Antonella Gambotto-Burke is the vocalist and co-songwriter with the British band MAMA ft.
32 Facts About Antonella Gambotto-Burke
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke was born into a northern Italian Catholic family in North Sydney and lived in East Lindfield on Sydney's North Shore.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke is the first child and only daughter of the late businessman Giancarlo Gambotto, whose High Court win against WCP Ltd.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke did not speak English until she went to school, where she was known for her academic excellence and her singing.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke began contributing to magazines and major newspapers while still at school, where she captained two debating teams and was selected for the State Debating Trials.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke has said that despite their "wildly" differing political opinions, the two have remained friends.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke was first published under the pseudonym "Clavis Lumen" in the Sydney Morning Herald at the age of sixteen: a satire of poet Les Murray's "An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow", which was later included in Michele Field's anthology Shrinklit: Australia's Classic Literature Cut Down to Size.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke contributed to Peter Blazey's short story anthology Love Cries: Cruel Passions, Strange Desires.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke was commissioned by artist David Bromley to write his series of short films, I Could Be Me, which were narrated by Hugo Weaving and premiered at the Adelaide Festival in 2008.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke was first published in The Australian at the age of eighteen.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke won UK Cosmopolitan magazine's New Journalist of the Year Award in 1988.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke worked for The Independent on Sunday, notably a cover story on cardiothoracic surgeons.
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In 1989, Antonella Gambotto-Burke returned to Sydney, where she resumed working for The Australian as a senior feature profile writer and literary critic.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke began writing for The South China Morning Post, The Globe and Mail, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Vogue and other major global publications.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke's interviewees include Martin Amis, Elle Macpherson, Gerard Depardieu, Morrissey, Thierry Mugler, Marc Newson, Deepak Chopra, Flavio Briatore, Robert Smith, Erica Jong, Colleen McCullough, Jeffrey Archer, Princess Haya bint Al Hussein, Jerry Hall and Naomi Wolf.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke then wrote "A Man Called Horse", the first cover story about alternative rock star Nick Cave to document his since-widely-reported heroin addiction.
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Cave, retaliating, stated in an interview with Sounds that Antonella Gambotto-Burke had "brought her pyjamas along to the interview in place of a tape recorder".
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Cave, who had told Melody Maker journalists that he wanted to "kill" Antonella Gambotto-Burke, then wrote a song about her and Mat Snow entitled "Scum".
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In turn, Antonella Gambotto-Burke wrote about her experience of interviewing Cave for an Australian magazine in 2006, and her interview with him was again reprinted in the anthology Nick Cave: Sinner, Saint.
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In February 2025, Antonella Gambotto-Burke revealed in an essay that the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin now owns the letters Martin Amis wrote her during their secret non-sexual five-year romance.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke broke the news to me, expecting tears, but all I experienced was an overwhelming sense of relief.
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In 2017, Antonella Gambotto-Burke returned with her daughter to England, where she began working for The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, and other newspapers.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke's writing about human trafficking has been syndicated around the world.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke is a widely published essayist, and has written lead and front-page news stories about legal issues, and, in the wake of the Israel-Hamas conflict, antisemitism.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke dedicated her first book about motherhood, Mama: Love, Motherhood and Revolution to her daughter Bethesda.
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At the age of 22, Antonella Gambotto-Burke became engaged to the notorious American-born UK GQ editor Michael VerMeulen.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke left VerMeulen in 1990, citing, in The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide, his drug abuse as a primary reason.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke has since said that the city of Wolverhampton, where she records at Monaghan's studio Magic Garden, has been a "portal to joy".
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From June 2019 to February 2020, Gambotto-Burke hosted The Antonella Show, her own programme on London's independent Boogaloo Radio, which featured guests such as the acclaimed producer and composer Magnus Fiennes, the award-winning sculptor Beth Carter, former PiL bassist Jah Wobble and other internationally recognised artists and writers.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke told the BBC that she started singing in 2021, after lockdown, on the advice of a Grammy-Award-winning producer and former Creation Records CEO Alan McGee.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke was first played on national British radio by John Kennedy in late February 2025.
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke was at the Feel the Noise Festival on April 19,2025, where they headlined at their venue.