Because it’s election day, because this has been one of the wackiest, funniest, most insane, fun and entertaining Federal election campaigns in decades, because Mark Latham was rolled gold for all the wrong reasons, because PM Julia Gillard released doves (yes, she really did, and not a magician in sight), because former PM Kevin Rudd’s axing turned the ALP into a comic tragedy, and because Opposition leader Tony Abbott was armed with a Glock and stun gun, I bring you some funny highlights and observations of the day.

Whose bacon did you save?

Sydney butcher Victor Churchill getting into the 2010 Federal Election spirit

Let’s start with this brilliant window display in one of Australia’s best and most innovative butcher shops, Victor Churchill.

Two pigs – one wearing a red wig a la PMJG, the other in red Speedos like the LOTO wears and a sign: “Vote 1, whose bacon will you save?” Brilliant.

One shop assistant told me people asked if the pigs were real. She’s Irish. No beating around the bush. “It’s a butcher shop. What do they think?”

Well, there were a lot of people who bought the line about former President George W. Bush’s “plastic turkey” at Thanksgiving when visiting the troops in the Middle East.

Election window at Sydney butcher Victor Churchill

But back to the funnies: this from smart Tweeter @WogBlogger: “Overheard in polling queue in Wentworth: “Would you like a Greens how to vote card”? “No … second thoughts, I’ll take one. For comedy value.” Comedy gold.

Wentworth, of course, is the seat held by train spotter Malcolm Turnbull.

Style guru and social commentator @MelissaHoyer tweeted this: “Sad there r no sausages at Paddington St Francis of Assisi school. ‘It’s Paddington. They have sushi’, said one queue wag . .”

Another Tweeter, @marksmithers came up with this: “Outside polling station amusing myself by handing Australian Sex Party how to vote cards back to Family First campaigners #ausvotes”

And then there was this in The Australian by sharp election observer Samantha Maiden: “There was a touch of George W. Bush, a moment of Vladimir Putin, bare-chested, Old Spice-style—“I’m on a horse”—to the magic photographs of Tony Abbott let loose in a Campbelltown cop shop after midnight.”

The idea of Abbott as Old Spice man is too delicious for words and the rest of Maiden’s piece is a Must Read.

If you like your humour dripping with irony, how about former Labor hard-man and self-confessed Pinocchio, Graham Richardson who wrote in the same organ today: “I am confused…I am in utter despair”. Read Richo’s confession about Labor and PM JG’s woes.

Happy voting.

With the Australian federal election campaign in full swing and with Prime Minister Julia Gillard saying she “fully supports” the current 1550-strong deployment to Afghanistan, it’s worth focusing on the families of the brave Diggers who have lost their lives in the Middle East.

Since Australia deployed to Afghanistan in 2002, our nation has lost 17 soldiers – the most recent six in the last two months as the Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists increase their deadly campaign of burying improvised explosive devices in the countryside.

I recently spent some time with Victoria Hopkins, the widow of Corporal Mathew Hopkins, for a story in the latest edition of sunday magazine.

Victoria and Mathew Hopkins

I had written about her husband shortly after he was killed in action in March last year, and again when the Chief of Defence, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston released a report into his death.

Victoria Hopkins, who is now 24, is one of the bravest women I’ve met. When her husband was killed, she had been married a mere five weeks and had a five-week-old son, Alex.

Like many wives, husbands, partners, parents and family of the serving members of the Australian Defence Force, the unimaginable possibility had lingered in the back of her mind and she lived with the constant dread of that unwelcomed knock on the door ever since he left home in October 2008.

“Mat told me in his last email that he was going to try to ring me as soon as he got back from patrol. I hadn’t heard from him at all that day, I thought he must have been busy. I was actually up typing an email to him when there was a knock at the door.”

Three officers wearing their full dress uniforms and medals broke the news. “It felt like I had all the energy sucked out of me, like what should have been a happy time in my life – being married and having a baby and being a family – was just suddenly taken away by one bullet. They said it was instant, that there was nothing that could have been done to save Mat.”

