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Entertainment

Olivia Newton-John’s first husband, Matt Lattanzi, married their former babysitter

Olivia Newton-John's first husband, Matt Lattanzi, married their former babysitter

Late entertainment icon Olivia Newton-John once spoke of her desire to keep her marriage to John Easterling private, but before the couple’s fairytale romance came to be, the actress’ tumultuous love life was often plastered across the headlines.

Newton-John, who died on Tuesday at 73 after a long battle with cancer, her husband of 14 years and daughter Chloe Lattanzi by her side, had once gushed about how lucky she was to find the “the love of her life” at 59 .

It came after the mysterious disappearance of her ex-partner of nine years, and divorce from her first husband, Matt Lattanzi, Chloe’s father, which ended with him dating and then marrying the couple’s former babysitter Cindy Jessup — a detail many believed to have shattered Newton-John.

But the actress insisted it never bothered her – and today Jessup paid loving tribute to Newton-John in an interview with the Daily Mail.

‘The world has lost a true angel. Olivia cared so deeply about people and the planet. She was such a force for goodness, always helping others,” Jessup told the outlet.

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Inside Olivia Newton-John’s first marriage

The chemistry was instant when Newton-John and Lattanzi first met on the set of 1980 musical film Xanaduwhere Lattanzi, then 20, was hired as a dancer and Newton-John, then 31, was starring as Greek muse Kira.

Four years later they wed, welcoming their daughter, Chloe Rose, in January 1986.

Tragedy struck in 1992 when the couple faced Newton-John’s first cancer battle together, with the star’s neece Tottie Goldsmith revealing he was “so supportive” of her.

However, just three years later, in 1995, the couple announced their divorce.

They managed to stay friends, despite Lattanzi, who was 40 at the time, moving on with the family’s babysitter Cindy Jessup, then 23, two years after they split.

The couple had hired Jessup in 1993 to help look after Chloe while Lattanzi was working on Aussie soap Paradise Beachand she quickly became part of the family.

A friend told reporters at the time of Jessup and Lattanzi’s 1997 wedding that Newton-John was “delighted” they had struck up a romance.

“It looks bad, because Cindy would often babysit his daughter and she was a friend of his and Olivia’s – but in those days there was no romance.”

Olivia blamed her cancer diagnosis for split

Newton-John later attributed the marriage breakdown partly to her cancer diagnosis.

While she admitted going through a divorce was “painful”, true to form, she held no ill will against Lattanzi for his marriage to Jessup.

“I think our marriage would have eventually come to an end, but it happened sooner because of the cancer, which was a good thing” she told the Daily Mail.

“It was very painful, but we were never at odds with each other.

“What happened between us was between us, and we wouldn’t allow it to affect (Chloe).”

She added: “Divorce is never all right. Everybody wants the happy ending and the white picket fence, particularly me.”

It seems that wish finally came true when Newton-John met natural-health businessman John Easterling, who she described as “the love of her life.”

“I have a wonderful, beautiful husband who is just so loving and fantastic,” she said after their low-key wedding in 2008.

“I always tell my friends you’re never too old to find love. I found the love of my life at 59 going on 60! I’m grateful.”

Matt Lattanzi went on to marry again

As for Lattanzi, it was not to last with Jessup, with the couple splitting after 10 years of marriage in 2007.

He married once more, and now runs a medicinal cannabis farm with third wife Michelle Lattanzi, who is currently in remission from colon cancer first diagnosed in 2014.

It seems the exes’ values ​​aligned later in life, given Newton-John was passionate about ensuring medicinal marijuana was more widely available for cancer patients to manage pain.

Paying tribute to her husband’s ex-wife on Facebook on Tuesday, Michelle Lattanzi said the world had lost an icon.

“Today we lost one of the world’s greats Olivia Newton-John,” she posted on behalf of the couple.

“Matt and I are so overwhelmed with the love and gratitude shared with us by friends, family and a deeply loving community of fans who will all miss Olivia’s presence in this world.

“I have heard truly lovely stories and memories from people near and far, and honor in each of you where those feelings and memories come from.

