SPY: Daddy's losing his little girl

John Key's daughter Stephie (L) is leaving NZ to live in France. Photo / Mark Mitchell

First Dad of New Zealand, John Key, is kissing goodbye to his daughter Stephie next week as she heads to France for a year on an American Field Scholarship. The aspiring fashion designer will be billeted with a family outside Paris - the details of which are secret for security reasons, Key told Spy.

"She's going to be living with a French mum and dad," he said wistfully. "It'll be sad. Daddy's losing his little girl. But what a great adventure for her."

Key The Younger will immerse herself in the French way of life, going to school and living with her new family and honing her Gallic language skills.

The year-long programme starts next month and ends in July and will cost her dad $13,600 in fees. The only stipulation is no vegetarianism. But that won't be the only hurdle for Stephie. She also won't be allowed to have visits from her jetsetting family.

"I'm going to the UK in two weeks to see [David] Cameron," Key told Spy, "and I'll be in France, too, having dinner with [Nicolas] Sarkozy and Carla, but I'm not allowed to catch up with Stephie." Visits are strictly forbidden.

"They want parents to cut the apron strings and not destabilise the new environment for their kids." I get the feeling Key would rather break bread with his little girl than hobnob with Europe's leaders.

IS MICHAEL LAWS CURSED?

It's fair to say Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws has had it tough lately. His personal emails were leaked, he had to manhandle someone out of his studio, he sat through an earthquake, he rushed his daughter to A&E last week and his former partner Leonie Brookhammer is rumoured to have checked into rehab.

"I don't know how you got hold of that information," Brookhammer told Spy. "I'm surprised that a couple of sources have got hold of that information. It's an absolutely confidential place."

The website for the Serenity Drug, Alcohol and Addiction Rehab in West Auckland, where I understand Brookhammer is attending, says the clinic "provides a safe, medically supervised detoxification service with experienced physicians and nursing staff on call 24 hours a day."

"If I was here," Brookhammer said, "I would be surprised that any people knew about it. I don't know how that would be anyone's business but mine."

Marcus Lush made Laws' unlucky streak his business when he asked an applied mathematics university professor on Thursday whether Lawsy is just plain cursed. The prognosis doesn't look good.

Professor James Sneyd surmised: "Once you get to be a well-known politician, you attract headlines like that, then bad luck tends to come in groups because that's the way the universe works. The universe is out to get you because you're a well-known politician and you have to live with that unpleasant factor."