Rock on, Barnesy

POOR Jimmy Barnes is having a little trouble with the old ticker, and we wish him well for a speedy recovery.

POOR Jimmy Barnes is having a little trouble with the old ticker, and we wish him well for a speedy recovery, and are assured the Cold Chisel reunion tour for October and November will proceed.

But it underlines the fact that while Barnesy is a man of late middle age, so are many of his fans, who've grown old with him. The fact he's playing at four wineries in his coming tour, a long way from the sweaty pubs of his youth, would also point to a different sort of fan from those who went to the Star Hotel in Newcastle circa 1978. But apparently West Australian police are concerned about the sort of patron being attracted to the winery gig on November 26 at Sandalford Winery near Margaret River, and are expecting an influx of bikies and a "tough crowd", despite Chisel management insisting that its fan base is "more female than you might expect". Sandalford chief executive Grant Brinklow told The West Australian the police were "looking at Cold Chisel with a view that the crowd and the behaviour and the conduct of the band itself is going to be like their Youth in Asia tour", a wild 60-date tour in the early 1980s that would probably be a happy memory for many of its present-day fans, if only they could remember it.

Rough crowd, this

SO just who will be in the tough crowd that police are expecting? Step forward Troy Buswell, WA's Housing Minister and well-known chair-sniffer, squirrel gripper and bra snapper, who seemed unimpressed with the attitude of WA's finest when he spoke on Perth radio 6PR yesterday. "I mean, I'll be there. I want to break out my old black stovepipes, my old desert boots, and I'm going to be in the front few rows, like I was at the AC/DC concert. I think it's a little short-sighted to say that the crowd might be unruly," he grumbled. But as today's typical Chisel fan sips a good sauvignon blanc at an up-market winery, we can't help wondering if Chisel will launch into Cheap Wine. Presumably the wine's a bit better now, and Barnsey looks pretty clean-shaven these days as well.

Position on France

FORMER British prime minister Tony Blair granted an audience -- as his publicists put in their advertising material -- to about 400 people in Melbourne yesterday, an eclectic mob that included Anthony Pratt and his mother Jeanne Pratt, former Victorian premier John Brumby, Julia Gillard's head of strategy Nick Reece and Underbelly actor Vince Colosimo. Those who parted with the $1000 a plate -- or $1500 for cocktails and a photo opportunity with Blair -- heard him tell racy stories about his conversations with the Queen, and how his bad French let him down at a joint press conference he held with his French counterpart. When Blair was asked if there were any policies of the French prime minister he wished to emulate, he meant to say: "There are many policies of the French prime minister that I desire to emulate." "But instead I used a word a little wrongly and what I actually say is I desire the French prime minister in many different positions. It was a huge boost to the entente cordiale." Blair said his French counterpart blushed, which was quite sweet.

Law's the thing

FIVE years ago, in what became a typical lawyer's banquet, then foreign minister Alexander Downer and today's chief diplomat Kevin Rudd were locked in mortal combat over the AWB wheat deals scandal. While the politicians slugged it out, the real winners, as they often are in these sort of things, were the legal eagles who made a motza. And so, perhaps drawing from that lesson, a new generation of the Rudds and Downers has taken to the law. As fortune would have it, Edward Downer and Nicholas Rudd, both young litigation practitioners, have found themselves working with Clayton Utz in Sydney. As they sort the legal wheat from the chaff each day, their working quarters, Strewth is told, are just metres apart. Real walls as well as Chinese walls would be useful in this situation.

No worship needed

BEING expelled from the Catholic Church seems to have been a liberating experience for Peter Kennedy, the former Catholic priest who now seems closer to the apparently fictitious bishop in Yes Minister who didn't believe in God and saw Jesus as a postmodern metaphor. Kennedy, who was expelled from the Catholic Church two years ago for conducting services at St Mary's Catholic Church in South Brisbane that were outside the church's approved liturgical practices, told comedian Judith Lucy on ABC television last night that "I do not believe in worshipping God. Whatever God is . . . that God does not need to be worshipped". Kennedy said there was "very little corroborating evidence" for the existence of Jesus, and although he still leads his new congregation, St Mary's in exile (they call themselves SMX) and in prayer, said his own praying style is more like "meditation". Finally, Kennedy still considers himself a Catholic, but not in the "literalist" sense. Yes Minister's Jim Hacker would be impressed.