Socialites in restaurant catfight

A dinner among some of Auckland’s socialites at one of the city’s swankiest restaurants turned into a heated debate with one woman dragged out by her husband. Auckland socialite and former Real

Housewives of Auckland star Gilda Kirkpatrick got into an argument with Zainab Sokona-Whyte, the wife of former Act Party leader Jamie Whyte, at Ponsonby’s Augustus Bistro last Friday night.

Kirkpatrick declined to comment, however Jamie Whyte — who was also at the dinner — confirmed there was a discussion so heated he had to take his wife out of the restaurant.

“This is scraping the bottom of the barrel for gossip . . . somehow someone stood on somebody’s toes conversationally,” he said.

“I found the whole thing so ridiculous I didn’t even bother to find out what the root of it all was once I dragged my wife out of there.

“I was there, I had to drag my wife out. She was getting pretty fired up.” Whyte said he had no idea what the argument was about.

Asked if the pair were drunk, Whyte said: “Well, my wife certainly was. It’s just really a trivial non-event of a thing.” When asked if SokonaWhyte had any qualms about sticking up for herself, Whyte replied, “No, that’s why I had to drag her out.”

He added: “There was no big incident and I don’t even know what they were discussing, I have no idea. There was no underlying issue either, it was just childishness.” As for whether the pair would be on speaking terms sometime soon, Whyte said they would, but “it will take a while”.

Whyte said although SokonaWhyte and Kirkpatrick were not close friends, they had a mutual friend in fellow former Housewife Michelle Blanchard. When contacted yesterday by the Herald on Sunday, Blanchard declined to say if she had witnessed the incident.

“I am not commenting on anything. I have nothing to say,” she said.

Sokona-Whyte was yesterday also staying tight-lipped about the stoush.

“I want nothing to do with it, I have nothing to say,” she told the Herald

on Sunday. “Let it go, it’s ridiculous.” Real Housewives of Auckland screened in July last year and also featured Julia Sloane, Angela Stone, Anne Batley-Burton and Louise Wallace. It caused controversy when Sloane used a racial slur against Blanchard.