Nigella lights the flame for a potential saucy channel swap after MasterChef shock.Curvy cook Nigella Lawson has left the MasterChef Australia kitchen.Is she about to serve up a tasty channel swap?Lawson, who was in town as a guest of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival last weekend, is not part of MasterChef Australia this year.The show is still filming in Melbourne but despite being in Melbourne, Lawson did not participate in the show and won’t be appearing on it either in person this season or as a hologram (as she did last year).Lawson has made several appearances as a superstar chef on the hit Channel 10 show.Her absence this year very much opens the door for Seven to tempt her across to its MKR reboot.Seven has made no secret that it wants an international foodie to add some sauce to its reheated culinary competition and Lawson’s name has been widely spruiked as the ideal candidate for some time.Manu Feildel is one of the hosts of the show.Blonde Bomber’s sweaty socks skyrocketSAS: Australia bombshell boxer Ebanie Bridges may not have passed selection on the brutal course set by Ant Middleton and his DS staff, but who cares.Bridges won something much bigger, scoring the IBF Women’s Bantamweight World Title after defeating the current titleholder, Argentinian star, Maria Cecilia Roman in Leeds on the weekend.The win will no doubt see the price of the sweaty socks the “Blonde Bomber”, as she is known to boxing fans, sells as a lucrative side hustle to the foot fetish community skyrocket.Yes, you read that right, Bridges, who hails from Sydney and is a maths teacher when she is not belting people in the ring, is big in the foot fetish world.In February she revealed she regularly sold her ordinary dirty socks for $150.A pair of filthy training socks fetched $2500 from a Danish “collector” and she has a price of $5000 on the pair she wore in her title bout.Following her title win, who knows what price the socks she wore on SAS: Australia will fetch.She has kept them in all their grubby and tatty glory and they are on the market … for the right price.“It is a f–king weird thing,” Bridges said of her sock side hustle, noting she had foot fetish fans vying for her socks from about 20 countries, but curiously not Australia.“I have never sold a pair of socks to someone in Australia. It is not big in Australia but socks and feet are definitely big in the UK and Europe,” she said.Ant recruits Kath and KimHe’s not so scary now: Tough man Ant Middleton is turning into a Kath and Kim clone on SAS: Australia.Tough man Ant Middleton might have been spending too much time in Australia because he seems to have become a parrot of a particular phrase from a classic Aussie show.Middleton was sounding like a hairier, bulked up, gruffer version of Kath Day-Knight, the character made famous in Kath and Kim by Jane Turner, in recent episodes of SAS: Australia.“Look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me,” Middleton said while motivating world title winning boxer Ebanie Bridges after she failed a horrendous rope crawl across a dangerous ravine.His words and clipped delivery was reminiscent of many “‘look at moi, look at moi, look at moi” exchanges between the characters of Kath (Turner) and Kim (Gina Riley).Could hard man Middleton have a soft spot for the much-loved Australia comedy.Ant Middleton parrots Kath and Kim when dressing down champion boxer Ebanie Bridges – “look at moi!” Smith’s slapdown a ratings winnerWill Smith’s Oscar’s slapdown is a turn-on for Australian viewers.Smith’s unhinged behaviour where he smacked Chris Rock across the face on stage during the Oscars ceremony had a small turn on factor for Australian viewers.His bizarre antics after he took offence to a pretty basic joke from Rock, saw him get up from his seat, walk on stage, hit the comedian and then return to his seat and yell “leave my wife’s name out your f—ing mouth,” twice during Monday’s Academy Awards broadcast.It was an extraordinary, off-script moment of inappropriate, violent behaviour that aired live around the world.Channel 7 broadcast the awards live on Monday afternoon in Australia with 277,000 capital city viewers tuning in.The network quickly pivoted after the Smith slap drama – a moment that went viral within minutes and will be talked about for years to come – and flipped its evening programming schedule, bringing forward its repeat of the show to the earlier 8.40pm timeslot.That meant the final episode of Amazing Race was bumped to next week.The Academy Award repeat pulled 148,000 capital city viewers last night.The numbers were slightly up on last year’s efforts of 212,000 in the afternoon and 100,000 for the evening repeat.Meanwhile, viewers who are now curious about Chris Rock should snap up tickets to his Melbourne shows quick smart.His part in the global Oscars drama should result in tickets to his Margaret Court Arena show on August 10 this year sell out.Hughesy the love guruFunny guy Dave Hughes has been revealed as the matchmaker behind the loved-up pairing of “woke-busting” broadcaster Steve Price and his new beau.Price is dating Sacha French, the content director of Hughesy’s 2Day FM breakfast radio show Hughesy, Ed and Erin.French is a dear friend of Hughes and the pair have worked together for more than 20 years.“It is nice, it is good, it is good,” French said of her headline-making relationship on Hughesy’s show on Tuesday.“You played matchmaker, so it is all down to you and the early-morning matchmaking you did.“It was embarrassing at the time.”Hughesy sensed a certain frisson between the pair when he stumbled upon them chatting in the kitchen at the radio station office late last year.“The light went off in my head, ‘these two could be a couple’,” he said before making the match happen by giving Price French’s number and urging him to call.“I scurried around to Steve and said ‘have you thought about Sacha as a partner?’“And I gave him her number.”Hunting for TV stars in Melbourne You can run … but a new reality series is going to ask fleeing contestants “can you hide” when you have a team of trained hunters on your tail.The show, Hunted Australia, has quietly wrapped the filming of its first season in and around the streets and suburbs of Melbourne.The series, which will debut in the coming months on Channel 10, sees 14 “ordinary” people go on the run for 28 days and try to remain off the grid and undetected while being tracked by a team of surveillance experts.It is a game of cat and mouse, but the show, which is based on a UK format, will no doubt be a reminder that the real Big Brother is always watching.Expect cast announcements soon.Get ready to do your BlockFilming starts on The Block next week out at its new home in the paddocks of Gisborne South.The April start date is weeks later than in past years, in part due to a delay in permits being granted.The show this year is an enormous undertaking – the biggest ever in the history of the production.“In the first series of the show back in 2003 the contestants (each) renovated 73sq m of apartment and this year they will be doing 40,000 sqm; each contestant is doing 10 acres so that is 40,000sq m,” executive producer Julian Cress said.
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