Harney Fever

What do you think the biggest news story in Australia is right now? The devastating floods and aftermath of Cyclone Yasi in Queensland? The most recent Aussie soldier to die in Afghanistan? The first day of Parliament? No, no and no. The most talked about topic on the news - in newspapers, on talk-back radio, talk shows and morning TV, and all over Twitter, the blogoshpere and social news sites – is Liz Hurley and Australian cricketer Shane Warne hooking up. Yes, Harney (pronounced ‘horny’ – yes, I’m afraid so) has made front page headlines since the pair were caught smooching a couple of months ago while Warney was in London. They have since carried out their tryst in the very public domain of Twitter, for all who actually care (and it seems that a lot of people do) to see their relationship blossom.


The story has now exploded again as Hurley has flown over to Australia to stay with Warney and the paps have been tracking the couple’s every move. Which in truth hasn’t been at all difficult seeing as they haven’t actually left his house. That in turn has of course kept everyone speculating just what they’ve been getting up to in there. Yes, seriously. Every morning since she arrived breakfast news has been crossing over to a journalist who is camped outside his house, just for her to say that they still haven’t emerged yet but that a mattress has been delivered and some workmen turned up the day before for a couple of hours. And I thought the English press was bad! Why does everyone care so much??

And that’s when I realised why I was so surprised at the media attention this fling was getting. In England this would be par for the course but the Aussie press aren’t like the English. They don’t really have tabloids, not to the same extent anyway. They don’t have a problem with celebs getting hounded. Like in most things in life, they are a lot more relaxed about it all. So why this big hoo-ha over what doesn’t really seem to be that big a story? OK, as one of Australia’s cricket legends he’s pretty big news here but she’s just an ex-model turned businesswoman who dated Hugh Grant last century. She seems to hold this spell over Australia, as if her glamour and admittedly very good looks have bewitched the Australian people and, by dating an Aussie, they have somehow been sprinkled with fairy dust too.

I’m sure that the press in the UK aren’t covering the story to this degree – or perhaps at all. In the name of research, I went on to the Daily Mail site, that bastion of trashy news (though with a couple of actual news titbits thrown in so that middle-class housewives can pretend that they’re only interested in the serious news stories) to see whether they have reported on ‘Harney’. And it seems I was wrong – they have made the Daily Mail, albeit only in a short piece. I just don’t get it.