Celeste Barber takes her comedy show on regional tour
Australian comedian Celeste Barber is a global sensation, with nearly 10 million followers on Instagram and sold-out tour dates across the world's major cities.
In August she'll bring her hit show Backup Dancer home to Australia, visiting regional towns from Wendouree to Toowoomba for the first time.
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News.com.au
34 minutes ago
- News.com.au
Tammy Hembrow's $50m empire at risk in divorce bombshell
Less than a year after her fairytale wedding to Love Island star Matt Zukowski, fitness entrepreneur Tammy Hembrow's estimated $50m fortune is suddenly on the line amid their shock divorce. 'Oh my gosh, this is giving me so much anxiety,' Ms Hembrow said in a surprise statement on Sunday, taking several deep breaths. 'I am going to be getting a divorce. I know a lot of you have been following my journey for years so I wanted to be open about it.' Breaking down in tears, she shared with her 2.1 million TikTok followers, 'I do feel like addressing you guys is therapeutic; it's sort of like the next step for me'. Govt pays $3.3m for unliveable derelict house Ms Hembrow, a successful self-made entrepreneur on the Gold Coast, has a fortune estimated between $38m and $50m, thanks to her online fitness and fashion businesses and luxury property. She is also one of the country's most successful social media users with almost 20 million followers across Instagram and TikTok. Now the battle for her multimillion-dollar empire is set to heat up, given Mr Zukowski – who was a runner-up on Love Island Australia in 2019 – has much less net worth, dabbling in modelling and acting with a lower profile than his wife who is one of Australia's top influencers. At stake is Ms Hembrow's fortune made out of her activewear brand the wildly successful Saski Collection, her Tammy Fit app and website Tammy Fit by Tammy Hembrow, reportedly worth millions, with subscription plans ranging from $114,99 yearly to $24.99 a month. Their love nest, a $2.88m waterfront mansion in Broadbeach Waters bought by Ms Hembrow five years ago this week, is also in the mix. The home was built in 1989 and extended into a sprawling entertainer's paradise in 2009 by the previous owner Tracey Cianci – whose family resurrected the much-loved beachfront Kirra Pavillion – and it has since been given a luxe makeover featuring extensively on Ms Hembrow's social media platforms. It has sweeping views of the Gold Coast skyline and is a rare 980sq m of prime waterfront with a jetski ramp, timber jetty and deep water access. Ms Hembrow joins other high-profile Australians with short marriages, such as Liam Hemsworth and US star Miley Cyrus, who lasted eight months. But the Aussie fitness queen should thank her lucky stars she did not get married in Los Angeles where there is a mandated equal asset split. In Australia, family law may allow Ms Hembrow to avoid a 50-50 asset split, focusing instead on each party's financial contributions. She is in good company though, with other celebrities who didn't make it past the one year mark including Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries (72-days), Delta Goodrem and Brian McFadden (roughly a year), and even Nicolas Cage – whose Aussie movie has just been released online – and Erika Koike who lasted just four days because he said he was too intoxicated when he wed. The divorce announcement comes just days after the birthday celebrations of her 'big sissy' Amy Hembrow, who she thanked 'for always being there for me'. Cryptically, she also said, 'you've wiped my tear, told me the truth even when I didn't want to hear it, and given advice (even when I refuse to listen)'. Just hours after the divorce confirmation, she posted stunning images of herself with friends on Instagram enjoying a night out. With her children's welfare at heart, Ms Hembrow has a high-stakes financial showdown ahead, fully supported by her loyal fans. One summed it up Sunday night, 'I've followed you since before you even pregnant with Wolf, and this is the most honest and transparent I have ever seen you be. My respect for you just shot through the roof'.
