The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 25

8 1)1 ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ALMOST EVERYTHING EDITED BY DAVID DALE AND SACHA MOLITORISZ. WHY PACIFIC DRIVE IS NOT EMBARRASSING, BUT BANANAS ARE CH umi UJtm UT5 owm wham mMmmtmm ID-BOM mmt mlMU JOUNJ WOWA! TO SOCKET THIS? I'M I'M A POUClf I'D bfM WOt I I IWVit tm I Jit liavfli I 1 rai MATS KF ft JWnr. MWn iKJAL MfHn WE HAVE A HfffiS El buys frozen pizza four times a month. saves less than a year towards his retirement. earns a year.

Reliable Australian data does not exist on most of these measures, but some indication of their relevance to us may be gained from the discovery that the average Australian male wage is $34,000 a year. No doubt we beat them on all the others. hr Rimr touct mm poum amd; WW tSiM fesi mi um mA mm mm l-T-f -V TT 1 I III YT 1 7I 1 I I VNr I I wilIT Jrrr mi r.r'H, iiWrtL-. PRECEDENTS AMERICANS are very good at measuring themselves, while Australians are hopeless. We lack the self-consciousness which drives the Yanks to constantly undertake surveys and studies about their vital statistics.

But in other ways we are growing more like the Americans every year, so there is value in comparing ourselves with the data just produced by the US magazine Men's Health on the characteristics of "the average How do you or your closest male companion measure up to the following? In America, the average man. makes love seven times a month, and takes an average 10 minutes each time. loses his virginity at 17, marries at 26, and has sex with five to 10 partners in his lifetime. Scan run a mile (1.6km) in 12 minutes and do 33 sit-ups in one minute. has consumed 1 1 beers in the past seven days.

can bench press 88 per cent of his body weight. II is 1.75 metres tall and weighs 78 kilos. sleeps 7.5 hours a night. watches TV 28 hours a week. tm i tP pi PL MYSTERIES COUPLE of weeks ago we reported a rumour that young single people were picking each other up on Tuesday nights in the fruit and vegetable section of Woolworths at Neutral Bay.

The rumour suggested that carrying a bunch of bananas in your trolley is a signal that you are available, particularly around aisle 11. The management of Woolworth's denied this rumour (but then they would, wouldn't A reader named Rory Murphy has sent us this account of his experiences (from which we have deleted last names): "My flatmates and I decided to THE TRIBAL MIND much incorrect conjecture. Our initial intention with Pacific Drive was to produce a serial for either an 1 1 pm timeslot or a mid-afternoon slot, straight after The Young And The Restless at 3.30 pm. We canvassed the ABA (Australian Broadcasting Authority) in the hope that they would change their rulings and allow afternoon drama to count as local content. Our argument was that as long as no quality was compromised, as long as the drama was not some cheap excuse to avoid our drama quota responsibilities, then this drama should be valid quota.

What matter whether it played in the afternoon or in the evening? As you probably know, to achieve drama Mi WHAT WlLlTUttW IT TO I finally gave up in embarrassment when a young couple (obviously Herald readers) looked at my trolley, looked at me with derision and then burst out into laughter as I walked past. Conclusion: stay at home with your Twisties and Melrose Placed WHAT HAPPENED A daily summary for people too busy to read the rest of the paper A SUICIDE bomber blew up a bus in Jerusalem, killing 15 passengers and wounding another 30. Three more died in a bomb blast in the southern city of Ashkelon. MUSLIM militants shot dead lllseven Christians on a farm in southern Egypt. A 12 per cent swing to Labor in the Tasmanian State election has resulted in a hung parliament, with HATS in a name? Money.

If you re prepared to squeeze, that is. Courtroom veteran O.J. Simpson has been fighting another legal tussle against the makers of orange juice, who like to call their product Simpson, acquitted last year of murdering Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman, had applied for trademark protection of his initials, which stand for Orenthal James. The orange of growers Florida opposed the application. Last week, reports Agence-France Presse, Simpson and the Florida Department of Citrus reached an agreement: the former footie hero and the orange juice producers will share the initials and the producers will withdraw their opposition to his application for a trademark.

But O.J.'s battle may just be starting: we understand. Bart Simpson is seeking trademark protection for his surname. THE man linked romantically with Princess Diana, heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, is looking for a job in Sydney, according to Rupert Murdoch's London newspaper News Of The World. Khan, 35, is allegedly trying to escape the limelight. "It's getting too much," Khan said after the press quizzed his parents in Pakistan about Di.

