Sideswipe

Picky, picky: A classified ad in the Fiji Times.

In case you were wondering about the identity of the 60-year-old British actor in former Good Morning presenter Lisa Manning's life whose name didn't make her life-after-telly Woman's Weekly story this week ... it's John Rhys-Davies, the Welshman who played Gimli in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yes, there is a bit of an age difference. But despite his appearance in the film, there's not as much of a height one.

* * *

Tomas Brennan has another example of blissful ignorance, from Whakatane High School. "A few classmates and I were talking about the war in Iraq. After a while, one of them said 'There's a war on in Iraq?' The rest of us gave him a funny look and said 'Yes, it's all over the news'. I then said 'Well, you're fairly ignorant, aren't you?'. His reply was 'What's that mean?"'

* * *

The Prime Minister has a new nickname among police staff - "the seventh offender". Rank-and-file officers are annoyed that five colleagues and a civilian VIP driver have been charged over Helen Clark's high-speed motorcade trip from Waimate to Christchurch in July, but the Prime Minister - the ultimate big cheese in the entourage - has not. The PM was in a hurry to catch a plane to the Bledisloe Cup rugby test in Wellington.

* * *

Cheeky, cheeky: Former Cabinet minister Warren Freer, in this year's autobiography on his 34 years as MP for Mt Albert, relates this scene the morning after Labour was thrashed in 1975: "Mike Moore and his wife, Yvonne, burst into our lounge with the request that I resign so that he, who had lost the Eden electorate, could take my place. I was told that I'd had a long term and I would be entitled to full superannuation. When I stated that I had no intention of resigning ... Mike and Yvonne persisted that it was my duty to the party to resign and make way for him. After all, he was younger and had a lot more to offer." The answer was no. But that must be the sort of gall that propelled Moore into the Prime Minister's job 15 years later.

* * *

Finland is apologising profusely to a British family who flew to visit Santa only to get the brush-off. Hilary Hughes, who brought two daughters and four grandchildren to visit Santa in Finland, claimed to Britain's Guardian newspaper that they were told he was too busy to see them, then finally received them in a dining room cluttered with dirty plates. Since the 1960s, the Finns have promoted as a tourist draw the idea that Santa's home is in Lapland, so the affair was treated as a national humiliation and tabloid newspapers passionately bemoaned the damage to Santa's image. "This was most unfortunate and we can only apologise profusely," lamented Jyrki Niva, manager of the firm that arranged the trip. He blamed a delayed flight.

* * *

Treasure found: While kitesurfing last Sunday at Shoal Bay, a reader found a small silver cylindrical object floating in the water. Sideswipe would be happy to reunite the contents with their owner - just give us a description of them.