Just resting

IT must have come as some surprise to Mungo MacCallum when it was Summers that got him.

THE autumn years are meant to be the final stage of our lives before, inevitably, we succumb to the bleak, permanent winter of death — so it must have come as some surprise to Mungo MacCallum when it was Summers that got him instead. It was a single, simple message from writer Anne Summers that dropped like a depth charge into the duckpond of Twitter yesterday afternoon: “Vale Mungo Macallum (sic). Journalist and gentleman. His words and wit will outlive him.”

As if it weren’t bad enough losing Robin Williams and Joan Rivers, it seemed the gods had robbed us of this hirsute curmudgeon as well. The bastards. Word spread and a vortex of mourning began slowly swirling like a willy-willy of grief. Another former Fairfax colleague, Mike Carlton, soon joined in: “Sad to hear of the death of Mungo MacCallum, a giant of the days when the country was run from the non-members bar in Old Parliament House.” Carlton rightly views death as a time of not just mourning but celebrating as well, adding, “It was Mungo who famously likened the frightful Sir William McMahon to a Volkswagen viewed from the front with both doors open.” But was there a chance Summers was jumping the gun, perhaps going so far as filling the shoes of the nation’s hitherto most celebrated premature grim reaper, Richard “RIP Jeff Goldblum” Wilkins? The very lovely journalist Simon Thomsen attempted something called verification and rang The Byron Echo — the northern NSW paper MacCallum writes columns for — and was told, “He’s over the road having coffee at the Poinciana.” Which, even with the best of efforts, doesn’t sound like a metaphor for death.

Thomsen asked everyone to stop Mark Twain-ing MacCallum. (“It was all a bit surreal,” he told Strewth, before dropping this topical joke: “Richard Wilkins reports Lake Mungo has dried.” Five stars.) It was around about this point that Summers tweeted her regrets: “I was misinformed about Mungo. Thankfully he is still with us. My sincere apologies to you Mungo and your many friends & admirers on Twitter.” Assuming — correctly, as it transpired — Summers would be keen on an out, we asked her if there were any way we could somehow pin the blame on Wilkins. “Why not!” she quickly replied. Our colleague Rick Morton should have the penultimate word: “Where did Mungo? Nowhere!” (We’re not judging, just quoting.)

Mungo lives!

THE final word, for now, belongs to MacCallum’s partner, Jenny Garrett, who responded philosophically to our colleague Simon King when asked about rumours of Mungo’s demise: “Look, it’s absolute bullshit. He’s sitting beside me at the Poinciana cafe in Mullumbimby. He’s wading through some scrambled eggs and he’s perfectly all right. He’s rather alarmed at this. As one of the friends sitting with us here said, ‘You could lie low and see what the obits are like.’ Anyway it’s greatly exaggerated is the way the classics would talk about it.”

A certain focus

DURING MacCallum’s mercifully brief spell in the sweet hereafter, we found an interview in which he tried to recall starting at The Sydney Morning Herald: “I can’t remember anything about joining, except Dad being slightly drunk when he took me round.” We’re sure drunken days there are a thing of the past, though we did wonder when we looked at the paper’s editorial. Despite all that is going on in politics, international affairs and business, the SMH opted just to offer thoughts on two rugby league teams: the Rabbitohs and the Tigers, concluding with this groundbreaking thought: “… it’s never over until the referee blows full-time.” Well, as long as they’re all having a nice time.

Leaving on a jet plane

IT was but a short time into his press conference yesterday that Christopher Pyne began looking like he was thinking that even a spell sitting on the Eric Abetz Memorial Bacon Slicer (copyright: Strewth) would count as a “nice time” in comparison to getting asked lots of 60 Minutes-fuelled questions about James Ashby. Sure he remembered to take the opportunity to put the boot into the “sordid, despicable” Gillard government, but rarely have we heard such longing in a human voice as when Pyne said, “After this press conference, I’m going to China and Laos.” (Not an option open to Tony Abbott, who’s just come home.) What was most surprising, though, was when he concluded proceedings thus: “With that, I’d better zip, as the former PM used to say.” But then, Pyne and Kevin Rudd used to be in the same prayer group.

Like a treasure hunt

NATIONALS senator (and Barnaby Joyce’s former chief of staff) Matthew Canavan tweeted this yesterday: “I see labor now using term ‘GFC deniers’ stay classy. Tony makin only 1 I have seen that looks at evidence of stimulus. Tsy use modelling.” Any interpretation help appreciated.

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