“Nothing will replace the icon we lost, yet her legacy is alive and well in our hearts and memories, as well as her contributions to our global culture, her beloved daughter Chloe Lattanzi, and her cancer research and wellness center in Melbourne.

“Please honor your sadness, and then celebrate the joy that Olivia’s heart and lifetime achievements endowed in our world.

“Sending all kinds of love.”

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Entertainment

UK woman dies after face collapsed from disease Wegener’s granulomatosis

UK woman dies after face collapsed from disease Wegener's granulomatosis

A “glamorous” mum-of-eight has died at the age of 47, having spent years indoors over fears about her appearance after a rare condition made her facial features “collapse”.

British woman Nicola Kilby didn’t want to look at herself in the mirror and refused to be photographed after a rare illness dramatically altered her appearance.

The mum had battled inflammatory blood vessel disease for five years, but the condition known as Wegener’s granulomatosis (GPA) had already started to change her appearance before she was diagnosed.

The condition attacked her ears, nose, sinuses, kidneys and lungs as well as leaving her deaf in both ears.

It also affected her soft palate, leaving her unable to talk and causing her nose to collapse.

But after spending years indoors hiding, the devoted mum and grandmother tragically died last month, The Sun reports.

Her son Kieran, 25, is now raising funds to help pay for his mum’s funeral costs, and hopes her story will raise awareness of GPA.

“My mum was an amazing person, she put everyone before herself. She was very outgoing, she was one of the most glamorous people I’ve ever met,” he told Birmingham Live.

“She adored her children and her grandchildren and gave anyone who came through the door the warmest welcome, like they were family.

“She was a very strong woman and even when she was in the worst pain imaginable, she’d never let on. Ella she did n’t want to subject anyone else to what she was going through.

Nicola had lived in Cirencester, 130km west of London, with her husband of 10 years, Kevin.

She leaves behind eight children aged between eight and 27.

Speaking about his mum’s battle with GPA, hotel worker Kieran said: “It’s one of the most horrendous things I can imagine anyone going through.

“One of the things my mum struggled with most was how dramatically her appearance changed. It ate away at her nose from her, she became deaf in both ears and she lost a lot of her soft palate so she could n’t talk properly anymore.

“Something minor like a cold would really affect her, to the point she could end up in hospital. It made the Covid pandemic very difficult for her.

“The doctors originally said she could live for 10 years with it, but it affected her very rapidly. It got to the point where she couldn’t even use the stairs, she was so weak.

“It was hard for my mum because she didn’t leave the house for years. She was so self-conscious about people staring at her.

“Even looking in a mirror was too difficult for her because of the damage it did to her nose. None of us have any pictures of my mum from the past five years because she would n’t allow it – not even with the grandkids on her birthday de ella. ”

Before her death, Kieran said his mum had been dreaming of getting a prosthetic nose after seeing the dramatic it change it made for a woman with vasculitis on a TV show.

“All my mum ever wanted was a normal nose,” he said.

“It was weird when she saw that episode on TV because most people have never heard of GPA, it’s not a word you hear often like cancer.

“My mum started asking questions about prosthetics. We all started looking into getting her a nose for Christmas, but all the clinics we could find were in America or they were extortionated.”

He added: “Not only did it affect her physically but it had a huge impact on her mental health as well. Because she wouldn’t leave the house, she became very isolated.

“Me and my siblings bought her a French bulldog to keep her company. It got to the point that she was so lonely that she started accepting random friend requests from strangers on Facebook so she had some friends to speak to. That’s something that really stuck with me.

“She went from being a normal outgoing mother to feeling disfigured. She just wanted to be able to take her children to the park and do normal mum things, but it changed every part of her life completely.

Any money raised by Kieran through his GoFundMe page will be used to pay the funeral costs, a memorial bench in Nicola’s name and the charity Vasculitis UK.

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission

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Technology

The top 10 worst movie tie-in video games ever

The top 10 worst movie tie-in video games ever

While definitely not as common as they used to be, movie tie-in video games are generally viewed as the absolute bottom of the barrel in terms of video game entertainment.

