Explosive Detection Dog Sarbi, in her custom-made red jacket to denote the EDD Section, at the launch of the new book, Saving Private Sarbi (picture Laura Robins)

The former top dog of the Australian Army launched my new book, Saving Private Sarbi, The True Story of Australia’s Canine War Hero, this week with a moving speech in which he highlighted the unbreakable bond between the explosive detection dogs and their handlers.

In a distinguished event at Victoria Barracks in Sydney’s Paddington, Lieutenant General Ken Gillespie, AC, DSC, CSM (ret) introduced the four-legged hero, Sarbi, saying the highly-trained EDD and her canine counterparts were unrivalled in their ability to protect soldiers from the lethal roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices, the enemy’s weapon of choice in Afghanistan.

No technology had yet been developed that could do what the EDDs do on a daily basis – putting their four paws on the line every time they went to work sniffing out IEDs, LtGen Gillespie said.

Sarbi, who turned nine years old on September 11, was a divine doggie diva as she sat politely on the podium while the General extolled her virtues in front of 70 invited guests from the media, military and mutt worlds.

She even signed an exclusive series of the book by dipping her front right paw in non-toxic ink (vegetable dye). Six limited edition, numbered copies of Saving Private Sarbi pawed by Sarbi and signed by me will be auctioned for Legacy and the Australian Institute for Deaf and Blind Children in the coming year.

Sarbi’s handler, Sergeant D, was unable to attend the launch as he is on his fourth deployment to Afghanistan. His identity is protected – for operational security reasons. He joined the army in 1995 and became a dog handler in 2000.

Among the guests at the launch were several officers and members of the Australian Army family including the wife of  Major General Mick Slater, the officer who recently returned from leading the Queensland floods recovery.

Royal Australian Navy specialist clearance diver, Paul de Gelder, attended, as did one of the original ‘tunnel rats’ from the Vietnam War, Sandy MacGregor.

Well known media identities included Miranda Devine and Piers Akerman from News Limited, Janine Perrett from SkyBusiness, radio and television commentator Melissa Hoyer , gun reporter Kate McClymont from The Sydney Morning Herald, as well as one of the stars of Good News World, Mikey Robins. Fellow authors Caroline Overington (also of The Australian), Sue Williams, Lynne Cossar and Jimmy Thomson were also in attendance.

EDD Sarbi signs a limited edition paw-print for her book, Saving Private Sarbi (picture Sandra Lee)

Some background.

Sarbi and Sgt D have been a team since Sarbi joined the Army in 2005.

Sergeant D was Sarbi’s original trainer and has been her only operational handler.

Sarbi and Sgt D were part of the extensive security team for the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, and in 2007 were on their first deployment to Afghanistan, where they distinguished themselves with some serious ‘finds’ of enemy weapons and bombs and bomb-making material.

In 2008, Sarbi and Sergeant D were deployed to Uruzgan a second time.

On September 2, they were on patrol in the remote region of Khas Uruzgan.

Sgt D was with 11 troopers from the elite Australian Special Air Service Regiment, about a dozen battle-hardened men from the United States Special Forces, and a team of soldiers from the Afghan National Army.

The Special Forces patrol had one mission: to remove the Taliban from the region.

In the previous 24 hours, they had done a pretty good job of it. En route to base after a successful operation, they were ambushed by up to 100 Taliban fighters hidden in well-fortified positions.

So began a four-hour, do-or-die battle in which nine of the 12 Aussies were wounded, including Sergeant D. Three had life threatening injuries.

Sergeant D’s American counterpart, a dog handler by the name of Sergeant Gregory Rodriguez, was killed in the ambush. Several Afghan soldiers were also wounded. An Afghan interpreter was blown off the back of a US Humvee with Sergeant D and sustained near fatal wounds.

As Lt General Gillespie pointed out at the launch on Wednesday, SAS Trooper Mark Donaldson, distinguished himself during the battle by running into the line of fire several times to help draw fire away from his mates, and to rescue the wounded Afghan interpreter. For these heroic actions, he was later awarded the prestigious Victoria Cross.

Another soldier was awarded the Medal For Gallantry for his actions.

Like her handler, Sarbi was also wounded in the ambush when a razor sharp piece of shrapnel from a rocket propelled grenade sheered through the carabiner’s clip that fastened her to Sgt D. At the end the firefight, she went missing in action, lost in the Afghanistan countryside for the next 13 months.

LtGen Gillespie launches Saving Private Sarbi, with the hound in red beside him

A lot of people wonder about the bond between handler and hound in the Army, but as Lt General Gillespie said at the launch, that connection can never be underestimated.

