Solly has in recent months gone to live in Thailand where his wife Samantha Hawley is the ABC's south-east Asia correspondent. But before that he was on the ABC here for nine years. My correspondent couldn't bear him, and had been finding being out of earshot was one of the joys of Perth life.

''So imagine my horror when I turn on the local ABC every morning in Perth to hear - who else - but Ross! It is as though the radio gods have decided that I was enjoying my listening pleasure far too much and decided to impose Ross on me again.

''The lack of subtlety, lack of reading, his tiny amount of cultural knowledge is on audible display every morning at 7.30 am as he is interviewed by [ABC Radio's] Eoin Cameron about life in Bangkok.

''The other day Ross was asked by Eoin what the major religion was in Thailand. Ross had no idea. I am fairly sure that his wife read about the country she would be covering for the ABC before her arrival. Ross obviously missed the classes, forgot his books, or just had no interest in the fact that he is now living in one of the world's most interesting cities!''

Yes, there used to be so much emphasis on Solly's popularity in Canberra (he enjoyed inexplicably high ratings) that those of us who struggled to bear listening to him used to share that sentiment with others, in whispers, like people with a minority political or sexual orientation, timid about disclosing our dark, perverse secret. It was the dislike that dared not speak its name. It was always gratifying to find a kindred spirit (oh, the catharsis!), and after a while one seemed to find them everywhere in Canberra, as if the ratings statistics might, somehow, be a little misleading.

My Perth correspondent continues, uncharitably, ''I'm not alone. Someone else in the office is similarly amazed that WA has to put up with him … but only I seem to have the exquisite pain of having left him only to have the ABC deliberately begin the torture again.''

On the small screen Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock and Jonny Lee Miller in Elementary are doing their best, bless them, to portray versions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's great pipe-smoking, tweed-wearing, violin-playing, cocaine-taking detective Sherlock Holmes.

But of course, the greatest screen Holmes of them all, his deerstalker hat far too large for Cumberbatch and Miller to ever fill, was Basil Rathbone, pictured.

Rathbone was Sherlock Holmes (in much the same way that Johnny Weissmuller was Tarzan) and for readers of a certain age, who saw him as Holmes in films such as The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) he remains the one, true Sherlock. Rathbone as Holmes (on a big screen) sounds like more bliss than working-class Canberrans have a right to expect. Yet the just-mentioned 1939 classic is the main feature of the second of the old-fashioned movie matinee sessions being revived by the Tuggeranong 55 Club. It is on next Saturday, February 15, at 2pm at the Tuggeranong 55 Club, 101 Cowlishaw Street, Greenway, beside the lake.

Everyone is welcome; it's $4 for members, $7 for non-members, and there is a complimentary ice-cream.

As well as Rathbone at his best there is, before the big picture, Victor Jory at his best. He plays Lamont Cranston alias the Shadow, in part two of the 19-part movie serial The Shadow (1940). The hero battles The Black Tiger, a villain bent on world domination. Oh for a modern Shadow, now, to save us from those bent on Canberra domination.

We continue our occasional series about Ainslie's grand old, garden-haunting kangaroo (is he, perhaps, the most popular kangaroo since Skippy?) with this fabulous portrait of him by Sean Holyoake. Showing him in full-length, the picture dispels, rather dramatically, any doubts there might have been about the sex of this noble animal that one artist (she has painted his portrait) has called The Eternal Kangaroo of Ainslie.

Holyoake said: ''l read your column this morning online and was pleasantly surprised to see the famous kangaroo of Ainslie has finally made it big! This fella has been coming to my garden, front and back, since winter … where the first encounter in the dark of night in the back garden ensured I was susbsequently in need of a shot of Jameson [a famous, nerve-settling brand of Irish whiskey]. I thought you would like this cheeky photo of him, taken from my kitchen window, two metres away.''