Every time another Digger has died, Victoria is reminded of her loss in more ways than one.

It happened most recently when 23-year-old Private Nathan Bewes, who was on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan, was killed by an IED on Friday, July 16, 2010, taking the loss of Australian lives to 17.

Mathew Hopkins and his newborn son, Alex

And yet there is no easy way to cope, each new aching tragedy adds to the last, she told me, especially when she thinks that her young son will not grow up with his proud father. These are the small things that the rest of us don’t know about, but should.

“You just learn to move your life around these sort of things. There is no real way of moving on because it’s always going to be there; you just learn to accept that these sort of things can happen.”

Importantly, though, she has beautiful memories of her time with Mat. She smiles remembering the night they stayed up going through the alphabet from A-Z thinking of names for their unborn son (they chose Alexander Robert John, because it’s a strong name and will stand the test of ages); the night they had a “Sounds of Silence” dinner in the desert under Uluru, listening to an Aboriginal guide telling stories about the constellation; how thrilled Mat was to claim the honour of being the first to change their newborn son’s nappy; and how Mat loved her weekly care packages.

“I sent Mat a can of Spam once and he rang me up and told me off,” she says with a laugh. “For Christmas I sent him a gingerbread house which actually remained in tact all the way there, and a triple choc pudding that he ate in one go, and his Top Gear magazine – he loved his Top Gear magazine.”

She laughs at the folly of him taking on patrol a 1kg bag of lollies she sent so he could share them with his mates. His fully-loaded pack already weighed 60kg but Corporal Hopkins would not leave base without his sweet reminder of home and the woman who loved him.

Corporal Hopkins on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan

They wanted two or three kids and decided to settle in Darwin, where her husband hoped to continue his rising Army career.

“Mat and I had discussed that our kids were going to join the defence force if they didn’t have continuous study like TAFE or uni or they didn’t have a job. That was our decision,” she says.

Those dreams for a shared future were shattered by one single bullet.

But, as Victoria says, she has her memories and a treasured wooden box made by the Army carpenters in Afghanistan who deployed with her husband. It contains dozens of letters written by his mates.

“Reading the great things that they said about Mat really opened my eyes up more as to who he really was. There was a side of Mat that I knew but the side of Mat they were talking about was the side I didn’t know yet. They said Mat was a great leader, he was a funny guy, which I knew about, and it just made it very special hearing and reading those things and knowing that Mat meant more to a lot of other people as well as to Alex and me.”

This is Victoria’s story, as it appeared in the most recent edition of the sunday magazine (July 18, 2010) which is inserted in The Sunday Herald Sun in Victoria, and The Sunday Telegraph in NSW.

Lest we forget.

Victoria’s story, as it appeared in sunday magazine on July 18, 2010

Critically acclaimed writer and actor Brendan Cowell photographed by Rodger Cummins for The Age newspaper

Crticially acclaimed Australian actor Brendan Cowell sure is a busy man. Currently starring in two Australian films – the brilliant Beneath Hill 60 and I Love You Too – he is also working on the final draft of his first novel.

Cowell, back in Australia for the premiere of I Love You Too in Sydney tonight, is racing against the clock to finish the book, which he told me recently was a dark, coming of age story about male friendship.

“Or, a little bit of a love letter to my upbringing in Cronulla,” he said, adding that for the last few months he was “basically being a writer guy” in Los Angeles where he is presently based.

Cowell scored an advance for the unfinished manuscript on the back of his other prolific and successful career as a writer, which includes eight plays (Rabbit and Bed have both won awards), a critically acclaimed television series (Love My Way) and a movie (Ten Empty).

“I got a publishing deal a couple of years ago and I’ve been climbing the enormous mountain since,” he told me during an interview for a story I wrote recently for sunday magazine on his I Love You Too co-star Yvonne Strahovski.

