Kidman’s swimsuit buys nine cows

A swimsuit left at a Swedish pool by Australian movie star Nicole Kidman has been sold at auction to buy cows for poor families in India.  The suit’s previous owner, Zlatko Nedanovski, 32, says the swimsuit sold for enough to buy nine cows.

“The swimsuit went to the highest bidder for 16,200 kronor ($3,270),” he said.  A day into the week-long auction, Mr Nedanovski said he hoped to raise enough to buy five cows, or around 9,000 kronor, as part of a project run by the Swedish aid organisation Erikshjaelpen.

“This went amazingly well,” he said.

However, he says that he will miss the suit, which has been on display in a second-hand store in the southern Swedish town of Esloev for the past five years.

“I felt it was time the bathing suit was used to help others, but it will feel a bit empty without it,” he said.

Kidman, a keen swimmer, forgot the suit at a pool she had reserved for her personal use in the south-western town of Vaenersborg during a 2002 stay in Sweden to shoot Lars von Trier’s “Dogville”.

Pool staff found it and handed it over to a local radio station.

Mr Nedanovski then bought the swimsuit for 5,500 kronor.

Mr Nedanovski says bids for the swimsuit had come from all over the world, but it finally went to 49-year-old Bengt Olsen from Sweden’s film town Trollheattan, just south of Vaenersborg.

- AFP