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Tuesday 7 October 2008

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Diary

Barry Humphries

Wednesday, 7th November 2007

Barry Humphries on his week

Itake no interest in sport but I have been feeling a bit sorry for Australia lately. Our reputation for athletic prowess has taken a beating; no doubt vitiated by the epidemic of poofterism for which my homeland is increasingly famous. The other week the Guardian, lacking a new Maddie story, was not content with the usual vulgar triumphalism with which the British press greets its own success in sport. Instead it carried the front page headline ‘HAT TRICK OF LOSERS’. Aussie-bashing seems to be a deplorable new trend and I had hoped that my countrymen had sufficiently infiltrated the media to put a stop to this kind of thing. When will Rupert buy the Guardian?

A neighbour of mine from the slums of South Hampstead went to a picture show the other night at the comparatively new O2 centre on the Finchley Road. Halfway through the movie she felt something moving across her lap and it was not the exploratory hand of her partner, Lois. No, it was simply a large rat. Can you imagine what a perfect environment for rodents are these big, dark, warm auditoriums, carpeted with scrumptious popcorn? Think of them scuttling around your ankles while you are enjoying the felicitously themed movie Ratatouille.

I was meant to go to the Barbican this morning but it’s so ugly and hard to get at that I avoid it whenever possible. The current exhibition is called Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now. Why should I go to the Barbican when all I have to do is browse in a corner of my own library?

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