Yvonne Strahovski, the Sydney-born co-star of I Love You Too

BTW: the charming Aussie rom-com is the brainchild of former Rove sidekick, Pete Helliar, who also stars in the flick with American actor Peter Dinklage (remember him from the brilliant Death at a Funeral?) It is a lovely story and a great first effort by Helliar with good performances by the lead actors.

But back to Cowell and his writing, which he says began as a youngster when he developed a love of books.

“I read a novel every week and I’m obsessed with books and I always have been. I was brought up with books and my mother was really into literature and I’ve always read and I’ve always seen it as the highest literary form, and the use of language.”

The 34-year-old actor hopes to have the book published at the end of the year by Pan Macmillan.

“The notes that I got [back from the editor after the first draft] were actually longer than the novel itself,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I’m battling away.”

Meanwhile, Cowell will be back in Sydney later in the year to star in a Sydney Theatre Company production of the Sam Shepard play, True West.

Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman, who has already helmed one play for the prestigious company and acted in the same play on Broadway, will direct the piece co-starring Cowell and Wayne Blair.

Kerri-Anne Kennerley, host of her own Monday-Friday morning show on Channel 9

While Channel 10 has lost 9am With David and Kim with the exits of co-hosts David Reyne and Kim Wilkins, the carpet strollers over at Channel Nine are working on extending Kerri-Anne Kennerley’s morning show.

Word from inside the Nine corridors is that Tom Malone, the wunderkind executive producer of Today and Mornings with Kerri-Anne, will find an hour-long time-slot for a “best of” show to be broadcast on Saturdays in 2010.

The decision is based on demand from advertisers and given that the indefatigable KAK is a cash-cow for the network – generating several millions from commercials and infomercials each year – Malone would be crazy to ignore the potential for extra revenue for the station.

Kennerley will choose her five or six favourite interviews or stories from the week which will be stitched together with taped promos and introductions filmed by KAK at the end of her Friday show.

In other changes to Mornings, Kennerley, one of the broadcast industries strongest survivors, will broadcast live Monday to Friday next year instead of pre-taping a couple of shows each week as she did in 2009.

As well, the program will move into the Today studio as soon as it’s vacated by Karl Stefanovic and Lisa Wilkinson – who has single-handedly improved the breakfast show ratings this year, challenging the dominance of rival Channel Seven show, Sunrise . That means a lightning-speed turnaround from one show to another.

Stay tuned.

C.D.B. Bryan's first non-fiction book, Friendly Fire

The literary world lost a true legend this week with the death of critically acclaimed author and journalist, Courtlandt Dixon Barnes Bryan, the author of Friendly Fire, one of the most seminal books about the Vietnam War.

Better known as C.D.B Bryan, the author died at his home in Connecticut on the east coast of the United States on Tuesday with his adored wife, Mairi Bryan, by his side.

Bryan, who has two children from his first marriage and one from his second, had been battling cancer. He was 73.

His loss is enormous both professionally and personally.

Courtlandt was a mentor to many younger authors – including myself. He generously offered incredible support, encouragement and wisdom particularly to first-time writers.

When I began work on my first book, Beyond Bad, The Life and Crimes of Katherine Knight, I visited Bryan at his home in Guilford, CT, and asked the obvious: how do you do it?

I’ll never forget what he said, in his fabulous east-coast accent that would have been at home in Fitzgerald’s Gatsby. “Simple, shoulders forward, eyes down, type. Oh, and if you get stuck, a martini at midday helps.”

Months later we corresponded about the art of writing; about structure, tone, intent and narrative.

“The book you write is never the book your first draft turns out to be,” he wrote to me. “Just get the words down and worry about polishing later.  The art is in the artlessness, in making it look easy and inevitable and, as Salinger said, ‘You just sit down and write the book you would most like to read yourself.  Dare to do it. Trust your heart,’ etc.”