Many in the audience – including me – fought back tears as the General told of meeting Sergeant D in a field hospital at Tarin Kot the day after the ambush. He was at one end of a ward with seven other wounded Diggers, all lying across from each other, toe to toe.

Lt General Gillespie moved through the ward checking on each of the wounded soldiers and finally came to Sergeant D. The General said he was shocked by the soldier’s face.

“It was almost completely pockmarked,” he said.

Sgt D had also been sliced with shrapnel and razor sharp metal fragmentation from rocket propelled grenades. The only parts of his face unmarked were around his eyes where protective glasses had prevented certain blindness. His legs, torso and arms were also wounded.

To get an idea of how bad he looked, it’s worth noting that during interviews for my book, Sgt D told me that as the convoy of five Humvees roared back to their remote Fire Base Anaconda, he tried to stop a fellow Australian with more serious wounds falling unconscious. The Digger kept closing his eyes, and Sgt D feared if he lost consciousness, he might die.

In the hospital the next day, the soldier told Sgt D he was never in danger of slipping into unconsciousness when he closed his eyes.

“He just didn’t want to look at me because my face was so cut up and looked pretty horrible. I didn’t know how bad it was,” Sgt D told me.

That was the face looking up at LtGen Gillespie. The General asked Sgt D what he had done and who he was.

“I’m the dog handler, Sir.”

As Sgt D explained that Sarbi had gone MIA towards the end of the battle, the veteran soldier choked up and couldn’t finish his sentence. The other seven wounded men all turned their heads away, out of respect and because they were, as the General said, equally distraught by the loss of their four-legged warrior.

It was a telling – and extraordinarily moving – part of the General’s speech

The bond between the explosive detection dogs and their handlers is unbreakable, and the dogs also are a shot of morale for the men and women they work with and around in Afghanistan. It’s no wonder the men in the hospital ward with Sergeant D had to turn away as he did his best to explain what happened.

Animals – especially dogs, and more particularly working dogs on whom we humans rely for so many things – have the incredible ability to lift our spirits; they have the power to transform us humans into something better than we are; to teach us compassion and kindness, and the rewards of unbidden loyalty.

In a way, the ability of the explosive detection dogs to foster a sense of camaraderie and kinship with their two-legged compatriots is unrivalled. It’s why the Special Forces soldiers never gave up on Sarbi and kept an eye out for her every time they went out on patrol. It’s why they finally got her back – in one piece, if a little fatter!

Sarbi was a dog, but she was one of them – an Australian Digger. They never get left behind.

Sarbi finally returned to Australia in December last year and is now back at work at the School of Military Engineering in Holsworthy, training new dog handlers.

She will retire when Sgt D returns from his current deployment to Afghanistan and live out the rest of her days as a pampered pooch, with another retired explosives detection dog, Vegas.

You can buy the book online at any number of sites, or by starting at Allen and Unwin’s homepage here. Saving Private Sarbi is also available in eBook format.

Mia Freedman about to debut in her own talk show on Sky News (picture Max Doyle, Fairfax)

With the success of Channel Ten’s female chat fest The Circle, it comes as no surprise that Sky News is getting in on the action with the post-Easter debut of a new female-friendly show hosted by Sydney journalist and regular Sky guest, Mia Freedman.

Freedman and Sky insiders are being tight-lipped about the show that could challenge Ten’s new ratings juggernaut and popular newcomer Chrissie Swan, who is up for three Logies.

Or it might find its way to an evening time-slot amid the highly respected political shows PM Agenda followed by The Nation With [political heavyhitter] David Speers and Paul Murray Live, helmed by the multi-talented  2UE drive-timebroadcaster.

Sky recently boosted its political credentials by giving Helen Dalley and Graham Richardson shows in the evening timeslot, and it ran a NSW-election special called So You Want To Be A Politician.

Freedman refused to confirm her imminent debut when I asked her via Twitter yesterday, saying only; “So many rumours”. However, I can report the show will involve a revolving panel of guests from the familiar worlds of fashion, media and celebrity, in which she has a slew of mates and contacts, mirroring her spectacularly popular blog, MamaMia. Politicos also have been approached to appear.

News of the Freedman experiment follows speculation in the Media column in The Australian earlier this year that Sky news boss Angelo Frangopoulos was considering giving her a talk show. It also follows the short-lived effort by Sky to launch 2GB superstar broadcaster Ray Hadley in the evenings. Experiments, however, don’t always work. Hadley quit after four episodes including one in which a young woman appeared in a bikini and boxing gloves (don’t ask), reportedly upsetting some of serious players at the station.

The only questions remaining for the Freedman TV trial are: what time-slot will it get and what will it be called? If the show lands in the hard-hitting political nightly line-up the title Mama Mia might not be a perfect fit, though I suspect it would work if the show goes into day-time.

