Hostage to fortune

SHE came to Sydney to play the role of Matron Mama Morton in Chicago and she may have been expecting glamour but Kath and Kim comedian Gina Riley instead found herself occupying a room in a Darling Harbour hotel that overlooked the Pig Ship.

SHE came to Sydney to play the role of Matron Mama Morton in Chicago and she may have been expecting glamour but Kath and Kim comedian Gina Riley instead found herself occupying a room in a Darling Harbour hotel that overlooked the Pig Ship.

The Pig Ship, also known as the Good Ship Swine Trip, and more accurately as the Pacific Dawn, has been linked to 40-odd cases of swine flu and, like the Tampa before it, wasn't allowed to discharge its cargo of pleasure-sneezers. And so whenever Riley opened the curtains of her palatial suite, she found herself staring not at the jeweled waterways of the Emerald City, but at rows of people with their hands up against the portholes, wearing glum expressions and paper masks. Not that all of them were complaining about being so confined, mind. Strewth understands one passenger, a young woman, sent a text message from the ship to her mother, saying: "It's not too bad. We can still gamble."

Devine intervention

DIGITAL knights at Fairfax Media have come to the rescue of Miranda Devine and others whose identities were hijacked on the social media site known as Twitter. Strewth understands there were at least three fake "Miranda Devine" accounts on Twitter, plus a fake smh.com.au account, and numerous other fakes pretending to be Fairfax people they weren't. Within two days of getting in touch with whoever it is who runs Twitter, Fairfax lawyers had the lot pulled down, and the names returned to their rightful owners. Devine says she didn't do anything with her new property for a few days, but has since put a toe in the Twitter pool and finds it "addictive".

Strong, silent typer

ON the subject of Twitter, everybody's favourite, ABC Lateline host, Leigh Sales last week encouraged serious insect Michael Fullilove of the Lowy Institute for International Policy to get with the times, and get himself an account. He obliged, and quickly found himself with 50 followers, and yet he hadn't written a thing, leaving some to dub him the Marcel Marceau of Twitter.

A family affair

YOU know that recurring dream you had as child, that you weren't actually the child of your daggy parents, but the long-lost off-spring of some great dynasty? Well, sometimes dreams come true. Maha Akhtar is a 44-year-old woman who was raised in Australia, always believing that her father was the Pakistani husband of her mother. In fact, she's the granddaughter of one of India's richest maharajas, Jagatjit Singh. Apparently, her grandmother was Spanish dancer Anita Delgado, who married the maharaja in 1907 at the age of 17. Their son, Ajit, had a brief affair with Maha's mother, Zahra Ajami, who then married a Pakistani man, and moved with him and the baby - Maha Akhtar - to Australia. Akhtar only found out when she went to get a passport. She's now written a book, of course.

Max-i-mum exposure

UNKIND people have suggested that the new member for Bennelong should be called Maxine McWho? because she is so seldom in the public eye, but that's about to change. Maxine McKew this week makes her debut on News Limited's grand new website, thepunch.com.au, edited by David Penberthy. Penbo has signed up 90-odd contributors to the site, including politicians Barnaby Joyce, Joe Hockey and John Cobb, a former Howard minister who came up with the story about Kevin Rudd going off about his hair dryer, making his column surely one to watch.

Bed and bored

IT probably seemed like a good idea at the time. NSW Premier Nathan Rees is due to make some kind of announcement in the Blue Mountains today. Naturally, he wanted the press to attend. Rather than have them get up with the birds this morning, he invited the entire parliamentary press gallery to join him for dinner at Peppers last night, and to stay over for today's announcement (cost to journos, $250; cost to taxpayers, nil). Quite a few reporters agreed, but one wonders how well the conversation flowed after a tabloid newspaper splashed with a poll saying Rees was going nowhere fast, and indeed was still less popular than Barry O'Farrell.

Off the Boyle

FANS will know that one of the lines in the song that the never-been-kissed Susan Boyle chose for her sensational debut on Britain's Got Talent is: "There are dreams that cannot be..." And so it proved for Boyle, who sang the same song - "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables in the final last night - only to lose to a dance troupe.