The Continuing Adventures Of Your Own Personal Jesus

I can’t remember who won the SANFL grand final in 1977, being that I was barely ten at the time, let alone the now famous VFL tied grand final. Frankly I was more interested in Star Wars, Mego and cars at the time to worry about any football game that either meant I had to walk further than the Ponderosa or involved teams that I couldn’t care about. I think Sturt won in ’77 here, but over the border it was down to Collingwood and North Melbourne, the former coached by Tom Hafey and the latter by the man for whom the term ‘Super Coach’ was invented – Ronald Dale Barassi. I never thought much of Hafey, but I have nothing but admiration for Barassi. Despite boasting players of quality in Kink, Thompson, Wearmouth, Shaw (Ray) and Moore, North were just too strong, with their own champions in the form of the mercurial Malcolm Blight along with Cable, Crackers Keenan, Alves, Schimmelbusch and more. What it came down to, and I’m going to use another time honoured cliché here, was that o...

You want to know something? I don’t want your frigging ketchup. I don’t want your bloody catsup either – sounds like cat spew to me. I want chips, not fries. And by chips I mean proper chips, big chunks of spud, not poe-tay-toe, but bloody spuds, peeled by some fat old bird, chucked into a bucket of water, left there for a few hours, then deep fried into greasy goodness and wrapped in butchers paper from a proper woggo chip shop. Limp, warm fries in a little cardboard container? I think not. I want chips that scald the mouth when you think of them drowning in vinegar and dancing with more salt than the Atlantic. Chips that withstand a good soaking from a bottle of sauce, not a plastic squeeze thing, but a glass bottle that you have to stick a knife into to clear the dried residue from the previous times and that you have pound on the bottom of like it owes you $20 and has turned up drunk at a party. I’m sick and tired of the gradual taking over of my condiments by rampant seppos, ai...

Some books just make you chuckle at how crazy they are - and this is no exception.  Written by our good mate Norm Barber, he of the non-flushing turds, ads written on toilets walls and Professional Bum, this tome is as hard to find as anything that he ever wrote, and with good cause.  It's not that Norm couldn't write, it's just that he had absolutely no idea of writing an impartial book.  Actually Norm couldn't write anything impartial really, I think he'd probably disagree with his own name. Norm hated, and possibly still does, anything to do with the Government and any form of social services.  Actually, I'll alter that, Norm doesn't hate the services, he loves them, after all he's lived his entire life on the dole and is a self confessed leach, but what really boils Norm's piss are the people who have to deliver those services to the likes of, well Norm Barber.  You know the kind, the world owes them everything, argumentative, arrogant, know it...

It’s that time of the year when a young man’s fancy turns to the finals season and a young woman’s fancy turns to crap like Ikea or shoe shopping. I don’t know which one is the bigger waste of time really, but there is something quite manic about going to the local football ground and screaming your tits off for a pack of guys kicking and chasing a ball around. Personally I love it. In my time you could go to a game and see some absolute champions.  Players like Malcolm Blight, Russell Ebert, Greg Williams, Peter Motley, Paul Bagshaw, Barrie Robran - I could sit here for hours naming names, but the reality was that I used to wander down to Elizabeth Oval to watch Wilbur Wilson – a footballing God really. Wilbur was brilliant. He could take a stunning mark and kick a bag full of goals, but, much like any Aboriginal player of the era was subject to some of the vilest racial vilification that I’ve ever heard. This might come as no surprise, but it seemed to be worse whenever ...

Ya know, there's really not a lot I can add to this, other than the caption, which is authentic, has made my bloody week...you may need to click on the image to appreciate the full impact of the humour, but Jaysus, I mean...can you imagine the sledging that ole John would have got back in the day? Almost too good for words really.  It's one thing to be considered to be a handbag carrier in football, but to admit that your job was to make frilly little knickers and bras?  Get in there!!!

Dental health was optional There’s a pack of fifty year old bags out there who probably still swoon at the sight of these heads, and I’m stuffed if I can ever understand why. Frankly I never saw the appeal of the Bay City Rollers – heads like bags of busted arseholes really – but the little girls knew something and would scream like fucking idiots and leave snail trails all over the seats wherever they played. And they played, a lot. Well, at least they looked the part on stage, I doubt that they could play the instruments that they were often shown holding, indeed the bass player looked about at ease with the bass as W.C. Fields did holding kids. But the girls would squeal. Wanted . I could understand bands like Skyhooks, after all Shirl and Bongo Bob were fairly attractive, but these guys, I mean, they look like they’d happily leap over the fence at night and knock your washing off. Plus that tartan gimmick? Please! Gimme a break. So I was fairly intrigued when I disc...