"Ruby", the teenager at the heart of a sex scandal involving Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, was the star turn Thursday at the Vienna Opera Ball, a highlight of the Austrian social calendar.
The Moroccan-born pole dancer Karima El Mahroug, nicknamed "Ruby the Heart Stealer," joined entrepreneur Richard Lugner in his box alongside former "Dallas" actor Larry Hagman and attracted frenzied attention.
Dressed in a long embroidered gown, the 18-year-old hogged the media limelight with photographers jostling to photograph her, despite media being told to ignore her.
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A debutante even asked her to autograph her bouquet.
In recent years, the 78-year-old Lugner, who briefly starred in his own reality television show, secured the company of British tabloid darling Katie Price, Baywatch stars Pamela Anderson and Carmen Electra, striptease queen Dita von Teese, and US socialite Paris Hilton.
This year however, Austrian tabloids chronicled his failure to get his first two choices as guests before picking US actress Bo Derek, whom he then dropped after she apparently made too many demands.
Opera Ball organiser Desiree Treichl-Stuergkh however has already hit out at Lugner's latest guest.
"This is the biggest embarrassment that Mr. Lugner has ever made. It's sad, humiliating and disrespectful," she said, threatening to cancel his loge next year.
"Ruby" told reporters Wednesday that she wanted to resume a normal life.
"I want to be the old Ruby again," she declared, "to have a normal life, to be able to eat a pizza in peace."
Berlusconi faces charges of paying the poledancer, a minor at the time, for her services and pressuring to have her freed after she was arrested for theft.
