Mel, Sam and our claims to both class acts

Melissa Doyle, who will soon leave Sunrise after 14 years to work on a prime-time news program for Seven, worked in Canberra in her early days. She was a reporter for both Prime and WIN in the national capital and ended up marrying a Canberra boy (she met husband John on a blind date at the Hyatt Hotel).

And the new host of Sunrise, Samantha Armytage, started her career at WIN-TV in Canberra in 1999, later working for Sky News at Parliament House before joining Seven in 2003

Armytage, 35, grew up on a Snowy Mountains sheep station and went to to school at Adaminaby Public with just six other kids in her class before heading to Sydney for later schooling.

Centenary of Canberra executive director Jeremy Lasek worked with both Doyle and Armytage when he was the news director of WIN News.

''Both were naturals for television,'' Lasek said.

''They have a great presence, a good nose for news. [The late WIN newsreader] Peter Leonard often remarked how the camera loved them both.''

Doyle will no doubt continue to pop up in Canberra as the No.1 ticket holder for the GWS Giants.

Those icons of the late 1980s/early 1990s Salt n Pepa have included Canberra on their latest Australian tour.

Salt (Cheryl James) and Pepa (Sandy Denton) will be performing at the Canberra Theatre Centre on Friday, November 8.

The Canberra Theatre staff are among the most excited to be seeing the duo, famous for their breakthrough hit Push It, with them tweeting ''there has been much shooping around the office in celebration''.

It may be cold but there's still plenty of reasons to enjoy the great outdoors.

The Bungendore community celebrates the winter solstice on Saturday (tonight) with a giant bonfire and a glass or two of mulled wine. There will also be fire twirling, live music, soup, jaffles, damper and even the ''Pumpkin King''.

And we love the entreaty to build the biggest bonfire possible, with the community earlier asked to contribute not only ''fence posts, palings, pallets, timber, stumps, stiles and stairs'' but also ''bed heads, cupboards, dressers and drawers''. The fun starts at 6pm at the Bungendore Bowling Club in Turallo Terrace.

Then next Saturday, June 29, there will be stargazing at Crace. Members of the Canberra Astronomical Society will be there with their highpowered telescopes to help the public get a close-up look at the planets and the stars. It will be held at the Crace memorial on the top of the Hilltop Reserve Park on Langtree Crescent next Saturday between 6.30pm and 8.30pm. Hot food and drinks will be for sale, with all money raised going to the Salvation Army's winter appeal.

Labor Member for Fraser Andrew Leigh this week gave a speech to the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences which is meeting in Canberra to explore the issue of civility in Australia.

Leigh, a former ANU economist, had a few intriguing measures of civility within parliament, including getting his interns ''Ellen and Eleanor'', to walk around all of the federal parliament offices this week.

''I asked them to look at a simple thing; I asked them to look at the posters in each window,'' Leigh said.

''For parliamentarians who had a political poster up, I asked them to write down whether that was a positive poster (spruiking the good things member's or senator's party were doing) or a negative poster (attacking the other party).

''Of the 99 offices in Parliament House that depict a political poster in the window, 42 of them are negative posters.

''So, 42 per cent of the federal parliament on this measure self-define to their colleagues through a negative lens rather than a positive lens.''

Leigh also had a look over time at parliamentary behaviour.

''I went back through Hansard and in every year counted the number of times that two measures of incivility are mentioned: first, the number of times the words 'liar' or 'liars' are used, and second the number of times the word 'unparliamentary', a typical response when people are behaving in an uncivilised way,'' he said.

''And I've normalised that by the number of words spoken in parliament over the year. What I saw surprised me.

''The periods of greatest incivility are the early 1950s, the late 1970s and the early 1990s. On this fairly narrow measure of incivility, incivility is down in the federal parliament.''

Not sure how that washes, but there you have it.

The Royal Australian Mint has expanded from a coffee cart to a kiosk cafe – Cafe at the Mint – which Louis Summerfield will take charge of from Saturday.

He had his last day as manager of the complaints and data entry teams for TransACT on Friday.

Summerfield, 27, has otherwise been working in hospitality, including restaurant management and is looking forward to the new challenge at the mint, which will investigate eventually having a full-blown cafe at its Deakin headquarters.

''I'm very excited,'' Summerfield said.

Watch out Canberra – the Judith Lucy and Denise Scott double act The Spiral hits the national capital on Saturday night.

The much-loved comedians have been touring the country for an evening of short stories, tall tales and jokes at each other's expense. There is dancing too. And singing. The girls will also be roaming the audience at the Canberra Theatre Centre. With a microphone.

''The stuff from the audience is just fantastic. The stories they tell. And people feel compelled to share them with you,'' Scott said.

Scott told us she remembered the first time she saw Lucy on stage.

''She must have been about 21 and she was doing a performance where she twirled a stick of salami above her head and I remember thinking, 'There's a girl who's got no future in comedy'. So, I really know how to pick them,'' she said, with typical drollness.

Needless to say, both women are now household names. And loving their time together. Really.

''I think what makes it so great for us – and hopefully the audience – is this real enjoyment Judith and I have for one another, which is quite rare. On stage I think it is. For it not to have turned ugly by now is a pretty good thing.'