These are video games created often in short time frames, with limited development cycles, budgets, and anything else that you need in order to make a decent video game.

But, as with anything, some are worse than others.

So here, we have compiled the top 10 (in no particular order) worst of the worst, the rock bottom, the absolute dredge of them all for you to enjoy.

10. E. T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982, Atari)

While older than most people reading this, this game is often credited as having caused the video game market of 1983 to crash. The game itself was boring and bland, featuring awful graphics (even for its time) and repetitive tasks.

Rumor has it that Atari only gave developers five weeks to develop the game for the Christmas season, which would explain the lack of… well, gameplay in the video game. A huge number of these games were returned, Atari fell into bankruptcy, and, as the legend goes, the remainder of the stock was buried in a New Mexico landfill somewhere.

9. Tomorrow Never Dies (1999)

Remember golden eye 64? Remember how much fun it was to stay up late into the night with three of your best friends, getting mad at each other over picking Oddjob, or someone who grabbed the Golden Gun first? Those were good times. What if the next game released in the 007 franchise was worse in every conceivable way?

Tomorrow Never Dies did away with the first-person view, instead choosing a third-person view. The game only featured a story mode, lacking any multiplayer whatsoever. If they had named this game anything else, it probably would have been fine, but coming hot off the heels of the success that golden eye 64 was, it led many to see this as a downgrade in every way.

8. Marvel’s Avengers (2020)

Crystal Dynamics has done some good work in gaming, don’t get me wrong, but avengers fails in a lot of ways that don’t make sense. The launch of avengers had some serious game-breaking bugs tethered to it, and while most of them have been ironed out over its lifespan, one of the game’s core problems hasn’t been – how content dry and unrewarding it is to play.

The game has a decent story mode, but once you complete it, the only way to progress is to complete multiplayer missions, which are the same boring, repetitive missions that every other games-as-a-service game has. The multiplayer is not fun, and that’s the biggest advertising point of the game. Please just make another Legacy of Kain game, Crystal Dynamics.

7. Saw 2: Flesh and Blood (2010)

“Hey, what if we took a movie that was relatively unique in the horror genre for its interesting puzzles and turned it into a boring action video game?” said the developers of Saw 2: Flesh and Blood. I may be paraphrasing.

The puzzles are boring, the dialogue is boring, you’re having to repeat puzzles often because they do not explain how the puzzles work, and the majority of downtime in between puzzles are filled with quick-timed events. Low amounts of checkpoints means that you’re often having to redo several rooms multiple times.

6. Cat Woman (2004)

Not unlike the movie of the same name, cat woman did extremely poorly with critics and players alike.

Genuinely awful voice acting combined with seemingly malfunctioning camera controls and a mash-one-button-until-you-win combat style made this game an easy one to pass up.

5. Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game (1995)

In the games industry, there’s an unfortunate expectation that a video game made to tie in with a movie is gonna suck. So what happens when a movie is made based on a video game – that is then turned into a video game itself? It’s like an inception of bad video games.

This soulless shell of a game lacks even the most basic things that Street Fighter II had, namely its charm. Seeing Dhalsim stretch-punch or Ryu throw Hadoukens is timeless, but seeing digitized versions of the actors playing these characters doing the same is just painful.

4. James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game (2009)

Picture this: you’ve just seen Avatar in theaters, and it was a wondrous journey through what cinematic effects can look like in 2009. You can’t get over how cool the fight scenes were, how beautiful the landscapes were, or how intricate the sex-hair thing was. So you rush to your local store and immediately spy a copy of Avatar: The Game. Surely it must look just as good, right?

While the game does tackle events prior to the movie, expanding the lore of the world a bit, the graphics looked awful – I can think of a few late-gen PS2 games that looked nicer – the gameplay was bland and repetitive, made worse by the linear paths you have to walk in the game.

3. Evil Dead: Hail to the King

I cannot imagine watching Evil Dead 2having a wonderful time, and then picking this game up and trying to play through it. Hail to the King lacks pretty much everything that made Evil Dead 2 or Army of Darkness work, instead attempting to emulate some action-horror games that had come out before it.

