The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 127

Chosen one: Johanna Griggs will be Channel 7's Olympic breakfast show host. She has come a long way since the same channel sacked her by fax three years ago. Cowgirl tips From Erin at iVillage.com comes the following advice: The easiest way to eat crow is while it's still warm. The colder it gets, the harder it is to swallow. Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.

If something doesn't seem worth the effort, it probably isn't. If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. If you think you are a person of some influence, try ordering someone else's dog around. If you give a personal lesson in meanness to a creature or a person, don't be surprised if they learn the lesson well. 'She sometimes wears her heart on her sleeve and people can relate to that Brush up A class in how to mix colours and achieve a perfect colour balance inside and outside a house could certainly fill in a winter afternoon.

Porter's Paints, famous for their environmentally friendly milk paints, will hold a workshop dealing with paint finishes on Saturday from 1pm to 4pm. For information about the classes, designed to provide practical advice in a relaxed environment, phone 02 9698 5322. Wine, cheese, refreshments and a sample bag of goodies costs S40 a person. Put a cork in Time to consider what to do with the champagne corks you pop on New Year's Eve to usher in the new millennium. First piece of advice is to keep only one, then keep it in a special place as a memento of the occasion.

From Christofle and Dom Perignon, here's a stylish alternative to that. For between Vi I 4. iiiii A-j i i Liuj riu tie It 1 $350 and $370 you can have the champagne, the cork and a pretty keepsake. You'll have to wait though they're not on sale until October. Life for Johanna Griggs has never been sweeter.

But how did this everyday girl turn herself into one of the nation's biggest stars? SUE WILLIAMS looks at this phoenix of the small screen. The hole truth Tempo was at an art show the other night and there were enough studs in tongues and noses worn to brace a three-bedroom bungalow. So with only a single pair of ear lobe piercings to our name. Tempo felt just about as straight as we looked. We're now studying Body Bizarre Body Beautiful, by Nan McNab (Allen Unwin, for future plans to tattoo, tweak and bind into something a little more barefoot, the day after the heavily reported wedding, for beer for him and his mate.

She had two kiddies in quick succession, and then the marriage, all too horribly predictably, fell apart, leaving her a single mum. But she had already begun her climb in television, eventually giggling her way through a whole series of Beauty And The Beast and Good News Week. What did it all add up to? Unlucky? Not particularly talented on TV? Bad taste in men? None too bright? It didn't matter. We simply just loved her for it. "One of the categories of celebrity these days is ordinariness," said Ken Wark.

senior lecturer in media studies at Macquarie University. "I don't mean to be insulting to Johanna, but she clearly has a talent for being ordinary. "She's attractive, but not a supermodel. She's intelligent, but not a rocket scientist. She has charm and grace without being ethereal." Some people call it the democratisation of fame, this elevation of the ordinary.

Bruce Johnson, associate professor at the school of English in the University of NSW. saw Johanna as a good example. "The mass media have made the distribution of information so much easier and access to it easier which provides the means by which the ordinary can penetrate public consciousness," he said. ne minute, Johanna Griggs was just another ex-sportswoman being tried out as a TV commentator with her new career ending suddenly in the bleak ignominy of a faxed sacking. The next, she's on the cover of every woman's magazine, a prized guest on every TV talk show, being groomed for her very own pay-TV interview program and, delight of delights, anointed as one of the chosen few faces of the Sydney Olympics telecast by the very same TV network that once axed her so abruptly.

What happened? It's a question that's no doubt bew ildered Griggs just about as much as it has everyone watching her, hearing her on radio and reading endlessly about every aspect of her life. But there are no easy answers. For. on the face of it, she does look one of the unlikeliest candidates around for such a heady bout of superstardom. She's a former swimmer hose career was cut short by a bout of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFSj.

She impressed few during her brief stint as a TV sports presenter, and was ridiculed in Melbourne for talking about a "Plucka Then she shocked every one by falling for actor Gary Sweet and becoming his third wife. She cut a tragic figure when she went out, daring than stilettos. Wonder if we should try to talk any men of our acquaintance into a penis gourd? ilHIIMI Ill I I ii Hi I www.sunherald.com.au August 15, 1999 ,4 THE SUN-HERALD TEMPO BC.