Freedman was a successful magazine editor at ACP Magazines before a brief and unsuccessful stint at Channel Nine with the ill-fated, all-female day-time show, The Catch-Up (based on the US show, The View). It was boned after four months of low ratings.

She is a mother of three and successful pop culture commentator, author and Fairfax columnist, proving that some women can have it all. At once. Eventually.

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.

Tiger Woods in the new Nike ad

Here’s why Nike’s new 30-second advertisement featuring a robotic-looking Tiger Woods and the voice of his late father, Earl, is wrong on so many levels.

Here’s what the late Earl says:

“Tiger, I am more prone to be inquisitive to promote discussion. I want to find out what your thinking was. I want to find out what your feelings are, and did you learn anything?”

And here’s why I think Nike have totally missed the point. The advertisement cements Woods’s reputation as a cold-hearted, self-centered man. It’s not cutting edge. It is pure exploitation.

Sure, Woods has generated hundreds of millions of dollars for Nike since the sporting goods company signed the golfer as a name years ago, but this is no way to resurrect his thoroughly (self) ruined reputation.

It is impossible to ignore what Woods has done. Golf nuts and men have tried to ignore it, but women and all sports fan with a moral compass pointing north can’t. And already the ad has been called creepy. I agree.

Here’s why.

1)            Nike and Woods are usng Woods’s dead father. Ewww. Woods clearly has given his OK to use his late father’s voice. Double ewwww.

2)            Tiger says nothing in the ad. He merely stares into the camera. The ad reveals nothing and answers none of the questions his late father asks. Tiger Woods doesn’t discuss; he doesn’t say what he was thinking; he doesn’t express his feelings, nor does he reveal if he’s learned a thing. He simply stares – like a cold-hearted robot. Like the cold-hearted millionaire who tipped cheap on his black AmEx card. He lets his dead father do the talking, and that’s cheap, that’s easy, that’s a major cop out.

Tiger Woods with his wife Elin, children and two dogs - the picture perfect family - or is it?

3)            Woods has been exposed as a) cheap, b) dirty, c) someone who engages is unprotected sex with many women other than his wife, d) a liar, e) an egoist who continues to play by his own rules even when in rehab – remember the individual cabin? and f) a manipulator – the latest woman to come forward says they had a one-night-stand when she was his teenaged neighbour.

And where did he get up to this behaviour? In the family car and in his office next to the baby’s crib. Eww. Eww. Ewww.

Tiger Woods might be good at golf, and he might prove it at the Masters in Augusta this weekend, but he’s bad at everything else, and he’s already proved that.

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.

World champion boxer Danny Green - getting ready for the 2009 Sydney to Hobart yacht race

It took Danny Green just two days – and a pile of changed nappies and school runs with his kids Archie and Chloe – to come back to earth from his brilliant 2-minute fight with American Roy Jones Junior.

Green told me earlier today that he couldn’t wait to get home to Perth after spending nearly two months in Sydney in training for the fight on December 2.

The world champ shocked the boxing world when he unexpectedly KO’d the 40-year-old Jones in two minutes to successfully defend his International Boxing Organisation cruiserweight crown. No one – except Green himself – had given him a chance against the multi-world prizefighter.

“It was very satisfying after 20 years of boxing,” he said with typical understatement. “Jones worried me. He is one of the greatest fighters of all time and he is going to go down in the record books as an all-time great. As a fighter, he is electric and so exciting.

“No one really gave me a shake, and understandably – he is Roy Jones.”

Green explained his strategy to 650 people today at a charity fund-raiser for the Loyal Foundation, which is entering a celebrity crew (including Green) in the 2009 Rolex Sydney-Hobart yacht race.

Danny Green at the Loyal charity fund-raiser

His tactic was to run in early and land a punch anywhere he could, just to “let him know you are in for a long night, fella”.

As history knows, it worked and Green landed a ripper and Jones’s long night lasted just two minutes and two seconds.

“I thought wow, he is in trouble and the punch made a helluva smack.”

I met Green, his adored wife, Nina, and kids Chloe and Archie early last year when I was writing a cover story  for sunday magazine around the time he retired for the first time. Today he told me there was no way that retirement was on the cards – at least not any time soon.

“No, I’m having too much fun, I love boxing,” he said. He returned to the ring for the simple reason that he missed the sport.

Meanwhile, the 36-year-old is gearing up for the Sydney-Hobart. “To be honest, I am looking forward to it but I am shitting myself.”

