Jim Hopkins: Posh gossip lifts gross happiness

It's Wednesday. Only just, but it is Wednesday. Best make that clear at the outset in case something major has happened since, a late-breaking scandal or outrage that's instantly captured hearts, minds and headlines.

Normally, it wouldn't matter. Normally, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, this column isn't even a gleam in its author's bloodshot eye. Normally, it hasn't even become a twinkle when Thursday's sun ascends.

Normally, it isn't even half finished, let alone half baked, when the noon-day rooster crows and tattooed men with known gang affiliations start banging on the door, yelling, "The editor says, if you hasn't filed your fatuous thoughts in 30 seconds flat, he's authorised us to burn your (landlord's) house down."

All of which means topicality isn't usually a problem. Producing something - anything - in time for the late edition is the problem.

But this week is different. This week employment calls (hallelujah). This week an aircraft awaits. So the words must come early this week and that's that.

Except, sod's law being what it is, you can guarantee this will be the week when events take some unexpected turn, thus rendering what follows as irrelevant as a time limit when Colonel Gaddafi is boring the pants off all the panting bores at the United Nations.

Not that Kiwis gave a toss about the Libyan leader's rant-a-thon. The loquacious loony could have waffled on for 90 hours and we wouldn't have cared. Because we knew the world was watching someone else. And we knew who. We knew the world was watching our dude, Big John, Captain Key.

It didn't matter what he was doing - climbing into cars, hopping out of showers, nipping into noshes, pressing the flesh with the Prez, doing the biz on Letterman - we were enthralled. Suddenly, the United Nations had two heavenly bodies - Ban Ki-Moon and John Key Sun - and we were in seventh heaven on cloud nine.

Or most of us were. Some serious commentators clearly disapproved, arguing that the PM's all-conquering, record-breaking, peacemaking, world-shaking trip to New York was just a frivolous montage of photo opportunities, and that our journalists' mawkish coverage of its every trivial element merely proved how far they'd gone down the frippery slope.

Such loftiness ignores our insatiable appetite for trivia. We love the stuff. Can't get enough of it.

When all's said and done - as it often is - trivia and gossip are the essence of our engagement with the world. Except when we're being terrified by some real or imagined catastrophe. And if trivia reigned in New York then, clearly, we weren't being terrified.

Which is a good thing. Terror will come soon enough. We should savour its absence while we can. And gather trivia while we may - especially when it comes from the United Nations, that most opulent palace of inconsequence.

No one's supposed to say this but most news is basically posh gossip. Indeed, you could argue that gossip is the purest form of news. And if you can't get gossip, then trivia, or gossip minus embarrassment, is the next best thing.

It was fun finding out Johnny's shower had packed a sad. (That's what happens when Bill English books you in at The Broadway Backpackers to avoid another accommodation imbroglio.)

It was neat knowing J.K. had done an Anzus Washus deal with his Aussie counterpart and shared Kevin Rudd's shower - though not while Kev was in it. That sort of thing happens to ordinary folk in foreign parts. It's comforting to know it happens to the big wigs as well. Such things unite us as people, just as a one small hot water tap united two great nations in a hotel in New York.

So let the snooty sniff. Better the rest of us focus on happy thoughts, perhaps considering how this encounter could launch Australia's PM on a new musical career.

Imagine turning on the telly and there he is, star of the five minute special, Australia's Got Talent. "Ladies and gentlemen, cobbers galore, please welcome our own political superstar, Kevin 'Dusty' Rudd, the man who was there when the taps were flowin' and the dust was blowin', here with his chart-topping sequel to that fair dinkum outback classic, The Pub With No Beer. Take it away, Kev."

Well, it's lonesome away

From your kinfolk and all

When hot water won't flow

From the tap on the wall.

'Cos there's nothing so freezing

For hour after hour,

As to stand there and shiver

In this dud pub's cold shower.

Hey, anything's possible. Where there's a will there's a way. And where there's life, there's soap.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy would understand that. He's just announced plans to make happiness part of France's GDP. And we should do the same.

However much the high-minded may object, it's immaterial if the things that make us happy are immaterial. Being happy is what matters. And whether our GDH (Gross Domestic Happiness) stems from All Black win or a John Key wash, either is better than the censorial coming down on the last shower.