Insiders reveal fallen ACA star Ben McCormack's deepest fear as he's arrested on sickening charges - and the no-skills job he fell back on after his television career ended
When A Current Affair's consumer affairs and social justice frontman wasn't chasing down fraudsters or wedging his foot in the doorway of accused conmen, he was enjoying sun-soaked weekends as a part-time lifeguard.
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Daily Mail
15 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Channel Seven's 'hottest reporter ever' Kristian Gaupset proposes to his Bachelor star girlfriend: 'Happiest day of my life'
Channel Seven 's 'hottest reporter ever' has taken himself off the market permanently. Kristian Gaupset, who left the network in 2021 after 12 years, got down on one knee on Friday as he popped the question to his Bachelor star girlfriend Steph Harper. The TV journalist-turned-model proposed in a romantic outdoor setting after Steph returned from a 'girls' trip' to Ibiza, and shared the video to Instagram. 'Happiest day of my life,' the former reality TV star wrote next to the video alongside a ring emoji. The blonde beauty could be seen beaming as Kristian shared a sweet kiss with her before he dropped to one knee. He wore a white, loose-fit shirt and matching slacks as he popped the question during a sunset picnic. Steph, who appeared on the 2020 season of The Bachelor to find love with Locky Gilbert, wore a flowing red satin dress for the milestone occasion. She left her blonde tresses down, styling them into loose waves. The swimwear founder was in a state of shock when Kristian got down on one knee, covering her face with her hands before joining him on the ground. Saying 'yes', she then leaned in for a sweet kiss and embrace as he slipped the ring onto her finger. It seems Kristian and Steph have been dating since early 2021, with the former journalist featuring her on his Instagram for the first time in July that year. 'Mine,' he captioned the post next to a white heart emoji, before adding: 'Picked up a quality souvenir in Byron.' Kristian made a name for himself as the 'hot' reporter on Channel Seven for many years. He was flooded with messages from female admirers after his live cross on Seven News from the snow in New South Wales back in June 2021 went viral. But after 12 years at Channel Seven, Kristian quit television that same year to pursue an unlikely role as Ausgrid Government's relations lead. He continues to hold the position, but also notes in his Instagram bio that he is a model who splits his time between Sydney and the Gold Coast. Kristian also dabbles in photography and travel content creation. He first landed a job at Seven as a news producer in 2009 after studying journalism at the University of Technology in Sydney. Kristian was promoted to senior news producer in 2016, and later given on-air presenting duties. After going viral on TikTok for his smouldering good looks, he was signed up by leading talent agent Neon Model Management. The journalist and model has since flaunted his lavish lifestyle online, including trips abroad, attending exclusive events and posing in front of luxury cars.
The Guardian
16 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Limitless: Live Better Now review – Chris Hemsworth has absolutely no sense of rhythm
So, you know how there was once the Era of All the Chrises? Pine, Evans, Pratt, Hemsworth. And they all looked the same, especially Pratt 'n' Evans and Pine 'n' Hemsworth (plus Hemsworth had 17 brothers who also looked the same, which felt like an unnecessary layer of complication). Then Evans became Captain America and Hemsworth became Thor and that sorted things out a tad, although Pratt ran interference as Star-Lord in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise for a bit. Anyway. Limitless is a reality-documentary sort of thing by the Hemsworth one (if you need further elucidation, he is Australian and looks like a handsome teddy bear with an unparalleled fitness regime). In the first series he investigated ways to deal with stress and shock, and how to slow the ageing process and other ills that flesh is heir to. In the fifth episode, he found out he had two copies of the heritable gene for Alzheimer's disease, making him eight to 10 times more likely than the average person to get it. This added an unexpected note of gritty realism to proceedings and seemed to give our seemingly otherwise invincible hero understandable pause for thought. Now he is back with a shorter second series, Limitless: Live Better Now, looking at ways to improve not just his physical resilience but mental too. The three episodes cover ways in which to reformulate his approach to the chronic back pain he has suffered since he was a teenager, whether we can benefit from facing up to the things that most scare us and, in the opening instalment, how to protect ourselves against cognitive decline. The expert consulted recommends learning a musical instrument as one of the best ways of keeping over-40-year-old neurons firing and synaptic pathways forming in a nicely plastic manner. There are also the emotional and social bonds that music can engender, she notes. 