Reporters Diary

Press, 9 June 1978, Page 2

Reporters Diary

Helpful MERCY on the grounds of metrics was pleaded for in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday. Counsel, Mrs D. Orchard, asked the Court to take into account, when sentencing a man convicted of driving with excess alcohol the possibility that he might not be able to cope with another j (metric) written test. “I’ll ■ exercise a little leniency,” ; said Mr F. G. Paterson, i S.M., fining him $2OO and i disqualifying him for 11 I months. If the man had ; been disqualified from 1 holding a driver’s licence : for more than 12 months he would have been faced I with sitting the test again. Ups and downs i SOME will be pleased to I hear that the Prime Minist r will be one of the few New Zealanders whose tax will go up as a result of | the Budget. Most members of Parliament will be paying less when the new scales take effect in October, but Mr Muldoon and 1 his deputy, Mr Taiboys, | both get paid more than I the $27,000 at which the i tax rate will take another 1 jump. Mr Muldoon’s salary is $36,204. plus possible increases due to State servants, and he estimates that he will have to pay an extra S2OO a year in tax as a result of his Budget. Mr Taiboys gets $27,976, and his extra tax burden will be quite small. Ordinary members of Parliament, who get paid $14,810 a year, will

enjoy tax cuts of between $6 and $7 a week, while Cabinet Ministers and the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Rowling) will save about $2 a week, Walked IT WAS almost as if someone was waiting for the new sign which the Lyttelton Road Tunnel Authority put up at the tunnel portal on Friday. The unusual blue “no pedestrians” sign, which has a silhouette of a walker with a diagonal red bar across him, cost the authority $76.25. It was gone the very next day. They’re watching A POLICE officer visiting a class of five and six-year-olds at a Christchurch school gave the customary homily about not talking to strangers, and other useful advice, then asked the children what they knew about policemen. “Well,” replied one safety-conscious five-year-old, “last week-end I saw one driving about not wearing his seat-belt.” There was a brief pause, while the officer thought his way out of that one. Then he assured the child: “If I’d seen him dcring that, I’d have taken his car away from him.” The young informer seemed satisfied. Hymn too IT IS not only the Anglican clergy who play numbers games with the hymn

book. The Rev. David Steedman, former minister of St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Armagh Street, is remembered for the way he answered the telephone at the manse. The number was 70-479, and the minister — having checked Hymn 479 in the hymn book — would answer: “70-‘Love Divine’.” Return season CARRIE Fisher, who plays the part of Princess Leia Organa in “Star Wars,” now in its twenty-sixth week at the Cinerama Theatre, is playing her second role at the theatre. Hugh Taylor, who used to manage the theatre, remembers that Miss Fisher played the title role in a film called “Bundle of Joy” which screened at the Mayfair, as it was then called, in January, 1958. The stars were her parents Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, and Carrie was just a baby at the time. The film was no match for “Star Wars” — it stayed at the Mayfair only four weeks. Different agony THE ECCENTRIC English homosexual Quentin Crisp, whose autobiography “The Naked Civil Servant,” made a big impact in New Zealand when presented as a television documentary, will make an eight-week theatre tour of Australia. He calls his one-man show “A Wine and Crisp Evening — a Straight Talk from a Bent Speaker,” and is a bit worried about how it will go down in Australia. “I will be very cautious,” he told a news conference in London.

“There may be difficulties, and I don’t think I will do anything to annoy people.” Mr Crisp, who is 70, has spent only three days outside Britain in his life. He is making this trip only because his agent told him to. “I’ve never had any wish to travel,” he said. “The most I can expect out of a holiday is a change of agony.” Not wanted WHILE Quentin Crisp prepares to fly to Australia, the actor John Hurt, who played Crisp in “The Naked Civil Servant,” is wondering why he was refused a work permit by the South African Government 20 minutes before he was due to fly there on May 25 to play in the film “Zulu Dawn.” Losing the role will mean a loss of about $60,000 to Hurt, who was given no reason for the refusal. But he believes he is connected with his portrayal of Crisp on television. He cannot understand it. “I have no criminal record,” he said. “I’m a happily married heterosexual and I’m not a left-winger.” Burt Lancaster, Peter O’Toole and John Mills are already in South Africa, preparing to film the 19th century Zulu war epic. Oops! A GIRL who got all dressed up to pass herself off as older than her 15 years made a fatal mistake when she reached the box office at the theatre showing “Saturday Night Fever.” She asked for a half-price ticket. —Garry Arthur