Spider-Man counted out

FOR a while on Monday night Collingwood's Dane Swan was doing very well in the AFL Brownlow Medal count.

FOR a while on Monday night Collingwood's Dane Swan was doing very well in the AFL Brownlow Medal count.

Indeed, heading into the business end of the evening, the Magpie was a decent chance. But where was he? As the Seven Network hosts quizzed Collingwood skipper Nathan Buckley on the whereabouts of the club's top vote-getter, sports radio SEN managed to get him on air. Swan explained he hadn't been invited to the ceremony and so, along with a handful of teammates, was enjoying the end-of-season boozefest known as Mad Monday. Despite admitting to having had a few drinks, Swan sounded OK. But had he continued to poll well, it could have become a little tricky for the AFL. Swan said he was watching the broadcast on TV dressed in a Spider-Man outfit.

Hex marks the spot

HOLOCAUST denier David Irving has relocated himself to Windsor in England after his stint in an Austrian jail and written to newspapers across the world offering himself for interviews. Irving says he is writing three new books: one on Winston Churchill, a biography of SS commander Heinrich Himmler and a volume of memoirs. He says the only condition on any interview is that his exact location, Lake End House in the village of Dorney, is not revealed.

The biggest loser

A HAYBURNER from Puerto Rico has beaten Australian galloper Ouroene's record for the longest losing streak. The Camarero racetrack presented trainer Efrain Nieves with a plaque when his horse, Dona Chepa, lost its 125th consecutive race. The nine-year-old brown mare had just finished last in a six-horse field, beating Ouroene's losing streak of 124 races without a win. Owned by Lorraine Chiotis and trained by her husband George, Ouroene was a great favourite with Sydney punters and ran second twice, at Randwick in 1977 and Canterbury in 1981. She snapped a fetlock while training at Eagle Farm in Brisbane in 1986 and had to be put down.

Made in Marrickville

AUSSIE filmmaker Belinda King has taken out the top prize at the inaugural TropfestTribeca festival in New York. The short film festival is a collaboration with John Polson, creator of the Australian Tropfest, the world's largest short film festival. King, from Marrickville in Sydney's inner west, won with The Picnic, a film about how the desperate acts of a crazed woman turn a friendly picnic into a day to remember. King picked up $10,000 and, because the event was held in New York, a trip for two to Australia. It wasn't King's first Tropfest triumph. She was a finalist and won the best actor award in 2006 for her film The Sister.

Sea dog sails off

PETER Luke, a co-founder of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia in 1944 and the last survivor of the nine intrepid skippers who participated in the inaugural Sydney Hobart Yacht Race in 1945, has died, aged 92. Peter Campbell, the CYCA's unofficial historian, reports that two weeks ago Luke went out in a dinghy to his beloved yacht Wayfarer, which is moored near his home at Salamander Bay in Port Stephens. Luke sailed Wayfarer in the inaugural Hobart race, setting a still standing record for the longest time taken for the 628 nautical mile course, 11 days 6hr 20 min. He also sailed aboard Charisma in the 50th Sydney to Hobart in 1994, aged 79. Luke was one of a small group of sailing enthusiasts planning a cruise to Hobart post-Christmas 1945 before Royal Navy captain John Illingworth convinced them to make it an ocean race.

Baby on call for Rudd

WHEN a beaming Kevin Rudd turned up at the Burnie Hospital in northwest Tassie yesterday, there just happened to be a young mum with a baby at the main entrance. Good luck, it appeared, for a camera-friendly would-be PM. Three-and-a-half-month-old Isabella was certainly a cute drawcard, and Labor candidate for Braddon Sid Sidebottom took the opportunity to present the little tacker with a Kevin07 sticker, prompting Rudd to joke that she must not eat it. However, it turned out that luck had nothing to do with the situation. Young Isabella is not, as Sidebottom suggested, a Braddonite. Isabella's mum, Jan Hutton, confessed she was a visitor from Canberra and a friend of one of Rudd's advisers. She'd been asked to go along to provide the photo opportunity.

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