18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Sydney porn king releases new book lamenting decline of larrikinism
It's been a hot minute since we checked in on colourful Sydney porn king, right-wing tour impresario and CBD favourite Damien Costas.
The brash publisher of nudie magazine Penthouse 's Australian spin-off and promoter responsible for bringing conservative culture warriors to these shores has shrugged off years of court battles, cranky creditors and embittered former business partners to turn over a new page as an author. Self-published, of course.
Costas' new book, What Happened to the Lucky Country (displaying in title alone, a profound ignorance of what Donald Horne really meant), was released last month.
It's basically a lengthy rant about the sheer horror that is modern Australia, where good patriotic characteristics such as larrikinism have been lost to psychological frailty and slavish deference to rules as exemplified by COVID restrictions that happened years ago.
And while it hasn't exactly got critics and readers jumping out of their chairs, Costas' book has excited the people that really matter. Sky News bloviator Rowan Dean reckons 'if ever a book demanded a trigger warning, this is it'.
And then, there's the foreword by Mark Latham, former Labor leader turned Macquarie Street's resident village idiot, in which he refers to One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts as a 'right-royal dingbat' for believing that United Nations globalists are secretly working to destroy Australia. While lavishing praise on Costas' book, of course.
Costas the businessman first burst on the scene as the promoter behind alt-right poster boy Milo Yiannopoulos' 2017 Australian tour.
But that was soon followed by a spectacular falling-out between Costas and his co–promoter, celebrity agent Max Markson, over unpaid debts, which brought its share of legal action and media mudslinging.
Costas was eventually bankrupted by his former printer, but in 2021, convinced a majority of creditors to vote in favour of having the bankruptcy annulled. Amid all that, there was the matter of Costas' former business partner Sean Dolman jailed after being caught up in Australia's biggest meth bust.
With all that behind him, Costas last graced these pages as the man behind British nativist politician Nigel 'Mr Brexit' Farage's 2022 Antipodean tour, and has recently been doing interviews rebranding as a wise survivor of the digital publishing game.