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Raygun's Olympic breaking broke the internet and continues to polarise
Australia achieved its greatest-ever medal haul at the Paris Olympics, but 12 months on, the enduring memory is of a white, middle-class, 30-something B-girl in a cheap green-and-gold tracksuit crashing out of the breaking competition in the first round. Going by the name Raygun, Rachael Gunn seared herself into the collective imagination with a series of moves that failed to impress the judges but launched a torrent of memes, vitriol, and hot takes. Was she punking the Olympics? Was the routine, with its imitations of kangaroos and sprinklers, ironic – a playfully knowing appropriation of Australian iconography? Or was she simply having an off day? Whatever the case, Gunn's routine, the reaction to it, and how she subsequently carried herself, combined to create a confounding cultural moment. "To be honest, I get mental whiplash thinking about this topic," marketing strategist Christina Aventi tells Australian Story. "It's just a confusing mess. And it's hard to make sense of." There are so many strands to the Raygun phenomenon that it's hard to neatly untangle any of them. Even the initial responses to her routine were wildly varied and often contradictory. Back in Australia, some simply saw it as funny – something in the spirit of Roy and HG's The Dream – and didn't care if it was serious or a piss-take. But for others, the Olympics represent a rare opportunity for Australians to punch above their weight on the global stage, and thanks to Raygun, people all around the world were laughing at us. "It's clear that it really touched a nerve around our cultural, athletic identity," Aventi says. "It was our best performing Olympics yet, that was somewhat overshadowed by this routine that looked more eisteddfod than Olympics." There is, of course, a rich tradition of heroic Olympic failures — think Eddie the Eagle, Eric the Eel, the Jamaican bobsled team, even Australia's own Steven Bradbury, who speed-skated to victory, only because all his competitors crashed out. But as Aventi points out, Gunn does not fit neatly into that pantheon of losers. "They have backstories that people respond to really positively because they're hard-luck stories; they're against-all-the-odds stories," she says. "And in this case, we've got a uni professor who doesn't look like a breaker, who's wearing a green-and-gold tracksuit that looks like it's straight out of Lowes. "It just doesn't quite stack up to some of those other stories we love." Criticism of Raygun's routine did not just come from Australians with a bruised sense of national pride. For some in the international breaking community, her performance was insultingly amateurish. "The anger that came from Raygun's performance at the Olympics comes from a lot of different places," explains New York artist and breaking pioneer Michael Holman. "A slice of that pie came from people who knew what breaking was, saying, 'Wow, you know, that's not great breaking.'" But a bigger issue for Holman — and one that Gunn, an academic interested in the cultural politics of breaking, seemed oddly unprepared for — was that of cultural appropriation and insensitivity. "Part of the magic of hip hop culture is the fact that it was created by marginalised teenagers, poor and working-class black and Puerto Rican kids who came from nothing," Holman says. "So her being white and Australian and jumping around like a kangaroo, that's going to be a loaded gun. "Whether she intended it or not, the end result was mockery." She was ridiculed by US tonight show hosts, eviscerated by countless bloggers, and falsely accused of everything from gaming the system to being responsible for breaking not being part of the 2028 Olympics. There were concerns for her mental health in the days after the event. Australia's Olympic chef de mission Anna Meares defended Gunn publicly, calling out "trolls and keyboard warriors" for their misogyny and abuse. Even Prime Minister Anthony Albanese came to her defence, although "Raygun had a crack" was perhaps not the most ringing of prime ministerial endorsements. Initially, Gunn seemed to handle the situation well. Although the criticism clearly stung, she appeared willing to make fun of herself, breaking into an impromptu routine and throwing kangaroo poses as the Australian Olympic team prepared for the Closing Ceremony. "I think there was a sense that it was a cultural moment," says journalist Jordan Baker, who covered the Paris Olympics for The Sydney Morning Herald. "She gave an unusual performance. It was fun. We'll rally behind her." It was a musical, of all things, that changed all that. Comedian Stephanie Broadbridge didn't even watch Gunn's Olympic routine but became fascinated by how she handled herself in the aftermath. Broadbridge had been through her own social media pile-on in 2023 when a video of her trying not to laugh as a male comedian told a joke was viewed more than 150 million times, provoking a torrent of cruel and misogynistic comments. She was traumatised by the experience and found something admirable in Gunn's refusal to apologise for herself. "Raygun never backed down, and I was like, I love this. This is such an interesting thing from a woman," Broadbridge says. "Women don't usually behave like that publicly, and I was so excited that there was one around my age doing that." Broadbridge looked at the heightened emotion around the Raygun phenomenon and