On the run

IT'S nearly half a decade since Ben Cousins's celebrated booze-bus dodging escapade.

IT'S nearly half a decade since Ben Cousins's celebrated booze-bus dodging escapade.

When he abandoned his Mercedes and his girlfriend and running (and eventually swimming) off into the night; our only regret is it was never turned into a video game called Spaced Evaders. The anniversary is set to be marked in style with the Cousins Fun Run ("run & swim - no bike"). The Facebook page set up for the event explains, "[Cousins's] intricate escape route was revealed on his recent documentary and, with careful retracing of his movements, Saturday, February 12, 2011 will be the inaugural running of the Cousins Biathlon." Among the nearly 4000 potential participants who've registered their interest, one asks the pertinent question: "On a scale of one to Ben Cousins, how hacked do we have to be to attend this event?" And remember, drink in moderation.

Shirt tales

WE'RE coming to appreciate the spooky omnipresence of author, academic, historian and newspaper contributor [nobody's perfect] Ross Fitzgerald. Now, as Anne Pender's book, One Man Show: The Stages of Barry Humphries is unleashed, Fitzgerald tells us he even had a fleeting cameo in Humphries's and Bruce Beresford's cinematic masterpiece, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie. "I was told to bring the most colourful shirt I had," Fitzgerald tells Strewth. That's him on the left, watching as Humphries's alter ego Edna Everage attends to nephew Barry McKenzie (Barry Crocker) before he flies off to edify the Poms.

Howard's cover-up

IT was about this time last year that The Australian photographer Sam Mooy was dispatched to John Howard's Sydney office to take a portrait of the former prime minister. Barely a few minutes into the session, Mooy was, not unreasonably, yet to come up with the shot that captured the essence of the man. But his subject was starting to get antsy. "I just wanted a nice portrait," says Mooy, "but after five minutes, Howard was politely but firmly pushing me to wind it up." Mooy had time to squeeze off a few more shots and then was out the door. So Mooy is gratified to see that one of those last snaps has rematerialised on the cover of Howard's autobiography. Says Mooy, "I'm hoping for a signed copy."

A head for hates

MANY adjectives get applied to Dutch politician Geert Wilders, but "ambiguous" isn't one of them. He has called for an end to Muslim immigration to the Netherlands, argued "there is no such thing as moderate Islam", and said the Koran "incites hatred and killing [a bit like chunks of the Old Testament] and therefore has no place in our legal order" . So there's something bewitchingly oblivious about Sydney-based Muslim cleric Feiz Muhammad's decision to respond to these slanders by calling for Wilders's decapitation. It reminds us of the furore that accompanied the publication of Monica Ali's novel, Brick Lane. Set amid east London's Bangladeshi community, it provoked a response summed up by a cartoon in Private Eye, that had a protester declaring, "Monica Ali calls us ignorant and reactionary, so we're burning her book." (Germaine Greer also attacked Brick Lane at the time, an attack Salman Rushdie characterised as "philistine, sanctimonious, and disgraceful, but . . . not unexpected". But we digress.)

Just high spirits

IT'S looking a whole lot calmer in Blanche d'Alpuget's world. According to Woman's Day, d'Alpuget is part of Subud, a "cult-like spiritual group that encourages 'emotional release', resulting in devotees barking like dogs, laughing uncontrollably and having aggressive outbursts." This could even further explain that recent Mungo MacCallum beard-yanking incident at the Byron Bay Writers Festival. (Well, that and MacCallum's uncomplimentary remarks about her.) Alas, Woman's Day was unable to elicit a comment from d'Alpuget, other than a suggestion they check out the Subud website, so we did likewise. There we learned, "Subud is a way to renew contact with the power of God, or the Great Life Force" and, encouragingly, "It is a simple, natural process that occurs without effort or study." We like to believe that by going no further, we are taking the Subud spirit to heart.

Party people

A FRESH approach to asylum-seekers, courtesy of Sunday Telegraph gossip columnist Ros Reines: "[W]hen the next boatload of refugees is being processed . . . our immigration officials should be looking out for any newcomers who seem talented, poised, eccentric, wildly beautiful or even mildly animated. Australia (Sydney in particular) has a shortage of bright sparks on the social scene and this should be taken into consideration . . . when looking for the skills that immigrants possess in terms of making a positive contribution . . . The situation is critical, as most social scribes will attest."