
Aussie icons Paul Kelly and Adam Briggs stun AFL crowd as they perform at the MCG in Melbourne
Australian music legend Paul Kelly and rapper Adam Briggs delivered a powerful performance at the MCG on Friday night, leaving footy fans stunned ahead of the Round 11 clash.
The pair joined forces for a moving rendition of Briggs' iconic track The Children Came Back, captivating the packed crowd with their heartfelt delivery.
Kelly, 70, cut a dashing figure in a grey blazer and matching trousers, teamed with a crisp black shirt.
The acclaimed singer-songwriter strummed his acoustic guitar with emotion as he performed on centre stage.
Meanwhile, Briggs, 38, brought his trademark energy and charisma to the night, belting out his verses with passion and purpose.
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The First Nations star looked effortlessly cool in a blue jacket and black pants, clearly relishing the moment as he performed alongside Kelly and a live band.
Their show-stopping collaboration set the perfect tone for the night, blending powerful storytelling with a celebration of resilience and Aussie music.
Last year, Briggs set his sights on becoming an accredited AFL player agent and planned to undertake the AFL Players Association's accreditation course.
The Yorta Yorta man is an actor, producer and political campaigner - but now he's looking at wearing another hat entirely.
The Essendon supporter is currently part of a group of aspiring player agents who are seeking official accreditation, and will do the seminars and exam required for approval.
Once the award-winning artist is accredited, he will be able to sign players and engage in contract negotiations.
Briggs is a big fan of the AFL and has attended the Brownlow Medal count.
As a child growing up in the Victorian town of Shepparton, his biggest hero was Indigenous footy star Gavin Wanganeen - who won the Brownlow for the Bombers in 1993.
In 2023, Briggs famously pulled his support for the NRL side Melbourne Storm because one of the footy team's board members donated money to the No campaign.
The Shepparton-born singer wrote a scathing letter to Storm chairman Matthew Tripp as he took aim at corporate director Brett Ralph for giving No campaign group Advance Australia a $75,000 donation prior to the referendum.
Briggs - who was behind a viral Yes campaign ad explaining the Indigenous Voice to Parliament to two women at a pub - claimed the Indigenous Voice to Parliament No campaign had 'devalued my people and my Yorta Yorta / Wurundjeri identity'.
'It has heightened the stereotypes of devaluing our contribution to the Australian society and nationhood, and enhanced the burden of irrelevance.
'In doing so, it added to the already endless workload of myself, my father, and the Indigenous community.'
Briggs said he and his father had supported the Storm since it was founded as a new NRL club in 1998 and had developed 'lasting friendships' at all levels of the club.
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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Katy Perry fuels split rumours as she makes cryptic comments about a breakup amid claims of 'tension' in relationship with Orlando Bloom
Katy Perry has added to rumours that she's facing 'tension' in her relationship with her fiancé Orlando Bloom while making a telling comment on stage. The American singer was performing the third of her Sydney concerts during the Australian leg of her Lifetimes Tour on Tuesday night when she was handed a packet of Tim Tams chocolate biscuits. The 40-year-old singer was in the middle of her performance of her 2008 heartbreak anthem I'm Still Breathing when she opened the packet and ate one of the treats. 'This song is about a breakup, and this Tim Tam saved me' Perry told the crowd during the brief interlude. 'Thank you' she added, before launching back into the track while kneeling down and offering the biscuits to audience members in the front row. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. The American singer was performing the third of her Sydney concerts during the Australian leg of her Lifetimes Tour on Tuesday night The comment about suffering through a 'breakup' has only added to recent speculation that Perry and Bloom are facing some challenges. On Tuesday, the California Gurls singer - who album 143 was hit with a wave of negative reviews, was spotted looking less-than-enthused as she stepped out at Sydney's Luna Park with daughter Daisy, four, who she shares with Bloom. On the same day, Orlando seemed to be having a blast at the Tribeca Festival in New York City. He posed on the red carpet with their adorable Teacup Poodle Biggle Smalls. The couple's sightings on different continents come amid a new report alleging that Katy's poorly performing album caused 'tension' in her relationship. The singer's seventh studio album, 143, was released in September 2024, and received a largely negative response from fans as well as critics, who claimed the record sounds 'generated through AI.' 