Three weeks ago, the media couldn't get enough of Richie Strahan, this year's pretty, blue-eyed sacrificial lamb on the dating slaughterhouse that is Channel Ten's hit show The Bachelor.
Paparazzi were making $10,000-plus sales for photos of the handsome blond as the series reached its crescendo and he ultimately selected Alex Nation, the single mother who, with the aid of great lighting, a cheesy score, a few over-bedazzled frocks and impeccable hair and makeup, stole his heart.
So fierce was the media competition that Who weekly threatened to sue one pap who dared take photos of Strahan and Nation during a sexy swimsuit shoot the magazine conducted at a rented mansion in Darling Point. PS hears the cheeky pap offered his set of shots, taken from a neighbouring property, to Who, only to be slapped with a stinging legal threat. The images were splashed across the Daily Mail this week, but PS understands the sale was for much less than the sort of money being being touted just a few weeks ago.
One pap, Jonathan Marshall, who has followed the couple across Australia and Bali over past few months, told PS that today: "I'd be lucky to get $20 for a shot ... the steam has gone out of it, I just don't think Australia likes them as much as they did the other couples from the show."
Indeed, in today's click-and-you'll-miss-them world of instant celebrities, three weeks can be an awfully long time in the spotlight and fame can be an especially cruel mistress the longer she seduces you.
Strahan lashed out at another magazine, Woman's Day, when it ran a cover story claiming he and Nation had already split on September 19, while rival New Idea's cover featured the couple with the headline "Wedding Day Announcement" and "We're Having A Baby!".
This week, still bruised, Strahan told Popsugar – that oracle of celebrity tittle-tat – his old friends at Woman's Day had "thrown [them] under a bus" after they posed for exclusive photos during a "holiday" the magazine had organised and paid for in Bali, for which Strahan and Nation were paid a rumoured $20,000 each.
But according to Strahan: "It was like we'd bent over backwards to help them, and then it was a massive stab in the back. We were just frustrated."
However, the Australian public wasn't buying the love story. PS can reveal Woman's Day's shock-split cover far outsold New Idea's wedding-day-announced edition.
Given the couple's flagging celebrity stocks, Strahan might be returning to his former gig as a "rope technician" sooner than he anticipated.