Mates rates

IT seems like hardly any time since Kevin Rudd told Ray Hadley he wouldn't go on the naughty 2GB broadcaster's show until "you start behaving yourself".

IT seems like hardly any time since Kevin Rudd told Ray Hadley he wouldn't go on the naughty 2GB broadcaster's show until "you start behaving yourself".

Come to think of it, it is hardly any time: less than a fortnight. At the time, Hadley informed Strewth he had no intention of amending his ways, so a Hadley-Rudd interview seemed to be something you could safely file under "Tragically Unlikely", alongside cold fusion and "Harry Jenkins 4EVA" tattoos. But it may have been a misunderstanding, and that rather than "behave yourself", what the PM had actually said (but was radically misconstrued due to crowd noise at the time) was: "Ray, I'll go on your show the moment you expand your audience." This can be the only explanation, otherwise it would look like a weird coincidence that Rudd just happened to change his mind yesterday and, for the first time since he became PM, go on Hadley's program the very same day it was revealed Hadley's ratings had surged by a solid 3.1 per cent. So anyway, on Rudd went, and a surprisingly matey affair it was. As Hadley noted afterwards to Tony "The federal member for members" Abbott, "Looking at the 184 emails that have come [from listeners] in the last six minutes, they're all objecting to the fact that [Rudd] called me mate apparently 38 times in our extended interview." We counted only 13, but it still sounded like plenty. According to the Strewth research lab, Rudd's previous record was a mere five mates on Neil Mitchell's show earlier this month. Mates' rates? Or mates at a rate of knots? Either way, the annual mate quota looks like it could be expended before we even make it into autumn; we'll count it as just another case of Rudd efficiency.

Rudd red-handed

ALL those mates can take it out of a man, so we were curious to see how Rudd was holding up by the time he made it to question time. Yet, give or take a tie that looked like a barbershop pole, nothing seemed amiss. Or at least not before Rudd began working through his repertoire of hand gestures. All seemed normal with his left mitt, but then up into the air swirled his right and on it was an odd purple splotch. What had happened? Had he written notes on his hand, Sarah Palin style, only to smudge them in a torrent of nervous palm sweat? Had he walked past a failed ATM robbery the moment the dye bomb detonated? A beetroot sandwich incident? Or had Mikhail Gorbachev's birthmark slipped through a wormhole and found itself a new home? The actual explanation may be devastatingly prosaic, so we'll just stick to our wild theories.

Gillard worth a punt

MEANWHILE, Centrebet is offering $4 on Julia Gillard replacing Kev in the hot seat by the next election, even despite Gillard's wanton misuse of fulsomely this week. (Strewth's inbox has been running so hot with pedantic rage, we've been using asbestos gloves to open our emails). According to Centrebet's Neil Evans, "We had one client hell-bent on placing a wager on Gillard to take Rudd's job, claiming he would place a bet of up to $10,000 if the price was right." That said, Evans admitted the first sizeable wager yesterday -- $2500 from a regular -- was on Gillard not being PM come the election.

Rhyme no reason

ON Wednesday, when this paper published an elegant yet robust love poem by our colleague Imre Salusinszky, its subject, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, was spotted wearing a skirt, a significant departure from her usual fashion template. Could it have possibly been a case of cause and effect? We get slightly nervous just thinking about it. So yesterday, when our colleague (and occasional Strewth stunt double) Caroline Overington followed up with a rhyming paean to Wong's shadow, Greg Hunt, we were on the lookout for any hints of change. It wasn't until we checked Hunt's Twitter output that we found this subtle evidence that the Big O's poem had hit the mark: "Dear Ms Caroline, oh your words they pack a punch. And yes I'd be delighted -- to have lunch." At this rate, we may be able to amend the old National Lampoon sales slogan for The Oz: "Buy this paper or the doggerel gets it."

Heavy Carr traffic

STREWTH'S reports this week that former NSW premier Bob Carr co-starred in a Q&A session with satirist Max Gillies triggered a heartfelt response from a Strewth agent: "This Bob Carr Q&A business is getting way out of hand. In November I went to a public lecture at Sydney University given by American politics professor Fred Greenstein, which also featured a Q&A session with Carr. Not only was Dr Greenstein under the impression Carr was a former PM, but even the university seemed incapable of remembering who he was. Each of the programs featured a nice photo of Carr next to a short biography. But if you carefully peeled back the labels covering Carr's name, you discovered the university printed hundreds of programs with the name Rob Carr."

Timing is everything

IT'S just a small thing, but 24HR Art, a contemporary art gallery in the Darwin suburb of Parap, is, despite its bold name, open from 10am to 4pm only from Wednesdays to Fridays, and 10am to 2pm on Saturdays. We'd suggest visiting on Saturday; that way you can grab yourself a nice laksa at the Parap market afterwards.