'Katy was deeply frustrated following the reception of her new album. It made her very stressed,' a source told People on Monday. 'Orlando was understanding, but it did cause some tension,' the insider added of the Lord of The Rings star, 48, who shares daughter Daisy Dove with the singer. The 40-year-old singer was in the middle of her performance of her 2008 heartbreak anthem I'm Still Breathing when she opened the packet and ate one of the treats Another source shared, 'She was also disappointed in some of the tour reviews. It's put stress on their relationship.' Perry - who recently 'accused' a bewildered fan of sending private messages to Bloom - is currently on her Lifetimes world tour. has reached out to representatives for Perry and Bloom for comment. Later on Tuesday, Orlando appeared on The Tonight Show and wowed Jimmy Fallon with the tiny dog, who his manager said was 'trending.' 'So, my manager calls me and says, 'You know, you're trending.' And I'm like, 'Well, that's great, I'm trending.' ''Well, not exactly you. It's the dog,'' he recounted his manager saying. Orlando added that he considered Biggie Smalls to be an 'emotional support animal,' and he said the little dog goes nearly everywhere with him. Later, the Lord Of The Rings star spoke about his recent skydiving adventures and how it felt as if he was 'flying.' 'It's the fastest you can be propelled as a human on the planet without an engine or something. And you literally feel like you're flying,' he said, before joking, 'By the way, Marvel, I'm ready.' Perry and Bloom first met in January 2016. They had a brief breakup in 2017, but later reconciled by March 2018. The pair got engaged on Valentine's Day in 2019 and welcomed their daughter in August 2020. Bloom also has a 13-year-old son named Flynn with his ex-wife, Miranda Kerr, 42. 143 - which references the expression 'I love you', but is also what Perry considers to be her symbolic 'angel number' - is her first album in four years, following Smile in 2020. Much of the criticism even before the album was released was down to Perry's decision to work with her old music producer Dr. Luke who settled his longstanding sexual harassment lawsuit with Kesha last year - which he vehemently denied. In May, Perry left one of her fans speechless as she performed in front of a full-house at T-Mobile Arena in Paradise Valley. She halted her show in Nevada to single out one of her bewildered fans. Dressed in a leotard and fishnet tights, Perry crouched on her haunches as she searched for her target in the audience before accusing him of repeatedly sending private messages to her fiancé, Orlando. Looking down at the stunned fan - referred to as Kyle - she warned: 'I know why you're here. Listen, if you keep DM-ing my man... you've been doing it for months, ever since the residency. You didn't come to see me play.' As the crowd roared their approval, she continued: 'If you keep on DM-ing my man I'm going to have you removed - seriously, get your own life.' Raising her voice, she added: 'He don't want you, Kyle. I'm his wife. I'm his, he's mine... stay the f**k away.' Standing close to the stage, Kyle looked stunned as he turned to his friends while Perry worked her way back into the set-list. Fortunately for him, the outburst was a scripted stunt employed by Perry as a means of interacting with her audience before launching into her 2024 single I'm His, He's Mine. Her performance came after it emerged she has not been invited back to continue her Las Vegas residency as her career continues to suffer from the backlash of her Blue Origin space trip and disastrous world tour. The California Gurls singer has faced an onslaught of criticism over her 11-minute space flight which saw her join Gayle King and Lauren Sanchez for the all-female trip in April. Shortly after the flight, Perry kicked off her Lifetimes tour in support of her seventh studio album, which was widely panned by critics on its release in September. The tour has suffered from a series of setbacks - including a delayed start in Minnesota that forced fans to stand around for hours - that have led to low ticket sales and canceled dates. The former American Idol judge has also been suffering severe backlash ever since her space tourist trip on Blue Origin's New Shepard NS-31 mission. Perry was seen floating inside the capsule holding a daisy in a nod to her daughter Daisy. She was ridiculed on landing back to Earth and emerging with the flower in hand which she held to the sky before dropping to her knees and kissing the ground. She then proceeded to claim she was 'super connected to love' and thanked a reporter who incorrectly referred to her as an astronaut. 