Fixed camera angles are fine in some games, but the game has to be built around them for it to work. This game has problems with enemies swarming you, and you are unable to deal with them due to the camera perspectives.

2. Every Shrek Game That Isn’t Shrek SuperSlam

I don’t really have the energy to go into why all but one of the Shrek games are bad. In short, they’re poorly paced, have game-breaking bugs, are boring and feature repetitive gameplay. Instead, I want to focus on why SuperSlam is a great game.

SuperSlam is technically a bad game, in terms of gameplay and execution. It’s a broken platform/arena fighter, with several characters able to commit to ‘infinite’ combos that generally just make it unfun – in theory.

What makes it fun is that an entire competitive esports community has formed around the broken game, figuring out how the game works within how broken it is. To this day, tournaments are held online, with new players joining in to try to win.

1. Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013)

This one is a pain for me, personally. Alien is such a cool series, with a lot of lore and a lot of good horror sequences – Alien: Isolation is arguably my favorite movie tie-in game because of how oppressive and well-done the horror in that game is. Enter Colonial Marines: a game with broken AI, to the point where Aliens will crab-walk right past you while they try to figure out their pathing, or get caught in level geometry because the developers couldn’t figure out hitbox collision. The graphics were extremely bland for their time, especially when you compare it to the alpha footage that leaked before release, which looked incredible.

What’s worse, however, is the vast number of promises that the developers gave prerelease that were simply not true. It was a giant mess from beginning to end, and Alien fans the world over were truly disappointed.

Written by Junior Miyai on behalf of GLHF.

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Business

Australian Aldi customer slammed for cashier rant

Australian Aldi customer slammed for cashier rant

A shopper who went on an angry rant after claiming she was short-changed at Aldi has been slammed online.

The customer took to Facebook to vent her frustrations at a checkout worker who claims short-changed her by 50c.

The shopper shared a picture of a packet of smoked salmon that had a red ‘reduced’ sticker on the front, with a price of $7.19.

Next to it was an Aldi receipt that showed the salmon being charged at the full price of $13.99.

After returning to complain, the customer said the cashier tried to rectify the issue and showed the follow-up receipt with the correct price and the woman’s owed change of $6.80.

However, the customer claims that the cashier mistakenly only gave her $6.30 in change – meaning she was still owed 50c.

“Today as usual I did my weekly shop at my local Aldi in Broadmeadows,” she began the post.

“It didn’t turn out to be pleasant. The checkout staff charged me full price for a product that was on special.

“I approached her and told her she gave me the wrong change, but insisted that is what it says on the till.

“My math is not great but if I was charged $13.99 for something that is $7.19, I should be refunded the difference right?

“She only gave me $6.30 instead of $6.80.

“The worst part was she said if it’s not correct then she’d give me the difference. She made me feel like I was in the wrong.

“So I waited a few minutes to explain to her that she indeed gave me the wrong change but the line was just too long.

“I know it’s only 50c but money is money plus her attitude was despicable. End of rant.”

Although a few people were sympathetic to the shopper’s situation, many slammed her post and urged her to “be kind”.

“It’s easy to get flustered in situations like this, try not to be too hard on them,” commented one.

“It’s 50 cents, you need to chill,” said another.

“Go easy on customer service staff please. It’s been a really crappy few years for us,” one group member commented.

“You can’t possibly imagine the abuse and negativity we have received. Be kind.”

“Maybe she just got flustered and made a mistake considering you ‘confronted her’. Cashiers at Aldi can serve over 200 people in a shift so mistakes will happen,” said another.

“They have a lot going on, with speed, lines, working out money and more. Maybe next time show a bit more understanding for the cashier just trying to do her best de ella. ”

News.com.au understands that if any customers have concerns about a store experience they can visit the Aldi help center for more information.

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Entertainment

Constance Hall’s rant about ‘d*ck’ pics after man sends explicit image

Constance Hall's rant about 'd*ck' pics after man sends explicit image

Constance Hall has slammed “desperate, lonely” men who send unsolicited photos after receiving a “d*ck pic” from a total stranger.

