Oprah house

UNTIL Hugh Jackman's accidental moment of "light entertainment", the most striking vision from the latest day of the Oprah Winfrey occupation was the one and only Martin Ferguson.

UNTIL Hugh Jackman's accidental moment of "light entertainment", the most striking vision from the latest day of the Oprah Winfrey occupation was the one and only Martin Ferguson.

While it's always lovely to see Marn in action, it was even lovelier than usual seeing him by Oprah's side, smiling the gentle smile of a federal Tourism Minister coming to grips with the happy realisation that for the outlay of a few million bucks, he's spared himself the agony of ever having to preside over the launch of a "Where the bloody hell are ya?" campaign. That's no small thing and we're grateful he's been spared. As for Oprah, perhaps as a small token of gratitude before she departs these shores she could give Marn that gigantic, luminous O off the Sydney Harbour Bridge to help kickstart his vowel collection. She could also give him the spare E she used when she accidentally misnamed sponsor Telstra as Telestra; Marn will be well set up then. Though the way things are going, it'll be known as Telestra before the week is out.

Oprahtic overture

HERE'S a line that wasn't uttered yesterday at Sydney's Canterbury Boys High: "Thanks, Oprah, but we'll politely decline your kind offer of computers for all of us; every child here already has a laptop, as promised during the heady days of Kevin '07. Huzzah!" As it was, the local paper, the Canterbury-Bankstown Express, was sufficiently overwhelmed by the gesture - computers, an upgrade of the school library and music room - that it accidentally renamed her Opera.

Cable stitch

AS pleased as we are for The Sydney Morning Herald having those WikiLeaks cables clutched tightly in its mitt, we are a tad worried about its ability to overlook vital nuggets staring it right in the face. Yesterday, it had a gentle poke at this august organ's declarations that little in the WikiLeaks cables (still invisible on all Fairfax websites, incidentally) would come as a surprise to regular readers of The Australian. "Anyway," wrote one of the Herald's diarists (we trust it wasn't you, Leesha McKenny), "we mention it because at the weekend The Australian ran a front-page story - 'Burma's nuclear secrets exposed' - citing WikiLeaks cables as its source. It's a jolly good story - North Korea curled up in a nuclear bed with the Burmese junta - and a story that was told in a Herald exclusive by Hamish McDonald, on August 1 last year." Nice, very nice. Though it does overlook the handy tear-out we ran under that headline of an earlier story ("Burma seeks nuclear weapons alliance in N Korea"), accompanied by the helpful caption, "How The Australian broke the story on July 5, 2006." Still, it's probably our fault for hiding it away in the middle of our front page.

Gillard greetings

WE know Wayne Swan is running the joint as Acting Prime Minister at the moment (and Julie Bishop is the stand-in Iron Monk, oh joy), but Julia Gillard is rarely far from our thoughts, especially now her Christmas cards are heading out into the world. Already, though, we're hearing a little . . . well, not so much grumbling, more the soft sigh of deflating expectations over the fact that, unlike Kevin Rudd and John Howard, who signed hundreds of cards, Gillard's gone for the printed signature in blue ink. Not that we're reading anything into it.

Milking politics

THE whimsical campaign by yoghurt-pusher Jalna trundles on. It has already used ads to speculate that the failure of Peter Costello to attain leadership, and Kevin Rudd's lack of success in keeping his, all boiled down to deficiencies in the men's yoghurt consumption. As Rudd informed Strewth at the time: "I was a little perplexed . . . The powers of yoghurt, however, can scarcely be overestimated and I am honoured to be recognised as a famous yoghurt eater and trust the certificate (trophy even?) is in the mail." Now Jalna has appropriated Julian Assange's mug to flog its wares: "Of course, when you don't know whether you're spending your next night in England or Sweden (or several years in the US), it's not easy keeping a pot of your favourite yoghurt handy. So Geoffrey Robertson QC has cut short his Sydney holiday and flown to London with emergency supplies. And regards from Kevin, of course."

Geelong way to top

IN the interests of looking after the blood pressure of Strewth readers, we will now hand over to Jennifer Evans to let off a little steam about Portia de Rossi and her book Unbearable Lightness: "In the interviews I have heard her discussing the book, especially the cross-promotional one on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, she has stressed the importance of how the book expresses her desire to accept, and her final and absolute acceptance, of who she really is. While it is certainly positive that she has overcome her eating disorder and is comfortable with her sexuality, one wonders why, if she is so comfortable with who she really is, that she uses the pseudonym Portia de Rossi and has adopted an American accent, when she is actually Amanda Lee Rogers, who was born in Horsham and grew up in Geelong." No doubt the yoghurt wallahs will have a theory.