'It's not about singing my songs. It's about a collective energy in there. It's about us. It's about making space for future women and taking up space and belonging,' she said in a post-flight interview. 'And it's about this wonderful world that we see right out there and appreciating it. This is all for the benefit of Earth.' It wasn't long before she was branded 'tone deaf' and 'dramatic' for her actions, which came days after NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore returned to Earth after being stranded in space for more than nine months. Her much-maligned Lifetimes Tour has been hit with accusations of copying other pop stars, including Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter. During her show to a sold-out crowd at Chicago's United Center on May 12, the singer addressed being the 'most hated person on the Internet. In a video captured by a fan, the star takes a moment to look around at her fans, and says: 'Well, I thought I was the most hated person on the internet. I think that's false.'


The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Flying shoes, a viral BLM speech and that leather jacket: Q+A's most memorable moments
After 18 years, the national broadcasters flagship program, Q+A, is dead. ABC confirmed the axing on Wednesday, a day after staff were warned of cuts. The ABC's news director, Justin Stevens, said it was time for the broadcaster to 'rethink how audiences want to interact and to evolve how we can engage with the public to include as many Australians as possible in national conversations'. The weekly discussion program was launched in 2007 by executive producer Peter McEvoy and host Tony Jones, and in its early years was highly influential, regularly making headlines and setting the news agenda. Let's reflect on some of its most memorable moments. Actor Meyne Wyatt's powerful monologue, in June 2020 at the height of global Black Lives Matter protests, recounted his experiences across the spectrum of racism – from micro-aggressions to outright hatred. 'Silence is violence. Complacency is complicity. I don't want to be quiet. I don't want to be humble. I don't want to sit down,' so part of his speech, pulled from his semi-autobiographical play, City of Gold, went. It racked up more than three million views, and saw him included on 2021's Time100 Next list of emerging leaders. 'It was last minute; George Floyd had died, #BlackLivesMatter was at its height. Q+A wanted to focus on the treatment of Aboriginal people here,' Meyne told Guardian Australia in 2022. 'I was aware I was representing – I had to bring it.' An audience member hurled his shoes at John Howard, the former prime minister who signed Australia up to the Iraq war, after demanding he defend his decision to send 2,000 troops to support the US-led 2003 invasion. 'That's for the Iraqi dead!' Peter Gray shouted as he flung the shoes during a 2010 episode of the program. Gray was then escorted from the studio. Howard had a close relationship with George W Bush and Australia was one of the first countries to commit troops to Bush's 'coalition of the willing'. 'I thought it was justified,' Howard said during the broadcast. 'I think there were errors made after the military operation ended. I think there were too few troops and I think a mistake was made in disbanding the Iraqi army. But I will continue to defend … the original decision on the basis on which it was taken.' At that point, Gray stood up and threw his shoes – mimicking the shoe-throwing protest against Bush in Baghdad in 2009. A criminologist and former detective in the audience lectured politicians in 2024 for failing women and putting politics above the reality of deaths caused by domestic violence. 'How dare you! How dare you go into politics, in an environment like this, when one woman is murdered every four days, and all you … can do is immediately talk about politics? That is just disgraceful,' Vincent Hurley said to federal senators Murray Watt and Bridget McKenzie, and NSW opposition leader Mark Speakman. 'For God's sake, how long do we have to listen to politicians like you … high-horsing about? 