Following my item on the "outrage consultant" (which isn't exaclty the guy's title, I think the field is called crisis management or some such thing), I did a Google search on stupid job titles. I found this article on Askmen.com in which writer Kevin Gibson rails against what he calls politically correct titles such as "administrative assistant" for secretary, "custodial worker" for janitor and "flight attendant" for stewardness (he's American, OK). My favourite bit is when he wonders how the guy in the coffee shop became a "barista". "Let's be honest," he writes, "a barista is an over-educated, disillusioned slacker who pours your overpriced coffee."

[Warning: long rant follows. You'll need to click the Read More link to finish it.]
If Britain is, as Napoleon and Adam Smith claimed, a nation of shopkeepers, Australia is becoming a nation where service in shops is non-existent. Today I waited 20 minutes at a counter to pay for parking. While I waited, one bloke who ought to have been serving was counting out coins and desperately trying not to make eye contact with anyone in the queue. Another staff member simply hid behind a partition hoping she wouldn't be noticed. When I was finally served, my ticket wasn't validated properly and wouldn't open the barrier - so I had to return to the counter. When I later rang to complain, the first person I spoke to was one of the offenders who claimed that the person in hiding "isn't paid to serve customers" and "can't work the machines". When I got on to the manager, I discovered this was a lie.

The early word on the second 2006 Brisbane radio ratings survey released today is that Triple M, Nova 106.9, 4BC and 612ABC are celebrating good results overall and in the all-important breakfast shift.

AWB has apparently hired an "outrage consultant" on US$650 an hour plus first class expenses in the wake of the Iraq wheat scandal. It worked. I'm outraged.

Pro Hart died this mornng at age 77. Although a world-renowned artist, he was also very down to earth. To that end, he was best known to many ordinary Australians as the star of the Stainmaster carpets TV commercial. My Celebrity Deaths Archive is here.
PS: His real name was Kevin Charles Hart; his mates called him the Professor and that's where "Pro" came from.

"Nobody knows more than I do how important this is, and it's my job to get it right." That's Daniel Craig - the screen's first blond James Bond - speaking to the BBC about the responsibilities of taking on the role of James Bond in the film Casino Royale. Craig also says of Bond: "I just wanted to see him make a few mistakes. I want to make the audience believe that it's all going to go wrong and then when it goes right it's much more exciting."

The battle against misplaced apostrophes continues. This contribution - from the Regatta Hotel at Toowong - came from Margaret, one of Spencer Howson's listeners on 612ABC.

I won't be uploading a podcast today, as I'm working on an exciting new audio project. Return soon for more information.
PS: I was a guest on 4ZZZ's Art to Lunch program today, talking about my day job.

Apparently the Commonwealth Games - or the "School Sports" as they were referred to in The Courier-Mail's Q Confidential column last week - finish up today. I know the television ratings prove that many people have been watching, but maybe that says more about their novelty value and Australians' parochialism than anything else. All I can say is: how many people will be rushing out to catch a badminton game or a men's singles bowls event between now and the Beijing Olympics?

The Weekend Australian reports that Adelaide radio announcer Bob Francis faces a possible jail term for contempt of court. Francis pleaded guilty to a charge of bringing a judicial officer into contempt, but not guilty to prejudicing or perverting the course of justice. The Adelaide Advertiser has more detail here.
PS: The website for FiveAA, Francis's station, says this about him: "Bob Francis is an Adelaide radio institution. Listen to Bob weeknights from 8 and go to sleep with a smile on your face."
Somehow I think the woman he called a "dick brain" on air wouldn't have been smiling afterwards.

At the risk of flogging the story to death, The Times has a nice wrap on the South Park-Scientology battle here. It recaps on the history and includes information on the hastily put together episode that screened this week in the US, where Chef joins a cult and has to be de-programmed, but ends up dead. Or perhaps not. The story doesn't, however, cover yet another angle in the saga, where it's been claimed that Isaac Hayes was too ill to quit the show and that "somebody" did it on his behalf. Cue Twilight Zone music ...
Mar 26 update: The above theory has been dismissed by an Issac Hayes spokesperson (although not Hayes himself).

Is Shane Bourne everywhere? Just days after the former standup comic was the guest on the ABC's Talking Heads program, Channel 10 has announced his new vehicle, Thank God You're Here. The show features improvised comedy around a scene where an actor enters a room to be welcomed with the words "Thank God you're here" and a different unfolding scenario. Tom Gleisner will feature as a judge, Bourne as host and there'll be a roster of performers. The Working Dog team - the clever people behind The Panel and Frontline - will produce the show, which will screen from April 5.

This morning on Spencer Howson's show on 612 ABC, I spoke about A Streetcar Named Desire, television after the Commonwealth Games, and the chances of Spamalot coming to Australia.

Onetime pop star Peter Andre and his famous-for-being-a-Page-3-girl wife Jordan are said to be renewing their wedding vows less than a year after getting married. The venue? Walt Disney World.

The synopsis for an upcoming episode of South Park reads: "The town is jolted out of a case of the doldrums when Chef suddenly reappears. While Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman are thrilled to have their old friend back, they notice that something about Chef seems different." That would almost certainly be his voice. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have decided to keep the Chef character in the show despite the departure of voice artist Isaac Hayes, who has quit citing the show's "intolerance and bigotry" toward religion. Of course, it took Hayes 10 years to make this discovery - and he only took action after the show finally got around to parodying his own religion, Scientology. People magazine reports here that there's no word on who will now provide the voice of Chef.

"You do have a choice as to whether or not to watch the television." So, thank goodness, found magistrate Elizabeth Powell when fining a man who posted indecent images to the BBC as retaliation for a program he found offensive. The full story is here.

BBC News headline: "Microsoft delays launch of Vista".
Microsoft media release headline: "Microsoft Updates Windows Vista Road Map".
Upshot: The new Windows Vista operating system, originally due to be launched later this year, won't be available to consumers (that's you and me) until January 2007.

And the Oscar for the year's most puzzling press release goes to SBS for this effort, released to hundreds of media recipients today:

THE MOVIE SHOW TO CHANGE FORMAT

Network Programmer Matt Campbell said “The Movie Show has an extraordinary history and remains one of our best-known and best-loved programs. One of the secrets of its success has been its ability to evolve with the times.”

Alan B'Stard, the anti-hero of TV's The New Statesman played by The Young Ones Rik Mayall, is back - but he is no longer a Thatcherite Tory. Instead, he's defected to Tony Blair's New Labour because it's a "rightwing party full of nice looking girls". Mayall will star in a UK stage show, The Blair B'Stard Project, written by New Statesman creators Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran. There's more from The Guardian here.

As my previous post pointed out, a dead cat has received more media attention than many dead (or living) humans ever will. One person who passed away recently (either on March 16 or March 20 depending on which of two online sources one believes) was British actress Moira Redmond. She was never a big star, but she was one of the Windmill girls made famous in the film Mrs Henderson Presents and she later appeared on stage with Laurence Olivier, in some films and in a number of cult TV series, including Danger Man, The Avengers and the excellent 1976 mini-series I, Claudius. She also lived in Australia briefly in the 1950s. My Celebrity Deaths Archive has a link to an obituary from The Guardian.