High Society’s ‘Risky’ Craze and a Spicy Banker Rumor: THE GROUP CHAT

Welcome to The Group Chat with Lucy Manly, where Australia’s most-trusted society insider shares the hottest gossip BEFORE it makes the news.

Like the cat that got the cream

They called off their engagement amid reports of conflicting lifestyles.

But after a few months licking his wounds, young-at-heart financier Tom Fennell has bounced back from his break-up with glamorous single mother Annabelle Price.

He announced his return to Sydney’s social scene recently by posing front and centre among a bevvy of very beautiful women.

The 52-year-old tomcat stepped out with a fresh rinse and sun-kissed tan at Bondi hotspot Icebergs alongside the group of lovely ladies to celebrate the birthday of Brisbane recruitment specialist Jacqui Paul.

Fennell looked in his element surrounded by a mix of perfectly proportioned companions as they marked the joyous occasion with a photo on the oceanfront balcony.

We also hear the divorced man-about-town has a new ‘special lady’ in his life whom he has already introduced to trusted friends and confidants.

As soon as I find out the identity of the lucky lady, I’ll let you know. 

Fennell, of course, makes no secret of his lust for life. In 2023, he hosted a themed soirée for his 50th birthday at the Ivy Penthouse, where 100 his closest friends dusted off their tuxedos, silk pyjamas and bunny ears for ‘A Night at the Playboy Mansion’.

Whispers of Fennell’s new love come after his split from society beauty Annabelle.

The May-December lovebirds’ ‘quickie’ engagement had set tongues wagging in June 2023 when Fennell presented Price, 33, with a five-carat diamond sparkler and an offer no eastern suburbs socialite could possibly refuse.

Their love story had emerged phoenix-like from the ashes of Price’s headline-making separation from wealth advisor Freddie Blencke, with whom she shares two children.

But just over a year after the blonde said yes, the pair quietly ended their engagement last August, and managed to keep it under wraps until I caught wind of it in March.

Fennell was previously married to South African charity maven Vanessa Jacobs Fennell, who was once a shortlist candidate to appear on The Real Housewives of Sydney.

Ms Fennell made headlines in March for allegedly crashing her Range Rover Sport into a number of parked cars, including a Tesla, in Bellevue Hill.

The tyres on her luxury SUV were reportedly shredded as a result of her ‘doing laps’ of the ritzy suburb.

Footage of the incident appeared to show the socialite taking a swipe at a police officer as she was arrested. She spent the night in the clink before making bail the next morning.

She was charged with refusing to submit to breath analysis, assault police officer in the execution of duty and not give particulars to owner of damaged property.

At Waverley Court on April 1, her lawyer Helen Christinson pleaded not guilty on Ms Fennell’s behalf and applied for a Section 14 which, if accepted by the magistrate, will see the charges dismissed on mental health grounds.

Murky past of Justin Hemmes’ new neighbour

Porsche-driving Sotheby’s realtor Maclay Longhurst and his wife Jessie have snapped up a Vaucluse mansion for about $27million, just a stone’s throw away from Justin Hemmes‘ famous ‘Hermitage’ compound.

The Longhursts, who recently welcomed their first child, certainly look the part of an upwardly mobile eastern suburbs power couple – but there’s a rather murky detail from Maclay’s past that he perhaps won’t want his well-heeled neighbours to know.

Prior to making it big in the prestige real estate industry, a young Mr Longhurst was pictured in an infamous image from the 2005 Cronulla riots.

I was first to unmask Maclay as the 19-year-old in the background of a group of largely shirtless ‘patriots’ being led by an irate man brandishing a beer bottle while shouting at police.

The Associated Press image was published around the world and became one of the iconic pictures of the riots that brought shame on Australia and highlighted the ugly racial tensions between Cronulla ‘locals’ and those perceived to be immigrants.

We do not suggest Maclay was part of the racially motivated contingent. Given his age and otherwise good character, he was most likely just following the crowd, which is foolish but forgivable.

Maclay, who was raised in the Shire and attended Waverley College, had long feared the photo would one day surface.

When I put him out of his misery in 2021 by identifying him as the teen in the photo, he declined to comment but was keen to know who had shared the image with me. (That article, by the way, has since been inexplicably pushed down Google rankings when you search for his name. Go figure!)

At the time of his exposure, he was selling homes for agency BresicWhitney but later jumped ship to start Woollahra’s first Sotheby’s International office.

Now aged 39 and a new father, Maclay enjoys the finer things in life, including driving luxury cars, sailing on superyachts and long European summers.

The Longhursts new four-bedroom home sits above the harbourside Hermitage Walk, and boasts views across Sydney Harbour to the city skyline, a level lawn and a pool.

They bought it from another notable couple, high-powered solicitor Maxine Brenner and her husband Jodee Rich, the businessman best known for the One.Tel disaster.

We hope his new neighbours will forgive Maclay for his adolescent lapse of judgement.

After all, the youthful indiscretion certainly hasn’t hurt his career, with Real Estate Business ranking him Australia’s third best-performing agent of 2024, clocking 176 sales totalling about $504million.

Then there’s his own savvy property investments, including the recent sale of a three-bedder in Woollahra for $12million, four years after buying it for $8.3million.

And finally… guess who, don’t sue

It’s fast becoming the drug cocktail du jour for fiends in the Harbour City.

You may not have heard of pink cocaine, but it’s all the rage in the eastern suburbs. It has become more in-demand than the white stuff at certain parties, I am told.

So, what is pink cocaine, I hear you ask? Known variously as pig nose, pink panther and cocaine rosada, the colourful powder rarely contains cocaine but is instead a mix of dangerous illicit drugs like ketamine, MDMA and methamphetamine.

All drugs carry risk, but this stuff is another level, and even veterans of the party scene fear it’s only a matter of time before something ‘really bad’ happens.

‘I wouldn’t risk it,’ one told me. 

Liam Payne reportedly had pink cocaine in his system when he plunged to his death from a hotel balcony in Argentina last October. A complainant against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs claims it was the accused sex-trafficking rap mogul’s go-to party drug.

In November a record-breaking 252kg of pink cocaine destined for Sydney’s streets was seized by police, with a 21-year-old man arrested in Coogee for allegedly trying to import the dangerous new substance.

• This item does not relate to anyone mentioned or pictured elsewhere in this column.