"It's upsetting for my family when people call them and say, 'Have you seen what they're saying about your son? I've had this job offer in Sydney so I want to 1 WTfUTUEM? mmmiw in me to: mm mm A5M4UJ AMD G6T IT IN, TPIMK I'LL filVE- IT TO NOW ITS if UfllK P06 TO CUtW-j four or five Greens holding the balance of power. STEVE Forbes, the millionaire non-politician, won the Republican Party's Delaware primary, putting him back in the race to be a presidential candidate. Note that his anagram is "Vote, be THE Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir, said Australia and New Zealand should not bp-allowed to participate in the Asia-Europe summit, since they do not "identify" sufficiently with Asia. How about if we identify with Europe then? CUBAN military jets shot down two planes belonging to a Cuban exile group named Brothers To The Rescue, which were apparently trying to pick people up in Cuba. CLEAN Up Australia announced it would begin a year-long project to remove car bodies and other rubbish from the Nullarbor Plain.

OUR anagramatist, Robert Reidy challenges you to unscramble three 20th century musicians: Do our medley Sing, hero, rager. Soul storm I rang. GOSSIP check it out." The report does not' specify at which hospital Khan hopes to work. It can't boost Di's self-image to know Khan would rather be in hospital than with her. ARY Fairfax, widow of the former owner of these pages, Warwick Fairfax, has put her 42nd floor New York apartment up for sale.

Complete with black Belgian marble staircase, seven-metre high ceilings and Central Park views, the pad's asking price is nearly $47 million, Associated Press reports. "I'm very familiar with all the great apartments of New York, and I believe this is the most important room in private ownership," says the agent in charge. The pricetag is twice as much as anyone has ever paid for an American apartment. Fairfax bought the triplex with six master bedrooms, six wood-burning fireplaces, four terraces, three kitchens, two powder rooms and eight baths in 1988 for $16 million. She never planned to spend more than two months a year there, but' decided to sell when she found she was spending only a few weeks.

I'm won iN fi "nimn fi i "1 3y rtmi)mmm A tftimwatm Avae pecMlwu-ly fWsiVyly Avcaqe Avreraae Avee (vtr4C K3t stray conduct a scientific experiment at Woolworths last Tuesday night. James strategically positioned expensive and blemish-free bananas in the children's compartment of his 'love-seeking' trolley. James's scorecard read: 1. Two lingering trolley dodgers; 2. Trolley split two women who checked his profile out from both sides with accompanying nods (I think he is grasping at straws here).

Dianne's approach was to hide behind the vegetable aisles and pounce upon hapless shoppers. Her scorecard read: 1. One lingering trolley dodge with a 'sorry'. 2. One 'accidental' trolley crash and a seductive 'hello'.

I decided that fortune favours the brave. I may have overdone it by filling my trolley with bananas (and a few cucumbers for good measure) all carefully placed in the upright position. My scorecard read: 1. Five looks of pity. 2.

Solid eye contact with a mid-30ish woman who walked right up to me past a sea of bananas and then right on past. quota the drama must be aired between 5 pm and midnight. "The ABA, however, were not amenable to this argument, clearly feeling that the strong afternoon viewing audience should be left to overseas soaps and talk shows, that an attempt to provide local product to their taste was somehow less worthy than providing local product for prime-time viewing tastes. One can only assume that the afternoon audience is seen by the ABA to be a second-class entity. Why can't an Australian soap compete in the potentially higher rating mid-afternoon time slot with the American soaps? "One argument for strong programming in the afternoon has been validated by the success currently being enjoyed by Network Ten with the adult soap opera, The Bold And The Beautiful, in the 4.30 pm time slot.

Sadly, Ten have chosen a slot for this program traditionally reserved for (general audience) and often (children's) programming. "The ABA are an odd body. They were highly concerned about the inclusion in normal afternoon slots of Australian quota programming, yet seem unconcerned about the invasion of traditional family slots by an American sex and sin soap. What's wrong with this picture, I ask." Noble has given us a lot to digest. We will ask the ABA to respond to his argument today.

Certainly it seems scandalous that Australian children are being deprived of locally made sex and sin and forced to watch American sex and sin when they get home from school. THE Director of Drama for the Nine Network, Kris Noble, phoned last week to complain about our description of his program Pacific Drive as "one terrible embarrassment" for Nine. In our TV ratings report, which appears every Tuesday in this column, we noted that Pacific Drive, a Melrose-style sexy soap, attracted an audience of 83,000 in Sydney on Monday declining to 61,000 on Wednesday night. We thought this did not constitute a success, but Noble disagreed. He said such figures are healthy for any program shown at 1 1 pm.

But, we asked, why are you showing Pacific Drive at 1 1 pm if you have such confidence in it? What Noble told us offered a fascinating insight into how TV programmers see their world, so we asked him to expand on it in a letter. This is what he wrote: "The only way to make a fair comparison is to examine the figures of Pacific Drive against its 11pm opposition, and against the figures of other 11pm Nine programming. Using these figures as our comparison, the Nine network is very pleased with the initial achievements of Pacific Drive. We are also factoring into our response to the early Pacific Drive figures the fact that it historically takes serials months to build a loyal following. Consider early ratings of A Country Practice, Home and Away and Neighbours.

They all languished for months before they kicked in. "At this time, I think it is also worth pointing out to you the truth behind the Pacific Drive timeslot, a matter that has been the focus of.