The mummy blogger posted a lengthy rant after she received an explicit image from a random man on an app that she had ironically downloaded at the request of “paranoid friends” who wanted to communicate safely.

After receiving the image, along with a string of disturbing sexual text messages, the outspoken mum tried to “put herself in the shoes” of males who send these pictures to understand why they do this.

However she concluded that there was no circumstance in the world in which she would send such a “depraved” photo – labeling it an “assault” against the unwitting recipient.

“What would drive me to the point of being gratified by sending a close-up cl*t pic of my [vagina] to someone who I’m 99 per cent sure doesn’t want to see my clacker?” she wrote on Facebook.

“Could it be depravity? If I had never met anyone who actually wanted to see my [vagina] could I be driven to send it out there anyway? Umm that’s a no.

“What if I thought that my cl*toris was a hooded mystic possessing some kind of power or blessings (which isn’t that far-fetched), meaning that even though these people didn’t want to see it… the photo is for their own good? Hmm no I’d just keep the blessings for those who consented to them.”

She also decided she wouldn’t send a “cl*t pic” if she was “terrified” of the opposite sex but had a high libido – or if she had “throbbing” genitals.

Despite toying with various reasons why men send unsolicited images, the 38-year-old concluded that “there isn’t enough empathy in the world that could help me understand”.

In an unexpected twist, Constance was able to have “sympathy” for the males who commit this awful act.

“Now that I’ve let the shock settle. I do feel a little sorry for the poor excited man, alone in his room, [erection] in one hand iPhone trying to get the best angle in the other, dreaming about the wide world of sexual encounters being had all over the place, none of which he was invited to,” she said.

However, even with a sprinkling of “sympathy” for the “desperate, lonely” men who do this, she pointed out it was a criminal offense and a form of assault.

Constance’s rant was widely well received, with many praising the mum-of-five and stepmum of two for her “clever” post.

“Never in my life will I understand why ‘men’ send (ad*ck) pic! Send back a pic of a scoring panel!” one woman wrote.

“I’m in a relationship now but before I wasn’t and I found this kind of behavior really disgusting and degrading… hard no, from me,” another said.

While one woman said: “Weird that men think it is a turn on.”

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Entertainment

Kids orphaned as parents fall to death from Bronx apartment

Kids orphaned as parents fall to death from Bronx apartment

Investigators are probing whether there was a struggle before an Albanian actor and his wife plunged to their deaths from their apartment in New York over the weekend, a police source said.

Florind Belliu, 35, an actor and aspiring filmmaker originally from Albania, and his wife Ornela Shehi, 28, were found in the rear courtyard of 2199 Cruger Avenue in the Bronx at around 9.15am on Saturday, cops and police sources said.

“There were signs in the apartment that indicated it wasn’t all Kumbaya, like they didn’t just decide to leave their kids behind and jump,” the source told the new york post.

The source wouldn’t provide any more details on the alleged “signs”.

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A suicide note was not left behind, according to the source.

Authorities are waiting for autopsy results to determine whether Mr Shehi suffered any injuries not indicative of a fall, the source said.

By late Tuesday morning, the city’s Medical Examiner’s (ME) Office had not made a determination on either Mr Shehi or Ms Belliu’s death.

“Both are pending while the ME awaits additional investigative information,” a spokeswoman said, adding that the signs could include “further testing of remains or investigatory material from the scene”.

Mr Shehi was caught on video plunging from the building’s sixth floor first and hitting the alleyway, with Ms Belliu landing seconds later, sources told the post a day after the couple’s deaths.

The couple moved into the building with their two young children about four months ago, and authorities never received reports of domestic violence related to the couple, according to police sources.

Neighbors told the post on Saturday that the pair were a “quiet couple” who “kept to themselves,” and were often seen taking walks – but also that Mr Belliu had been seen visibly angry Friday.

“I’ve seen them always buying things for the house, like every day together, with two kids together, we didn’t recognize there was something wrong,” said Shadie Perkaj, the wife of the building’s super.

