Commentary on the impact of stardom

Peter B Buckley of New Ulm, Minnesota, USA, lords it over us with this celebrity encounter (C8): “In 1961, my father and I were staying at the Savoy in London when there was a knock on the door. It was the hotel manager who informed him that our bath had overflowed and flooded the suite below. After finding out the room where the affected people had been moved to, we went down to apologise and present a bottle of champagne as a peace offering, as it were. My father knocked on the door, and as it opened, he said, ‘Why, hello Larry.’ It was Sir Laurence Olivier. It was then that I learnt they had met back in 1941, ironically at the Savoy, during World War II.”

Not to be outdone, Lance Dover of Pretty Beach was browsing one lunchtime in the tiny RM Williams city store. “I thought I was the only customer, until the change room door opened, and I came face to face with Lauren Bacall. I was, unusually, left speechless as we just nodded to each other. She was appearing in Sweet Bird of Youth at the time. The Rolls-Royce outside was nice looking too.”

“Sorry Tom Meakin, no offence meant, but to your mother’s claim that she was playing hide and seek with Profumo, I can only repeat the famous Mandy Rice-Davies reply: ‘Well she would say that, wouldn’t she?’” With thanks to Jeremy Parsons of Milton.

“If Pauline Hanson would let the back of her hair grow a bit, we would have the first sighting of a red mullet in Canberra,” notes John Elder of Annerley (Qld). “Until then we’ll have to put up with the plain old red snapper.”

Jack Dikian of Mosman observes that “Trump declared the US would officially refer to AI as ‘Super Intelligence’. I’m surprised he didn’t land on ‘American Intelligence’.”