Yellow Wiggle Greg Page is expected to........

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Yellow Wiggle Greg Page is expected to announce today that he will quit the children’s supergroup because of a serious mystery illness which has kept him from performing for five months. In what is likely to be an emotional press conference scheduled less than two hours before their latest national tour kicks off in Perth, Page will outline the reasons for his decision in a prerecorded video statement. Page’s understudy, Sam Moran, is expected to replace him. Moran has been filling in for Page since he pulled out of the Wiggles’ recent US tour because of the illness, which included frequent bouts of fainting and lethargy. Blue Wiggle Anthony Field said yesterday that Page was too sick to travel with the group to make the announcement in person. “It is sad — Greg has been with us for 15 years,” Field said. But he believed it would be the parents who would be more upset than the children because they would have a better understanding of the circumstances. He said the group’s young fans would still see a yellow Wiggle on stage and would be too caught up in the show to realise Page was missing. Doctors have been unable to diagnose the condition and the group’s manager, Paul Field, earlier this month denied it was cancer. Yesterday, the Wiggles’ publicist Dianna O’Neill also ruled out a nervous breakdown. Page had a double hernia operation this year and further surgery a month later with the same complaint but it is understood that those procedures were not related to his mystery condition. Arriving at Perth Airport yesterday afternoon, Page’s three Wiggles counterparts refused to elaborate on the reasons for this morning’s press conference. They said they were following Page’s wishes about the timing and nature of the announcement. “We want to be fair to Greg and wait until tomorrow,” Murray Cook said. The Sydney-based group have won five ARIA Awards and sold more than 17 million DVDs and five million albums worldwide. They are estimated to earn $45 million a year.