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Older Newer. Out beyond the floor-to-ceiling mayoral windows are the ailing Shell oil refinery, the Ford motor factory, which is closing down, and the Alcoa aluminium smelter, bracing for closure.
It was felt that a man known around the world as Mr Paparazzi, with all the associated razzmatazz; a man who boasted that he couldn't be "managed", which was the antithesis of collegiate council behaviour; a man who was known to the reality-TV-viewing public as a buffoon and an outrageous cartoon character with fake abdominal muscles, was not what was called for at a time of such economic uncertainty.
Yet out of 16 candidates, he took almost 30 per cent of the vote and, after preferences, won easily. Former colleagues in London are incredulous that he is mayor of a city. If Darryn Lyons were a bird, he would be a sulphur-crested cockatoo. It is there in the challenging look in the beady eye, in the plumage. Brash, bombastic, conspicuous, perched at the top of the tree, ready to pillage the lower branches.
The whole fancy mayoral robe, with its white fur trim and medallion, is a relatively conservative look for Lyons. When he first put them on, his mother, Lorraine, thought he looked like a king; his father, Graham, thought he looked more like a queen. The colours of the plumage can change on a daily basis.
Hair extensions can be added. But today the quiff is toned down to a more magisterial bleached white. Strangely, the eyebrows shoot skyward like wings on a suspiciously smooth forehead.
The portly frame is encased in a retina-detaching matching pink shirt and tie. The Savile Row suit is accessorised by a huge, diamond-encrusted Cartier watch. Soberly dressed public servants come in and out trying to keep him on schedule. Just papping out … Lyons at work on the streets of London in Credit: Big Australia. Mingling on the wall with government-issue aerial photographs of Geelong are photos of the luscious, partly clad Lady Mayoress to be.
The year-old Elissa Friday is an exotic beauty and, naturally, a model. She is a thriving educationalist; she just loves building that brain. In the frame With actress Lindsay Lohan in London in The year-old Lyons is counting down the hours until "the Girl Friday" finishes her journalism degree and moves back from the UK to be with him; he visibly misses her. Certainly, Geelong will not know what hit it when she turns up for her first ribbon-cutting.
Elissa Friday is, in a way, the embodiment of the many contradictions that Lyons himself would appear to be, and why it would be a mistake to underestimate him. On display Credit: PA. But the bling, and the seeming attention-seeking, has been there from a young age. His school friend Mario Gregorio, who now runs Lyons' Australian pub, club and pizza businesses, recalls him wearing fur coats to school, and having a live snake around his neck when he was a DJ in a hotel while still a student.
I looked down this long corridor and there was a guy standing there in a double-breasted pink suit. He looked at me and blew me a kiss. When I got the job, he said, 'Good, I need someone to drink with.
If it wasn't a double-breasted pink suit, it was a double-breasted yellow-and-black suit. According to Lyons, a triumphant life was assured from the very beginning. I shouldn't have survived. And a man who was completely and utterly driven. I am a classic Leo, so I am extremely sensitive underneath, but I am also determined. Gregorio says that, even as a schoolboy, Lyons was competitive. He always wanted to beat me and he worked hard at it.
I had a wonderful upbringing, best family in the world. Sometimes I pray, yes. But I am not sure who I am praying to. In his book - well, his extended ode to himself and his legend - Mr Paparazzi , published in , he writes of this idyllic childhood as well as his early entrepreneurial flair. At the age of nine, he wrote to his hero, the cricketer Dennis Lillee, and received autographs that he then sold to his school friends.
He had a picture of a Lamborghini Countach on his bedroom wall, and told his friends he would one day own one. Needless to say, years later he would buy an identical one from Rod Stewart. Encouraged by his art teacher, Mal Donnelly, the young Lyons discovered his "massive passion" for photography while still at high school.
By the age of 18, the legend of Darryn Lyons was being created, the absolute single-minded focus already in play.
Quartermain remembers being called out to cover a siege in Geelong. He always went to the edge to get the shots. Lyons next moved to the Geelong Advertiser as a photographer. According to Lyons' book, the newspaper's then editor, Graeme Vincent, realised that "underneath all that bravado and bullshit was a fairly complex character".
In , when Queen Elizabeth II was visiting Australia during the Bicentenary, Lyons got his first taste of a page-one photo going global.
