Such happy mammaries
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday March 18, 2011
Michael Idato sends birthday greetings to the bosom of the family, Maria Venuti. Parenting is one of the great challenges of high society. Godparenting even more so. Even the late Princess Diana, who chose former King Constantine II of the Hellenes for her little bub Wills, will tell you you don't always make the right choices. Think about it: she had the whole world to choose from and she picked the guy who lost Greece in what amounted to a political game of KerPlunk.The sad tale of VIP's own godparents makes even that dire tale look like The Collected Works of Jacqueline Susann. We won't name them in this forum to prevent any public embarrassment, though it is fair to say they were blow-ins from the eastern suburbs Campari and canapes set of the early 1970s and, as the years followed, did not live up to expectation as far as Christmas and birthday gifts were concerned.As a result, in my early-late-young adulthood, VIP was signed up for the then-pioneering Celebrity Godparent Program. You might call it a lottery, though I only recall two large balls dropping on me, one of which was almost certainly the supplementary number. From that particular cake sprang, one balmy summer in the early 1990s, the larger-than-life Maria Venuti, duchess of the decolletage and custodian of the 8th and 9th Wonders of the World. Adoption papers were signed and, much like a modern-day Cabbage Patch Kid, I was hers.Within the family, she is known as Mama Venuti. (Her other nickname, "Jesus Christ, someone call an ambulance, your Uncle Gary isn't breathing", didn't catch on, for some reason.) And so it naturally follows that as Mama Venuti celebrated her 70th birthday - a glittering occasion heralded with the Roman numerals LXX - VIP was there clutching a couple of balloons with Sydney's A-list and hoping for the best.It was, as they say, an affair to remember. The Prime Minister's special friend, Alan Jones, waxed lyrical about the little girl who used to walk from Harris Street to Haymarket juggling a couple of melons. The legendary crooner Barrison Crockwell, more lately known as Barry Crocker, donned a velvet smoking jacket that could surely tell some stories, were it not just a velvet smoking jacket.And Maria's twin sister Maria was there, courtesy of musical theatre star Trevor Ashley and a strap-on bust flown in from the Parton Laboratories in Las Vegas especially for the occasion. Maria version 2.0 took to the stage sporting a decolletage of devastating power which, over a couple of mocktails behind beaded curtains later in the evening, we christened the 10th and 11th Wonders of the World.For the godmother, it's been an extraordinary life. From the Afro-Cuban Club in Kings Cross to her tireless charity work as foundress (and 11th Squadron Group Captain) of Australia's Royal Flying Wet Nurse Service. American playwright Truman Capote once said life was a moderately good play with a badly written third act. He'd clearly never met Maria Venuti.
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