THIS is hopeless! I can’t stand much more. You have to understand I’m new to all this football stuff. At school I was the bloke who ran on at half time with the oranges. The Cowboys have changed all that. I am a Fan. I have expressed my undying loyalty publicly – in these pages! I watched the semi-final last week and I had every expectation tonight would be the end of it and the talk in the pub would go back to important issues, like why women have a non-negotiable expectation that men will put the seat back down when they’ve finished. Now I discover that tomorrow night is…

SAY goodbye to Sir Les Tyrell. A knighthood wouldn’t have suited him anyway. But he blew any chance he ever had of getting one when he replaced HRH’s photo behind the mayoral chair with a football jersey. Gone is the opportunity to have the head of the Commonwealth touch him gently on the shoulders with a sword and cry: “Arise Sir Les!” The most he can hope for now is a swift stroke across the neck with an axe and his head in basket. Personally, I think he might have made a big mistake. He says it was a small gesture that might help the Cowboys to victory. But the…

IT’S a beautiful day outside and I should be in it. But I’m not. I’m in here writing stuff. If I’d known it was going to end like this, with me slaving over a hot keyboard while everyone else is sailing around Magnetic Island, I’d have done something else. I don’t know what. There’s nothing else I feel cut out for. I envy those people who have a calling from the age of four and who sniff their way into their future career like a bloodhound that’s picked up the scent. My cousin was one. When he was four someone spotted him stripped to the waist, his trousers slipping of…

I AM a back sufferer. This doesn’t mean I have a bad back. I have a back like an octopus’s forearm. It means I am surrounded by people with bad backs and I have to listen to them. By observation I have noted these natural laws of back suffering: Two or more back sufferers in one room can dominate a conversation more effectively than an evangelist. All back sufferers present will tell personal stories of horrifying or incurable back suffering until a clear winner emerges. Once a winner has been established the conversation will turn to People Who Can Help You. Everyone knows a chiropractor/osteopath/masseur who is Just Wonderful and can.…

A SPIDER? A spider! They’re going to have a giant spider strung over Flinders Street East in Townsville? Oh great. Oh very good. Other places get koalas. Or wombats. Or bilbies. Townsville gets a spider. There are some factors they have overlooked at the Museum of Tropical North Queensland, which will be hosting this… this… arachnid. Starting with arachnophobia. I mean, if they’d chosen a wallaby or a sugar glider it’s a fair bet there would have been very few people out there with wallophobia or glideritis. But it is a Well Known Fact that lots of people are turned to jelly by spiders — and that’s before they’ve bitten…