A star arrives
THE BIGGEST cheer in the country must surely have come from Durban last Saturday as little Lwazi Mvovo burst through three tacklers at Twickenham to clinch the Test against England.
Mvovo has had the King's Park crowd on their feet all season with his bursts of speed. Here is a star who has arrived.
For the Boks as a whole it was a wonderful performance. Next stop Auckland where we take on New Zealand in the opening match of the World Cup. Oh boy!
A world of ideas
IN A CERTAIN hostelry the other night, a professor's absolutely charming wife was asking where we hacks and scribblers dredge up our ideas.
I explained that the world's capitals – Pretoria, Washington, London, Paris, Moscow – have nonsense factories that churn out such a never-ending supply of absurdity, it becomes a task to winnow the ridiculous ideas pouring our way.
She didn't seem very satisfied with that explanation. I was about to debunk in advance the theory of ideas coming from herbal cigarettes, when her cellphone shrilled and she went outside to take the call.
When the prof returned from the bar with the drinks, I explained where she was. A conversation ensued in which it was agreed among the several fellows standing around that the fairer sex find a telephone call absolutely irresistible. It ought to be possible to harness such a thing.
Why not write a computer programme that causes all the ladies' cellphones to ring whenever conversation takes an unwelcome inquisitorial turn or somebody wants to tell a lewd joke or it looks as if the hens' party at the end of the bar is going over to striptease?
Why not indeed? What a splendid idea. We could all become millionaires.
But just then the prof's wife came back, telephone conversation accomplished, and our own conversation abruptly altered course.
I hope this answers her question.
Echoes
WE KEEP getting echoes of the high snobbery of the literary era of Evelyn Waugh, who wrote with pinpoint accuracy about the hedonistic monied classes of pre-war England. His son Auberon, also a writer, used to delight in using the phrase "the lower classes" – this during a time of entrenchment of the welfare state in the 1960s and 1970s and a swelling tide of political correctness.
Now one of David Cameron's newly-appointed Tory peers has caused outrage by describing the welfare system as an encouragement to the poor to breed. It is difficult to imagine anything more un-PC.
An echo? The offender is a man named Howard Flight, who is still to take his seat in the House of Lords and decide on a title.
In Brideshead Revisited, Waugh's tour de force, one of the characters is named Sebastian Flyte. As one reviewer puts it: "The complexity of Sebastian's character evolves around internal and external contradictions concerning temperament, alcoholism, and religion. Sebastian himself is somewhat of a self-contradiction, for his greatest strengths are also his gravest weaknesses. His charm is both untainted and fatal. The graceful manner in which Sebastian embraces both his faults and talents is what makes his character so impeccably charming."
I don't know about Howard Flight's religion or whether he peps things up with a dram or two. Not even whether he's "charming". But I'd guess that, as with his near-namesake Sebastian Flyte, his great strength – telling it as it is – is his great weakness in politics. Untainted and fatal, as the reviewer says.
Entente cordiale
THE Anglo-French agreement to share an aircraft carrier while the Royal Navy re-equips has been interpreted as a historic end to ancient rivalries across the English Channel. Private Eye, the British satirical magazine, has its own line.
A photograph shows Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicholas Sarkozy sitting in relaxed mode with their wives, Samantha and Carla, on sofas in No 10 Downing Street.
Cameron and Sarkozy are convulsed with laughter. Sarkozy is offering Cameron a handshake. Samantha and Carla are smiling rather dutifully.
Private Eye's headline: "CAMERON AND SARKOZY AGREE HISTORIC DEAL TO SHARE WIVES".
Oh, lovely stuff!
Tailpiece
Paddy goes to the vet with his goldfish. "I tink it's got epilepsy," he tells the vet.
The vet takes a look. "It seems calm enough to me".
Paddy: "Just wait 'til I take it outta de bowl."
Last word
The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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