Strewth: crown jewels

The Australian Monarchist League has launched an online shop, including a G-string to cover your own crown jewels.

Show your true colours with Australian Monarchist League underwear.

Does your beloved just lap up episodes of The Crown? Do your teenage heirs have posters of Prince Harry on the wall? Then have we got a range of birthday gifts for you. The Australian Monarchist League has just launched an online souvenir shop. You can buy T-shirts, mugs, pillows and much more branded with slogans like “Republic? No way!” and “Keep the crown”. You can even get a G-string with one of the Queen’s crowns covering your pubic area. Yes, the monarchists are helping to protect your crown jewels, for only $9.99. The AML’s national chairman Philip Benwell tells Strewth it’s all part of the push to increase support for the monarchy among young people. “Our organisation is old but most of our membership is under 40,” he says. “The Queen is a constant for them ... and the young royals bring the celebrity side of it.” Benwell says the AML put up the shop link on its Facebook page a little prematurely as the league hasn’t quite figured out if all its logos fit on the clothes. There’s a joke about the size of one’s sceptre compared to one’s AML boxers, but we’re certainly not making it. Republicans don’t seem to be worried by their opponents’ foray into online shopping and they’re more offended the site uses the British term “thong” for a G-string. “I’m not going to say the monarchists are un-Australian, but they don’t know their thongs from their G-strings. Talk about throwing a shrimp on the barbie,” says the Australian Republic Movement’s executive director Michael Cooney.

Buckingham Rex

In other royal news, the Australian National University has discovered the building blocks of Buckingham Palace have links all the way back to the Jurassic era. Professor Murray Batchelor and his team found microbes in the Queen’s main residence that date back more than 200 million years. “Our research has highlighted yet another vital role that microbes play on Earth and in our lives,” he says. Some people would say the idea of a woman born to be head of state to multiple countries belongs in the Jurassic era. But we wouldn’t. We really love The Crown, guys. It’s an addiction.

Canberra Keneally

Kristina Keneally has finally put her hand up to fill Sam Dastyari’s Senate spot. Following in the footsteps of other former NSW premiers, she’s very likely to end up in federal cabinet at some point. Bob Carr became a senator and served as Julia Gillard’s foreign minister (which Gillard says in her memoir was a big mistake). And John Fahey, NSW premier from 1992 to 1995, was John Howard’s finance minister. We assume Howard has slightly more positive feelings about his NSW premier turned minister. Though he did famously have to stop Fahey’s feud with the late Alby Schultz when the two fought over the seat of Hume following a nasty redistribution.

Julia on TV

Whatever happened to Rachel Griffiths playing Julia Gillard? News yesterday that the screen rights for Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury — his scandalous tome on Donald Trump’s first year in office — were snapped up has Strewth pining for the great political telemovie which never was. In late 2013, Griffiths (Aussie star of US hit shows Six Feet Under and Brothers and Sisters) was signed up to portray Australia’s first female prime minister in an adaptation of veteran Canberra journo Kerry-Anne Walsh’s The Stalking of Julia Gillard. “I am thrilled to … explore the private aspects of her remarkable term,” Griffiths said at the time. Alas, it was reported months afterwards that none of the networks wanted to touch the Griffiths project because, quite frankly, viewers loathed the former prime minister. But we still think Griffiths would have been captivating as Australian politics’ most famous redhead. And who wouldn’t love to see, say, Hugo Weaving as Tony Abbott?

Girls run the world

Romania is set to get its first female leader after Viorica Dancilaă was nominated as the eastern European nation’s next prime minister. The current tally of women who are heads of state and/or government worldwide stands at 24 leaders (not counting the five female governors-general representing the Queenin her various realms). But that number will dwindle in a matter of days as Liberia’s president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Chile’s Michelle Bachelet are both due to stand down due to term limits.