In at the deep end

GOLD medals weren't the only thing on 15-year-old Shane Gould's mind at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

GOLD medals weren't the only thing on 15-year-old Shane Gould's mind at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

After her speech at the Australian Institute of Project Management annual conference in Adelaide yesterday, an audience member asked Gould if the fun had been taken out of sport for kids these days. "Oh no," Gould said with a chuckle. "It's great fun for teenagers. For a teenager it's just fabulous to be in a pool with near-naked men, or for men to be with near-naked women. You're brushing up against body parts that you wouldn't normally be allowed to touch."

Liza's white advice

OUR colleague Ian Cuthbertson has become the only person we know to have been given grooming tips by Liza Minnelli. "You should whiten your teeth," she told Cutho during their interview at Sydney's InterContinental hotel. "I do it, honey. Everyone does." Having been regularly dazzled by the Cutho pearls, we have no idea what she was on about. Offered Cutho by way of explanation: "The interview was on the 21st floor; the lighting must have been very poor." Meanwhile, freshly smooched Oz photographer Alan Pryke was last seen parading his freshly planted smear of Minnelli lipstick around the office.

Dame's stunt is sunk

GIVEN Strewth's soft spots for Tasmania, Barry Humphries and political ambushes, yesterday was looking promising after we received word from Animal Liberation that Dame Edna Everage was to pay a surprise visit to Kevin Rudd at the community cabinet meeting in Hobart. Animal Liberation NSW spokeswoman Emma Haswell said: "She will offer him a symbolic red gladiola and a ticket on the Stella Deneb ship to accompany our sheep on their way to the Middle East to be sacrificed for the Eid." But our hopes were dashed in two stages: it wasn't the real Dame Edna, just a female impersonator impersonator. Then the flight that was to have conveyed pseudo-Edna's make-up artist to Tassie was cancelled, so Edna refused to let the show go on.

A drunk discourse

ACCORDING to Dean Martin, a man who can lie on the floor without holding on cannot be said to be truly drunk. Scouse comedian Alexei Sayle - who, mesmerisingly, will be on ABC1's Q & A this week alongside Christopher Pyne - assessed it thus: "I always know when I've had too much to drink: I fall over, throw up and hit a policeman." Now South Australia's opposition spokesman on sport, recreation and racing, Terry Stephens, has added to this rich oeuvre with a speech about a bill that attempts to clarify intoxication under the Liquor Licensing Act 1997. Referring to the "night of the long drinks", when Labor MPs gathered in the parliamentary bar to discuss Mike Rann's leadership and state treasurer Kevin Foley allegedly declared his readiness to lead, Stephens told the SA parliament yesterday: "In my experience, it is simplistic to describe someone as either drunk or not drunk. Intoxication is a state that occurs along a continuum. At the high end, symptoms could include keeling over, vomiting, shouting, fighting or planning to elect Foley as the next leader of the parliamentary Labor Party." Not so snappy, but it's a start.

Turnbull flies solo

SPEAKING of festivities, Malcolm Turnbull enjoyed a successful Liberal fundraiser in Sydney on Monday night, still glowing from the miracle of not-catastrophic poll numbers. Some, however, noticed the absence of oft-mentioned alternative leaders Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott. Was there anything we could read into this? A senior Liberal assured Strewth that having appeared at the big fundraiser in Melbourne last week, Kilimanjaro Joe and the Monk were probably "just giving their livers a rest".

The Age of fiction

FROM the Better Late Than Never Department, one of Strewth's agents begs to differ with a crucial line in Michael Shmith's review of Medea in The Age. Shmith concluded his review of the opera on the opening night of the Age-sponsored Melbourne International Arts Festival, thus: "The opening-night audience cheered long and loud." Our agent assures us this was not the case (tough crowd, by the sounds of it), but as Shmith was seen leaving before the applause (ah, the tyranny of deadlines), the mistake was at least understandable.