She said Saturday was Mr Belliu’s birthday.

Mr Belliu’s pal Elona Caslli mourned her lost friend on Facebook.

“A multiple tragedy for which there is no word of consolation. God give strength to your children and parents,” Ms Caslli wrote in Albanian.

Ms Belliu was a graduate of the University of Arts in Tirana, Albania, and performed on TV and in the theater before moving to the US, EuroNews Albania reported.

As of two years ago, he was working on two books and a movie script he hoped to pitch to Netflix, the report said.

Police sources said he may have been recently working as a livery driver to help make ends meet.

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission

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Business

Amazon: Tech giant’s next big move in Australia

Amazon: Tech giant's next big move in Australia

Multinational tech company Amazon has announced a major change to its delivery services in an effort to ramp up subscription numbers.

The brand has launched free next-day delivery on hundreds of thousands of products for Sydney and Melbourne Prime members, with no minimum delivery spend needed.

The move, which was announced on Wednesday, means consumers placing their orders at midnight will receive them on their doorsteps the next day.

The shift follows the opening of Amazon’s 200,000sq m robotic fulfillment center at Kemps Creek in western Sydney that cost the company mor than $500m.

The tech giant claims the center can house more than 20 million products, including household items and gifts.

Amazon Australia country manager Janet Menzies said the faster delivery speeds were a direct result of building fulfillment centers and delivery stations close to where customers lived and worked.

“Our ability to offer customers faster delivery speeds is a direct result of our continued investment and expansion of our operations in Australia. Building fulfillment centers and delivery stations close to where our customers live and work means packages travel shorter distances, accelerating shipping speeds,” she said.

“We know that Australian customers are always looking for value through great prices and fast delivery, so we’re thrilled to be able to make Prime even more convenient with free one-day delivery.”

Australian consumers are increasingly turning to Amazon for popular tech items, with the company more than doubling its operations in 2022 since the launch of their robotic center in 2017.

Over the coming months, the company aims to expand product selection and delivery areas eligible for its free one-day delivery.

Read related topics:amazon

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Business

A Virgin Airlines passenger sparks debate for breaking ‘unspoken’ rule

A Virgin Airlines passenger sparks debate for breaking 'unspoken' rule

A woman flying from Sydney to Melbourne has triggered debate online, after she shared her awkward middle-seat experience where another passenger sitting on the aisle of her row took more than their fair share of space.

In a photo posted to Reddit, the woman on the aisle seat is seen crossing her leg into the middle passenger’s section, with her foot tucked under the middle seat in the row before them.

According to the post’s caption, the woman on the aisle also allegedly removed the middle passenger’s arm from the armrest.

“She’s in the isolated seat. She pushed my arm off the armrest and plopped her feet in my space. The middle seat already sucks enough,” the caption read.

The post has acquired more than 550 comments, causing a stir online over plane etiquette and who has the right to the space.

One thread that received a lot of attention was a Reddit user’s explanation of who has the right to what part of the seat in a three-seat row.

“Window gets an armrest and a wall. Middle gets two armrests. Aisle gets an armrest and a little bit of extra leg. We’re not animals! We live in a society!” they commented.

“This is the way. The few times I’ve flown, I just naturally surrendered the arm rest for the middle seat,” one reply read.

“The armrests in the middle belong to the middle. This is global unspoken plane etiquette,” a third said.

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Others responded to the post with ways they would have handled the situation, including repeatedly going to the bathroom, stretching their legs over the aisle passengers and calling a flight attendant.

“Simple. Ask this person to respect your space. If she does not want to, ask to be moved to another seat because your neighbor is not respecting your space, ”one user commented.

“That’s where you rub your leg against hers and when she looks at you appalled, you can say, ‘Oh sorry. Was I invading your personal space?’” said another.

But not all commenters felt sympathetic towards the middle-seat passenger, seeing the post as her making a “big deal” out of an easy-to-solve situation.

