KEY POINTS:
I hate the fact I can be a glass-is-half-empty kind of girl at times. I hate that I went to bed at half-time thinking we're never going to win this. But most of all, I hate it when I'm proved wrong... usually.
Except on Sunday morning, when I awoke to read in the Herald on Sunday that the Kiwi rugby league team were World Cup winners! Bloody brilliant.
Yesterday everybody was cashing in on the victory, and so they should. Even that most disparaging of British papers, The Sun, was backing THEIR Wigan star Thomas Leuluai as a Kiwi World Cup winner with the home page header, 'Leuluai is on top of the world'. Everyone loves a winner; and with England's thrashing from the Boks at Twickenham, heck, why not throw your quid and your cheers behind another former colonial outpost to soften the pain.
The league boys as the undisputed underdogs have undoubtedly achieved something truly phenomenal and inspiring. We should be immensely proud.
I was listening to BSport's Dean Lonergan on Marcus Lush's RadioLive show this morning claiming this victory should make the Kiwis the winner of the Halberg Team of the Year award in 2009, but it won't. He reckons rugby league doesn't receive the appreciation it deserves. He's right. But it would be an outcry if the Kiwis didn't win the top team prize. Who could top them? Which team could possibly beat this victory? The Halberg Team of the Year award has their name engraved all over it.
Even from a shallow social page perspective, I'll admit, we focus on the lives of the over-exposed ABs and many of their WAGs, because we presume that's what the public wants to read about.
Ali Williams streaking down Ponsonby Rd, and his blonde girlfriend wrapping her taut thighs around a pole as a dance class choreographer, are stories we perceive to be of public interest.
We play little attention to the private lives of the league boys and their beautiful partners, partly because their adventures and misadventures seem to slide under our radar; partly because I've always found the league boys to be painfully polite and chivalrous (generally not good fodder for a gossip column); and partly because if I was being brutally honest, they have had less marketable sex appeal, than say, Dan in his jocks or topless in a kilt (oh, how the Scots must have giggled).
But HAD is the operative word in the former sentence. Marketable sex appeal can so easily be accrued when you're a winner with fame and adulation at your feet. The Kiwi rugby league team will be the hottest property for some time to come, and Simon Mannering, the undisputed hottie of the team, will be the Becks equivalent. Sit back boys and enjoy the shining spotlight. You deserve it.
I love Lucy
Very rarely do I put up my hand and say how proud I am of an ex-pat celebrity, and I should do it more often. Not necessarily because of their achievements on the stage, the track, the red carpet with a publicity-hogging sound bite, or whatever. No, I mean proud of he/she as a person.
Enter Lucy Lawless.
The gorgeous star who jetted home yesterday, has come out on her blog declaring marriage should "be phased out" in response to the Proposition 8 decision to override the California Supreme Court and not recognise same-sex marriage.
For a woman who's been married TWICE - once in 1988 to Garth, the father of her teenage daughter Daisy; and 10 years later in 1998 at Santa Monica Church to American television and movie executive Rob Tapert - it's quite a statement to make. Lawless and Tapert are reportedly living in marital bliss and have two sons - Julius and Judah.
So, why then is Lawless an advocate against marriage?
She wrote: "I have my issues with 'marriage'. I think it is a throwback to feudal times. It ought to be phased out. We should have agreements that get revised at 10-year periods. I can't think why gay people should necessarily want it, but if they want it with all its strictures and ownership over one another, then let 'em have it. What's the big deal? What the heck are we afraid of sharing? Our sacred heterosexual rite?"
Last Saturday night she marched alongside celebrity friends Ricki Lake and Marissa Jaret Winokur in an anti-Proposition 8 rally asking Los Angeleans to be "warriors for equality."
Lawless is a true warrior. And in true leadership style she wrote about her own experiences of being raised in a moderately religious home, where she says, "I grew up being taught that marriage was a sacrament - sacred. I was told, 'No one must come between a husband and wife.' Then I would look over at a relative with a black eye meted out by her husband in the privacy of their sacred matrimonial chamber, and the bruises on her child, and I knew that was bullshit. There was nothing holy there. Only love is sacred and heterosexuals don't own that."
Top Gear launch
Car enthusuast and all-round lover of his own voice, Jeremy Clarkson, is jetting to GodZone in February with his pint-sized co-star Richard Hammond and the enigmatic Stig for the Top Gear Live extravaganza show.
Organisers of the event hosted a media shindig last week to announce details of the event, which will also feature Kiwi driver Greg Murphy. Tickets are on sale now.
Click here for photos.
Corridor chitchat
Word around the new corridors of power last week had some respectable names from the National Party of old tipped for some highfalutin positions of power around the world.
Statesman Don Brash is believed to be the frontrunner for the ambassador role in Washington, though what would happen with his hands-on position at Huljich Wealth Management is unclear.
Gossipmongers are tittle-tattling that Diane Foreman would be excited about the prospects of hobnobbing with Georgetown's power elite. It's also said Clem Simich is being lined up for a position in Ottawa, and former Prime Minister Jenny Shipley is being approached for a role in one of New Zealand's major posts.
Spy's spies tell me former Commonwealth boss Don McKinnon is believed to be eyeing up a domestic role now that he's built a gorgeous new home on the shores of the Manukau Harbour.
Rachel Glucina
Pictured above: The Kiwis celebrate victory in the 2008 Rugby League World Cup. Photo / Jonathan Wood/Getty Images. Inset: Lucy Lawless. Photo / Justin Stephens.
