Ajay’s (Legal) Weigh-In

You’ll recall that a month or so ago it was revealed that Biggest Loser host Ajay Rochester was headed to court to face 23 charges of fraud (yes, 23).

Well, she had her day in court yesterday, and it was good to see the Daily Telegraph bringing out the sizeist adjectives once more to describe “the larger-than-life personality” of Rochester:

She is accused of receiving single parent payments for four years when she knew she was not eligible, Kim Arlington reports.

Rochester was a no-show – believed to have been in Fiji – when her case first came before the court last month.

But the larger-than-life personality appeared in person yesterday, with her lawyers telling the court she was formally pleading not guilty to the charges.

After a brief hearing, Rochester remained in conference with her legal team for close to an hour before emerging from the court complex.

Flanked by her lawyers, with her eyes shielded by sunglasses, she refused to answer questions before slipping into a waiting car.

A single mother with an eight-year-old autistic son, Rochester allegedly received welfare payments between December 2001 and December 2005, when she knew she was not eligible for the Centrelink handouts.

What a surprise that she didn’t want to talk to the reporters outside the court, eh? The nerve!

She’ll be back in court in September to continue the proceedings, and hopefully by then the tabloids will have thought of another way to describe her and taken the bookmark out of the “big” section in the Thesaurus.