Harper Prize winning book, P.S. Wilkinson, written by the late C.D.B. Bryan

He spoke from the experience of having written at least 10 books and scores of magazine articles.

Despite his impressive body of work, it is Friendly Fire for which he is best known. Compelling and insightful, it has been repeatedly cited in professional military studies.

Bryan, who had served in the US Army in the peacetime occupation of Korea from 1958-1960, and again in the Berlin Crisis of 1961, focused on the death of Corporal Michael Mullen in Vietnam in 1970 and the subsequent radicalisation of his all-American farmer parents, Gene and Peg, who became vociferous anti-war protestors in their home state of Iowa.

Corporal Mullen was a draftee and killed by American artillery shelling, aka friendly fire, which is anything but.

The book is an aching report about the loss of a child that could have been avoided and the impact of his death on his parents, both of whom lose their faith in their country and it’s leaders and don’t believe their son’s death was accidental.

Friendly Fire began as a feature article for The New Yorker magazine, then under the editorship of legendary William Shawn, but by the time Bryan had finished interviewing the Mullen family and many of Michael Mullen’s fellow soldiers – including the yet-to-be famous General (Stormin’) Norman Schwarzkopf, he decided to extend the single article into a three-part series and finally a book.

The best-selling book was critically acclaimed and turned into an award-winning television film starring Carol Burnett and Ned Beatty as Mullens’ parents, and Sam Waterston (from Law and Order fame) as Bryan. Not for nothing did it win six Emmy Awards.

Actor Sam Waterston from Law and Order fame, who played C.D.B. Bryan in the telemovie based on his book, Friendly Fire

Bryan, a Yale University graduate and the stepson of writer John O’Hara, was also an accomplished novelist and his first fictional work, P.S. Wilkinson, won the prestigious Harper Prize in 1965. A later novel, Beautiful Women; Ugly Scenes is one of the most astute – and painful – books about a marriage that is failing only to end in a bitter divorce.

A skilled writer, he could turn his hand to any subject – fictional and non-fiction. He wrote Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Alien Abduction, UFOs and the Conference at M.I.T; The National Air and Space Museum and The National Geographic Society: 100 Years of Adventure and Discovery. As well, he wrote for various magazines.

Cover of Beautiful Women, Ugly Scenes by author C.D.B. Bryan

And there was so much more to Bryan beyond the pages.

A bon vivant of the highest order, he had wit, charm and effortless style. He was a native storyteller and brilliant raconteur who used satire and wit in equal measure and like his wife, Mairi, could be counted on to be an engaging dinner companion.

I last saw Courtlandt on New Year’s day two years ago after the Bryans threw another of their renowned parties to welcome the arrival of 2007. He smoked, drank and cursed in equal abandon and, despite not being in great health, was in great spirits.

I’m told he was drinking his beloved martini shortly before he died.

He will be sorely missed, and always remembered.

Vale, Courtlandt Dixon Barnes Bryan.

My sincere condolences to Mairi and family.

The new leader of the Federal Opposition, Tony Abbott

Within minutes of Tony Abbott’s unexpected ascent to the leadership of the embattled Liberal Party yesterday, the women in the Twitterverse that I follow were baying for blood. Abbott’s blood, and lots of it.

They were furious that the man who has been dubbed Captain Catholic or the Mad Monk had toppled the “progressive” ETS-champion Malcolm Turnbull by a single vote.

The invective was so instant and so prolific that it prompted me to Tweet shortly after 10am: “Boy, oh boy, Tony Abbott has a lot of ground to make up to the Twitterverse women – there is anger out there, Mr Abbott.”

Popular Tweeter and influential columnist Mia Freedman wanted to know Abbott’s position on contraception and IVF, pretty much around the same time she Tweeted, “there are still some women who don’t know where their own clitoris is”. She said Abbott’s leadership equalled a bad day for women.

A few months ago I ran into Abbott and we were chatting about IVF and he said he was for babies, any which way they came.

