Australian teen: Naughty boy or brat?

The party was a blowout: More than 500 people showed up, and it took 30 police officers with dogs and a helicopter to break it up.

Some teenagers caught throwing an unauthorized bash at home while mom and dad were away would fear retribution.

Not 16-year-old Corey Worthington.

After police halted his party, Worthington popped up on television, radio and in newspapers, sporting Elton John-style yellow sunglasses and a baseball cap over his dyed yellow hair. He often appeared shirtless, displaying a pierced nipple.

The brazenly unrepentant party boy has been front-page news in Australia for weeks, and rocketed to the top of Internet news and blogging sites.

More than 500 people turned out for the Jan. 12 party in Narre Warren, a working-class suburb of Melbourne, after Worthington posted an invitation on the social networking Web site MySpace, police said. Police arrived after neighbors complained, and moved to shut the party down.

Worthington said later that he cooperated with police, but some partygoers did not, and scuffles broke out in the street. Police said some patrol cars were damaged, along with the gardens of nearby houses. The dog squad and a helicopter were called in before the melee was over.

There were no arrests at the time of the party. The legal drinking age in Australia in 18, though police have some discretion not to pursue prosecution in cases such as teenagers drinking at home.

The party was unsupervised: Worthington's parents were vacationing on the Gold Coast, a holiday spot in Queensland state.

Two days after the party, Victoria state Police Commissioner Christine Nixon called the teenager irresponsible and threatened to bill his family nearly $18,000 for damages. The threat hasn't been carried out.

Two partygoers, both juveniles, were charged with creating a public nuisance, and one of them was accused of producing child pornography — reportedly taking photographs of semi-naked teens at the party. Television footage showed police briefly taking Worthington into custody, though they refused to identify those arrested because both are juveniles.

Worthington blamed gatecrashers for the violence, boasted of his party-throwing skills and said he would do it all again.

The attitude rocketed him to prime time, where he kept the ball rolling with interviews for which he reportedly received money or gifts. Ending one interview on the Nine Network, "A Current Affair" host Leila McKinnon suggested Worthington "go away and take a good, long, hard look at yourself." The teen replied: "I have, everyone has; they love it."

Worthington has quit his job as an apprentice carpenter and hired an agent, Max Markson. Markson, who fields interview requests for his client, did not respond to a call from The Associated Press. In Australia, young people can leave school at 16.

Worthington's parents, mother Jo and stepfather Stephen Delaney, issued a statement saying they did not condone his behavior. They said, however, that the incident had been blown out of proportion.

"How many parents of teenagers reading this haven't had a fight with their son or daughter? How many have been let down by their teenager when they have been given a bit of extra trust?" they said, describing him as a kind, loving boy.

Worthington has been booked to host a series of parties in Australian cities, and he is to appear as a guest at parties on a tour of Britain in June, Markson told News Ltd. newspapers.

"He's the figurehead for the disaffected youth of Australia," said Paul Merrill, editor of the celebrity gossip magazine Zoo. "Anyone over 25 would probably hate him. For anyone between 15 and 25, he'd be a hero."

While not missing any opportunity to cover Worthington's exploits, the mainstream media have been generally disapproving — sometimes calling him Australia's Paris Hilton.

Web sites have been created both for and against Worthington. One, slapcorey.com, invites visitors to do just that online, and has racked up more than 900,000 hits, according to a counter on the site.

Pop culture analyst Marc Brennan said Worthington's actions play to a stereotype of youth gone wild. He said, however, that celebrity for its own sake is rarely sustainable, and there are no signs that Worthington has much star power.

"For someone to be a celebrity, no matter how much the media pushes them, if they don't have some sort of resonance with an audience, then their star will fade very quickly," said Brennan, a culture and media expert at Sydney University.

"He doesn't have celebrity," he said. "He's actually just a very naughty boy."

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Associated Press writer Meraiah Foley contributed to this report.