Risking the cupcakes with beefy Stu

Press, 6 May 1980, Page 23

Risking the cupcakes with beefy Stu

By

JOHN COLLINS

Stu’s guest at dribbling the basketball backwards and risking the mystery studio-baked cupcake on “How’s That?” (TV], Saturday) was the All Black full-back, Stu Wilson, in appearance a sort of John Walker clone. Unlike the prototype, Stu the larger managed to traverse : several yards of the studio without being tripped, spiked, or boxed in. He actually seemed to enjoy the proceedings, e-3-pecially in view of the rule that leading sportsmen are not allowed to smile outright or look too enthusiastic, in case it seems bigheaded and is considered a bad example. The proceedings, such as they were, had a nice

desperate edge, lots of instant cooking and relay races, the sort of thing akela might throw together in the hall on a wet day. Not a lot is achieved: but there’s plenty of movement, and. after all, that’s what the kiddies want these days, isn’t it. At least Stu the smaller wears long trousers and doesn’t say, “Nice one.” Stu the smaller, asked Stu the larger how it felt to don an All Black jersey. It’s a sort of instant Bullworker, apparently; makes you feel inches taller. stones heavier in a jiffy. Welsh forwards will no longer kick sand in your face. Stu the smaller actually stopped bobbing up and down for a moment, making a mental note to get himself one.

Stu the larger turned up on the tube looking healthy again the next day in the All Black trials on “Sport on One”; the cupcake’s appearance must have been deceptive. Kieth Quinn attempted a commentary once more, commiserated with this time by Graham Thorne. Thorne has a ponderous delivery, and, going by that and by memories of

ms habit m ms playing days of smacking great holes in opposition defences with his head, one might half-expect him to fall off his commentinf chair and open a boutique. In fact, Thorne talks a lot of sense. His aftermatch analysis, using slow-motion clips of the game, always goes a long way towards filling the gaps left by the commentary. He retains the understatement, of course. At one point the Waikato player, Geoff Hines, shrugged of eight opposing forwards and rolled his way upfield through tackle after tackle with the indifference of a runa-

way truck flattening a row of parking meters. “Firm running by Hines, there,” said Thorne.

Hines, or Thorne for that matter, might not have found it so easy to run through 15 Possibles selected at random from among the transvestites in the “Close-Up” (TVI) piece on the Wellington landmark, Carmen. Many of these ample specimens were prostitutes, the reporter, Paul Ransley, told us in best no-holds-barred, this-is-a - real - adult - ducustyle. Many made $3OO a night. They didn’t look much, but pound for pound it’s probably good value. Interviews with drag queens, backstage shots of strippers parading the silicon (“Do you have a match? When did you first realise you were homosexual? Have you heard the weather forecast?”) have become a bit old hat; but Ransley didn’t make a bad fist of it, if that is the right phrase. His sound man might have been a little more careful in his positioning of the huge microphone in view of the subject.