The boxer with a massive heart joins Olympian Grant Hackett, Wallaby great Phil Kearns, rugby star Phil Waugh and television host Larry Emdur on the super maxi Loyal, which will be skippered by Sean Langman, an experienced yachtie who was born on a boat in Rushcutters Bay and has been sailing since the day he first drew breath. . They hope to raise $1 million for various charities around the country and they aim to win line honours in one of the most thrilling and dangerous ocean yacht races around the world.

The super maxi was left lying in a paddock in Auckland until four months ago when Langman, who had raced in 18 Sydney to Hobarts, and a mate got their hands on it. They have lengthened it and gave it a new keel and new sails. “There’s lot of challenges in front of us and I give it [the yacht] at good chance,” he said.

Green said he had enormous respect for the professional yachtsmen and women who he reckons have way more courage than any boxer or rugby player.

“They are going out into the unknown and you are at the mercy of the climate – that’s just ridiculous,” he said. And of skipper Langman Green joked: “He’s got a pair of figs on him like cantaloupes.”

Phil Kearns has nominated the Humpty Dumpty Foundation as his preferred charity to benefit from funds raised.

If you want to donate to any of the sailors’ chosen charities, go here.

One of Sophie Gralton's paintings (not the one auctioned at the Black Dog Institute annual gala dinner)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Sydney artist Sophie Gralton who was rejected by the Australian version of The Apprentice for one of the show’s challenges.

Well, I bet the men’s team of Morello, Gavin and Sam – who chose two other artists instead of Gralton only to be out-sold by more than $25,000 by the women’s team – would be kicking themselves to learn that a painting by Gralton sold for $50,000 at auction in Sydney last night.

The painting was bought by a mining magnate at the annual shindig put on by the Black Dog Institute at the Westin Hotel in Sydney, which was emceed by the ABC’s Julian Morrow.

Gralton donated the artwork to the institute at the request of a childhood friend whose 14-year-old son committed suicide last year.

The Gralton painting that sold for $50,000 titled If You Had Been His Own Boy

The auction was going well and when the bid reached $38,000 Gralton walked on stage to explain that she used to push the 14-year-old boy, who I won’t name, in a pram when he was a baby. As coincidences go, the boy in the painting was actually the teenager’s little brother adding another level of poignancy to the occasion.

Organisers then re-opened the auction and the bids rocketed to $50,000, all of which was donated to fund research into the impact of depression on teenagers.

Wonder what Morello, who won The Apprentice, would think about that?

Painting titled "Beige Like Her Complexion" by artist Sophie Gralton (picture Sandra Lee)

The most recent episode of the Australian version of The Apprentice was manna from heaven for five little-known Aussie artists.

Aboriginal painters Tarisse and Sarrita King starred in the 7^th episode and sold the most number of art works in the Art Attack contest between teams Pinnacle and Eventus. Pop artist Ben Frost, landscapist Laura Matthews and Shannon Rees were also featured.

But who were the two artists who missed out on their 15 minute of television fame?

Here’s a scoop: one is none other than successful Sydney artist Sophie Gralton who is represented by respected art dealer Charles Hewitt at whose eponymous gallery in Darlinghurst The Apprentice men staged their art show, which was the subject of the episode broadcast on November 9.

One of the toughest challenges confronting any artist is building a profile and audience so an appearance on a national television show like The Apprentice was a golden opportunity for those selected by the contestants competing to win a job with the show’s host, Mark Bouris.

And the talented King sisters, whose late father William (Bill) King Jungala was the well-known respected artist and elder from the Gurindji tribe in Katherine in the Northern Territory, should be in a position to now capitalise on their growing success.

But back to Gralton. A former textile designer and National Art School graduate (as well as a mother of three), she has been painting for more than two decades and is known for her use of textiles and various media in her large and often colourful pieces to which she gives quirky titles such as Beige Like Her Complexion when there’s not a spot of beige to be seen.

She was in the middle of finalising her most recent solo show at Hewitt’s gallery when The Apprentice was filmed, and two weeks later, it was a near sell-out with all but two of her paintings being snapped up by collectors.

While Gralton’s art didn’t make the Channel Nine reality series, the show’s cameras captured the bubbly blonde for a nanosecond in the crowd at the Pinnacle event, which flopped compared to the show staged by the women of team Eventus who sold a staggering $30,000 worth of art by Frost and the King sisters.

In comparison, the blokes managed to rack up $5000 in sales of Rees’s works.

Meanwhile, I have to admit I am quietly addicted to the local edition of The Apprentice even if Mark Bouris’s pistol-pointing hand-signal when announcing “you’re fired” is utterly ridiculous. He’s no Donald Trump.

Full disclosure: I am a fan of Gralton’s work and have six pieces of her art, the first of which I bought in 2000 is pictured here.

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