“Can’t we just communicate anymore? Instead of acting all passive aggressive, kindly ask her to move her foot from her. Problem solved in 5 seconds without making a big deal of it. Never understood these posts,” one person responded.

“Just politely ask them to mind their space. Why take a picture and just continue to sit uncomfortably,” replied another.

Plane etiquette has become a hot topic as flights return to their pre-Covid capacities, with mask wearing, sanitization and social distancing where possible joining the list of already-existing unspoken plane rules.

While masks are no longer required in airport terminals, they are still mandatory on most flights and are only permitted to be removed if a passenger is eating or drinking.

For those who forget their mask, most airlines offer travel packs that include a mask and sanitization wipe which can be collected prior to boarding.

As for plane etiquette that existed prior to Covid-19, passengers are reminded not to kick the seat in front of them, wear headphones if listening to music or on-flight entertainment and to leave their shoes on.

“Take showers, brush your teeth, leave the perfume off, don’t eat stinky food (caesar salad and tuna fish I’m talking to you!), and bring headphones. Trust me,” a US flight attendant said in a popular Facebook group.

“These things sound basic, but (if not implemented) add to stress on crowded plans.”

Read related topics:MelbourneSydney

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Business

McDonald’s customer’s weird discovery in nuggets order

McDonald's customer's weird discovery in nuggets order

A Macca’s customer has been left less than impressed after she ordered six chicken nuggets – only to open the box and find something very different inside.

The Canberra woman took to Facebook to share a photo of what was supposed to be a box of nuggets after going through a McDonald’s drive-through.

Instead, the container was filled with raw sliced ​​onion, Yahoo News Australia reported.

When contacted for comment, Macca’s said that if any customer ever had an issue, their meal could be replaced.

“At McDonald’s, we are committed to giving our customers a great experience every time they visit one of our restaurants,” a spokesperson told news.com.au.

“Of course, if a customer receives an incorrect order, we will happily replace this for them.

“We apologize for the inconvenience and encourage the customer to contact our Customer Service team so we can look into it in more detail.”

It comes after another Macca’s customer claims she found an unexpected item in her McChicken Sandwich.

The Irish woman was recorded by her boyfriend expressing her shock after she took a bite of her burger and pulled out what appeared to resemble a dandelion.

“There’s a flower in my McChicken Sandwich,” she said in the video, holding the mayo-covered piece of greenery.

“Is this actually for real?”

She then placed the green item on the top of the burger box, showing it was an entire stem complete with yellowing buds.

The video of the unimpressed woman – captioned, “Flowers in chicken legend meal looks lovely so it does” – has clocked up over two million views since it was shared on TikTok on Sunday.

But while many people sympathized with the woman’s plight – others were suspicious.

“I work at McDonald’s. No you didn’t,” one commenter wrote.

“Yeah nah Maccies worker here, that’s not possible,” another agreed.

While another said: “I work in McDonald’s and I can assure you that everything is checked, so I feel like this has been planted in.”

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Business

How David Jones is targeting 582m Chinese customers via WeChat

How David Jones is targeting 582m Chinese customers via WeChat

Upmarket legacy retailer David Jones is arguably better known for its old-fashioned shops and traditional customer service than its online innovation.

But the department store appears to be one of the only Australian retailers tapping into the gigantic Chinese market on a social media platform that boasts 582 million active users a month.

The retailer’s chief marketing officer James Holloman has described the platform Weibo or WeChat as “world leading” combining the elements from other social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and WhatsApp, as well as the ability to pay bills and buy everything from fashion to beauty products .

With more than 40,000 followers and three years on WeChat, Mr Holloman said David Jones’ Chinese clients were “incredibly important” to the retailer, which has signaled unrivaled “commercial success” on the social media platform.

“WeChat is a full ecosystem for mainland China … and it’s almost a one-stop shop for mainland Chinese where they are doing kinda like Facebook, Instagram and a payment wallet all in one,” he told news.com.au.

“You technically follow different accounts and different individuals, and you use it essentially as a WhatsApp version between your friends in terms of messaging, but then you also follow different brands and it’s similar to a really immersive email.

