Air Kiss and Tell by Charlotte Dawson

Author:Charlotte Dawson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9781742698892
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2013-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

Close but no cigar

I stole the title of this chapter from the headline of a story about me, because I found it so entertaining. See, sometimes, life in the public eye can be very relaxing. You can make headlines by barely doing anything—other people will do all the work for you. You can be walking along a wharf, exerting a minimum of effort, and all of a sudden you’re having sex with one of the most recognisable and well-known men on the planet, without having so much as shifted a shoulder strap.

CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR was the headline accompanying a photograph of me and US President Bill Clinton. You remember him: the one who got in trouble for the sexy cigar with that Monica lady. He was an awesome and charismatic president, but most people will still remember him for those fateful words, ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman,’ and have an instant mental image of a cigar being placed in an orifice not usually used for smoking.

In July 2002, in my early days residing back in Auckland, I was invited to attend a gala dinner for about seven hundred guests. Hosted by BMW, who were launching a car, the event’s guest speaker was the former president. Yeah, those BMW kids should really learn how to spend some money one of these days. The event had been organised by Max Markson, who you may remember from the first series of Celebrity Apprentice—he suggested that fellow contestant Didier Cohen was a ‘self-confessed concaine addict’. We believe he meant ‘cocaine’, but Max sometimes has an odd way of speaking, and indeed of conducting business. He’s managed Lara Bingle and promoted everything from wet T-shirt competitions to charity dinners for foreign dignitaries. I’ve known Max for a long time. He can be incredibly fun and charming, and even after a few disagreements and stoushes over the years, we still maintain a mutual respect for each other.

When Max was visiting Auckland to start preparing for this big event, I introduced him to my manager, Andy, who leased Max’s company an office from which to operate. They hit it off, and Andy, an ex-All Black, ended up doing a number of events with Max in the years following. During the lead-up to the BMW event, we would all go out to dinner with the advance crew, the secret service team and various aides who had been sent out prior to the visit to make sure everything was secure and adhered to protocol.

Finally the night of the event came around, and it was stunning. Clinton was an impressive speaker, and Andy, his wife, Trecha, some secret service people and I were invited to meet him. The main dinner was held at Auckland’s Hilton Hotel, with a smaller event afterwards at a cigar bar about a hundred metres away.

A cigar bar. Stay classy, everyone, and try to keep the cigars in your mouths.

Max arranged for us to meet the former president immediately after the

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