Low note for 'Tony Soprano'

"Why do you just sit there and show off, 'I am the man, I am the man'?" she wrote. "Do you see Tony Soprano doing that? He points it all off on a junior for a reason - to take the heat away from him ... you, on the other hand, want the attention, you get a big head, you love it. People like that won't survive."

Natasha was right.

There's quite a tradition of real crooks copying fictional villains. Many modern gangsters - just like the characters in The Sopranos - have been obsessed by The Godfather movies. Academic Diego Gambetta has documented many cases of the Mafia playing the movie's music at their weddings, and copying the "traditional" customs Mario Puzo invented in his novel. They've even used some of its techniques. In Italy mafiosi have disguised themselves as doctors to carry out hits in hospitals, and several times have left horses' heads in the beds of men they wanted to intimidate.

The Godfather, of course, is a grossly romanticised picture of a reality that in truth is without honour. That, says Diego Gambetta, is why gangsters prefer it to more realistic portrayals such as Goodfellas.

Returning to The Sopranos, James Gandolfini, who plays Tony, once told a newspaper the Mafia were fans of the series.

"I talk to some gentlemen who have friends who are these people," he said, "and most of them enjoy the show.

"They get a good laugh out of it, although once when I wore shorts in a barbecue scene it was relayed to me that it was not something these gentlemen would do, even at a barbecue."

We'd love to hear from any reader who knows if Alen Moradian wore shorts at his Versace-furnished residence in West Pennant Hills.

Scare went wrong

A saga involving the shooting death of Victor Elliot, chief radiographer at Tweed Heads Hospital, has finally ended in the Supreme Court. Many radiographers have no trouble earning squillions from their job, but Elliot was more entrepreneurial. He became co-owner with one Daniel Scott of the Stardust Club, a brothel.

For a while it was a happy arrangement, but then Elliot acquired a de facto, and she and Scott fell out. This soured the relationship between Elliot and Scott.

This was resolved by Scott buying out Elliot's share in the business. But the radiographer then built a new brothel 300 metres from the Stardust Club. Scott believed this was in breach of a verbal non-competition agreement, and hired ex-soldiers Michael Grupe and Dayal Utz to kidnap Elliot and give him a scare. The two could then steal a large amount of cash Elliot supposedly kept in his house.

The kidnap attempt went wrong when Elliot pulled off Utz's balaclava. The ex-soldiers panicked and killed him. They made Scott pay them $50,000 but later fell out, and Grupe killed Utz.

Last Monday Scott was due to go on trial for his involvement in murder, with Grupe as main witness, but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of being an accessory before the fact of manslaughter. According to an agreed set of facts read to the court by deputy senior Crown prosecutor Chris Maxwell, QC, Scott "wanted the deceased to be intimidated and hurt. There was no intention that he be shot at and/or killed".