Sideswipe

Rodney Hide is not the first politician shaped like a popular root vegetable to trip the light fantastic to win the hearts and minds of voters. Here's Rob Muldoon at a Kumeu wine festival in the 1970s.

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Does the Blood Service know when its TV adverts go out? It was strange to see an ad looking for people like you to give blood during the break in gay TV programme Kiwifruit on TV2 on Tuesday night, considering the service has a ban on donations from gay men.

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Two brothers, aged 10 and 6, drove the family car for almost 100km along one of Australia's busiest roads because they wanted to visit their grandfather. They reached speeds of almost 90 km/h along the Newell Highway in northwest New South Wales before police - alerted by truckies - pulled them over. Both boys then jumped into their normal positions in the back seat.

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If it sells, brand it. Jumping on the child anti-obesity bandwagon, Disney has begun branding fruit and bottled water. The fruit branding involves putting "collectible" stickers on the skin of the fruit, which can then be transferred into a sticker book available at British supermarket chain Tesco and throughout France and Germany. Disney's existing food products include pasta, pizza and beef burgers in the shape of Mickey Mouse. The kid-size bottles feature labels with some of Disney's most popular characters; the products will be available in mass merchandise stores throughout the US.

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Spare a thought for Kiwi comedian Ben Hurley, now on his OE in Britain and booked for a week of gigs in Dublin between the first and last All Blacks v Ireland rugby tests. His final night will be on Saturday after the last test will have been played at Eden Park.

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Breaking news of the power cut on TV3 included a comment on how there was nowhere to get a good coffee. An easy Auckland stereotype, you may think, but a dialogue between two city law firms reveals the gravity of the situation: "The first thing one of our partners did was to find a kettle and connect it to the emergency generator supply, so that we could revert to the back-up of plunger coffee. Talk about an addiction," one lawyer emailed a colleague in another firm. "Yeah, the first thing one of the managers here did was connect a coffee maker to a secure power connection!" replied another. "We went along to the Vero centre where Auckland's big cheeses were grimacing, making do with a nasty Kona brew," chimed in a third party.