Fabled gossip columnist makes an exit

Picture / Supplied

The grandma of gossip has put herself down.

Metro magazine columnist Felicity Ferret has kicked off her heels and - according to the latest issue - sunk beneath surface of a bath filled with Bollinger champagne to die.

It is the second time the Ferret has left Metro - she was dumped in 2002. Her final column in Metro depicts this exit as a suicide.

The Ferret was the country's first regular gossip columnist, emerging with the launch of Metro in the early 1980s to humble and humiliate those in Auckland's social scene.

The exit comes a year after former editor Bevan Rapson reintroduced the feature.

Rapson left in May this year to be replaced by Simon Wilson.

Wilson said yesterday: "I sacked her from the magazine." Her last piece is a column of reflections and what that means for her to be sacked.

Wilson said the Ferret was the forerunner of later popular gossip and society columnists, including the Herald on Sunday's Rachel Glucina.

She was often a compilation of the social adventures of Metro staff - although Judith Baragwanath was suspected of being a central contributor.

Conceived in an era when Michael "Humpty" Fay could only dream of winning the America's Cup, the Ferret finished as she began - daring, embarrassing, crass, irreverent, funny and just a little bit mean.

Former Metro editor and owner Warwick Roger said Ferret was doomed once newspapers started doing gossip and her death was overdue.

"I think the poor girl was past it."