By NOEL MURPHY
THE LAST thing Torquay’s Paul Nigro expected to see on TV was his disguised wife running from the media outside Bali’s Sentosa resort.
Masquerading as Schapelle Corby, Corinne Nigro had news crews pursuing her through the streets of Seminyak this week as her girlfriends formed a clutch around her to keep them at bay.
Giggling and laughing, they managed to inject some frivolity into an otherwise non-event press conference as a media gaggle tried to interview people outside the resort.
Mr Nigro was flabbergasted watching the scene on national TV while holding down the fort back home.
“I was surprised, absolutely,” he said.
“She’s gone up there for a week with her girlfriends and it turns out she’s staying at exactly the same resort as Schapelle.
“The media and paparazzi were everywhere when she got brought in and they got wind of it. Next thing we see her running down the street with a veil over her head.
“I don’t know whether the kids were embarrassed or really happy about it. We do play a few practical jokes but I wasn’t sure if over there was the best place to see her and her girlfriends running down the street like that.”
Mr Nigro laughed that he had been dropping off the kids at school, running the shop and keeping house while his wife was away.
“And then I get people coming into the store telling me, ‘Hey, your wife’s on TV in Bali!'”
Meanwhile, Deakin University’s Damien Kingsbury has warned Schapelle Corby will need to keep her head down while on parole in Bali, especially with any lucrative media deals she might strike.
“The catch … is that she cannot leave Indonesia until her sentence is completed in 2016,” Professor Kingsbury said.
“She must also stay in Indonesia for a further year to assure Indonesian authorities that her parole has proven she is of reformed character.”
Prof Kingsbury said Corby would need to “moderate any comments she might make to an enthusiastic media” or risk breaking her parole.
