Greg Dixon's weekend

FAG HAG

The scene is the Grey Lynn Bowling Club last Sunday. The crowd is Auckland's boho aristocracy. They have gathered to pay homage to one another at an event staged by Public Address, a bloggers website. The atmosphere, as befitting a do put on by Russell Brown, New Zealand's most opinionated man, is opinionated. The smokers, as specified by Labour's Dirty Stinking Scum Act, are outside being dirty stinking scum. However, this is still not good enough for the rarely-sighted Minister for Auckland Issues, Her Majesty's Dreadnought Judith Tizard. While a local combo called The Checks are playing, HMD Tizard steers a course for the door and sails among the various enemies of the state standing outside. At the sight of them her demeanour bellows: I am a Labour zealot. Smoking revolts me. You revolt me. Then, like some hard-up hobo, she begins scrabbling over the ground and on the footpath picking up discarded cigarette butts, stopping only to dump them in the hands of some poor fellow to get rid of. Then she wipes her hands on her skirt. Her job done, the dirty stinking scum cowed, she sails inside once more. It is the intermission before the media panel begins bagging the media. But she is not yet done. Her fog horn sounds. "Are we pissed enough for the intellectual part yet?" it roars.

HOLMES 1, WOOD 0

War. What is it good for? Well, if it's a clash between rival current affairs shows, it's good for a laugh. During the bunfight for the most hair-raising survival stories after last week's Greymouth tornado, TVNZ and Prime went head-to-head in mortal combat. The local talent - the usual suspects: victims, shopkeepers, the mayor, stray dogs - were all highly sought-after for live interviews, usually within minutes of each other. The victor? Well it seems Prime's Paul Holmes got the better of TVNZ's Susan Wood. She was expecting first go at one guest, with live pictures, leaving the Late Broadcaster to pick over the remains. But oh no. The TVNZ crew discovered Prime had booked the Telecom feed for the entire half hour and Wood's Close Up had to resort to a cellphone conversation with NO PICTURES AT ALL. A source reports that when the talent finished with Wood and headed to the prearranged meeting place for Holmes, he found the Prime crew "looking very smug indeed". This is quite possibly a trick TVNZ has played on a rival coming back to bite. But one up for the little man, wouldn't you say?

SURVIVOR PARLIAMENT

Picking their noses, yawning, making faces, gesticulating, reading the newspaper ... if you actually sit in the public gallery of Parliament, you too can enjoy watching the tribes on Planet Beehive behaving like so many filthy Yak herders. But apparently our sturdy little democracy can't handle television screening a slumbering David Benson-Pope. Surely we are entitled to see - to paraphrase the Greens' Nandor Tanczos - our Government asleep in charge of the country?