Welcome to The Group Chat with Lucy Manly, where Australia’s most trusted society insider shares the hottest gossip BEFORE it makes the news.
Nightclub to nappies
The nightclub temptress who found herself at the centre of Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow‘s sex-tape scandal is preparing for a very different kind of life chapter: motherhood.
I can reveal that the woman – whose late-night liaison with the Dolphins fullback blew up his romance with Gold Coast Titans NRLW star Jaime Chapman – is now several months pregnant.
Let’s rewind, in case you missed it. Last July, I broke the story that there was an explicit video doing the rounds.
The compromising clip showed the 24-year-old NRL golden boy – better known as The Hammer – receiving a consensual sex act from a woman he’d met on a big night out at Brisbane’s Su Casa nightclub before taking her back to his Redcliffe home.
The woman involved in NRL star Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow’s infamous nightclub tryst is pregnant… but not with his child
When I confronted the man known as ‘The Hammer’ about his sex tape last year, I asked him the question on everyone’s lips: ‘Why’d you film it?’
After the State of Origin dust settled, I headed north to the Dolphins’ stomping ground to ask the question fans, sponsors and probably a few furious exes wanted answered: why film it?
Tabuai-Fidow had just wrapped up a punishing five-hour training session at Kayo Stadium when I caught up with him outside his home.
To his credit, he didn’t slam the door in my face. In fact, he was disarmingly polite – right up until I uttered the phrase ‘sex act in question’, at which point I watched his soul quietly exit his body.
With a half-smirk and a nod, he acknowledged the tape, didn’t deny a thing, and declined to comment. Fair enough – he didn’t need to. The tattoos visible in the footage, including a distinctive crowned bear on his right thigh, said it all.
Sources at the time told me the video was filmed on June 7 while Chapman was away on NRLW duties with the Titans. Neither party has ever spoken publicly about it, but those in the know insist the footage was the final nail in the coffin for the league’s once-golden couple.
And now for the plot twist.
Six months on, the woman in the video is pregnant. No, not with The Hammer’s child – but with a similarly built, gym-honed gentleman. Evidently, she has a type.
Still, my personal favourite part of the whole Tabuai-Fidow saga was my excitable phone call from the Dolphins’ media minder, Trad McLean.
Tabuai-Fidow and NRLW poster girl Jaime Chapman (right) were a sporting golden couple before his sex tape scandal involving another woman broke them up
The Hammer sports a distinctive bear tattoo on his right thigh, which identified him in the tape
Trad, whom I accidentally called Trent for the entirety of the call, branded my door-knock ‘disgusting’ and ‘poor form’ in a spirited dressing-down.
I politely suggested he might be better off directing his outrage at players misbehaving on camera rather than journalists doing their job – a remark that, predictably, did not go down well.
Mile-high faux pas
Charity maven Vanessa Jacobs Fennell is lighting up WhatsApp group chats across Sydney once again.
The latest round of chatter was triggered by Ms Jacobs Fennell secretly snapping a photo of Hollywood royalty Sir Anthony Hopkins on a flight from London to Switzerland this week as the 87-year-old Hannibal Lecter star tried to eat his in-flight meal in peace.
The humble-brag caption did the rest: ‘Two Oscar winners off to Switzerland. Front row’, she wrote, before making the bold move of tagging the actor.
Within minutes, the screenshot was ricocheting through inboxes from Bellevue Hill to Bondi. Even those known to be fond of her couldn’t help but cringe a little.
Ms Jacobs Fennell, who was formerly married to private-equity banker Tom Fennell and remains a regular on the high-society charity circuit, has never been far from the spotlight – or the gossip mill.
Last year, she was in the headlines when her Range Rover ploughed into several parked cars in Bellevue Hill.
Charity maven Vanessa Jacobs Fennell is lighting up WhatsApp group chats across Sydney, after she posted this rather gauche in-flight selfie with an unwitting Anthony Hopkins
Last year, Ms Jacobs Fennell (seen outside Waverley Local Court in April) ploughed her Range Rover into several parked cars in Bellevue Hill. She was disqualified from driving for six months
She was pulled from the damaged vehicle by bystanders, later refused a breath test, and was disqualified from driving for six months. That ban has since expired.
In November, she told the Daily Mail she was keen to move on from the saga.
‘I just can’t handle the nastiness anymore,’ she said at the time. ‘I’ve got incredible friends and my life is connected… I need to rebuild for my children.’
It’s understood a brief romance with Melbourne businessman Nathan Sable had ended shortly before the crash, with insiders saying she was deeply rattled by the split.
Model meets retail royalty
A scion of a vast family fortune tying the knot with an eastern suburbs model – it’s a Sydney story as old as time.
But this time, the script has flipped: the usual gender roles are reversed.
I can reveal that male clotheshorse Jordan Stenmark – of the Stenmark twins who were everywhere in the 2010s – has put a ring on appliances heiress Jasmine Lee.