As for contraception, well, as we all know from the man himself, he didn’t use it – he has publicly spoken and written about the unknown son he wrongly thought he fathered in his teenaged years. Not using contraception doesn’t mean he’s against it; neither does it mean he’s for it.

I can’t recall anyone asking Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, another committed church-going Christian about his position on contraception, abortion and IVF.

For the record, Abbott voted against removing the restricted goods provisions from the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 on the abortion drug RU-486 in 2005. But he was not Robinson Crusoe when it came to the conscience vote. And he wasn’t the first health minister to impose the restrictions.

Another professionally successful and clever woman, Marino Go, Tweeted: “I would rather eat my first born than vote for Abbott (with apologies to my first born)”. She later assured me the baby – now 16 – was safe. Phew!

Yet another typed: “Abbott once said that abortion should be outlawed in this country. People have such short memories. 1950’s here we come again!!”

Award winning journalist Tracy Grimshaw from A Current Affair

Last night Tracy Grimshaw pulled on the gloves and asked Abbott – on his first appearance as leader on A Current Affair - about his position on abortion.

He answered he was for “safe, legal, rare”. Who isn’t?

Somehow, Tweetchicks, I don’t think we’re headed back to the 1950s, even though Abbott does want to reintroduce fault-based divorce alongside the no-fault system, but only for those crazy masochists who prefer the harder, blame-game route to divorce.

Another popular Tweeter, journalist Julie Posetti, reckoned that Turnbull sounded 10 times better in defeat than Abbott with his “divisive and robotic” style.

Yet another wrote: “Oh God, Abbott’s even worse than I thought.”

The attacks were loud, many, and varied (I’m not even going to address those by the anti-Abbott blokes on Twitter, of whom there are also many).

What is it that makes some women hate Abbott? Is it because he’s proudly conservative? Or a Catholic? Would they be so vehemently anti-Buddhist, anti-Anglican, or anti-Muslim?

And is the antipathy rational? Or is it, as Miranda Devine wrote in her excellent Sydney Morning Herald column today, just that the chattering classes don’t like him?

A few months ago, Abbott launched his book, Battlelines, and as I wrote back then, Melbourne University Press boss Louise Adler agreed he was the “Liberal Party’s intellectual”. And she’s not known as a conservative.

Abbott likes women. He supports paid maternity leave, has taken part in the annual Pollie Pedal to raise money for breast cancer research (and other charities), and has raised three lovely daughters.

He even admitted in Parliament yesterday that the “flirting” with the Deputy Prime minister, Julia Gillard, must now stop.

She giggled.

Firting with the enemy? Yeah, Abbott’s really down on women.

Adam Scott on the cover of sunday magazine - Australia's most popular weekly magazine

A couple of weeks ago I spent the day with Australian golfer Adam Scott for an interview published last weekend in sunday magazine.

The 29-year-old Queenslander was intent on getting his form back for the final four tournaments of the year, the first of which was the Barclays Open in Singapore where he finished third on the course that’s delivered him victory twice before.

Then Scott tied for 6th at the Australian Masters in Melbourne on November 16, a finish that pushed him up the official world golf ranking chart to number 62. Sure, it’s still a long shot from his top rank of 3rd in 2007 but it is 14 better than his previous rank of 76, and will lift his confidence going into the Australian Open in December.

The thing that struck me about the lanky golfer was his down-to-earth nature and the honesty with which he addressed his form slump in 2009. “It’s been my worst year ever,” Scott told me bluntly, without shying away from the subject.

We spent the day at the gated community of Sanctuary Cove, where Scott lives when he’s not touring the world. He has a house high on the hill with views of the ocean and reminisced about how the neighbourhood has changed since he moved there from Adelaide with his parents, Phil and Pam, and younger sister Casey, while still in his teens.

“I got a shock when I came home this year and saw a McDonald’s on Hope Island,” he said with a laugh. “I thought ‘we have cracked it, Maccas on Hope Island’.”

