No he didn’t

I snorted when I got this notification on my phone last week.

Yep, fake Anthony LaPaglia has started following me on Instagram. It’s so random and ironic, since fake Anthony has no idea that I am on real Anthony’s naughty list.

Just in case you’re in the dark about who the hell Anthony LaPaglia is … he’s an Aussie actor who made it big in the US with a starring role in the TV series Without A Trace. He also had parts in TV shows such as Frasier.

And he won the Tony Award for best actor for his Broadway turn as Eddie Carbone in ‘A View from the Bridge’ in 1998.

Then he went very quiet for a long time, other than marrying a woman half his age in 2018, following his divorce from Gia Carides in 2016.

But he’s making a comeback in a new ABC TV series called The Black Hand. He’s also about to make his stage debut in Australia in Death of a Salesman in Melbourne.

I presume that’s why a Nigerian scam artist decided to impersonate him.

As for why I’m on Anthony’s naughty list … back in my Woman’s Day years, he was being stalked by the paparazzi whenever he came home for a visit. And it used to drive him CRAZY.

During one of his visits I bought a set of photos of him playing a friendly game of soccer in the suburbs with some mates.

He was taking his shirt off in one shot and … well, let’s just say he looked like he’d been over-indulging in the spaghetti carbonara.

A sub-editor at Woman’s Day thought it would be a lark to call him Anthony LaPudgier in the caption accompanying the pic. And I didn’t notice when I was checking the page proofs.

But someone did notice. Anthony’s mum.

Anthony’s mum was really dirty about it. Apparently she couldn’t hold her head up in Anthony’s home town or Adelaide because of the shame we’d brought on her family. So she rang Anthony in Los Angeles (he’d returned to Hollywood by then) and expressed her concern that his name had been besmirched in a magazine.

So Anthony rang me to have a go.

Back in those good old days I had a PA. I can’t tell you how much I loved having a PA. Especially one that understood the difference between the phone calls I wanted to receive and ones I didn’t. The divine Di tried talking Anthony off the ledge for about 45 minutes before finally admitting defeat and advising me he wasn’t going to give up, so I’d better take the call.

And then Anthony proceeded to yell at me for another 45 minutes while I repeatedly apologised. In the background I could hear his wife Gia loudly screeching her displeasure, offering creative suggestions on new ways he should castigate me.

At one point he turned away from the phone and yelled at her to SHUT UP AND LET ME FINISH. Or words to that effect.

Slice of life, let me tell you.

He eventually tired of yelling at me and asked to be put through to my boss so he could have a go at fresh meat higher up the food chain. Ninety minutes of displeasure had not cooled his ire in the slightest.

The divine Di transferred him to my boss’s PA, who was so dazzled to have Anthony LaPaglia on the phone that she put him straight through to my boss without checking, and he proceeded to yell at her for 45 minutes …

He was very, very, very cross that we’d dissed his belly and upset his mama. Very, very cross.

More than two hours cross. I hate to think what his phone bill looked like, as this was back in the days when international calls were rare, exxy things.

My boss was a whizz with the charm and eventually soothed his wounded ego, then offered a donation to his favourite charity to seal the deal.

And he finally hung up, appeased.

At the time and all these years later I still can’t quite believe a grown man could yell for that long at three women because aspersions had been cast on his manly girth.

But he did.

Ah, those were the days.

As for these days, or should I say nights … the jackhammering and concrete sawing started again at 9pm last night. That’s five nights now. There is absolutely no intel on Google about why it’s happening, so I joined my local community Facebook page to discover a message revealing: “The notice I received says the works would run from 11 June to 6 July excluding Saturdays and public holidays.”

Sob.

I walked the dogs past the roadwork last night and kept rehearsing in my head polite ways to discuss the situation with the crew. But I just kept thinking swear words – really bad ones – so I decided I’d better keep going to avoid accidentally saying the really bad swear words out loud to them, as I know it’s not their fault, they’re just doing their jobs.

That said, the noisy way they pack up at 5am IS within their control. They could choose not to repeatedly throw metal objects into trucks and onto the road and pavement …

July 6!!!!!!!! Pray for me. I don’t know how many more nights – and early mornings – I can take.

Song of the day: The Police “Every breath you take”