wild book launch for Rob Astbury's "King & I"

fun and games in Melbourne as Rob Astbury, noted Pattaya resident and contributor to many of Pattaya's gay charities launches his book about life with Australia's first and most famous TV celebrity:

King's chaotic life after death

A WILD book launch by the partner of the late Graham Kennedy would have brought a smile to the King of Television, as the author accused his publisher of threatening and blackmailing him, confirmed he was gay and HIV-positive and revealed he was seeking a seat in Federal Parliament.

The former sports journalist Rob Astbury said he was forced to produce a book he "didn't want to write" - King and I: My Life with Graham Kennedy - to fulfil a contractual obligation to the publisher, Anthony Zammit.

The author had almost finished his autobiography, To Find Yourself, when Kennedy, his lover of two decades, died in May last year. Astbury said he was forced to write the book, which details Kennedy's cooking ability, sexual predilections and power over television executives.

"The fact is I was put under intense legal pressure and there were personal threats also," he said, alleging the publisher told him he would "out" the journalist as gay by writing a book called The King, The Queen and I.

But Mr Zammit, who spoke at the launch in Melbourne, denied blackmail. "Our company sought to enforce that contractual obligation," he said. "Any suggestion of blackmail, quite frankly, is a load of crockshit."

However, Astbury is now pleased the publisher convinced him to write about Kennedy. "I realised all the marvellous things I could reveal about this man, what made him so brilliant."

Astbury, who last spoke to Kennedy in 2000, denied the entertainer died of AIDS, as the radio host Derryn Hinch had suggested, then retracted. But he warned of the dangers of oral sex, as that was how he contracted HIV.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/10/26/1161749256674.html