Scott was a dream to work with and spent hours being shot for the magazine without complaint, apart from a joke “you’re in my personal space” when the photographer got, well, in his personal space for a close-up portrait.

Ana Ivanovic, the Serbian tennis glamour who is also golfer Adam Scott's girlfriend (picture www.anaivanovic.com)

Nothing was off limits. He revealed how he was also happily involved with Serbian tennis ace Ana Ivanovic and spoke about how their relationship began and how it’s been going this year. Great, apparently.

Not surprisingly with such a high profile girlfriend, Scott has become the focus of the paparazzi and gossip magazines, several of which had  him linked with Academy Award winning actress, Kate Hudson, earlier in the year. Not true. Before Ivanovic, he was in a steady, seven-year relationship. He ain’t the playboy some make him out to be.

“When I first started playing I really flew under the radar a lot. When you have no status on the tour anywhere, you are just another one of the guys but as soon as you are successful you are in the spotlight,” he says.

A few things: Scott will take possession of a $36.95 million Gulfstream G450 jet next year as part of a promotional deal with the aviation giant. The plane is not valued at $75 million as has been previously reported.

He is a huge fan of novelist Dan Brown and reckons Angels and Demons is his best book yet. He is currently reading the latest Brown tome but has problems staying awake on flights, which is where he does most of his reading.

I’ll be catching up with Scott – and a few other top-name golfers including Geoff Ogilvy, Greg Chalmers. John Daly and Freddie Couples - again at a pre-Aussie Open cocktail party at one of Sydney’s best restaurants, Guillaume, in December.

More about that later.

Kurt Fearnley, Australian paralympian and marathoner who conquered the Kokoda Trail

Australian Paralympian and multi marathon winner Kurt Fearnley has conquered the Kokoda trail after an epic 10-day journey.

For those of us who know him and have seen him in action, we’re not surprised. Back in May, the 28-year-old took part in the inaugural Para Burn category of the 9th annual Balmoral Burn fun run up a very steep hill on Awaba Street in Mosman, which is put on by the Humpty Dumpty children’s charity.

He entered that race to help sick and injured kids and, in his big-hearted way, Fearnley later told me that he decided to tackle Kokoda because he wanted to help raise awareness about men’s health issues, particularly depression.

When I asked him about doing the trek, he said: “Kokoda is such a big part of Australian history and it’s my job week in-week out to race for Australia, so I thought it would be a good thing to do.”

Well, he’s done it. Yesterday Fearnley arrived at the finish, having crawled the 96km route on his hands in an epic test of endurance, courage, character, fortitude and inner strength.

He’s done a great thing. And, once gain, he’s done it for others. Kurt Fearnley is all heart, all hero.

He deserves our respect.

Here’s my original interview with Kurt (as it appeared in the Humpty Dumpty Foundation’s second annual Good Egg magazine.)

Australian Paralympian Kurt Fearnley usually roars along in his wheelchair at 35kph but when he won the inaugural Para Burn at the 9^th annual Balmoral Burn in May, he was cruising along at a mere two kilometres per hour.

But don’t think the slower pace was a comfortable ride for Australia’s wheelchair Marathon Man who has held every title for races longer than 800m.

“It was definitely a shoulder burn, my goodness. It was one of those things where every single metre of that entire race was a challenge – if you didn’t catch the wheel quick enough you would roll back down the hill,” says Fearnley.

“It was a grind and a tough slog and because we are usually travelling at 35kph it’s very rare to see or hear the crowd as you’re slugging it out. But in the Para Burn we did and it very rewarding to see people on the sidelines cheering for us, and it’s rare to get to soak that in.

“It was a fantastic and positive atmosphere and was a lot of fun; it was a really successful day.”

The 28-year-old world champion wheelchair athlete from Carcoar in country New South Wales won the inaugural burn in 5 minutes and 31 seconds – “the time was better than I was originally thinking”.

