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Mike's Pith & Wind - Fook the cook
On the odd occasion I’m lured into the studio, or my ‘cubby house’ as it’s sometimes referred to, perhaps to write this very blog for instance, I can almost guarantee that when I return to the lounge, exhausted from stringing together a few sentences, a cooking show of some description is playing on the telly.
Sometimes these shows are a counterpoint to some real life cooking going on in our painfully inadequate kitchen, sometimes they are simply a soothing background to real estate explorations, sometimes they are actually being given due diligence, but cooking shows are plentiful it seems and always ready and able to serve as a default entertainment on pay TV.
I’m even a little familiar with some of them. Maggie Beer’s The Cook and the Chef with Maggie and the other guy is almost as legendary as Bellbird and GTK in my mind. We’ve even been to Maggie’s farm – couldn’t stop Bob infiltrating proceedings as you might imagine – and we purchased some exotic jams, one of which I think we’ve since opened. Jams tend to accumulate I find, especially round Christmas.
I’m not sure about the format of two different recipes going on at the same time, and I’m slightly amazed that Maggie and the other bloke haven’t come to blows when both heading for the oven with their oven mitts on, but it’s entertaining and Maggie’s just such a darling. I was surprised to find out that she’s just six.. read more

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Dick's Toolbox - Historical curios
We live in interesting times, but there have been times more interesting and a lot more fraught than today. The past has outdone us, well and truly, in the nutters it turned up and to whom it gave considerable power. One only as to look at the Romans - Caligula is alleged to have made his horse, Incitatus, a Consul. This is somewhat like giving the arts portfolio to George Brandis.
Caligula lasted four years in power, not uncommonly brief for the great and powerful. My current favourite is Duc Ðuc of Vietnam, who lasted three days before he was deposed and sentenced to death by the same regents who had enthroned him. The reasons are unclear. It has been written that he so embarrassed the court with his debauchery at the coronation by having intimate relations with his predecessor's concubines, thereby failing to observe Confucian mourning etiquette, that they quickly poisoned him and buried him in an unmarked grave. This has been drolly noted as ‘a notably disproportionate sentence’. read more