What is real?

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source: Getty images

Katie Ritchie, Australia’s favourite television daughter, along with husband Stuart Webb has had her first real child – a yet un-named girl. The country is all secretly hoping that “Sally” is somewhere in the mix.

I say real because somewhere between leaving Home and Away in 2008 and returning in 2013, Ritchie’s alter ego Sally Fletcher also had a daughter. It must be a weird inside out sense of déjà vu for actors who experience significant milestones on stage or screen before it occurs to them in their personal life.

One upside for Kate is that Sally had sex with Heath Ledger.

One can only imagine what it was like in the Culkin household the first time Macaulay stayed home alone. His parents hiding the paint cans, thumb tacks, hot irons, blow torches, broken Christmas ornaments and electrified doorknobs. His older brothers Shane and Kieren would also be wise to lock their bedroom doors.

It is also no wonder Miley Cyrus is now singing naked on wrecking balls and twerking into the laps of strange older men whilst performing on stage. This is symptomatic of post traumatic stress syndrome caused by discovering that Billy Ray Cyrus is not only your TV dad but also your dad in real life. Disney May be the happiest place on earth but it is only pretend.

Haley Joel Osment of The Sixth Sense fame must be relieved when attending funerals, that he is no longer the only person in the room seeing dead people. Has he ever attended a John Edward performance? Appropriately Osment and Edward must be kindred spirits. Osment knows what it is like to think he can communicate with the dead and have no-one believe him.

Having started with Home and Away it feels appropriate to end with Neighbours. Kylie Minogue first came into Australia’s entertainment consciousness as Charlotte in The Henderson Kids in 1985 before joining the cast of Neighbours as Charlene in 1987.

It also appears that Australian writers have limited imagination in naming female characters. This is no surprise, in a country that has such creative names for its states and territories as Western Australia – for the state in the west, South Australia for the area of land in the south (though interestingly there are states further south) and Northern Territory which is not surprisingly north.

In real life has Kylie ever had to help protect a piece of land from ruthless developers? Or was this all rehearsal for surviving the ruthlessness of music producers and gossip columnists?  Her mechanic skills I am guessing fell to the wayside as quickly as her accent when she relocated to England. Perhaps now she can only repair fake cars.