'I went to 20 domestics in one night when I was in the police. I held a 10-year-old child in my arms who died from the stabbing from her father … You don't need a royal commission. That money needs to go into frontline services – now.' The clip, shared on ABC's social media went viral, garnering millions of views. Germaine Greer's 2012 crack about former prime minister Julia Gillard is infamous. Greer was responding to an audience question about Gillard's image. She initially defended the first female prime minister as an administrator who got things done, then went on to say: 'What I want her to do is get rid of those bloody jackets! … They don't fit … You've got a big arse, Julia. Get over it.' In a later interview with Channel Nine, Gillard said the incident made her feel 'sorry' for Greer. From 'being the feminist for our times, to end up talking like that for cheap laughs about another woman was a really sad thing,' Gillard said in 2014. Q+A became the most complained about ABC program of 2023, with a single November episode on the war in Gaza receiving almost 1,000 complaints, most of which accused the show of pro-Israel bias. That episode was particularly sensitive, host Patricia Karvelas had said at the start, and was recorded without a live studio audience, and with heavy police presence outside. The tense episode featured Labor MP Tim Watts, former ambassador to Israel Dave Sharma, Israel & Jewish Affairs Council chair, Mark Leibler, Australia Palestine Advocacy Network president, Nasser Mashni, and UN special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese. After the program, Albanese told Crikey the standard of Australia's media discourse was 'very basic'. Many viewers accused Karvelas on social media of not questioning members of the panel – especially Mashni and Albanese – fairly, or giving them equal time to speak. An investigation by the ABC's ombudsman said the episode presented highly polarising views in a fair and balanced way. The program as a whole received 2,100 complaints in 2023, according to ABC's ombudsman. Audience member Duncan Storrar laid out his situation in 2016: 'You're gonna lift the tax-free threshold for rich people. If you lift my tax-free threshold, that changes my life. That means that I get to say to my little girls, 'Daddy's not broke this weekend. We can go to the pictures'.' His question to then assistant treasurer Kelly O'Dwyer continued: 'I've got a disability and a low education, that means I've spent my whole life working for minimum wage … Rich people don't even notice their tax-free threshold lift. 'Why don't I get it? Why do they get it?' The part-time truck driver then became the focus of savage media coverage, particularly in the Newscorp press. ABC broadcaster Jon Faine grilled the outlet on its 'value system'. Many rallied online in support of Storrar, who thanked them, but told ABC's Media Watch, 'I didn't want this'. National director of lobby group GetUp!, Simon Sheikh, lost consciousness live on air in 2012. He slumped over the desk, before sitting back up after a few seconds and being helped off stage. He later posted that he was in hospital. Labor's climate change minister at the time, Greg Combet, rushed over to help. Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella, sitting right next to Sheikh, looked on in surprise and was criticised on social media for her reaction. GetUp! urged people to stop criticising her. 'It was an extraordinary circumstance and everyone was shocked,' the group said in a statement shared online. Mirabella said later: 'I thought initially he was just bent over laughing, because that's what you see, and turned around to try and get a better look and I – like everyone else on the panel – was just stunned.' Yassmin Abdel-Magied and Jacqui Lambie clashed in 2017, after the Tasmanian senator said all Muslims who supported sharia law should be deported from Australia, in a Trump-style ban. The author and Youth Without Borders founder responded that she was frustrated by uninformed comments about Islam, and that people were 'willing to completely negate any of my rights as a human being, a woman, as a person with agency simply because they have an idea about what my faith is about'. Lambie said: 'There is one law in this country and it is the Australian law … it is not sharia law, not in this country. Not in my day.' To which Abdel-Magied protested: 'You don't know anything about my religion,' adding that Islam specified the precedence of 'the law of the land that you are on'. Then-host Tony Jones had to intervene: 'Can I say, shouting at each other does not help. So please stop.' Lambie told Abdel-Magied to 'stop playing the victim. Your ban got lifted, get over it.' Abdel-Magied later wrote about the furious public response to her comments, describing herself as 'the most publicly hated Muslim in Australia'. A pro-Putin member of the audience was dramatically booted out of the studio in 2022 by then host Stan Grant after he asked a pro-Russia question. The audience member asked: 'As someone who comes from the Russian community here in Australia, I've been pretty outraged by the narrative created by our media depicting the Ukraine as 'the good guy' and Russia as 'the bad guy'.' 