'That depends,' says Hemsworth, who seems to have managed to retain to an impressive extent his antipodean dryness in the face of Hollywood excess, 'how well you can play'. He can, it turns out, already get by on the guitar well enough, so he needs something more challenging. His pal Ed Sheeran – a charmingly low-key unperformative friendship – tries him out on a few other instruments in his studio. They opt for the drums. It is a bold choice for a man without any notable sense of rhythm. Even bolder is the goal of being able to accompany Sheeran in a rendition of his hit Thinking Out Loud as part of his stadium tour in two months' time. Hemsworth recruits another pal to teach him how to play. His fellow Australian Ben Gordon is the drummer with the heavy metal band Parkway Drive and is chosen for his personal 'Zen quality'. At the end of their first lesson, Gordon remarks that it is 'pretty hard to find something Chris is bad at. But I think we've found it.' There is a chance, he says, that the audience's favourite song 'could be severely butchered by Chris'. To be fair, he does say it serenely. Hemsworth's lack of natural talent is soon coupled with a lack of time to rehearse amid all the other demands on his time. 'Chris doesn't really have his head around that yet,' says Gordon, serenely, of the chorus, as the weeks tick by. 'He can't just muscle his way through this,' says Gordon calmly, more weeks and less rehearsal time later. A couple of weeks before the big night, Gordon has him rehearse with his Parkway Drive bandmates. 'What's becoming clear,' Hemsworth says at the end, 'is that I really can't keep time.' 'You chose the wrong instrument, mate,' says one of the band, cheerfully. 'It was a trainwreck.' Somehow – and it is not my place to speculate on how this might have been achieved, perhaps with someone counting him in via earbud or frantically conducting just out of sight of the camera – it is alright on the night, and 70,000 paying customers do not have their night ruined and Hemsworth feels that the experience has future-proofed his brain in some small way. Hurrah! The same goes for the techniques he is taught by a palliative care doctor and the triple amputee BJ Miller, the MMA champion Kim Dong-hyun, a training session with South Korean special forces and a Buddhist ceremony to cope with pain, and with his experience of climbing a 600ft dam in the Swiss Alps in the name of exposure therapy and testing his hyperfocus capacities. Good for him. He's a warmly personable presence, even if he doesn't much endanger the truism that actors are best when they are given a script to follow. But at least now we know for sure how to pick him out of a Chris lineup in an emergency. Just show them a drum kit and see which one quails. Limitless: Live Better Now is on Disney+ now
Daily Mail
43 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
High-flying QBD Books CEO's debut novel is ruthlessly savaged with one-star reviews over bizarre sex scene. But the BOOK SHOP chain he owns has awarded it a special honour
One of the most powerful figures in Australian book publishing has been accused of writing a debut novel so bad an amateur reviewer described it as '300 pages of slop'. Nick Croydon is the CEO and co-owner of retail giant QBD Books and has penned a historical thriller called The Turing Protocol which was published by Affirm Press late last month. The novel imagines celebrated World War II codebreaker Alan Turing inventing a time machine called Nautilus which can send messages back into the recent past. Croydon's company QBD, which operates 91 stores across Australia and bills itself as the nation's number one online book seller, is promoting The Turing Protocol as its fiction title of the month. More than half the readers whose ratings were posted on the popular Goodreads website by Friday afternoon gave The Turing Protocol one star out of five, amid a backlash against Croydon for depicting the famously gay Turing as having sex with a woman. Some users suspected QBD employees were also bombarding the review site with positive comments, with the store acknowledging that staff 'shared their genuine views on the book - both complimentary and critical'. Turing, who was played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the acclaimed 2014 film The Imitation Game, helped crack Nazi Germany 's Enigma code machine, which became a major turning point in the war. The brilliant English mathematician and computing pioneer was notoriously prosecuted for homosexual acts in 1952 and underwent chemical castration instead of going to jail. Two years later, in a state of despair Turing took his own life by cyanide poisoning, aged 41. It was not until 2009 the British government finally made a formal apology for what then prime minister Gordon Brown described as the 'appalling' treatment Turing endured. Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a pardon in 2013 and the term 'Alan Turing law' now refers to UK legislation retroactively pardoning men convicted for acts of homosexuality. Some of the critics of Croydon's book are aghast the author has both described Turing having sex with a woman and given him a secret son, while others simply say the writing is awful. A prolific Australian author was flabbergasted by the change in Turing's circumstances, imagining if an African-American civil rights hero received the same treatment. 