Open post of the week. What’s on your mind?

Mia Freedman Wednesday 20 June 2012 11:27am

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by MIA FREEDMAN

Welcome to our Open Post of the week, where you can come and talk about – well – whatever you like.

On Saturday night I got to go to the kind of event some people think is my regular life but actually never is. Richard Wilkins was holding a benefit to celebrate his 25 years in the industry and to raise money for the Down Syndrome Foundation. As he explained in his speech, he lost his virginity at 18 and on that night conceived Adam, who was born with Down Syndrome. Richard married Adam’s 16 year old mother and worked a variety of jobs including in an abattoir to help support his family.

By his own admission, he was not able to cope with the responsibility of a special needs son and Adam was placed into care where he thrived with his foster mum who was a special guest at Richard’s table on the night.

It really was one of those pinch-yourself evenings. Here are a few of my happy snaps along with our usual behind-the-scenes in the MM office:

Here's Mamamia managing editor Jamila and publisher Mia with the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. They're having tea in her yard - as you do.

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It really was like the Logies meets the ARIAS hall of fame on steroids. Leaving aside the guest list for a moment (every channel 9 star and music industry name you’ve ever heard of), performances included Noiseworks (Jon Stevens is still astonishingly sexy), The Little River Band, Neil Finn sang “Better Be Home Soon” on acoustic guitar via skype, Olivia Newton John sang Hopelessly Devoted To You and Xanadu (yes she did), Australian Crawl sang “Boys Light Up” and the Voice Judges performed U2′s One and something else I can’t remember because I was transfixed and swoony watching Keith Urban do guitar solos. Oh the hotness.

I had hugs with Delta Goodrem who wanted to thank MM readers for the support she got on this post which she credited for turning around the public hate that bubbled up early on in The Voice.

Nicole and Keith were at the next table with the other judges and I spent the night watching them as much as humany possible. They are as lovey-dovey when the cameras aren’t around as the images you see when they are. He drank water. They nuzzled and whispered to each other a lot. And Nicole got up and rocked out in her chair with everyone else, every time someone performed a classic Aussie song.

Apparently she had a shoot at 7am the next day but was still on the dancefloor when I left at 12:30.

The food was by Luke Mangan – an amazing salmon entree and then my favourite: pie with mushy peas and mash for main. Tomato sauce bottles on every table. I took as many photos as I could. Had a few too many wines and woke up with a bad headache and two children who were oblivious to my hangover and were just as demanding as every other day of the week. My own fault.

Took them to the park, collapsed on the grass and noticed there were quite a few other parents in a similar subdued state. Solidarity.

Was awesome fun though. Richard is truly a legend and one of the nicest guys you could ever meet in any industry. Big heart, big hair. And big something else according to Karl Stefanovic who famously mentioned it in a speech launching Dickie’s book last year.

If you’d like to see more of what’s happening behind the scenes in the office, be sure to follow us on Instagram – our username is MamamiaAUS. And you can follow me at MiaFreedman

PS – And if you missed the news that the fabulous food blogger Not Quite Nigella will be joining us here at Mamamia for the next few weeks, you can read all about it here, her story is a fascinating one. Her posts are coming to you courtesy of Dilmah’s High Tea challenge and she will be sharing mouth-watering morsels of information – guaranteed to transform the entire Mamamia readership into culinary superstars. Ahem.

So that’s what’s On My Mind (OMM) – what’s happening in your life?