Michael Parkinson Becomes Honorary Australian

Comedian Ben Elton has become a citizen and 70's star Leo Sayer loves the place.

Now Sir Michael Parkinson has been given the rare honour of giving the Australia Day address at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music tonight.

Parky is no stranger to the place, Both he and wife, the TV presenter Mary Parkinson have been visiting Australia for 30 years. They spend most summers in an apartment in Rushcutter's Bay overlooking the harbour. One daughter and her family have lived here for 20 years which gives them the excuse to visit.

But of course, Parkinson's love of Australia has always been well known and since his retirement last year he told the Shuttle in January 2010 that one of the joys of giving up his interview program was the ability to spend more time here and of course, the ability to watch even more cricket, one of his greatest loves.

Leo Sayer (Australia Day Council)

Tonight Michael Parkinson in his speech pointed out some of the reasons he loves the place including the lack of snobbery and the directness of Aussies. He used former Prime Minister Paul Keating as an example pointing out the outrage that surged through British tabloids when Keating put a protective arm around HRH The Queen on an official visit and labelled Keating The Lizard of Oz :

 "He was simply reaching out in a friendly gesture as one human being to another. Here we are all human beings."

Parkinson said Australia first came to his attention as a boy in Shropshire when his miner father constantly commented on the quality of Australian cricketers. In his speech he marvelled at how the country had progressed from a penal colony to in his words : "one of the most powerful and progressive nations in the world".

And he brought up the subject of the devastating floods in Queensland and the dreadful bush fires in Victoria last year saying :


"It is a reminder to the world of the resilience and the courage of the Australian people"

# Fans of Parky should check out former East Ender Graeme Goldberg's Dee Bees cafe in Double Bay where Michael and Mary often take breakfast. You may even see Leo Sayer there-he and Goldberg are great mates. According to Graeme, Ben Elton is yet to visit as he lives in Perth with his family.

See our earlier chat with Michael Parkinson at Doyles in Watson's Bay.

A reminder of Michael Parkinson's brilliant show with one of his favourite guests-Dame Edna Everage.

Batty Lord Departs

British Joker

And so we bid a sad farewell to one of the most amusing visitors to this land in the last year, Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.

The Shuttle was delighted to meet the charming peer at a small farewell drinks party recently where he illuminated us on the latest quest for world domination via the very dodgy proposition that the world's climate is rapidly about to turn upon man and seek revenge for our unthinking decimation of Mother Nature's natural recourses.

"It's all a plot" he says "and just the new face of the extreme left who have found a new way for world domination". 

Monkton put up finance for the popular film feature fantasy  The Great Global Warming Swindle. (the Great Rock' N' Roll Swindle with the Sex Pistols was more fun) and says US President Barack Obama plans to cede US sovereignty to a newly created world government.

Many of these pearls of wisdom were delivered on the most insane TV station in the world-Fox News in the USA via the wacky host Glenn Beck. (Even Fox boss Rupert Murdoch is expressing doubts about Beck's delivery but that is possibly more to do with advertisers fleeing from his show.) Needless to say, the venerable Lord found a willing listener at the home of Australia's radio king Alan Jones who has taken up the cause with gusto.

The Shuttle's probing inquiry to his Lordship never received a full answer-he was pulled away to meet other less troublesome guests. If, as he claims. global warming is part of a communist inspired plot to destroy manufacturing which they hate, how does he explain the USSR's extraordinary surge forward in the early part of the 20th century when Russia went from a feudal society to a mechanized miracle in a few short decades?. It's something we will need to ponder on our own. In the past Lord Monkton has announced that AIDs sufferers should be isolated on an island and that he, as adviser to PM Margaret Thatcher, helped win the Falklands War.

British Aussie joker

Still, as one comedian departs, we welcome the newest Aussie citizen to our shores-Ben Elton.

PS: Today, federal Climate Minister and proud lesbian Penny Wong MP has announced that airports and a few thousand houses in Sydney will be underwater within 50 years as seas rise. 

Now you know why Lachlan & Sarah Murdoch purchased the cities most expensive mansion on the tallest hill in the eastern suburbs.