Porn stars joined politicians in giving the cold shoulder to Austria's government on Wednesday, as a clutch of erotic film actresses said they would spurn Vienna's famed opera ball.
"Now even politics is getting into the porn business,'' lamented Thomas Janisch, publisher of an Austrian sex magazine that invited the nine women to the ball. ``They're boycotting the government and don't want to come.''
The actresses said they would not attend the prestigious event on Thursday in protest at the rise of Joerg Haider's far-right party to national power.
Guest of honour Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio, whose country holds the European Union presidency, had earlier called off his night at the opera because of the Freedom Party's presence in Austria's government.
This year's event coincides with a regular weekly demonstration against the coalition government of Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel's conservatives and Haider's Freedom Party.
Police said they expected 25,000 demonstrators to attend a protest rally in central Vienna. Security for the ball will be tighter than usual.
The only foreign head of state expected to attend was Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbajev.
Despite the absence of luminaries from the entertainment and political world, organisers have had no trouble getting rid of the high-priced tickets to Vienna's social event of the year.
"Of course we're sold out,'' an organiser said. Even boxes costing up to 200,000 schillings ($14,040) each have gone.
Tycoon Richard Lugner, who has spiced the event with past escorts such as Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, Sophia Loren, Faye Dunaway and Ivana Trump, has had difficulty this year.
Film diva Claudia Cardinale said no and British actress Jacqueline Bisset turned down him down at the last moment.
``She was already on her way to the airport when friends warned her that it would harm her career if she now appeared in Vienna,'' Lugner said.
The Viennese building magnate will instead take the arm of Sudanese-born beauty Nadja (''Naddel'') Abdel Farrag, presenter of ``Peep!,'' a late-night German television program that features voyeuristic sex.
Naddel is not unaccustomed to bad publicity. Last year she made a tearful apology to an irate German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder for satirising him as a leather-clad hermaphrodite with a fondness for kinky sex.