'Believe it or not, there are a lot of Russians here and around the world that support what Putin is doing in the Ukraine, myself included. Since 2014, the Ukrainian government together with Nazi groups like the Azov Battalion have besieged the Russian populations in the Donbas killing an estimated 13,000 people according to the United Nations,' he went on, prompting shouts of 'lies' from the audience. 'My question is: where was your outpouring of grief and concern for those thousands of mostly Russians?' Grant corrected the figures, noting the UN figure referred to the number of people killed in the conflict on both sides to date, and after a brief discussion the program moved on to other issues. But a few minutes later, he brought the conversation back: 'Something has been bothering me, I have to admit … people here have been talking about family who are suffering and people who are dying. You supported what's happening, hearing that people are dying. Can I just say – I'm just not comfortable with you being here. Could you please leave?' The audience applauded, as the audience member initially resisted, then left the studio. Grant said the question was not vetted by producers. The pro-Russian audience member said it was 'not true' the question was unvetted, but that he had made an 'addition' when asking it. Malcolm Turnbull's famous leather jacket made frequent appearances with the former prime minister on the Q+A panel. When Turnbull appeared on Q+A without the jacket, it made headlines. He later auctioned it for charity on eBay and raised $1,800 for Sydney's Wayside Chapel.


Time Out
2 hours ago
- Time Out
Australia's largest international art festival just dropped its 2025 program – here's what to expect
Brisbane 's pink and white banners are flying once again, signalling the return of the country's biggest international arts festival. Spanning 23 gloriously jam-packed days from September 5 to 27, Brisbane Festival 2025 will offer a smorgasbord of 1,000-plus performances, featuring more than 500 free events and 21 world premieres. Wowza! There's heaps to get hyped about this year, starting with Riverfire, when the city's biggest firework spectacular explodes over the Brisbane River. We're also super excited for the return of First Nations-designed drone show Skylore, plus the transformation of three of Brisbane's most popular pedestrian bridges into a spectacular open-air art trail, featuring inflatable installations and colourful projections designed by internationally renowned Aussie artists Craig & Karl. This year, Brisbane Festival has secured four Australian exclusives, including Gems – a world premiere dance trilogy by internationally renowned choreographer Benjamin Millepied and LA Dance Project, and 100 Guitars – an immersive sound experience featuring 100 electric guitarists from around the city. But the world premiere we're absolutely stocked for is Afterglow – a mesmerising journey through a dreamscape of fire sculpture, candlelit artworks and live performances in the City Botanic Gardens. Sounds lit, right? Theatre lovers can look forward to a joyous Tina Turner tribute by drag icon Miss Ellaneous (Ben Graetz), the reawakening of Twelfth Night Theatre for sell-out cabaret Gatsby at the Green Light, a pop-fuelled reimagining of A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shake & Stir (titled The Lovers), and so much more. Seriously, you'll need a solid 30 minutes to scroll through the program. More into music? Festivalgoers can catch Australia's biggest names at Night at the Parkland – an epic outdoor concert under the stars featuring the likes of Icehouse, Lime Cordiale, Xavier Rudd and Amy Shark. Other Aussie favourites to look out for on this year's program include Kate Miller-Heidke, Sarah Blasko and Winston Surfshirt, plus the return of Brisbane Serenades – a series of free outdoor concerts across the city. Is it just us or is everyone else buzzing with excitement overload? You can explore the full Brisbane Festival program – did we mention more than a third of the events are free? – and get your tickets here. 🤘🏾