Bondage book whips up storm
By Kathy Marks in the New Zealand Herald
Saturday Jun 19, 2010 

Left - Gretel Pinniger has had a diverse history as an artist, dominatrix and wannabe politician. Photo / AP

Stripper, performance artist, fashion designer, portrait painter and above all dominatrix - Gretel Pinniger, the self-styled "Madame Lash", has been scandalising and titillating Sydney society for more than four decades.

Mistress to a string of celebrities, including Clyde Packer, elder brother of the late media tycoon Kerry, Pinniger - who once dabbled with becoming a nun - continues to throw legendary "S and M" parties: at her gallery, a deconsecrated church in inner-city Sydney known as "The Kirk", and at Florida House, her five-storey mansion, incorporating dungeon and bondage rooms, in upmarket Palm Beach.

Now that lifestyle is under threat, thanks to a new biography which details her relationship with a mystery "Patron" who has bankrolled her since the 1970s.

While the book, Madam Lash: Gretel Pinniger's Scandalous Life of Sex, Art and Bondage, refrains from naming him, his identity is one of Sydney's worst kept secrets.
Pinniger's benefactor was Paul Hamlyn, the late British peer and publishing millionaire, and - according to the book's author, Sam Everingham - she still receives a monthly allowance from his estate which is her only income.

Full story at New Zealand Herald.