Scene@ Same Place Different Face Book Launch * Domaine Chandon Sparkling Bar At Chadstone's Christmas Vip Night * Drambuie Party.

The Sunday Age

Sunday November 26, 2006

MIK GRIGG

OUR strongest image of St Kilda is of a sobbing she weeping her way up Fitzroy Street, a flotilla of friends click-clacking behind her tut-tutting, "Don't worry about him, he's an arsehole".

"That's here, that's page 31!" actor Stephen Curry joked at Tuesday night's launch of Same Place Different Face, a book of photographs capturing "the streets, saints and sinners of St Kilda". Photographer Elizabeth Clancy explained: "St Kilda's a great place. It's changed, and there are bars and all of that now, but you can still see that there's such a community down here."

While Clancy and her husband are off to Argentina, Curry is in rehearsals for a telemovie based on the life of Graham Kennedy - he's playing Kennedy. "We're shooting over four weeks, so it's pretty tight," he said. "But I get two weeks off over Christmas to put on nine or 10 kilos. My family are not even going to see any Christmas pudding."

There was no pudding but plenty of cheer (Domaine Chandon, naturally) and oodles of Christmas shopping at the Domaine Chandon Sparkling Bar at Sapore at Chadstone's Christmas VIP night. Guests including National Nine News reporters Mia Greeves, Christine Ahern and Clint Stanaway, and Melbourne Weekender and Coxy's Big Break presenter Melissa Kotsos, made the most of it. We wondered if Temptation's too-cute-twosome, Scott McGregor and Chelsea Butler, were there for the sipping or the shopping. "A bit of both," McGregor replied. The more you drink, the more you'll shop, we cautioned. Butler agreed, "It'll be like, one gift for them, one gift for me."

Later on Wednesday night, not bearing gifts but bearing alcohol (which is just as good), Scottish playboy Charles Stuart warmed the Old Melbourne Gaol as he hosted a party celebrating the golden Scotch whisky liqueur, Drambuie. How do you feel about being described as a playboy; are you the male Paris Hilton?

"I am not a socialite," Stuart laughed. "Though I do get around . . . in the nicest possible way." Already sighted at Public House, The Botanical, Cookie and Gin Palace, we wondered what was next for Stuart. "I need to give my liver a bit of a break. I've gone pretty hard on the system."

mgrigg@theage.com.au