“It’s basically a full immersive ability to shop directly from incredibly immersive posts … and you can follow everyone from Louis Vuitton, Coca Cola, Estee Lauder to Dior.”

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For David Jones, many of his followers are part of the Chinese community living in Australia and the bulk are aged between 25 and 36, Mr Holloman revealed, which has given the retailer “massive growth” from younger shoppers.

One of the department store’s big moves has been around Singles Day, an unofficial holiday and shopping event held on 11 November every year in China, that celebrates people who are not in relationships.

“Last year during the Singles Day shopping event, which is almost the biggest shopping day worldwide and it’s bigger than Black Friday, we did our first live stream,” Mr Holloman said.

“It’s the equivalent of shopping television where we had an hour and a half of fully engaged viewers watching our life stream of all of amazing products and key specials happening over that day and we had 13,000 viewers watching that on WeChat.”

For the Lunar Year in February, they introduced the little red packets which are a traditional gift of money, and allowed people to send them virtually to friends from their account.

Influencers have also been key to the brand’s success, I added.

Mr Holloman said mainland Chinese are important clients for buying premium goods, with a report from consulting firm McKinsey revealing that 50 per cent of the global luxury goods will be purchased by the Chinese by 2025.

“It’s a very hot market for the stuff that we sell,” he added.

“Secondly, there is an audience in Australia that want to be communicated to. There are 1.2 million Chinese born Australians so that’s a huge proportion as it’s almost 5 per cent of the Australian population.

“We want to talk to our clients in the language and way they best feel most comfortable in… and understanding and engaging in and on a platform that they feel most comfortable in.”

This approach has also been translated into stores as well with sales associates who speak fluent Mandarin, he added.

WeChat recently praised David Jones’ SS20 Beauty campaign as a part of a global showcase of best-in-class activity and it was the only international retail store featured on the list.

The beauty campaign, themed Full Bloom, included video, imagery, emails, in-store visual merchandising, a 36-page print booklet and shoppable article pages.

“With clever use of shoppable product display functions and rich graphic design elements, the campaign achieved a click through rate of more than double that of industry benchmarks,” WeChat said.

Another “incredible success story” for the China market has been landing Kim Kardashian’s popular Skims line, Mr Holloman said.

“She can be polarizing, but it’s been a commercial success and from what we hear from customers, they are excited to have such exclusive brands across our network,” he said.

The retailer copped fierce backlash when it announced it was stocking the star’s products, with loyal fans of the store accusing the world-famous influencer of diminishing the retailer’s “class” after DJ’s shared a video to their Instagram page of Kim promoting the brand.

However, despite its investment in WeChat, David Jones has no presence on another social media platform that has been blowing up – TikTok – which has over one billion users.

“We are incredibly strong on Instagram and on Facebook, we have in excess of 400,000 followers on Instagram and 600,000 on Facebook,” Mr Holloman said.

Queensland University of Technology retail expert Dr Gary Mortimer said David Jones’ use of WeChat is a “great strategy”.

“They are taking advantage of a growing middle class affluent Chinese market that does often look for Australian brands and often international brands and David Jones has the ability to provide those brands to that particular audience,” Dr Mortimer told news.com.au.

“When you look at what they are doing in that space they would be aligning themselves with Chinese influencers that connect really well with that Chinese market.

“They would be leveraging really large online promotional events like Singles Day that runs on the 11 November every year and it gets bigger and bigger.

“Singles Day is a bit like Amazon Price day but it turned over about $US85 billion ($A122 billion) last year. The Chinese market is a very valuable and viable market for Australian business and brands.”

Dr Mortimer said China’s population of 1.3 billion compared to the “tiny” 26 million living in Australia also showed it was a lucrative field to play in.

“Trust is huge issue for the Chinese population who are concerned about counterfeiting, so working on a Chinese platform gives legitimacy for David Jones in that market,” he added.

“Woolworths is playing in that space as well.”

In 2015, Woolworths opened its first overseas flagship store on the Tmall website and has also partnered with supermarket 7 Fresh since 2020 offering WeChat as a payment system.

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