‘I'm a sucker for any pub': MasterChef winner Nat Thaipun's go-to spots to eat and drink
When she's not globetrotting, Thaipun picks up shifts cooking at Melbourne's three-hatted Vue de Monde, as you do.
Yes, it's been a rapid rise for the former environmental science student and barista, who still lives in an inner-city Melbourne share house and now counts Jamie Oliver as a friend, but cooking has always been in her veins. Her parents ran popular Sunbury restaurant Thai Hut, until it closed in 2019 after 30 years.
It was her experience at The Zin House, Mudgee's biodynamic farm and restaurant, that spurred Thaipun to accept a spot on MasterChef. The restaurant's commitment to organic practices also prompted her to return to Thailand for a deeper exploration of her culinary heritage before filming began.
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The Advertiser
2 days ago
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Meghan Markle, Julia Roberts, the Obamas, Dr Phil and Tyler Perry have all counted media mogul as a friend over the years, while online Oprah has more than 21 million followers on Facebook and more than 22.4 million on Instagram. Her YouTube channel is where she continues her talk-show format via a top-rating podcast, interviewing has celebrities with more than a million views each episode. Arguably one of the world's most recognised media personalities, the 72-year-old will talk about the power of authenticity to the necessity of resilience, according to the tour promoters. "Oprah's reflections will resonate with anyone seeking purpose, inspiration, or a spark to reimagine their own path," they said. Pre-sale tickets for American Express Card members is from 10am Wednesday August 6. General public tickets are on sale 10am, Friday August 8. FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT: A billionaire storyteller with the ability to get heartfelt confessions from just about anyone is bringing her entourage to Australia, with much fanfare expected. The ultimate talk-show host Oprah Winfrey will be embarking on a speaking tour in December, and visiting Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane Melbourne and Auckland. Tickets are expected to sell out if her last tour is anything to go by, 10 years ago. Read more at The Senior: "One of the things I have always enjoyed is sitting down for real, honest, enlightening conversations, and this experience is all about that," said Oprah Winfrey. "The energy, warmth, and spirit I feel in Australia and New Zealand have stayed with me, and returning will be an opportunity to reconnect, reflect, and be reinspired-together. "I look forward to sharing stories, ideas, and meaningful connection about what's possible in our lives moving forward." 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For most of the past 20 years since it was founded, YouTube was an alternative to television, a home for cheap, low-quality ephemera like how-to videos and skateboard tricks that Hollywood worried was distracting people from real entertainment. YouTube started as a website to watch videos on PCs. It made its way on to televisions in 2010, but the interface was clunky. By the 2020s, a generation that grew up watching internet videos alone on their phones and tablets began watching YouTube together in their living rooms and with their own children. It didn't hurt that as prices rose for Netflix and Disney+, YouTube has remained free. In the process, it became a media juggernaut. MoffettNathanson analysts estimate YouTube's revenue last year was $US54.2bn, which would make it No.2 among entertainment companies, behind only Disney. Now, even the smallest decisions YouTube executives make about how their apps are designed or how their algorithm recommends content can have seismic impacts on global pop culture. When Kurt Wilms became senior director of product for YouTube on televisions in 2018, the company's TV app was useful if you knew what you wanted to search for and watch. Since then, it has worked to make its TV app similar to the ones on phones, with an algorithm that recommends what to watch next, and the ability to subscribe and comment. The key differences: ad formats designed for the TV, a search engine that suggests content that looks best on a big screen, and the ability to navigate it all with a remote. A coming YouTube feature, called 'shows', can automatically queue the next episode on a channel, rather than serving whatever the recommendation algorithm thinks you'll like best from billions of options. That will let YouTube viewers for the first time watch full 'seasons' and pick up where they left off, as they are used to doing on Netflix. 'It's going to be great for the 'lean back' use case of YouTube,' Wilms says. Many young people viewing YouTube on their TVs are perfectly happy to watch amateurs play videogames, spout opinions and share every detail of their personal lives. But increasingly, they are also watching the type of shows that used to be found exclusively on broadcast or cable channels: sketch comedy, documentaries, animation and talk shows. The latter are disappearing from traditional networks, as evidenced by CBS's decision to cancel its Stephen Colbert late-night show. Good Mythical Morning, on YouTube, is a lot like an old-fashioned network talk show. Every weekday, hosts Rhett McLaughlin and Charles Lincoln Neal – known to their fans as Rhett and Link – joke around with each other and their crew, perform blind taste tests and take part in bizarre contests. What started nearly 20 years ago with the two friends working alone in North Carolina has grown into a channel with 19.3 million subscribers. While Los Angeles is bleeding jobs in traditional film and TV production, Rhett and Link employ some 100 people in a complex just outside the city that houses stages, a writers' room, a prop-making office and interns. During a recent taping, the youthful-looking 47-year-olds were preparing to taste food a crew member's grandmother had canned decades ago. 