Neil vs Neill: Or, The Sun-Herald Takes a Tabloid Trip.

Congratulations to the Sun-Herald, who cemented their slide into tabloid ‘journalism’ this morning; stalking Kate Neill, the infamous 26-yr-old at the centre of John Della Bosca’s affair scandal last month.

Some enterprising investigative team tracked the Newtown student all the way to Adelaide, where she’s taking time out from the political hailstorm she caused to cosy up with Grandma. And hid out with a camera in her backyard, apparently. Who do they think they are, New Idea?

“When she emerged from the front door of the double-storey home on Friday afternoon, she looked a shadow of the happy, glamorous blonde woman seen in the 2007 television grab.”

You don’t say. I’m a shadow of my regular self before my morning coffee, and I’d look kind of crabby if caught by national photographers “shuffling” around my grandmother’s yard in my daggiest pyjamas*, before I’d washed my hair.

Eamonn Duff, the lucky journalist charged with writing this story, makes no attempt to disguise its trashiness. It’s almost self-consciously soap-operaesque. There’s the cast of characters: “An elderly woman, believed to be Ms Neill’s grandmother” answers the phone. “A stocky and heavily tattooed man” answers the door. And of course, the very flattering nom de guerre, “Mr Della Bosca’s Other Woman”.

With the ‘victim’ or the ‘homewrecker’, depending how you look at it, in hiding, and her parents fleeing the state (by caravan, it seems. How delightfully retro!), speculation turns to the state of Della Bosca and Neal’s marriage. Leaving their family home in separate cars last weekend is an apparent indication that it’s over. Also a subtle indication that the Herald have also been staking out their house. All class.

Kudos to the sub-editor who gave “It was just about the sex” its very own paragraph. I’m sure he was itching to make it a pull-out quote.

They should have. Perhaps then they could sell the reprint to OK! Magazine, and use the funds to pay for some actual journalism. Fairfax should brace themselves. I sense a defamation case a-calling. 

*Duff describes said pyjamas as a “singlet and baggy shorts”. Sure, sometimes you run out of time to check your facts, but it looks like a t-shirt to me?