Departing from the press pack, he hid in a flock of sheep during a shearing demonstration and captured a rare photo of Her Majesty with her head thrown back, laughing. According to his book, here the legend gains momentum. Running out of money, he walked for four hours with all his luggage from Victoria Station to News Corp's Wapping headquarters. The door of the lift opened and there was Rupert Murdoch, with his "immaculately turned-out henchmen".
Later, during a meeting with the News of the World's photo editor, Frank Hart, who was showing little interest in him, a call came down from on high.
Lyons started his first shift the next day. Fuelled by adrenalin, monumental ambition and the lure of money, he worked and worked. I had a work ethic the Poms couldn't compete with. They wanted a nice tidy life; this bloke was working 18 to 20 hours a day.
Sometimes I would go for treble shifts, I would work through 24 hours for a couple of days. I have always had it in me to push that extra distance.
Lyons' toughness and tenacity eventually brought him to the middle-market Tory tabloid Daily Mail. It was a perfect marriage. In , the Mail sent him to cover the revolution in Romania. Here, the paparazzo transforms into heroic war photographer - although, by his own admission, his fearlessness had more to do with the numbing affects of alcohol than bravery. Infected by the "war bug", Lyons was first on the plane to the Czechoslovakian revolution later the same year.
Between travelling to war zones and using practised subterfuge tactics, Lyons took the last photo of the dying Rudolf Nureyev. In the same year, newly ensconced with former Casanova Club croupier Melanie Whitehead, who would become his wife, Lyons covered the horrors of the Bosnian conflict in two tours. Here, he witnessed barbaric violence and the results of the "ethnic cleansing" program.
Now, in the relative safety of the mayoral office, he speaks of the dissociation the war photographer develops to get the job done. You switch off and focus on recording the images of history. Work is Lyons' comfort zone and his compulsion. And here the legend evolves into media tycoon. Lyons would make his fortune with his UK-based paparazzi company Big Pictures, which he started in ; ruthlessly hunting people down for photographs was a booming business and Lyons saw his opportunity.
The natural human urge to gossip over a back fence had become a burgeoning global commodity. He was very tabloid, very supermarket and he didn't give a shit, so he pushed many, many things.
Another photographer, John Gordon, says: "He is a chancer, a hustler, he always has been. He can persuade anyone to do anything. David Morgan, who worked at Big Pictures for 16 years, agrees. This week's public release of a 1,page report from an independent Commission of Inquiry identified a "culture of bullying" in Geelong's City Hall, with Lyons at the centre.
The report outlined a pattern of behaviour by the mayor who frequently swore at staff, publicly belittled them and created a "climate of fear and anxiety". Lyons, for his part, admitted that he should be "held accountable" for the swearing but said he was trying to hold his staff to high standards in a tough administrative environment.
Should the Victorian state government pass the bill in its current state, the entire Geelong council will be sacked and an administrator appointed until , ending mayor's short-but-colourful political career. Lyons had never been expected to get the job. His predecessor Keith Fagg, the preferred candidate of the local business community, triggered an early election race after he resigned for "health reasons".
Geelong's business and political establishment supported Ken Jarvis, a former mayor of Geelong known for a failed attempt to bring a Guggenheim Museum to the city. Lyons's candidacy at first appeared to be a joke but it soon became clear that the colourful photographer was shaping up as a serious contender. Fruit and vegetable tycoon Frank Costa - the president of the Geelong Cats, an Australian Rules football club that is as synonymous with the city as the Yankees are with New York - hinted that if the wrong candidate won, the state government might step in, sack the council and place it into administration.
But he could not stop Lyons who won by 58, votes, delivered in part through a social media presence of , Twitter followers, T-shirts, trailers, non-stop public appearances and a few carefully timed, self-deprecating jokes about his surgically enhanced abs. On 16 November Lyons was sworn in as mayor and it was not long before he started making people mad.
The trouble started with a widely ridiculed commercial, seen here on YouTube , that depicted the citizens of Geelong as zombies, wedded to their manufacturing past. Lyons, draped in mayoral chains and clutching a magical staff, rode into the city on a horse. With a thrust of the mayor's staff, a blinding flash of light banished the undead and turned Geelong into a middle-class playground of seafood lunches, amusement parks and sommeliers in top hats.
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