Keli Holiday, AKA Adam Hyde of Peking Duk, has pulled out of performing at Championships Day at Sydney’s Royal Randwick 24 hours after announcing the gig.
It seems like only yesterday that the Australian Turf Club announced that Keli Holiday, better known to his mum and Peking Duk fans as Adam Hyde, would be performing at Championships Day at Sydney’s Royal Randwick Racecourse on April 4. And that’s largely because it was. But what a difference a day makes, as Holiday (or Hyde – makes no real difference to us) is now no longer playing the aforementioned gig, apparently having eaten absolute sh*t for doing so in the first place. The reason? No official explanation has been offered, but it didn’t take long for the internet to connect the dots to his partner Abbie Chatfield’s well-documented criticism of horse racing.
As reported around the traps, responses from fans, racing aficionados, and animal rights activists alike ranged from cool to baffled to apoplectic, with all more or less fathering around the consensus that playing at the races when your girlfriend slammed the entire practice as barbaric smacks of hypocrisy.
“I’m all for Australian performers and people from all sides of politics and different of opinion, but this person and partner speak out so loudly about horse racing in The Spring that I feel it’s a bit tone deaf?” read one aggrieved post.
“Shows how hypocritical the anti-racing mob can be really?!” exclaimed another.
Lest we forget, back in 2022, reality TV star and FBoy Island Australia host Chatfield said on Instagram, “Guys I thought we were done with the races. I thought that wasn’t a thing anymore. Like, why are so many people going to the races. What the hell?”
In a second video, she said, “I was offered money to go. A lot of money, I said f**k the races.”
For his part, Hyde has also said “f**k the races”, and he clearly spent a bit of time thinking about it, so you know he means it. It wasn’t a snap decision, is what I’m saying, although it seems to have caught the Australian Turf Club by surprise. in a statement, the Club said, “Keli Holiday’s management has informed the ATC of his decision to withdraw from the performance. We will provide further event updates where necessary.”
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