Reporter's Diary

Press, 2 June 1979, Page 2

Reporter's Diary

Little lost lion A SMALL statue of a Chi-nese-design lion, cast in Christchurch by Eric John ; Doodney, at the School of ; Fine Art, has been taken

from outside the front door of a Merivale house. The little lion is one of four or five in existence in New Zealand, according to its owner, and it is of great sentimental and artistic value to her. She would very much like to have it back, and will not ask any questions if it should miraculously turn up again on her doorstep overnight. Basil Faulty lives! THE LIST of misdoings of a waiter sacked from a seaside restaurant in England sounds like something from “Fawlty Towers.” He had reduced one woman customer to tears, kept another waiting four hours for a meal, sprayed furniture polish over the cheese, and sent two lots of angry customers storming out of the restaurant refusing to pay. The waiter brought an action for unfair dismissal in the Brighton Industrial Tribunal because, he said, he was kept too busy. The hearing was adjourned. Nothing new YET ANOTHER complaint about newspaper advertising and “dirty" books on sale in Christchurch by Neville Rush, head of the Integrity Centre, was considered at a City Council committee meeting on Thursday evening. Yet

again, the council had to reply to Mr Rush that it could do nothing to censor newspapers or restrict sales of books and magazines in shops. One of his complaints was about an advertisement for an English sex comedy film, “Rosie Dixon, Night Nurse.” Above the caption “It’s fun to be in bed with a nurse like Rosie,” was a picture of a lady of generous proportions wearing nothing but a scant bib, a suspender belt, and black stockings. After looking at it, Cr Helen Garrett said, “That’s nothing. There are hundreds of pictures like that just advertising women’s stockings.” Priorities

MOST PEOPLE can be relied on to report a fire when they see one. But one Auckland man last week let a workshop garage bum down rather than lose five minutes duckshooting time. Instead of stopping and calling the fire brigade when he saw the burning garage, the man tooted his horn and kept on driving, hoping that someone would look out the window and see the flames. The fire brigade got to the fire soon after it was finally reported, but by then the garage was well ablaze. Later that day, a man telephoned the fire station wanting to know when the first report had been received. When pressed, he admitted that he had seen the fire when driving past but had not wanted to waste precious duck-shoot-ing time by stopping. When told that the garage had burned down, the caller admitted that he had a guilty conscience and hung up, without divulging his name. Town like Alice

AN ADELAIDE businessman has offered to buy the central Australian town of Alice Springs for S6OOM. The northern Territory Lands and Housing Department disclosed t he offer last week when outlining new Government policy on land adquisitions in the territory. The businessman wanted to buy “The Alice” lock, stock and barrel, pull it down and

build a dream city in the red heart of Australia. The application was not being taken seriously. Painter up a pole NEXT Saturday Brian Painter, a Kaikoura Post Office Savings Bank worker, will climb up a pole, amid the skirl of pipes, where he hopes to sit for a week to raise funds for Telethon. He will begin his long "sit” at 3 p.m. and hopes to stay on a small platform at the top of the pole, accompanied only by a radio, a television, a potty, plenty of nourishing food, and warm clothing, ■Until the following Saturday. To coincide with the beginning of his pole-sit, the pupils of Kaikoura Primary School will parade in fancy dress, and dance and sing, helping to give Mr Painter some moral support at the beginning of his fund-rais-ing effort. Trouser snakes AN AUSTRALIAN man tried to smuggle five live pythons into the country by concealing them in his underpants and trousers, a Darwin Court was told last week. The man, aged 21, who came from Townsville was convicted and fined $2OO on an importing charge as a result of the snakes being found when he consented to a body-search. He had bought the snakes In a Bangkok zoo for $l5 each, because he liked them, he told the court. Four of the pythons were found in cloth pockets in his trousers and the fifth was in his underpants. Back pedalling 'A LISTENER to a phonein radio programme in Russia dialled to ask if it was true that a postman in the town of Tiflis had won a car in a lottery. “In principle, it is true,” replied the announcer. “But the nostman is in Batum, not Tiflis. Also, it was not a lottery, but a meeting of the local soviet. And it was not a car, but a bicycle. And he did not win it. It was stolen.” —Felicity Price