'What's next?' he asked Daily Mail. 'Perhaps The Rosa Parks Codex, except, you know, Rosa is CIA, hot and secretly white, as written by the CEO of Dymocks.' Affirm Press, which is owned by Simon & Schuster, acquired the UK and Commonwealth rights to The Turing Project in a two-book deal with Croydon. 'In the midst of World War II, Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing has created a machine named Nautilus that can send a message back into the recent past,' a synopsis begins. 'After Turing uses it to help the Allied forces succeed on D-Day, he sees the power (and potential danger) of what he has created. He knows he can only entrust it to one person: Joan, the mother of his secret child. 'Over the next seventy years, the Nautilus is passed down through the Turing family, who all must decide for themselves when to use this powerful invention. Will it save the world - or destroy it?' The cover carries blurbs by crime writers Dervla McTiernan - 'a fascinating alternative history with an intriguing "what if" at its core' - and Chris Hammer: 'Thought-provoking, The Time Machine meets The Da Vinci Code'. Turing did have a close relationship with a female colleague - Joan Clarke, to whom he was briefly engaged in what is sometimes called a lavender marriage. But many online reviewers believe Croydon went too far. 'The way this book portrays him genuinely makes me feel sick in the mouth,' one wrote. As of Friday, there were 71 ratings on Goodreads, with 38 (53 per cent) of them one-star, 20 (28 per cent) five-star, and just 13 others between those extremes. Most of the one-star ratings were from users who had reviewed multiple books, while all bar one of the five-star ratings were left by readers who had never previously posted on the site. More than half the ratings for The Turing Protocol posted on Goodreads by Friday afternoon gave the book one star out of five One reviewer who described herself as queer took exception to Croydon's graphic portrayal of Turing engaging in heterosexual sex, even in a work of historical fiction. 'Using real figures but keeping them at a distance to establish setting is one thing, writing how Alan Turing, a gay man, experiences having sex with a woman is something else entirely,' she wrote. The one-star reviews are scathing, including a suggestion a better title for the book would be 'The Boring Protocol'. 'Honestly one of the worst things I've ever read, do not waste your time or money on it,' one man wrote. '300 pages of slop,' wrote another. 'This is possibly one of the worst books I've ever read.' The first five-star review on Goodreads described reading The Turing Protocol as 'like stepping into the mind of a creator who understands both the beauty and the burden of invention'. 'If you're looking for a holiday read that's smart, soulful, and deeply original - this is it,' one man wrote. The next glowing review came from a reader who was hooked from page one. He wrote: 'I was constantly checking what was real or not, and the twists kept me racing through the pages, but it was the tender family relationships that really struck me.' Some of the five-star reviews addressed earlier criticism. User Gayman3123 wrote: 'im gay and I enjoyed the book so much it was interesting during "that" part but I don't know why you guys hate because (it's) just fiction.' One fan read Croydon's book in a night. 'The Turing Protocol is as good of a debut as we have seen in historical fiction this year, and I will be surprised if sales all around the world don't reflect this,' he wrote. A young reader calling themselves 'Reader' gave the book five stars and said: 'Picked up this book for a recent long-haul flight and oh my goodness, I didn't put it down for a single moment!' As of Friday, there were 71 ratings on Goodreads, with 38 (53 per cent) of them one-star, 20 (28 per cent) five-star, and just 13 others between those extremes One even wrote: 'I watched the Book Launch and went to QBD Books the next day and was assisted by a very kind young man. Great shopping experience and great book.' A spokeswoman for QBD Books said 'it's not unusual for friends, family, colleagues and peers to provide reviews of an author's work. 'QBD Books staff are a team of avid readers across the country who engage with literature passionately, some of whom have shared their genuine views on the book - both complimentary and critical.' The spokeswoman said QBD chose its books of the month after 'a rigorous selection process that highlights debut or new authors who have written standout works'. She also defended Croydon's portrayal of Turing's sexuality and his relationship with Clarke. 'Throughout the novel, Alan Turing's identity as a gay man is neither erased, questioned nor diminished,' she said. 'Both the narrative and author's intent are clear to critique Turing's treatment, chemical castration, and ultimately his death as a result of society's and the government's treatment of him due to his sexuality. 'Specifically, the Author's note at the end of the book reads, "The way he was treated by society and the authorities was a travesty".'
