Sideswipe

There one day, goner the next. Someone at Air NZ didn't appreciate this effort at satire near Wellington Airport and must have placed a flea in the ear of someone at DB.

Craig from Waikato writes: "Last night's One News revealed how 54% of adults are overweight, and how this is linked to cancer. While I was watching the story, the phone rang. It was Warehouse Financial Services trying to sell me cancer cover! Three minutes later Body FX called flogging gym membership! Coincidence? I think not!"

* * *

The Government might not be ready for a full-scale emergency, but one West Auckland factory is. When a woman unpacking cases emerged from the storeroom with a puncture wound behind her knee, a colleague wondered out loud if she had been bitten by a snake. What followed was a MAF alert where the factory and neighbouring stores were closed. A day later no snake had been found and doctors had ruled out a snake or even a spider bite. That left the possibility that the culprit was in fact a mosquito or one of the sharp staples poking out the side of the boxes.

* * *

Eva Longoria tops lad magazine Maxim's seventh annual Hot 100 list for the second year in a row. An outstanding achievement when you consider in 2004, before the despo-hausfrau series made it big, she only ranked No 91. And wasn't it just weeks ago the magazine put Longoria on the cover to commemorate its 100th issue? It now all makes good commercial sense and explains why Longoria's character Gabriel was reading Maxim in an episode of the show a few weeks back.

* * *

Stormy start to Rick Ellis' reign at TVNZ? The new CEO missed his own powhiri on Monday. Turns out while the troops lined up in the atrium of TVNZ waiting for the beginning of TVNZ's new golden age, their saviour was left stranded in Queenstown because of bad weather.

* * *

The Da Vinci Code might have riled some of the world's clergy, but in Auckland Bishop Richard Randerson thinks it could be a marketing tool. With the film set to reopen debate on the themes of the book, he is chairing a debate at Holy Trinity in Parnell tomorrow on whether the book is anti-Christian, whether Jesus really did father a child and does the Church really suppress "the feminine".