Paul Holmes: Too precious for a life changer

Should the athletes go to India or not? Of course they should. As someone posted recently in a response to a Herald editorial about the matter, India remains one of the last great adventures on Earth.

From everything I've heard, I believe it. I've never been, but I've never met anyone who has come back from India with anything less than wonder, dismay and awe at the rich and brilliant chaos of the place.

One of the most fascinating books I ever read was Shantaram, about the Australian prison escapee who made his way to Mumbai and made a life for himself in the labyrinthine Mumbai underworld.

It is claimed to be a true story but it's so incredible, how would you know?

A young friend just back from his OE last summer pushed the book across the table to me and demanded I read it.

I protested that a grown, busy man such as myself had no time to lounge round with such a time-wasting exercise, and that it was the kind of book young people would read on their OE when they were hanging round with nothing to do.

The book took me over. Amazing.

Last Friday, I ran into my friend Peter, who was just back from a business trip to India. He couldn't stop shaking his head about the place.

Certainly, the hygiene aspect seems to be challenging. People there seem to do their number twos anywhere, as far as I can work out. But while he spent a good deal of time laughing about this, he couldn't get the wonderment out of his voice.

He went to the Taj Mahal. He got his picture taken where Princess Diana so famously sat, deeply lonely in that hopeless marriage to the bonkers Prince. Diana looked so sad. Peter was smiling his head off.

The athletes should go. They might learn something. Athletes, famously, know very little. They're young, all they do is run round and they're not famous for reading.

Young athletes give the most boring interviews in the world because they know nothing. They've had it all their own way all their lives because they were the sports stars, so they know little of pain, which is what makes us grow up and learn about life.

Older sports stars, on the other hand, those who are approaching the end of their careers or whose careers are already ancient history, are interesting people.

These people are acutely aware of fading glory, fading applause and the waning of their stardom. This makes them fascinating and sympathetic. Jonah Lomu, I would exempt from this. Jonah was always interesting. Jonah always had soul. Jonah had an unhappy home.

Living in Delhi will be a challenge. Not that athletes at Olympic or Commonwealth Games have to endure challenges when it comes to getting round.

God knows the entire world is laid out for them. And the entire world is laid, too, if you believe the stories - but that is another matter.

DAVID GARRETT is gone from Parliament, his Parliamentary career all over in a flash. I never like to see a man broken, no matter who he is and what he's done.

And without a doubt that place broke David Garrett - smashed him to a thousand pieces.

Garrett believed he was collateral damage in a war between Heather Roy and Rodney Hide. This may well be so. Such is life.

But the passport thing was weird. I don't know anyone who ever set out to get a false passport just to see if they could. And scouring a cemetery for a child's name to steal? It is certainly not something that could ever survive a television interview.

I'm told I am now supposed to think less of Rodney Hide. A couple of people in Remuera tell me they will no longer vote for him. I don't feel any different about Mr Hide.

I like Rodney Hide. His protection of Garrett was odd, though. But then again, Rodney himself is odd. So am I, I suppose. I hear myself speaking sometimes and think I must seem odd to people.

Like Rodney, I went through Dancing with the Stars. I think that if you are an unco person, as I am and as Rodney is, and you have endured the terror of Dancing with the Stars, as both Rodney and I have, you forever feel a bond with the other contestants. I do. Whenever I run in to Brendon Pongia it's like running in to one of the Band of Brothers.

Mind you, I still felt it behoved me to beat up Rodney last Sunday morning on Q+A. I had to. That's the game, I'm afraid. And if I don't beat up a politician every now and then on telly I'll be written off as past it.

Which I ain't. It was Gerry Brownlee the week before that I might have got wrong. But Gerry's big enough and tough enough, and Gerry can dish it out and if you can dish it out ...

But what has me spinning is the smiling, happy return of Chris Carter, as if the madness of the winter didn't happen.

There he is, back at Parliament, vowing that he's still a Labour MP. He says his problem is not with the Labour party - it is with the Labour leadership.

Sorry Chris, the way it works in the television age is that they are one and the same. I don't know why he can't understand that. I think the poor man will be made to. Very quickly.