Twin miracles of mascara, her eyes looked like the corpses of two small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff.

One of the virtues of the NHS... it doesn't worry you about money at the moment when you're least capable of doing anything about it.

Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it's in Hamburger Technology.

Delivering the State of the Union? That bloke couldn't deliver pizza.

It's my mission to tell the Australians from abroad in my work that Australia is a wonderful place.

What is Camille Paglia doing, writing that an actress as gifted as Anne Heche has the mental depth of a pancake? How many pancake brains could do what Heche did with David Mamet's dialogue in Wag the Dog? No doubt Heche has been stuck with a few bad gigs, but Paglia, of all people, must be well aware that being an actress is not the same safe ride as being the tenured university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

My niece is - her name is Sasha, is currently learning Russian at Melbourne University and I look forward to the day when I can talk to her about Pushkin.