It has been a funny week. Perhaps it's the sound of a nation holding its collective breath.

There is no way that anyone in this country who watches television, listens to the radio or reads a newspaper could not be aware that the Rugby World Cup is starting tonight.

From the morning story reading on National Radio to the pages of The Listener – a mere three All Blacks-focused articles this week – it's all rugby.

Shortland Street is planning to record extra scenes to slot into nightly episodes, reflecting the latest results. Amidst fears of possible defeat a national newspaper recently sought a psychologist's advice on coping mechanisms.

Charles Baudelaire once said: 'I am unable to understand how a man of honour could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.”

But he probably wasn't talking about rugby coverage. Just a bit grumpy.

I myself am a keen consumer of newspapers. I cleave more closely to the line taken by Aneurin Bevan, who said: 'I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one source of continual fiction.”

And, if you looked hard enough amongst the prattling predictions of sporting glory, there were a couple of entertaining snippets of information to be gleaned from the press this week.

The NZ Herald reported this week that Tiki Taane, the singer arrested at Illuminati nightclub some months back after being accused of behaviour likely to incite violence, had charges against him dropped.

Western Bay of Plenty Police Inspector Karl Wright-St Clair said Taane's arrest resulted from a misunderstanding and that police now respected his right to express himself as an entertainer.

That's a rather brain-boggling statement. Police ‘now respected his right to express himself as an entertainer'. The police and Taane apparently had three mediation meetings, each lasting around three hours. They talked about the case for nine hours. And that's what emerged?

But who knows whether Inspector Wright-St Clair actually said that. After all it was just something in the paper.

And it doesn't compare to the funniest thing I read in print this week: from another newspaper, really was worth a chuckle.

I guess everyone's heard by now that AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd is opening a restaurant in Tauranga where Spinnakers and The Lobster Club used to be and is remodelling it as Phil's Place, to be opened later this month.

Now I like Phil a lot; he's a top bloke. He has, as I've mentioned before, been extremely generous to many people, particularly other musicians in Tauranga.

He's got great cars and I'm sure his restaurant will be terrific. Only the suggestion, repeated elsewhere, that he is opening Phil's Place to 'give something back to the community” is a little bizarre.

It is my understanding that people open restaurants to make money, and Tauranga isn't exactly short of restaurants.
They fight and they struggle and, since there are so many, places are regularly going under. Why opening a restaurant – even if you're Phil Rudd – should be seen in such philanthropic terms escapes me.

But wait. There's an explanation in the article. The writer enthusiastically opines: ‘When Phil's Place opens this month, Tauranga joins London, Paris, New York and Los Angeles for being a town you will fly to just to eat.”

Wow.
I'll say it again backwards.
Wow.

London. Where Gordon Ramsey and Peter Gordon have restaurants. And Heston Blumenthal and Marcus Waring. Home to the famous Savoy Grill and Michel Roux Jr's La Gavroche, where the clientele are so posh that waiters are instructed not to even make eye contact with customers. I understand Paris has the odd good eatery too.

What will Phil's place offer to compare to these international palaces of gastronomy? According to Phil it will be steak and seafood.

'It is going to be known as the place you come to get a steak. There will be various cuts of steak on offer – fillet, rib-eye, porterhouse. I am talking steak that is off this planet. Kiwis love steak.”

Phil's right. I certainly love a good steak. But a rush to lengthen runways at Tauranga airport to accommodate the impending flood of food-tourism would seem premature.