Winfrey to take audience of 300 on 8-day Oz tour

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They shrieked, they gasped, they cried, they hugged — and that was before Oprah Winfrey’s studio audience got a trip to Australia. Winfrey kicked off her 25th and final season of The Oprah Winfrey Show on Monday with promised surprises. After teasing the 300 audience members with a suggestion she might take them on a trip to New York, Philadelphia or Los Angeles, she said her last season merited something “bigger.”
“So I started to think about where would I most want to go,” she said over the din of an audience that suddenly understood they were going somewhere far away. “Maybe I should take you all with me to the other side of the world. We’re going to Australia,” Winfrey shouted. With that, a mock-up of a Quantas Air Lines jet rolled onto stage, its door opened and actor John Travolta, who also flies airplanes, stepped out dressed as a Quantas pilot. Winfrey, who opened her 19th season six years ago by giving out cars to everyone in her studio audience, will take this group in December on an eight-day, seven-night trip.
The audience was made up of some of who the programme called its most loyal viewers over the years.
And throughout the show, Winfrey introduced audience members, including a man named Larry who received word he’d been invited to the programme via a taped message from Winfrey delivered to his house by NASCAR driver Jimmy Johnson.
There were some surprises for Winfrey as well. Actor Don Johnson, who declined to appear on the programme when it first aired in 1986 — when he was a much bigger television star than Winfrey — came by to explain he’d wanted to appear but “Miami Vice” bosses wouldn’t let him because he was too busy. “But I understand things have been going OK for you,” he joked to Winfrey.