Hughes on first

WHAT do you do when the film about your clan scores a gong at the AFI awards?

WHAT do you do when the film about your clan scores a gong at the AFI awards?

You give a concert, that's what. At least that's what Dick and Christa Hughes did on Saturday night; as You Only Live Twice - The Incredibly True Story of the Hughes Family won the AFI award in Melbourne for best documentary under an hour, the father and daughter team hit the stage in inimitable Hughes style at inner Sydney venue, Camelot, and gave the audience a dose of 21st-century blues (not to mention a sousaphone-powered rendition of a Franz Ferdinand ditty). And they were in a celebratory mood, with Hughes the elder setting the piano ablaze (figuratively rather than in the manner of Jimi Hendrix this time, but hope springs eternal). Hughes the younger gave a demonstration of how to drain a schooner in one go, appropriately enough during an instrumental break in Beer Drinking Woman. We like to think her grandfather, foreign correspondent Richard Hughes, was smiling down from somewhere.

Gray's cold anatomy

UNTIL yesterday, it had been a while since Woman's Day shook us to the core, but then the magazine of record revealed Ugly Dave Gray plans to be cryogenically frozen in Detroit. Unkind people may suggest the comedian will merely be following in the wake of his jokes, but Strewth has fond memories of him mucking about with Graham Kennedy on Blankety Blanks, so we're trying to come to it with an open mind. Certainly Gray is, informing the magazine, "I think once the first boy is brought back to life, everyone will be lining up to have it done. But I'll be in front of the queue." Indeed, he's already popped over to the Cryonics Institute in Detroit to see where he'll be put on ice. Unfortunately, it seems his wife Val is entertaining no plans to one day be thawed out alongside him and has opted to become an organ donor instead.

Swan leak

NOW let us slip seamlessly from cryogenics to Wayne Swan, who has sent us a copy of his mass email celebrating his bank reform announcement. It is crowned with a tasteful photo of our Treasurer and Acting Prime Minister that, while falling a tad short of the wild exuberance of Oprah Winfrey and her followers on the Sydney Harbour Bridge yesterday (and how sweetly like a cult they looked in their matching jumpsuits), it conveys a reassuring sense of quiet strength and dignity. We're not entirely convinced the autumnal leaves making up the backdrop support the message of renewal, but that's just a detail. The missive ends with, "Thanks for everything you do to support your Gillard Labor government", which is nice, but could cause trouble for Strewth if it gets out.

Ross reader fever

AS we're not quite sure what to say about this sentence that appeared in the Sunday Telegraph Magazine yesterday, we'll just let it speak for itself: "Funnyman Tim Ross may not seem the nerdy type, but he's loved the printed word since childhood." Meanwhile, it was left to The Sun-Herald to deliver the misleading headline of the day: "At last, Hicks answers the tough questions."

Rio comes around

RIO Tinto was less than entirely helpful to Kevin Rudd during the mining tax fiasco [Surely debate? - Ed.] that helped to seal his prime ministerial fate. Let's take a quick detour down memory lane and see what company chairman Jan du Plessis had to say at the time: "Whether it is desperately trying to mislead people deliberately, or whether it is possibly incompetence or a bit of a mixture of both, I actually cannot tell you, but it is really awful." So it's nice to see it hasn't held back in its praise of Therese Rein, who won the Australian Human Rights Commission's 2010 Human Rights Medal the other day. True, Rio Tinto does sponsor the medal, but maybe it'll go back on the Rudd's Christmas card list.

Limonov snippet

IN his Quarterly Essay Trivial Pursuit, our colleague George Megalogenis quotes Labor figures such as Rodney Cavalier lamenting the narrowing of the social spectrum represented in Labor cabinets. Where once there were shearers and farmers among the lawyers, nowadays it's getting top-heavy with former political staffers and union officials. To get a small sense of what we could be missing out on, here's Eduard Limonov, a Russian politician who is also a poet, in an interview in Britain's The Observer yesterday: "Westerners are not our enemies, but I have no reason to look for support from them. If, for example, the US president or even a senator said they supported Limonov at the elections, this would damage me so much. So please, f . . k, don't do it!" After a brief pause, presumably to draw breath and wonder whether he may be coming across as a bit soft, Limonov elaborates: "Europeans are so timid they remind me of sick and elderly people. And Europe is like one big old people's home. There is so much political correctness and conformity there that you can't open your mouth. It's worse than prison. That's why there is no culture in the West any more. Just dying screams. In Russia, fortunately, the people still have some barbarian spirit. But Europeans and Americans are just dying, sick invalids." Unquote.