Throw Another Prawn On The Barbie, Oprah!

Oprah Winfrey is well-known for giving expensive gifts to her tv show audiences.
And this week's episode (the premiere of her 25th and final season) was no exception. When Oprah revealed she was sending them on an all-expenses-paid trip to Australia, the crowd went wild! All 300 members of the audience are off on an eight-day trip to Sydney, dubbed 'Oprah’s Ultimate Australian Adventure', with celebrity pilot John Travolta personally flying the private jumbo jet!

But Oprah forgot to mention that her 'gift' is actually being paid for by the Australian tourist board... to the tune of more than $2.3 million! Lots of Oz taxpayers are going wild too - but in a different sense as negative feedback on various Oz news sites reveals. But Australia's Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson calls the deal (which has been a year in planning) 'a major coup', claiming he had received federal and state funding to convince Oprah to come to Oz.
Winfrey will film two episodes of her show at the iconic Sydney Opera House, to be renamed the Sydney Oprah House for the occasion. The shows will air in January, hoping to encourage US visitors to travel 'down-under' for the end of the southern summer. Tickets for the two episodes will be given to 6,000 Australians via a ballot on Oprah's website.
So much for Oprah's "personal" generosity. Still, the idea's gotta be more successful than the appalling A$180-million 'Where the bloody hell are ya?' campaign (featuring that sway-backed stick insect Lara Bingle): according to a former Oz tourism minister, it was an absolute disaster! Gotta agree with ya there, digga!