Obscure Box

I will begin with a confession. My early years in journalism included working for one weekly newspaper where as a poorly-paid and overworked junior hack I would also have to file the odd piece for the advertising department. These advertorials usually began with a phone call to whoever was paying for the advertorial, where I [...]

The poor soul following the G20 summit in London for the ABC got a bit confused over what’s English… and what’s not. On radio in Trouble at the G20 meeting in London, PM’s presenter Mark Colvin asked reporter Lyndal Curtis about a meal cooked up by a celebrity chef and served to the G20 leaders. [...]

Nice to see Tom Cruise actually sitting on a sofa this time as he chats with US talk show host Oprah Winfrey. But it is not Cruise’s antics that are a cause for concern. It’s Oprah. She’s inventing words as she chats with the actor. The interview was recorded in May 2008 at Cruise’s home [...]

Why bother going to see the much hyped Australia now we all know it has a happy ending? It’s all over the media how movie-maker Baz Luhrmann’s bowed to studio pressure to get rid of the sad ending where Hugh Jackman’s character dies. The UK’s The Guardian is in on the story with “Kidman’s outback [...]

One of Brisbane’s most popular watering holes was gutted by fire overnight. But was the pun intended in the report “Victory Hotel destroyed by fire” (Monday 28 July 2008) in the Brisbane Times. Little remains bar the charred hull of the popular nightclub, which was completely guttered by the fire believed to have started in [...]