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TV queen Julie Christie and celebrity It girl Charlotte Dawson have locked horns in a vicious transtasman email spat involving claims of bullying and a sex tape.
The spat between the women began when Dawson wrote in a blog that the Christie-produced Charlotte's Lists TV show was "diabolical crap" but that she was obliged to do it under her Sky contract.
"Didn't write or produce it and refused to do any publicity on it and therefore nobody watched it."
The blog entry drew a stinging email response from the reality show supremo, which Dawson then forwarded to friends with her equally stinging comments inserted throughout.
Christie: "I hope you are well and thoroughly enjoying your new life in your homeland (as opposed to the old country you only return to when you were desperate for work!)"
Dawson: "Meowwww! Bring Jules the saucer someone's wound her up!..."
Christie: "While your personal opinion does not bother me..."
Dawson: "Of course it bothers you otherwise why the email?"
At one stage Christie refers to "certain footage" taken during the making of the reality show The Player, in which a group of bachelors competed to woo women in an inner-city penthouse suite. The footage allegedly shows Dawson and another woman having sex with two of the contestants and was never shown in the show.
Dawson responds with "Julie the bully breaks out! Whoooo Hoooooo... But totally expected of you Julie, you are so predictable".
Now based in Australia, Dawson told the Herald on Sunday she was so drunk the night the so-called sex tape was filmed that she didn't remember what happened.
"It's always been this urban myth of what happened in this apartment," she said.
"I remember being there, I remember being drunk."
Dawson, who was wearing thigh-high patent leather boots on the night in question, said she remembered being on one contestant's shoulders while pointing a knife at the camera and saying "**** you Julie Christie".
"I'm not proud of that night, I'm not proud of that time in my life. It was one out-of-control night."
Dawson denied she and the other woman had sex with the two contestants at the apartment but two sources told the Herald on Sunday that the tape did exist.
Dawson had been at Auckland's Boogie Wonderland club with a group of friends, including Nicky Watson and her ex-boyfriend Matthew Ridge and some of the male contestants. Dawson, a friend and two of the contestants went back to the City Life apartment, where multiple cameras recorded the footage.
Christie said in her email that the group would have known the cameras were there. Dawson said Christie has held the existence of the tape over her.
"I will not be bullied about something that happened four or five years ago. My career is going well and I don't want someone like Julie... trying to ruin my life. I don't deserve it so I will fight back."
When the amended email document was forwarded to Christie's inbox her response was more conciliatory.
"I did not mean to threaten anything as I have no reason to," she wrote, "if you read it that way then it was not meant to be... Well done in how things are going and best of luck for the future."
Christie did not return calls from the Herald on Sunday.
Dawson said she was not liked in New Zealand and rebuilt a new career and life in Sydney. "There's a funny thing in New Zealand where people take a delight in the frisson of seeing someone in pain. Julie can try and pull out old tapes she thinks she has. I don't care."
