s downfall, sandwiched in the middle – were commercial as well as critical smashes, indicating a surprising degree of public interest in the topic of political mismanagement.

Looks like Scott Morrison has been paying attention too. The former PM’s publishing deal with Thomas Nelson Books, a US-based Christian offshoot of News Corp, to write “a series of reflections” has been noted with some interest by the chatterati in recent days.

Will the former PM’s literary effort be a prizewinner too? Can’t wait to find out.

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