This is serious

JUST like Craig Emerson and Malcolm Turnbull, Kate Ellis has a certain sparkle in the eye and a smile that can make you feel like spring has arrived. (Yes, that is also a hint to the tardy weather gods.)

JUST like Craig Emerson and Malcolm Turnbull, Kate Ellis has a certain sparkle in the eye and a smile that can make you feel like spring has arrived. (Yes, that is also a hint to the tardy weather gods.)

But sometimes that sparkle can be dimmed, such as yesterday. "Twitter is making me feel like the Fun Police today," Ellis tweeted with evident sorrow. "Am I alone in not finding the Joel Monaghan incident even remotely funny?" Now a short time before we read Ellis's tweet, we'd encountered Canberra Raiders chief executive Don Furner's sage advice to those contemplating committing their own bestiality-for-laughs incidents: "The perils of the media and social media today are a great example of why you shouldn't do it." This line alone, so magnificent it ought to be chiselled in gigantic letters into a cliff, made us guffaw so hard it may have caused some internal damage. It was in this state of mind that we offered our thoughts to Ellis on why she was possibly alone. A short time later, Ellis tweeted: "Thank you good folk of Twitter - my faith now restored." Back in our box, then.

Street-fighting men

IN her latest Well Readhead column (which can be read in stereo on The Drum and The Punch), Lateline host Leigh Sales kicks off with the creative tensions between Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, then moves on to the creative tensions between John Howard and Peter Costello - or, as she puts it without so much as a word of warning, "another pair of ageing sex symbols". Like Joel Monaghan's dog photo, that description is one of those things that, once seen, cannot be unseen. It has got us thinking, though; with that magnificent lower lip, Howard is halfway to being the Mick in that particular relationship. Let's now segue to Strewth's favourite band break-up. When British popsters Suede hit splitsville with maximum acrimony, their manager put out a refreshingly euphemism-free release to say the disintegration had nothing to do with artistic differences, it was "all personal".

Et tu, Janette?

AT a foreign correspondents' lunch in Walsh Bay yesterday, John "Mick" Howard reminisced about former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin's love of English literature and how, when he discovered Janette Howard was a former English teacher, took to quoting Shakespeare at her and getting her to name which play or sonnet it was from. Somewhere between this and the photo we recently ran of Janette wielding Oliver Cromwell's sword, a different picture of her is starting to emerge.

Sartorial amender

AS mentioned in earlier Strewth episodes, federal parliament's serjeant-at-arms and his henchpersons have recently taken to turfing out male press gallery members who try to watch question time without a tie dangling from their throats. A fresh edict from the serjeant-at-arms' office reveals a small but significant gap between the sartorial requirements of the House of Representatives and the Swill Chamber. In the Reps, "this includes trousers, jacket, collar and tie for men, and a similar standard of formality for women" (whatever that means). However, "In the press gallery of the Senate chamber, members of the press gallery should maintain the standards of dress adopted by the majority of senators when attending in the chamber [we're guessing that emulating Stephen Conroy and donning pro-Collingwood paraphernalia will be viewed dimly]. Members of the press gallery are not required to wear coats."

Get it right

AS US Democrats count their losses after this week's mid-term elections (or, if in a time-saving mode, count what's left), New Zealand Prime Minister John Key may have helped increase divisions by referring to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as "President Clinton" during a joint press conference on Thursday. But as Key quickly realised his error and recomposed himself, ABC TV's esteemed correspondent Dominique Schwartz did her best to redress the balance. Confidently correcting the Kiwi PM, Schwartz informed her audience that "Senator Clinton" had pledged to work with New Zealand on nuclear issues. For the record, Clinton has not been a senator since January last year and has not (as yet) become president.

Twittered out

WE were just about to embark on an ill-advised reflection on South Australian Premier Mike Rann and his decision to mark Movember by adorning his portrait on his Twitter account with a digital moustache that makes him look part Mexican bandit, part 1970s porn star. But then we were pulled up by the reflections of Strewth reader Brian Colton: "What is it with all this tweeting anyway? Who cares what they say? Why do close to two million hang on to Stephen Fry's every utterance? Tweeting seems to me to be a tragic attempt to be seen to be hip and technologically au fait, like a tattoo or a gigantic wristwatch. However, like a personalised numberplate, no matter how much thought is put into it, it still says W4NK3R." It's certainly one school of thought. We'll see how he feels after he's seen Rann's mo.