decided it had all the elements of a musical. "She's the hero that Australia needed; the female Shane Warne. The one that's flawed but we love her anyway," she says. "I wanted to tell that story. I wanted an Australian larrikin story that was a woman." And that's when things got weird. Days before the opening performance of Raygun: The Musical, Broadbridge received a cease-and-desist letter from Gunn's lawyers demanding that the show not go ahead because it violated her intellectual property and could damage her brand. "The dance moves were copyrighted, the silhouette was trademarked. Basically, every element," Broadbridge explains. Baker says this was "the point where a lot of people lost sympathy for Rachael". "People who had backed her the whole way felt like this was a betrayal of their support for her," she says. "When the heavy-handed legal threats started coming, it seemed mean-spirited; it seemed like she was no longer even remotely trying to lean into the joke." When Gunn addressed the outcry in an Instagram video, it only made things worse. It seems that in Australia, a far greater sin than athletic underachievement is taking yourself too seriously. "When she's trying to halt a musical, when she's trying to trademark something like a kangaroo hop, that's about her," Aventi says. "I think if she stood for something a little bit bigger – maybe resilience, strength, owning your own truth – that would have given a different centre of gravity to the story. "I know she's been through a lot, but a little bit more vulnerability might have helped people warm to her a bit more. "I feel really uncomfortable saying that. It's like Lindy Chamberlain all over again – why should we expect someone to be vulnerable? But vulnerability is something that connects and opens people up." Now the dust has settled on Raygun's cultural moment, what have we learned? That Australians don't like people who take themselves too seriously? That we like our athletes to win? That we're suspicious of academics? That the internet expects women to behave in a certain way and reacts violently when they don't? Or was it just, as Shakespeare once wrote, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?" In the end, Broadbridge got to keep her musical, albeit with the lead's name changed to Spraygun and the title changed to Breaking: The Musical. And Gunn has her trademarked moves and a great story to tell someday. And after their crash course in public relations, she and her team might get the marketing right when she does. Rachael Gunn declined to be interviewed for this story. Watch Australian Story's Break It Down, 8:00pm, on ABCTV and ABC iview.
News.com.au
4 hours ago
- News.com.au
‘Drowning': YouTuber raises $200k from fans over ‘debt'
An Aussie influencer who says he landed himself in major debt after failing to read a contract properly has raised more than $200,000 after asking his fans for donations. Youtuber and illustrator Campbell Walker, also known as @struthless, asked for donations in a video last month titled: 'I'm drowning in debt and I need a lifeline.' In the video, he told fans he was $135,000 USD in debt due to a 'contract' which he would explain more about in a later video. 'The reason I'm in this debt is something I will talk about in another video,' he said. 'Long story short, read your contracts everybody, read your contracts. 'I guess I thought I was good with money or good with contracts or whatever but yeah, the evidence pointed otherwise.' After raising $200,000 the fundraiser was shut down and the video taken off YouTube. However, a month later, Mr Walker is yet to provide clarification around the debt – with fans now urging him to update them on the situation. 'Basically, the advice I've gotten is until my situation is solved, a video will make my situation worse,' Mr Walker replied two weeks ago to one fan asking for an update. Mr Walker did not respond to multiple requests for comment from about the fundraiser. The GoFundMe was slammed by some online with fellow YouTuber Lufah labelling the move 'shameful' – fearing it was becoming a trend. He spoke about US YouTuber Ian Danskin, who raised $155,000 from his followers after also landing in major debt. 'Are you kidding me,' Lufah said in a video about Mr Walker's fundraiser. 'The one million [subscriber] YouTuber …. just begging for money.' Some fans commented on the video expressing how they had been 'uncomfortable' with the fundraiser. 'Not gonna lie, as a fan of his over the years I do find it a bit disappointing/uncomfortable that he's done this,' one wrote. 'There are literally kids getting bombed right now, homeless folks, that need it so much more.' Another wrote: 'Bit conflicted too. Not going into detail about what exactly had happened, and then setting up your own GoFundMe page with a title in third person and a sad picture is a bit poor taste IMO. 'He's also opened a potential can of worms if people don't like his reason for getting into this debt now that all the money's been paid.' Other fans said they were more than happy to donate, given Mr Walker had supplied them with free and important content, particularly around mental health, on his YouTube channel for years. 'Cam has added so much into the world and into his community in the form of help and positivity. And as a community we are more than happy to help him and his family out during such a difficult time for them,' one wrote. Another wrote: 'There's no shame in asking for help. His content is free and quality.'
