Sam's colourful Indian adventure

Journalist Samantha Hayes. Photo / Supplied

TV3 beauty Samantha Hayes will have you know she is a serious journalist, thank you very much. The Nightline cue-reader left the studio and the swivel chair in search of an intrepid foreign correspondent experience. She's chasing stories in India for 3 News and Campbell Live. Eat your heart out, Christiane Amanpour.

I tuned into Sammy's experiences on her blog called "Sam Hayes in India: with Sam Hayes" found on the TV3 website.

Day 10 and 11 at Holi (the Festival of Colour) shows just how far the reporter is prepared to go to give us the story.

"It was perhaps the hardest shoot I've ever had to do," Sam writes. "People came at us from every direction with coloured powders, rubbing them with both hands down our cheeks and across our foreheads. It got in our eyes, ears and mouths and most of all, up our noses. We were targeted and mobbed on the street so we talked our way up on to someone's roof, only to be cornered by drunken paint-wielding hooligans. In the end, we jumped a rickshaw out of there to a quieter street."

But not before this pic was snapped. C'mon Mike McRoberts, you may wear the flak jacket, but would you be prepared to report from the front-line looking like pigeons with multi-coloured excrement had just defecated on your face? Good on you, Sam. 

Spy-ed

Opshop frontman Jason Kerrison was Spy-ed tying the knot with his beautiful fiancee Cassie in Cornwall Park last Saturday. We wish the rock'n'roll couple a happy future.

Sudanese model Ajoh Chol, who wasn't with the remaining Top Model contenders in LA, was Spy-ed at a fashion casting in Auckland last Saturday.

At the Zoo Music concert on Saturday night featuring Pluto and The Mint Chicks, Antony Starr was Spy-ed in the audience being bailed up by pretty female fans. SJD, TV3's David Farrier and Shorty St stars Will Hall, Fleur Saville and Toni Potter, who was wearing a bogan pair of cowboy boots, and Go Girls' Bronwyn Turei were also watching the gig.

Yummy mummy Bernice Mene in skinny jeans, green T-shirt, and carrying baby India Lily on the hip was Spy-ed on Tuesday having lunch with a friend at the celeb cafe du jour: Queenies on Spring St.

Brendon Pongia was Spy-ed pawing his fiancee Michelle Kirkland in the front row of the live screening of Dancing with the Stars on Tuesday night at Avalon Studios. The loved-up pair are getting wed next weekend. But Pongs wasn't the only amorous ex-dancing schleb. Fake tan lover Rodney Hide was front row and centre with his missus Louise Crome, too.

Shhhh. Top Models in LA

Oh my god, you guys. Can you keep a secret? Don't worry, I won't make you sign crazy contracts like those young mannequins holed up at Seeby Woodhouse's rental property filming Top Model. Can you believe they signed confidentiality contracts with pecuniary penalties of a million dollars?! Like they can even spell P-E-C-U-N-I-A-R-Y let alone pay it if they blab. But anyhoo, that's not the secret.

Top Model has left Campbells Bay on Auckland's North Shore. They're filming in Los Angeles where they shot a commercial and photoshoot for Covergirl cosmetics on Wednesday.

Someone tried to swear me to secrecy, but what kind of person attempts to swear a gossip columnist to secrecy? Besides, PR lad Murray Bevan is blabbing about what he knows from Top Model – he sent out a press release last Monday announcing a partnership with GHD as the "official hair sponsor".

Covergirl's Christine Boyden had some actual juice to reveal. She told me the girls left for La-La land last weekend to report for filming duty on Wednesday. The models shot a super chic Covergirl commercial which will screen on a future episode of Top Model here. But any ideas about catching up with Tyra didn't eventuate.

The girls return home this weekend to lockdown at Seeby's and more filming for the show. Covergirl is an international sponsor of the Top Model franchise.

Rachel Glucina

Pictured: TV3's Samantha Hayes. Photo / Supplied