What's in the women's mags: Wendy Todd calls it a day on union with Brent

A feast of local, or almost local, talent is in store for the gossip hungry this week, with the covergirls much closer to home.

The hard-done-by-wife spot previously occupied by Jennifer Aniston has been filled by Brent Todd's wife, Wendy, in the Woman's Day. This cover story is a coup that will have all the other magazine buffs as well as a few serious news hounds gnashing their teeth with envy as it shows the first human fallout from the celebrity drugs case.

The years of tolerating her husband's "screw-ups" are apparently showing on the face of the former surf champion who found out Todd was involved in the drug case when a journalist rang her.

This ignominy was the last straw for a frustrated wife and mother who says that her 11-year marriage has ended for good after years of her having to carry the parenting burden almost solo, as Todd flitted between his family life in Oz and his "secret" life full of business dealings and partying in NZ.

New Idea promises intimate pictures of All Black Byron Kelleher and his X-rated lover Ashley Spalding, so it is almost disappointing to turn in and find them snuggled in white terry bath robes looking about as raunchy as the models in a Briscoes catalogue. In this clumsily executed piece of spin, there is also a picture showing the pair do have other cultural pursuits besides porn and rugby, the evidence being that they are drinking red wine from the correct glasses.

The magazine is at pains to point out that Kelleher is as unfamiliar with the body of work of his Singaporean porn star girlfriend as she is with his rugby. He is such a sensitive new-age guy that he sent flowers to her chihuahua.

New Idea is out on a limb with its assertion that Nicole Kidman is back under the spell of "Kiwi tycoon" Eric Watson and the pair are even weighing up marriage.

The Woman's Weekly won't have people lingering at the water cooler gossiping over its cover story about Mary Lambie and Jim Mora, the angle of which is that their household filled with three ankle-biters is "always frantic".

But the magazine redeems itself through the image gallery. On separate pages there is evidence of a trend that will worry anyone who eats. Posh Spice is in cut-off denim hot pants. So is Kate Moss. And turn the page and there is Jessica Simpson. Their pins are long, tanned and impossible to live up to.