Costly comments: Ray Hadley branded Ray Williams a liar. Credit:Rob Homer Three weeks before the trial was due to start, Hadley allegedly aggravated the defamation in a spray about another Liberal MP, Bart Bassett, and his appearance at ICAC. This prompted Williams' barrister, one of Sydney's most formidable silks, Tom Blackburn, SC, to file a contempt of court motion, given that the spray had occurred as a jury was about to be empanelled. Hadley told his audience he looked "forward to any Supreme Court acting involving Mr Williams or any other politician in NSW. It might be the only time in history that a so-called shock jock's credibility is running higher than a politician's credibility". The defamation trial was due to begin on Monday just passed (September 8) at 10am.

At the 11th hour, the parties sought an adjournment and a settlement was reached. On Wednesday morning Hadley issued a grovelling retraction, which he delivered live to air. Williams said the terms of the settlement were confidential, but added: "It's been a long drawn-out process for me and my family. But we are pleased to advise that we are completely satisfied with the outcome." It's been a pretty rough year for Hadley. Last December the NSW Supreme Court slapped the broadcaster and his employer – radio station 2GB – with a $280,000 damages order after attacking Carlingford fish and chip shop owner Kim Ahmed as an "unbridled tirade ... spat into the microphone for the consumption of the audience". Just a few weeks later in January, it emerged Hadley had settled for an undisclosed sum to resolve allegations he bullied and harassed a junior colleague at 2GB.

The turmoil has not been exclusive to his professional life. In February Hadley had been spending nights sleeping in his office at 2GB as his marriage to now estranged wife Suzanne unravelled. Then it emerged Suzanne had gone to Hornsby police station to apply for an AVO against Hadley, following what friends have since described as an "almighty blue" in the family home. The AVO was withdrawn the next day and remains a subject which Hadley will not be drawn on. Thorpe's manager denies Martin rumours Newsrooms around the country went into overdrive on Friday as rumours spread like wildfire that Ian Thorpe had struck a magazine deal with his alleged lover, pop star Ricky Martin, to do a "tell all" about their supposed romance.

But the deal, if true, is not with any magazines published in Australia, nor with any local media outlet. PS joined a conga line of reporters hitting the phones in an attempt to get to the bottom of the rumour, which was regurgitated ad nauseam on social media despite the lack of any confirmation or tangible facts. Thorpe's manager, James Erksine, who engineered the former swimmer's mega-buck deal to come out about his sexuality to Michael Parkinson in a nationally broadcast interview aired on Channel Ten in July, hosed the speculation down, telling PS on Friday afternoon: "I think someone is having you on."

PS can also confirm that Thorpe was nowhere near Martin's Coogee digs during the singer's stay in Sydney for the most recent season of Channel Nine's The Voice. One source, who spent considerable time with Martin, said the romance story was "rubbish". However, with social media and several news websites running claims that a mystery magazine had paid $500,000 for the story, it would count as some very expensive trash. Henson puts Kershaw in a different light It's not unusual to see Australian supermodel Abbey Lee Kershaw gracing the cover of a magazine, but the image sitting on the front page of the latest edition of hip culture glossy Oyster is more interesting for the person who took it.

Australian photographer Bill Henson is not known for doing magazine shoots. He is best known for his moody pieces depicting almost ethereal and dark images of naked bodies in unusual settings. They are usually adolescents and have often landed him in hot water – as they did in 2008 when his show at Roslyn Oxley9 Galleryin Paddington was cancelled following some complaints to the police. The controversy was sparked over an email invitation from the gallery to a "Private View", that depicted photographs of a nude 13-year old girl. Eventually the show went ahead after it was determined there was nothing untoward about the images and how the teenagers were being depicted. No such worries for Oyster magazine; Kershaw is 27. She is also shown only from the neck up, in a classic Henson pose where she does not make eye contact with the photographer – for a supermodel who has spent her life seducing the lens, this must have been extremely challenging.

