KEY POINTS:
TV One News presenter Tony Veitch (above left) is reportedly seeking legal advice following a newspaper story that he allegedly beat former girlfriend Kristin Dunne-Powell (above right) in 2006, which the publication alleges resulted in hospitalisation, a wheelchair, a nervous breakdown and a $100,000 payout for her silence.
He clearly was getting sartorial advice if his pastel-hued ensemble was anything to go by on the news last night - apple green tie, soft cream shirt and pale grey suit jacket. It didn't scream wife basher.
The story has been circulating on the gossip grapevine for months; yesterday it was saturating talkback and the blogosphere. Getting the bash has never been so topical. White-collar families and professional couples stopped slurping their Chardonnays and flat whites and paid notice. This wasn't South Auckland; it was leafy St Heliers. This wasn't a crime 'on the pipe'; nor a crime of financial poverty. It was a celebrity-done-bad story and we lapped it up.
Dunne-Powell's role in this case is - unsurprisingly - being examined. It's impossible to judge a situation from your own viewpoint, but the Kristin Dunne I worked with at Vodafone a few years back was strong, determined and confident.
She'd inspire other women to succeed; cry out if a colleague was hard done by. For now she's staying quiet. Veitch, renowned for his motor mouth show-off antics, is staying strangely tight-lipped too.
So, where does this leave the "Veitchy" brand on the celebrity star index? His core market may be blokes - on Game of Two Halves, RadioSport and TV One news - but you can bet the nation's network won't want to isolate one half of the country's population.
The Veitchy brand has suffered damage - but is it irreparable? His shares on the star index have undoubtedly fallen - but are they at rock bottom prices? Veitch's silence and failure to answer questions won't win him any new friends soon.
But he's got enough at the moment, thank you, who are standing by him. Like Jimmy Cowan and the All Blacks management, Veitch's employers see enough value in him to write-off this incident as a personal problem.
Which makes you feel sorry for Clint Brown, whose employer - Mediaworks - took swift action by suspending the TV3 sportscaster when he was alleged to have gotten into a drunken incident at a Taupo nightclub in 2006. His star value hasn't so much declined, as disappeared.
Click here for the Spy gallery of Kiwi personalities whose star value has, at some point, faced a drop on the fluctuating Celebrity Index.
Rachel Glucina