Humpty’s founder and executive chairman Paul Francis was thrilled with the expansion of the Balmoral Burn to include Special and Para Burn categories.

“This means that the race is truly a community event, open to everyone, and having an athlete of Kurt’s calibre on Awaba Street was amazing,” Francis says. “The crowd loved it, and that’s what the Balmoral Burn is all about – community involvement. The positive and warm mood on the day reflected how important the new races are for Humpty.”

Fearnley was born with lumbosacral agenesis, a condition in which his legs did not develop fully. He can feel and move them but they are not strong enough for him to walk on. But that has never stopped him.

The youngest of five boys, Fearnley was always involved in sport and played rugby league and well as taking part in school sports carnivals. He took up wheelchair racing at the age of 14 and has never looked back.

Fearnley first represented Australia at the Sydney Paralympics and four years later won the T54* 42km marathon at the Athens Paralympics despite pushing the last five kilometres on a flat tyre. He repeated the gold medal victory at the 2008 Beijing Games where he also won the silver for the 800m T54 and 5000m T54, and a bronze in the 1500m T54.

In the coming months, Fearnley will compete in the Sydney, Chicago and New York marathons before tackling the gruelling Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea with his family and friends for support.

The 96km trek is known as one of the toughest challenges for able-bodied walkers, but Fearnley plans to crawl it in a bid to raise awareness of men’s health issues including prostate cancer and depression.

“I crawled around as a kid, I didn’t use my chair as a young fella and I’m used to crawling, but 96 km through jungle is not something I have done before or plan to do again,” he says with a laugh adding that he likes to challenge himself and get out of his “comfort zone”.

“Kokoda is such a big part of Australian history and it’s my job week in-week out to race for Australia, so I thought it would be a good thing to do.”

Meanwhile, he promises to get his “arms cranking” for the second Para Burn next year – “if I’m in the country”.

*T54 is the Olympic classification for track event for athletes with spinal cord disabilities.

Vic Davies at his fund-raiser in August. The radio funny man died of cancer on Saturday Nov 7 2009, aged 55. (picture with Sandra Lee)

Australian radio has lost a true talent with the death of the funny-man broadcaster Vic Davies, who passed away decades too soon yesterday.

Davies, 55, was diagnosed with lung cancer in May this year and bravely – and with extreme good humour – battled several rounds of chemotherapy before succumbing to the disease.

He died at 1.30pm on Saturday and is survived by his adored and adoring wife, Jodie, four children, Harmony, Carrie, Rick and Jamie, and four grandchildren (yup, he packed a lot into a short life).

The indisputable star of Triple M’s now defunct Club Veg made a courageous appearance at an all-star fund-raiser held in his honour at the Bridge Hotel in Rozelle in August. As I reported back then, he received a rousing reception when he made an appearance while beaming his trademark cherubic grin and clutching a pillow and a can of VB.

As a mark of his enduring popularity and skill behind the microphone, more than 400 friends and fans had gathered especially for the sell-out event, which was one of Vic’s last public appearances.

Davies’s dear friend, Rina Ferris, yesterday announced his death on behalf of his beloved family.

“Vic was loved by many and we were honoured to call him our friend. We will always miss him and he will remain in our hearts forever,” she said. “Rest in peace, my friend.”

Davies ruled the radio airwaves on-and-off for three decades after getting his big break on 2JJJ in the 1980s. He then teamed up with Malcolm Lees and the duo created the unbeatably funny and irreverent Club Veg. They moved to the House of Ms in 1992 after another FM radio legend, Doug Mulray, hung up the cans.

Veg lasted a year before inexplicably getting the axe, but the station resurrected the clever duo five years later and they once again stormed the ratings and dominated drive-time FM radio.

Vale, to an enormous figure on the radio. Vic Davies will be sorely missed, but never forgotten and forever remembered and heard.

With sincere condolences to Jodie, his children and grandchildren.

