Ladies and gentlemen, we have officially hit peak Amber.
How do we know this? Because now Senator Derryn Hinch is receiving phone calls from Daily Mail journalists asking him to comment on rumours he is having an affair with the former mistress of Seven CEO, Tim Worner.
For the record: he's not.
"I should be so lucky," Hinch told us. "I've met Amber Harrison twice. The first time was on the campaign trail and she was pushing her wheelchair-bound father – I didn't even know who she was. We have two things in common. One is that we have been both screwed by Channel Seven and we both know a lot about suppression orders."
So how, we wondered aloud, did the good senator come to be implicated in unfounded rumours of a tryst with the nation's most famous executive assistant?
"She tweeted me about the suppression order Seven had succeeded in getting a court to impose on her and I simply replied to her tweet. Having done five months house arrest for breaching a suppression order, I know a thing or two about these things," Hinch said. "Not long after, I got a call from a Seven executive, who will remain nameless, asking me how I was, checking on how my political career was going and finally reminding me there was a court order out against this woman. I was quite surprised."
How extraordinary? Jumpy, much?
This latest development – dragging into the scandal a sitting member of our federal Senate – ups the absurdity stakes on the Amber saga, now in its eighth month, to a new and ludicrous level.
It comes a day after Justice John Sackar tele-conferenced the defendant (Harrison) into a court hearing in the NSW Supreme Court and amid a slow-drip of stories about Harrison in the tabloid media.
Sackar announced today that he will be passing down his judgment on the long-running case of Seven Network v Amber Harrison at 2pm on Monday – during which he is expected to rule on whether the Melbourne-based foster mum has to pay Seven's enormous legal bill.
And on it goes.