Congratulations are in order for appliances heiress Jasmine Lee, who is engaged to model and mid-2010s ‘It’ boy Jordan Stenmark
Jasmine (left, with grandmother and family matriarch Yenda Lee and father Lionel) is becoming the new face of the electronics retail empire started by her great-grandfather
Jasmine’s great-grandfather, Bing Lee (above) began the family empire now worth $680million after fleeing Japanese-occupied China in 1937 for Australia
They pulled off a secret engagement that somehow dodged the usual social-media fanfare. I was only tipped off to the hush-hush proposal when a source slid me a telling screenshot of the pair.
Jasmine is the face of the $680million Bing Lee retail empire – and the great-granddaughter of the man who built the electronics giant into a household name.
Jordan and Jasmine are often spotted around Bondi, where it’s understood they live at The Pacific apartment complex, overlooking the iconic beach, and are regulars at my preferred coffee haunt, The Depot.
Last year, Jasmine took the reins from her grandmother Yenda Lee, proudly carrying on the family tradition of hard work – and those maddeningly memorable ads.
Before this new chapter, Jordan was in a long-term relationship with Kambala alum and nutritionist-turned-dog-food-saleswoman Asha Dillon.
The pair were fixtures on the Sydney social circuit, popping up together at events, across social media and in glossy profiles throughout the mid-to-late 2010s.
Alongside twin brother Zac, Jordan shot to fame as one half of The Stenmarks.
The duo, who now boast 157,000 TikTok followers and 315,000 on Instagram, were famously discovered in 2011 while working at a Western Sydney café, before being signed by Vivien’s at just 19 – and the rest, as they say, was runway history.
Lawsie’s last gatekeeper
John Laws chose his longtime PA and chief ‘handmaiden’ Jodee Borgo as one of the executors of his estate, a fitting nod to the woman who managed just about every corner of his life
Even in death, John ‘Golden Tonsils’ Laws is still being minded by the woman who quietly ran his life for three decades.
Laws chose his longtime personal assistant and chief ‘handmaiden’ Jodee Borgo as one of the executors of his estate, a fitting nod to the woman who managed just about every corner of his life.
Those who knew Laws well will tell you Borgo wasn’t just a PA. For 30 years, she was his secretary, social organiser, confidant and unflinching gatekeeper.
If you wanted access to Lawsie, you went through Jodee, and not much got past her without good reason.
When Laws signed off for the last time last year, he publicly thanked her on air, acknowledging the role she played in helping him sustain a radio career that began all the way back in 1953.
Now, even after his final broadcast last year, Borgo is still doing what she always did: looking after Laws’s affairs.
And finally… guess who, don’t sue!
Which TV news exec has infuriated their own newsroom by pulling a disappearing act during a major breaking news event in their patch?
Staff were dragged back from annual leave to cover what became one of the biggest stories of the past few months – yet their highly paid boss was nowhere to be seen.
The optics aren’t great. It’s giving Christine Nixon at the hairdresser’s while Black Saturday burned.
Let’s just hope the mystery executive enjoyed their relaxing week off…
- The subject of this blind item is not mentioned or pictured elsewhere in this article.
New to DailyMail+? Here are our most-read stories from the last week
Chumpy Pullin’s dad reveals heartbreaking rift with his late son’s partner Ellidy that has torn him away from his only grandchild – and the ‘hurtful’ suggestion that triggered their estrangement
Is nobody going to say the bloody obvious about Ellidy Pullin? We fell in love with her story – now a bitter truth stares us in the face: AMANDA GOFF
I think I’ve discovered Tess Crosley’s true agenda after the Lachie Neale scandal. I know you’re reading… if this really is your plan, I promise it won’t end well for you: JANA HOCKING
Naked pop star Yungblud parties with 50-year-old socialite Dina Broadhurst at raucous private yacht party attended by Sydney’s elite
Regrets? He’s had a few: It’s all over for Lachie Neale as he moves into bachelor pad after his wife Jules left him… as we uncover telling post from the woman at the centre of their divorce
Noughties Aussie heart-throb Didier Cohen faces YEARS in an American prison for allegedly kidnapping his rich father and stepmother. Read the shocking full story – as an insider reveals what may have triggered his meltdown
Shocking suspicions about celebrity dentist Dr David Hurst’s sudden death at a casino revealed a year later – as we track down his elusive widow at $8million home
Poison pen email from the house of Woman’s Day reveals dire state of business… Plus, Cosmopolitan Australia crashes and burns under new owner – our sources have the full story: INSIDE MAIL
Why everyone’s talking about Ellidy Pullin’s luxury life and the celebrity couple she considers ‘family’ – after Chumpy’s dad revealed their heartbreaking rift
The madness continues: Jessica Camilleri hacked off her mother’s head in a crime that shocked Australia. She’s just done something so grim behind bars that it may get her MORE jail time