The late newspaperman Frank Devine, author of Older and Wiser, at The Australian in Sydney

The brains trust at Sydney production company Zapruder’s Other Films know when they’re on to a good thing which is why Andrew Denton and his right-hand-woman Anita Jacoby are in the middle of finishing another series of their top-rated Elders series for the ABC.

The first series of the show, itself a spin-off from Denton’s much missed Enough Rope, featured fascinating, in-depth interviews with members of our superannuated generation – all of whom still have much to offer and are offering it.

Denton and Jacoby, to their credit, realised that there were plenty more people to mine for knowledge and experience – some of it good, some of bad, but all of interesting.

Which brings me to my point: Frank Devine’s posthumously published prince of a book called Older and Wiser that will hit bookstores tomorrow.

The book is a collection of Devine’s essays from 2002 to 2009 originally published in Quadrant magazine after he retired “as a day labourer at the age of 70” from The Australian newspaper where he had previously been editor.

His intention was to examine getting old but after five years of writing his columns he realised he’d been “goofing off” and writing about everything but. Well almost. Devine’s facility with language ranks among the very best and his essays are sensible, endearing, charming, enlightening, clever, provocative and laugh-out-loud funny in equal measure.

Australia has a peculiar notion about age and retirement. Unlike many European and Asian nations, we don’t revere our elders or take from them the infinite wisdom they possess about life and living. They’ve been there, done that, which is why we should appreciate it. Yet, somehow, we don’t.

Remember the push to have former Prime Minister John Howard retire at 64 – as if 64 was the intellectual use-by date for employment? Whatever you think of his politics, there is no denying Howard was still as vigorous as a 44 or even 34-year-old. Not for nothing is he currently working on his memoir while travelling the world at the invitation of various heads of government and businesses that wisely seek his counsel on all manner of things.

So back to Devine and Older and Wiser. As an example of his acute insight and wit (and that of a grandson) take the following extract from an essay called Two Degrees of Separation about being a grandparent (he was that six times over – one granddaughter and five grandsons).

Frank Devine's new book, Older and Wiser

“It’s a mistake for grandparents to get ideas above our station. This was made clear to me when, in the temporary and unavoidable absence of his parents, I took a grandson from the rugby wing of our family (we also have a robust soccer wing) to his under-eights game one recent Saturday. We get on well and he was his usual ebullient self on the way to the ground. On the return journey, however, he was somewhat taciturn.

“You missed your dad?” I suggested.

Tactfully: “A bit.” His father is the team coach.

“What’s wrong with a grandfather?”

“Well…you’re old.”

“So?”

“Well, you can’t run around the field.”

“How do you know? You’ve never seen me try.”

Recourse to his gift for comic invention had become inevitable: “Sometimes at training we accidentally step on Dad’s foot with our sprigs. He just swears but, if we did it to you, I think you’d go down.”

Each of the essays in the hardback volume – the first title to be published by Quadrant Books – contains sentences, ideas, logic and laughs that sparkle like newly polished gems.

An early shot of newspaper man Frank Devine playing billiards

Devine writes about the “special choreography” of a marriage that survives and thrives after 50 years; about Margot Kingston’s “insistent drone of scold” in her book Not Happy, John!; about the delights of reading Wodehouse out loud to his wife – “once caught in the Wodehouse web there is no escape”; on Winston Churchill “pommy bastard”; about being home alone – “my household duties over the years have been light but I am by no means hapless. Not everybody accepts me as fully hap, however”; and extracts a revelatory and compelling conversation with historian Geoffrey Blainey who admits “to some extent I lead two lives”.

Devine’s brilliance can be found in the myriad of subjects he tackles and conquers, and the subtlety and finesse with which he executes the written word.

Older and Wiser is as beautiful to behold as the words contained therein. And as this collection of 34 essays from a total of 67 amply proves, Devine is among the finest wordsmiths Australia, sorry, New Zealand, has ever produced.

(Full disclosure: Frank Devine, who died in July from cancer, was a close personal friend.)

The book retails for $44.95