The residents of Louisa Road, Birchgrove, are well acquainted with the odd automotive mishap since the former Supreme Court judge Jeff Shaw's now famous drink-driving bingle which made it all the way to the Police Integrity Commission. On Saturday they were treated all over again when neighbours were drawn to a ruckus around a boutique apartment development at number 36, newly completed by Sunland, a company of which James Packer is a non-executive director. The Diary has been told that during a private appointment to tour one of the six multimillion-dollar apartments, a Sunland customer's car became jammed in the complex's car stacker, eventually requiring the assistance of a crane to get it out. Spotted in the vicinity was the Bing Lee matriarch Yenda Lee, but this column understands she was not the hapless party, whose identity remains a closely guarded Sunland secret. "There's really no comment from our side on what the neighbours did or didn't see," said Sunland's NSW general manager, Kate Braybrook. "It was an appointment that we wish to keep entirely confidential."
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BIRTHDAY BUST-UP
The ghost of budget nights past caused uproar in the Bearpit during question time yesterday after the Speaker, Richard Torbay, mischievously rose to issue "birthday wishes" to Wollongong MP Noreen Hay and Kiama MP Matt Brown. The announcement instantly prompted a cry of "let's have a party" from the Opposition benches, a reference to the budget night "dirty dancing" incident that saw Brown sacked as police minister for dancing in his underpants and allegedly simulating sex with Hay during a party in a Parliament House office. But it was all too much for the Government Whip, Gerard "Bundy Bear" Martin, who stormed over to a group of Opposition staffers, which included a woman, to call them "f---ing grubs", according to Nationals deputy leader Adrian Piccoli who duly placed the insult into Hansard by raising it as a point of privilege. Martin was forced to later address the House to deny the slur, but Torbay intends to investigate the matter.
DON'T GLORIFY CRIMS
The Underbelly series debuted in New Zealand last week and the television station, TV3, promoted it with full-page ads in newspapers: "The true story about a small-time New Zealand crim who went on to become the biggest crime lord in Australia. How's that for Kiwi ingenuity?" Its glorification of the Mr Asia syndicate head Terry Clark has infuriated a New Zealand journalist, Pat Booth, who led the Auckland Star newspaper's expose of the drug lord's operations. Booth, who says Terry Clark took out a $30,000 contract on him, wrote in yesterday's Dominion Post: "The full-page TV3 ad ? just sickened me. Ingenious? Homicidal, sadistic, totally without conscience, a vicious criminal who murdered or had at least six associates killed."
NAUGHTY BOY
Could Brett Stewart and Anthony Watmough not have been the only well-known people alleged to have been behaving badly in the Manly environs on Friday night? This column hears whispers that a prominent non-footballer found himself being asked to leave one establishment for being far too intoxicated. After refusing, he was told he had five seconds to leave by a bouncer or he would be "smacked".
SEATS WITH A VIEW
It was billed as a striptease by a desperate publicist, but media at a press call for the Sydney season of Guys And Dolls yesterday were left disappointed when they were restricted to centre-stage seats to protect the modesty of one of its stars, the musical theatre veteran Marina Prior. Prior and a group of back-up dancers strip down to their undies and dance topless with their back to the audience in the show. While the media may have missed out on seeing Prior in all her glory, it doesn't mean audiences at the Capitol Theatre in coming weeks will. Those usually undesirable seats to the far right or left of the stage may well be snapped up.
GOT A TIP?Contact diary@smh.com.au or 92822179.WITH FAMOUS SCOTS
SOME theories say he was a native of Greece, others say Spain, France, Corsica or Portugal. Now a Spanish historian says Christopher Columbus started life as a Scot named Peter. Contemporary reports say Columbus was Geonese; however, in his third book on the identity of the 15th century explorer, a Barcelona historian, Alfonso Ensenat de Villalonga, says Columbus was born to Scottish shopkeepers
in the Italian port of Genoa and was christened Pedro, and changing his name later in life. His surname was Scotto, indicating that the family was of Scottish rather than Italian origin.
Villalonga also claims to have discovered what the great navigator, who died in 1506 after four voyages to the New World, looked like. "Columbus had light-coloured eyes and freckles. He also had blond hair, even though it quickly turned white," he said. Columbus, asked about his origins, was known to reply: "Vine de nada", translated as "I came from nothing".
* The Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner, addresses the National Press Club
* Global Business Women Awards in Sydney
* Coldplay perform at Homebush Bay
* Taxation Institute national convention at Pyrmont
* Premiere of 17 Again, with Zac Efron, at the Entertainment Quarter
* Easter show showbags launchWITH ANIMAL RIGHTS
CELEBRITIES be warned. You are either in or you are out when it comes to the animal rights militants People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. This week PETA set its sights on the mini-mogul twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen or, as PETA calls them, "Hairy Kate" and "Trashley". Cartoon masks of the pair wearing fur hats, with bloodstained foreheads, landed on The Diary's desk yesterday with a handwritten note detailing the fur-wearing crimes of the "Trollsen twins", "a matching pair of Bigfoot bobble-head dolls". The organisation, known for persuading vegan and vegetarian celebrities to take their clothes off in the name of animal rights, also runs a worst-dressed list of "cold-hearted" celebrities, with Madonna the reigning queen accompanied by the comment: "Someone needs to tell Madge that wearing fur doesn't make you a cougar." The Material Girl and Trollsen twins appear to have got off lightly. In 1996 PETA activists sneaked into the restaurant of the Four Seasons Hotel in New York and threw a dead raccoon onto the table of the Vogue supremo and fur-promoter Anna Wintour, and later left the words "Fur Hag" on the steps of her home. WITH ECONOMIC FICTION
A 1957 science fiction novel about an economic Armaggedon is climbing back up the US sales charts. Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is set in a world in which a group of capitalist magnates, furious at being taxed on behalf of the masses, withdraw their labour, causing social collapse until eventually the government begs them to return and rescue the economy.
Over the past two years the book has sat at about 542nd place on the website Amazon. In January, however, it briefly overtook Barack Obama's popular work The Audacity Of Hope and this week settled into 55th place, between The Reader and a gardening guide. The novel's conservative followers claim the surge in popularity is due to the fantasy's parallels with the Obama Administration and its support for struggling home owners and banks. Peak sales days appear to correspond to major events in the attempted rescue of the economy, such as the passing of the stimulus bill.
"The current economic strategy is right out of Atlas Shrugged," one Wall Street Journal commentator wrote recently. "The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you." Some have predicted a Rand-revolution. Conservatives around the US have been organising street protests known as "tea parties", inspired by the 1773 Boston Tea Party. Closer to home, Australians it seems are yet to take up literary arms in response to Kevin Rudd's stimulus initiatives, with booksellers reporting little change in sales.
