FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 352, 12 May 1928, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By

“THE LOOK-OUT MAN.”

A WEE DEOCH AND DORIS “Gin a body toast a body, need a body tell?” This must be the lament of the Scots who had a convivial nicht recently in a Wellington tearoom. It was a braw occasion, but the sequel was not so bonnie. The proprietress was haled before a magistrate on a charge of allowing liquor to be consumed in her tearooms after hours. There was a fine spirit, and even a touch of logic in her defence. Had she known of the restrictions it would have been impossible (she pleaded) to stop the Scots from drinking. And yon man fined the woman. The Sassenach!

TALKING OF RAILWAYS

“There is enough railway track in Great Britain to go twice round the world,” says a morning paper. The essential difference between Great Britain and New Zealand is that there is enough railway track here to tempt one to go six times round the world, each time carefully avoiding the Dominion. FILLETED! It is reported that a Grimsby firm is turning fish bones into ornaments for women’s hats. That is all very well, but what are they going to put in place of the “fish” on the menu now? Gallant diners will have to be careful in their comment at a glittering table, and avoid the enthusiastic expression of Punch’s fishmonger who, in the deep field at the village cricket match when the curate cleanbowled an obdurate batsman, cried ecstatically, “Filleted!” * * • SHELLS Exceedingly versatile is the Hon. Hugh D. Mclntosh, ex-newspaper owner, present occupier of Broome Park, once the home of Lord Kitchener, and the man who had the honour of introducing Aucklanders to Vera Pearce, whose legs soon won her a prominent place in musical comedy. Those legs walked right past the winning post in Sydney’s first beauty contest —oh, how many years ago is it now? —and into the theatrical spotlight. On his return to Sydney last week Mr. Mclntosh, who has also won world-wide attention as a first-class fight promoter, announced that he had organised a chicken farm on the most palatial poultry lines. In harmony with all his previous big moves in business, Mr. Mclntosh did not break eggs in Britain on a small scale. With one swoop he ordered 12,000 one-day chicks, and placed them on the broad acres that Lord Kitchener used to roam, thinking of shells very different from those laid by hens! * * * BRAGG ADOCCHIO Preening himself on the victory of his countrymen over the Australians in the Davis Cup contest, the Italian Consul at Melbourne said: “It shows the Dagoes can do something.” One sees in imagination a dethroned dictator racing for a quill:—“Dear Mr. Consul, —It is well you are in Melbourne, for your tennis champions would give you little thanks for including them in the category of canecutters, restaurateurs and the like in Australia to which I originally affixed the appellation. If you have seen fit to extend the term to include re;l Italians, I am sorry for you.-—Billy Hughes.” LORELEI IN LONDON Although London is really nothing at all of course—after New York —the gentlemen and their girl friends in the audience laughed wonderfully when Lorelei, the famous gold-digging character of Anita Loos’s book, made her appearance at the Prince of Wales Theatre. But then, we mean to say, when you have a girl like Lorelei and a girl like Dorothy on the stage, you could hardly help laughing. Well, not really. Because, although seeing a girl’s hand kissed by a gentleman may make you feel good, a diamond and a sapphire ring last for ever, and the way that Lorelei got rings and things from that funny old man, Sir Francis Baakman, was enough to make any audience laugh. Funnier still was the way in which Dorothy backed her up. By the way, no fewer than 10,000 American blondes answered the call when Anita Loos had to select the girl to play the screen lead in “Gentlemen Prefer.” Well, not really. At least that is what the American publicity experts told us, but then, of course, they actually knighted Mr. P. C. Wren the other day without even consulting King George. What they have to say regarding the girl who really believed there was a Jewish Navy, we mean to say, is, well, a little over the odds. DOG NEWS CORRESPONDENT The records of a great agency like Reuter s can supply strang instances of how news from the uttermost parts of the earth reaches London. Perhaps by “tomtom” signalling or by native runner, perhaps by heliograph, or semaphore, or by carrier pigeon, then by cable, radio or wireless telephony, till it reaches the distributing centre, and thence with a clatter on the high speed “tapes” to the insatiable maws of newspapers all over the British Isles. Once a document of historic importance was smuggled out of a censor-ridden country to a Loudon news agency in the stomach of a dog which had been prevailed upon to swallow a cylinder containing it. The poor brute had to pay the extreme penalty so that the contraband could be quickly recovered. Speed is a factor of high importance in news collecting. It is now possible for the result of a great prize fight in New York, or of a test match in Australia, to be known in every newspaper office in England within 90 seconds ol the knock-out or the fall of the last wicket, and to be on sale in a printed newspaper in the streets of every great city in Britain within two or three minutes of the event.