We all need a bit of relaxation once in a while.
And that’s especially true if you’re having legal troubles or going through a rough patch in your career.
Take, for example, a man who has been in and out of court for years and even spent time behind bars recently.
It’s enough to make anyone tense.
So it wasn’t surprising to see Andrew O’Keefe slinking into a backstreet massage parlour in Bondi earlier this month for a quick rubdown.
O’Keefe, clad in a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, was spotted discussing the various services available at Miss Massage in Gould Street not long after 7pm on Thursday, November 7.
Deal or no deal? Andrew O’Keefe investigates the services on offer at Miss Massage in Bondi
And he could well have scored quite a deal.
When we checked in with Miss Massage – located a 10-minute drive from the ex-TV star’s modest apartment in nearby Vaucluse – a receptionist said the parlour offered a half-hour deep tissue message for $50 while a full hour was only $30 more.
It’s a bargain for a man who once commanded about $800,000 a year at Seven.
However, she warned that anyone expecting a happy ending would be sorely disappointed, saying, ‘No, we don’t do that here’ – and Daily Mail Australia does not suggest otherwise.
Still, O’Keefe was looking relaxed and carefree – and smiling again for the first time in months – the following day while running errands in a black Mercedes sedan through the city’s eastern suburbs.
The 53-year-old’s life spun out of control this year, with repeated appearances in court for a string of offences amid a well-documented struggle with drug addiction.
In October, O’Keefe was ordered to go into rehab after pleading guilty to trespassing, breaching an AVO and possessing a prohibited drug.
He had been on bail for the first two offences when he was re-arrested on September 16 after police said they found crystal meth in his car during a search.
The visit comes as the fallen Seven star undergoes court-ordered drug rehabilitation
The former lawyer then spent weeks in custody at the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre in Sydney’s notorious Silverwater jail complex as he awaited his next appearance in court.
During his stint behind bars, he was constantly taunted by his fellow inmates, who took every opportunity to mock the former Deal or No Deal host about his tragic downfall.
Prison sources said one group of accused criminals was particularly merciless and crossed their arms in front of their faces every time they spotted him in the prison yard, shouting ‘No Deal!’ at him.
Despite the bullying, O’Keefe did not make any formal complaints about his treatment inside the centre, preferring to keep a low profile and to himself as much as possible.
Prison officials did not deem the taunting serious enough to segregate the former Channel Seven star from the general population or offer him protective custody. He shared a two-bed cell with another inmate at the centre,
O’Keefe earned $800,000 a year as the host of Seven’s The Chase Australia and Weekend Sunrise before his tragic fall from grace
O’Keefe was seen running errands in Sydney’s eastern suburbs the day after the massage trip
During his sentencing in October, magistrate Jacqueline Milledge warned O’Keefe he faced almost certain prison time if he broke the law again.
‘You have been given lots of opportunities to do something about your use of drugs,’ she told O’Keefe.
‘I can assure you the next step is jail. I’m not just saying that, I absolutely mean it.
‘It’s got to the state where the court would believe you just can’t be rehabilitated.
‘I am personally disappointed that you’re where you are and you haven’t managed to get yourself back on your feet.
‘I just wish you’d get yourself back to a position where you can do something for the community again.’
O’Keefe told the court that, while he now had a ‘strained’ relationship with his children, they remained ‘the dearest things in my life’ and he wanted to overcome his debilitating drug addiction for them.
The one-time golden boy of television spent weeks behind bars on remand at Silverwater
O’Keefe arrives at Rose Bay police station before being arrested in September
‘They’re wonderful and I want to be there for them and I understand now that there’s no drug in the world that’s going to allow that to happen if it’s in my life,’ he said.
Ms Milledge sentenced O’Keefe to a 30-month community corrections order, contingent on him engaging with drug rehabilitation.
He was also ordered to pay a $2,000 fine and suspended from driving for three months for the drug charge, and slapped with a further $500 fine for the trespass offence.
It came just weeks after O’Keefe was told by the same magistrate he was ‘lucky to be alive’ after emergency services had to rush him to hospital after he overdosed on heroin in his eastern suburbs flat.
