The Heart of Chairman John

What a dog's breakfast for us elites. There we were, up bright and early, Chairman Howard's Little Teal and Orange Work Book already filled in, ready to stream off with the begging bowl to earn a few cents towards our daily latte, and what do we find when when we open our favorite paper? That prancing dominatrix, that shameless hussy, Mistress Miranda Divine, strutting over our prone bodies, her stiletto heel grinding our faces in the dirt, giving us all a wide-open view of her brains.

But our Miranda is a versatile lass: not only can she can dish it out and whip the paying customers into a frenzy, she also knows how to crawl on all fours, grovelling before the stern magisterial figure of her Prime Minister. Oh the exquisite pleasure it must have given her to write this:

Unusually for the Prime Minister, he did not speak off the cuff but read a prepared speech typed on 15 cream-coloured A4 pages, with paragraphs scratched out and typos corrected with his own black pen. He wrote the first draft, which was then polished by his economics adviser and speechwriter,

His Own Black Pen! O my Goodness! What a clever Prime Minister! And all his own work too, no doubt, except for just the teensiest bit of help from his speech-writer!

And thank god our PM keeps us mindful still of the perils of the cold war... the spectre once again haunts Australia, the spectre of Knopfles and Santamaria. Note to self. Forget Centrelink appointment today - hide under bed till danger passes!

But oh, Miranda, the unkindest cutlet of all!

The consensus after the dinner of beef carpaccio and roast lamb (no vegans invited) was that the Prime Minister's speech was perhaps his finest ...