blackadder
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DRUGS.
SHOWING the strain of her disastrous Australian tour, Whitney Houston looked anything but an international superstar while eating a late lunch in Sydney yesterday. Hours before hitting the stage before 12,000 paying fans at the Hope Estate Winery in Pokolbin in the Hunter Valley, Houston, 46, surfaced from her room at the Four Seasons hotel in The Rocks, She sat down with a few members of her entourage at 3.30pm and had a Coca-Cola, a bottle of water and a light meal.
Wearing a white singlet and long black shorts and looking extremely tired, despite not having performed since Wednesday night, Houston at times closed her eyes and rested her head against a wall and waved her arms. After eating, a puffy Houston happily posed with a couple of fans in the hotel foyer before boarding a tour bus for the two-and-a-half hour drive to Hope Estate. Two decades ago, Houston was the world's biggest pop star. Her magnificent voice pumped out a string of massive international hits, but her destructive relationship with drug-addicted husband Bobby Brown, himself a lower-level pop star, led her to a life of well-chronicled drug dependency.
In recent years she has split with Brown and kicked drugs, but her first tour to Australia since 1988 has been a disaster.
Houston's Brisbane show last week was slated by fans for forgotten lyrics and wobbly pitch.
After paying up to $699 for ticket packages, fans waited anxiously for her to come on stage at 9pm last night and were worried they wouldn't get their money's worth.
"I paid $250 and got a $350 package for the weekend, but I'm a bit concerned about it because I heard in Brisbane she only did a few songs, walked off throughout the show and her voice wasn't that good," said 20-year-old Jess Morton from North Sydney. The show was not a sell-out, with noticeable empty spaces around the 168ha estate.
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