The cover marks the 20th anniversary of Oyster, now a biannual publication that aims to capture the cultural Zeitgeist of the nation's hipsters. They may be dancing but are they flying? Much has been made of the alleged "on stage chemistry" between Lisa McCune and her King and I co-star Teddy Tahu Rhodes, though at Thursday night's Sydney premiere of the classic musical many in the audience were wondering where it had gone. The pair have flatly refused to discuss their relationship, which reportedly began while both were still married to other people (and presumably still are), and there was certainly no evidence of any steamy backstage dalliances on Thursday night – indeed many in the crowd opted not to return for the second half.

Well, PS did stick around for the second half, and let's just say the dancing and costumes were great. McCune wears six dresses in the production. Each gown uses about 15 metres of fabric, with the heaviest, the ballgown, weighing 12 kilograms. And when they're not being worn, McCune's gowns are stored in the wings, with a pulley system to raise and lower them as needed. She has three dressers to help her change. Most of McCune's costume changes happen in the wings as there's not time for her to get back to her dressing room and each of the dresses are made with hooks and eyes, laces and buttons, with absolutely no Velcro. Rhodes' costumes playing the King of Siam are a far simpler affair, but works of art in their own right. His six costumes are all hand-beaded, at the same factory in India which has been doing the costume beading since the 1991 production.

In total, Rhodes' costumes boast tens of thousands of individually sewn beads, with a multitude more adorning the costumes of the 39 children in the cast, who each have six costumes as well. Ladies, start your engines. Driving the girls to distraction Forget the Grand Prix, when it comes to motor sports and good-looking drivers, all eyes will be on Coffs Harbour this weekend for the Australian leg of the World Rally Championship. With a global television audience expected to top 70 million people, PS has discovered the sport boasts not one, but two fully fledged "rock star" drivers who will be in Coffs Harbour over the coming week.

Handsome blond Norwegian Andreas Mikkelsen will be zipping around the course for the Volkswagen team. Last year he introduced the world to his new "girlfriend" via Twitter, but it turned out to be a fluffy dog of the four-legged variety. So girls – he is clearly still "on the market". Among the drivers Mikkelsen will be competing against will be good-looking Italian driver Lorenzo Bertelli, who just happens to be the son of Italian fashion designer Miuccia Prada, and his family fortune is estimated at around $20 billion. But it won't be designer clobber and supermodels during his time in Australia, with Bertelli driving with the Subaru team in the muddy, dangerous and hair-raising sport. Don't expect to see his mum on the sidelines cheering her son on with mud being sprayed over one of her designer Prada ensembles – this is strictly a professional trip for the Italian.

The only Australian driving in the rally is Chris Atkinson, so really there should be plenty of room to extend the local fan squad to include Mikkelsen and Bertelli as honorary Aussies while they're in the country. It's the least we can do. Today's New York downer Despite Karl Stefanovic's off-key interview with Barbra Streisand (Stefanovic is entertaining, but why didn't Lisa Wilkinson do it – a few intelligent questions, woman to woman?), Channel Nine's Today show being broadcast from New York this week led to a modest increase in ratings for the program. However, it still fell well short of the network's expectations. The Today New York show was trounced by Channel Seven's Sunrise road trip in the US the week before. There was an average of 397,000 viewers for Sunrise in America verses 311,000 for Today in New York. Even with the Sunrise team back at Martin Place, Seven's show still won the ratings. Sunriseexecutive producer Michael Pell had kept the US project under tight wraps for months, only revealing the dates at the 11th hour. In contrast, Nine had locked in its dates for New York for weeks. PS hears this provided Seven with the opportunity to bring its US tour forward to beat the competition. It worked. James sticks to tradition You can take the boy out of Australia, but you'll never get the Aussie out of the boy, as witnessed on Wednesday night's red carpet in New York where Australian photographer Russell James, a Perth boy done good, launched his new book. Titled Angels, it documents his work as the official photographer of the Victoria's Secret lingerie shows (tough gig). To help him launch the book, there was a seriously stellar list of pals, including Donna Karan, Hugh Jackman, Karolina Kurkova, Richard Branson, Aerin Lauder and the latest model Kardashian, Kimmy's kid sister Kendall Jenner. There were also, of course, a list of supermodels, including Alessandra Ambrosio, Adriana Lima and Behati Prinsloo. While the Manhattan elite turned up suitably glam, it was James who stuck to the Aussie tradition of thongs for the soiree.