J-Gill a no-go

WHILE Europe struggles to come to the grips with the idea of life without flight, Strewth has been fantasising life without radio, if only to spare us minor atrocities such as this one from Steve Vizard yesterday:

WHILE Europe struggles to come to the grips with the idea of life without flight, Strewth has been fantasising life without radio, if only to spare us minor atrocities such as this one from Steve Vizard yesterday:

Vizard: "You're listening to MTR. I'm talking to Deputy Prime Minister J-Gill."

Gillard: "A new name for me."

Vizard: "Well, if that's all right. I think J-Gill - well, we had K-Rudd - I think J-Gill kind of works."

Gillard: "J-Gill, OK."

We asked Gillard's office whether there was any likelihood of the moniker sticking or whether Gillard would merely try to let it fade into oblivion. Gillard's office did not exactly rush to get back to us on this one, so we're assuming she's going down the latter path. In the meantime, we'll keep dreaming about a wireless-less world. If nothing else, it makes a refreshing change from our more regular fantasy of an internet without videos of cats.

No fan of Ramsay

SWINGING confidently (if flimsily) from J-Gill to A.A. Gill, we have to share with you a snippet from one of the restaurant critic's more fire-and-brimstoney judgments, as pronounced in The Times on recently reincarnated London eatery Petrus: "Everything about this restaurant, this food, this service, is hopelessly passe, utterly has-been. So, so, completely, defunctly dead. It's sad that anybody could still want to create a room this inhospitable and offer an evening that implies such an utter lack of sensitivity or understanding or contemporary awareness, but such a deep and probing fascination with their own bottom." There's also an excellent line involving mackerel, bicycle seats and fishmongers' wives, but in the interests of helping keep down Strewth readers' breakfasts, we shall refrain from sharing it. Incidentally, Petrus belongs to Gill's long-term non-chum Gordon Ramsay - so Tracy Grimshaw may at least get a kick out of reading the review - and is apparently the establishment the sweary chef hopes will restore his reputation as a culinary genius. Hopefully Ramsay will have simmered down by the time he reaches these shores next week (Icelandic volcanoes willing).

Champion defence

THERE sometimes doesn't appear to be any plausible way to react to Bob Ellis's ability to promote himself other than to stand back and offer some awed applause, as well as, perhaps, a doffed cap and, if one is sufficiently struck, some burnt offerings. Ellis, after all, moves in mysterious ways. Here he is in The Spectator Australia, going in to bat for Malcolm Turnbull after the magazine greeted Turnbull's decision to leave politics with an editorial headed "Good riddance". Ellis does so under the headline "Turnbull is really one of us", which gives something of a helpful clue as to why the magazine's not-at-all left-leaning editor Tom Switzer was so overjoyed at Turnbull's planned departure from the Libs. Strewth thinks it noble of Ellis to spring (if such a verb can be made to sit comfortably with Ellis's leisurely frame) to Turnbull's defence. But Ellis, being Ellis, never forgets about Ellis: "I have written about [Turnbull] copiously in my new book One Hundred Days of Summer, out in August, and find myself in many a paragraph involved in his pain." Coming soon to a bookshop near you.

Fielding calls

AMONG the fictional characters stalking through Twitter's jostling hordes of the fanciful and gleefully fraudulent is Fake Steve Fielding, carefully created by someone who, for reasons best known to themselves, decided one Fielding wasn't enough for this planet. The fake Fielding even attracted the attention of media heavyweight Laurie Oakes yesterday when he tweeted: "I plan to veto anything that COAG agrees upon." As Oakes observed drily, "Doesn't sound fake." The real Fielding was quick to differ, informing Oakes, "I won't be automatically blocking health reform. I would like to sit down with the PM and go through his plan in detail." We're pretty sure Kevin Rudd feels exactly the same way.

Let 'er R.I.P.

WE have nothing to add on the topic of the sad passing of Carl Williams - not quite the sort of health reform we were expecting yesterday - other than this sentiment, which we have borrowed temporarily from comedian and serial female impersonator Craig Russell: We should only speak good of the dead. He's dead. Good.

Elephant sufficiency

THE elephant. Not only is it our largest living land animal (give or take Donald Trump's ego) and a wholly remarkable beast to boot, it's also a handy new unit of measurement. Or at least it is in the hands of news agency Alliance France Presse, which gave us this remarkable vision yesterday: "The marine microbes in fact constitute somewhere between 50 to 90 per cent of all ocean biomass, and en masse they weigh the equivalent of 240 billion African elephants, according to the researchers." That many pachyderms surely constitute what may perhaps be termed an elephant sufficiency. And speaking of billions, here's a startling insight from distressingly omnipresent astrologer Jonathan Cainer, who has demonstrated once again why he gets paid the big bucks: "The world is full of people we don't know and have never met. There are several billion of those and pretty much all of them pose us no problem." That advice is for Cancerians, by the way.