The best tiffs and tantrums of 2009

Rachel Hunter. Photo / Norrie Montgomery

The billionaire boys club bust-up

Former business cohorts Mark Cooper faced off against his former friends, now foes, Rich List Hanover bosses Mark Hotchin and Eric Watson amidst allegations of blackmail, fraud, theft, extortion and threats of jail.

The Auckland central police station are a far cry from Cooper's sumptuous digs in Switzerland and Mexico where he lives next door to Seal and Heidi Klum.

Cooper told the NZ Herald in September that Hanover wanted to ruin his life and have him arrested. He claimed they lured him to Auckland in February to settle his long-running dispute and harassed the police into interviewing him. He alleged he and his socialite wife Rachel Deadman were shadowed, his offices monitored and his reputation sullied.

Hotchin scoffed and said the claims were nonsense and Cooper requested the meeting. But when he arrived without a proposal to settle, events turned sour. Hotchin accused Cooper of being behind an orchestrated extortion and blackmail campaign after a Te Puke investor and his teenage daughter became involved in a Disputes Tribunal complaint against Hanover, which was later dropped.

It has turned into a vicious he said/he said war of words. Cooper reckons he's owed $57 million; Hanover claim they're owed $25 million.

Hotchin admitted Hanover filed a fraud and extortion complaint with the cops when Cooper was in town, but Cooper said the police weren't pursuing the complaints because it is a civil matter. He laid a criminal complaint in Switzerland over Hanover's conduct. The dispute doesn't look to be going away anytime soon.

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The TV tussle

Andrew Shaw, TVNZ's head of commissioning, production and acquisitions, let rip at the Diplomatic Immunity media launch party in March calling the Dominion Post "just a waste of good s*** paper" and labelling its reviewer, Jane Bowron , in a particularly derogatory manner that I dare not put into print.

He added self-satisfactorily: "I don't give a "s*** about shares or making money or columnists. I just care about comedy... If you don't laugh at this [show] you are f***ing dead. I will find you and kill you... [This speech] might cost me my job, but hell, I have options.

The only option he had was apologise, which he did. Bowron received an apologetic email from Shaw after Spy printed the story. She told the NZ Herald, Shaw needed to "man up" over criticism of the show. Earlier, she described Go Girls as "so awful it makes Burying Brian look good" and "not since the awful Melody Rules has a locally made comedy been so painfully embarrassing to watch". A TVNZ spokesperson said Shaw went too far and "said things that were inappropriate and totally unacceptable." He was formally reprimanded.

The mouthy Molloy brothers

Horse racing enthusiast and amateur astrologer Don Murray faced the wrath of Leo Molloy earlier this year when the controversial restaurateur paid champion boxer-turned debt collector Sean Sullivan to visit the fortune teller and offer some choice forecasting of his own.

Police confirmed in April they'd received a complaint alleging Sullivan was offered a fee of $1000 to encourage Murray to remove comments from his website that Molloy found offensive.

Only, it turns out, the hard man likes horoscopes! Who knew?! Sullivan turned up at Murray's home on March 23 to follow Molloy's instructions, a Sunday newspaper reported, but instead, sat down for an astrological reading "which took about half an hour and was very accurate", Sullivan's police statement said.

"I had no intentions of threatening Don or causing him harm because he seemed like a nice chap," he said in his statement.

Molloy told the paper the cops would spend little time on the complaint. "The police will laugh at this. As soon as they come to me I will refer them to a number of prominent people I know who will tell them straight that I do good things for a lot of people," he said.

Julie Christie's other brother, Michael Molloy, was involved in a scrap of his own last month when he let loose a tirade of abuse towards TVNZ's head of programming Jane Wilson after she decided to put the second series of Burying Brian on hold.

The TV show belongs to Eyeworks NZ where Christie holds the position of chief executive and Molloy is business affairs director. The shocking verbal attack by Molloy on the woman who holds tremendous power over their work was particularly embarrassing as it took place in the middle of a swanky luncheon at Euro restaurant for Melbourne Cup day celebrations.

Wilson told Spy Molloy's vicious diatribe was "very humiliating. I was really embarrassed and I was trying to calm him down but I couldn't." An eyewitness described it as "appalling. He was being incredibly aggressive and intimidating to a woman. It was disgraceful and totally unacceptable. He was f***ing angry." Christie said her brother was wrong and he had apologised. Will that be enough to kiss and make up to get their show back on air at TVNZ? Wait and see.

Jilted by a juvenile

Rachel Hunter announced in May that she was terrible at wedding planning telling People magazine: "I need to be given less time than a year to plan because I change my mind so often. It was going to be in Mexico, but we decided otherwise. I've made seven changes to the location." Toyboy fiancé Jarrod Stoll (12 years her junior) didn't dilly-dally over his decision. He pulled the plug on the August 14 nuptials and swiftly sent out a cancellation email to all the wedding guests. She was shocked. A close friend told a British tabloid that jilted Hunter "has absolutely no idea why Jarret has done this. It sounds like it could be a classic case of cold feet. He is a fair bit younger than her."

Dancing With the Precious

Geez, they don't breed them tough in rugby these days. Alleged hard man Josh Kronfeld took to ballroom dancing, but didn't take too kindly to criticism of his performance. During a live television interview on Breakfast, the former All Black came out firing, labeling outspoken presenter Paul Henry a "dickhead". He was fed up and disappointed, he said, by Henry's regular ridiculing of his performances and comments made about his dance partner Rachel Burstein 's revealing costumes. Harden up, Josh. Raunchy Rach wouldn't have been wearing so little if she didn't want to attract so much attention.

Jocks jostle on air and off

In May, controversial radio host Willie Jackson incited a fight on air with his RadioLive colleague Andrew Fagan after he suggested Fagan's wife and co-star Karyn Hay was the real star of the pair. "Well, she carries him, there's no doubt about that," Jackson said on air. Fagan heard the comment, rang the hotline and after some heated discussion about New Zealand's race relations, spat: "In terms of Karyn Hay carrying me mate, I'll rip your f***ing heart out!" Not helping matters, Jackson retorted: "Hey, your missus carries you and you're lucky you've got a job here [at RadioLive]!" It was all live on air!

Then the boys took the bust up to the boardroom. Fagan, brandishing a plastic knife from a joke shop, came at Jackson thrusting it forward saying: "I'll get you for what you said about me on air!" But he carried the joke on too far. Jackson wasn't laughing. He grabbed Andrew and shoved him. John Tamihere stepped in to act as bouncer. Later Jackson told Spy: "I wanted to knock his head off!" Fagan apologised and the two jocks made up.

Tears and tantrums

Literary queen Elizabeth Knox told the Dominion Post last month she lay in bed and cried for days after watching Niki Caro's movie interpretation of her book The Vintner's Luck. She said she was shocked, upset, puzzled, surprised and betrayed. Where was the gay love?, she asked. How could the movie have departed so far from her highly-acclaimed novel? "It has a vague gay flirtation that amounts to nothing and it has quite a lot of heterosexual sex in it." Caro responded to her politely, she said, but it was a "great big cop-out".

Rachel Glucina

Pictured above: Rachel Hunter. Photo / Norrie Montgomery