'There's only one item we know is definitely unsafe,' the director warned them. 'Otherwise, you guys can do your normal smell-lick situation.' Televisions became the most popular screen for people to watch Good Mythical Morning late last year and now account for 53 per cent of all viewing. The hosts say longtime fans have grown up watching the show alone in their childhood bedrooms and now watch with a partner or friends in their own living rooms. 'There's this phenomenon of, 'Oh, wait, there's the YouTube icon on this television I just mounted in my first apartment. I can do this here now',' Neal says. Similarly, viewership on TVs surpassed mobile late last year for popular YouTube interview show Hot Ones, on which celebrities such as Billie Eilish and Kevin Hart answer questions as they eat increasingly spicy chicken wings. Dhar Mann Studios says TVs became the most popular device for viewers of its inspirational videos for kids in early 2024, and about 54 per cent now watch that way. Research from Tubular Labs shows viewers on YouTube are spending substantially more time with long content – meaning more than 15 minutes – than two years ago, and they are doing it the most on televisions. YouTube producers are noticing and making longer videos, which keep audiences glued to their channel for longer stretches. It also helps producers earn more. Google typically shares 55 per cent of commercial revenue with creators, and the most valuable ads are often 'mid-rolls' that run part way through a video when a viewer has already committed time to watching and wants to finish. Longer videos have more mid-roll ads and make more money. 'There has been a deluge of interest in long-form YouTube content with creators,' says Andrew Graham, an agent at Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency who represents digital talent. 'Short-form content doesn't monetise nearly as well.' Comedian Quenlin Blackwell's videos were typically 10-30 minutes long just last year, and she made them with her best friends. Now her sketches, travelogues and cooking collaborations with online celebrities last an hour or longer and are made with 10-15 writers, camera operators and other professional collaborators. 'People's attention spans haven't been that bad,' Blackwell says. 'It's what we've been feeding them.' On YouTube, visibility relies entirely on Google's inscrutable algorithm. Executives say they have no interest in deciding what gets made for their service or how it gets promoted. In 2015, YouTube hired a former MTV executive to develop original series for paying subscribers, but the effort flopped. The most notable result was Cobra Kai, a Karate Kid follow-up that became a hit only after it moved to Netflix. Now, Hollywood-style content comes from partners that sell subscriptions to their streaming services inside the YouTube app. Those deals give companies such as Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount access to a large, young audience, but means their shows stream beside virtually anything. People who pay for HBO Max inside YouTube and search for The White Lotus might see the latest episode of the series, a fan breakdown of the season and a video from Thailand about flowers. YouTube leaves content decisions largely up to its independent creators. One of the few exceptions is sport, where the company is paying for the rights to stream games. Viewership in that category is up 45 per cent so far this year on YouTube. Executives say they want to be the home for fans leading up to a game, during it, and for clips afterward. YouTube has been the exclusive home of the NFL Sunday Ticket since 2023. It pays the sports league $US2bn annually and charges viewers between $US378 and $US480 a season. Now it is bringing games to its free, ad-supported service. YouTube bought the exclusive rights to soccer tournaments in Brazil, and in September it will stream an NFL game on its free platform for the first time – a sign Google believes it may be able to cover the hefty cost of sports rights through advertising alone. It has brought concepts created for Sunday Ticket such as 'multi-view' – in which people can watch several games at once – to the main app. And it's experimenting with features that take advantage of its army of sports influencers, including letting some announce games. '50 per cent of consumers have told us that they'd rather learn about a live event from a creator than actually watch the live event themselves,' Oestlian says. As the rest of Hollywood eyes YouTube enviously, elite creators have become a hot commodity. Analysts at Wells Fargo recently said that to compete for young audiences, Netflix should consider spending $US500m to persuade 20-30 creators from the top YouTube channels to switch. Popular YouTube creators have been open to making new shows for Hollywood streaming services, such as MrBeast's BeastGames on Amazon Prime Video, or to selling old episodes, such as Ms Rachel's kids' videos on Netflix. But they say there is no cheque big enough to persuade them to abandon YouTube channels they spent years creating. 'The opportunity isn't to try and defeat YouTube,' says Sean Atkins, chief executive of the Dhar Mann Studios YouTube channel. 'That game has already been won.' WSJ The Wall Street Journal The AI co-founder got the newly built Hollywood Hills home for a significant discount compared to the price the Australian developer originally wanted. The Wall Street Journal His trial has been marked by legal and judicial irregularities and raise serious questions about the right of due process.
