Frank Avis' Memoirs of 42 Years in Radio

There's a bit of stuff going on the latest Sydney radio survey...

2024-05-01T12:00:00+10:00

There's a bit of stuff going on the latest Sydney radio survey, let me give you the drum. 2GB is hanging on to overall leadership but SMOOTH and KIIS – the FM-ers – are in hot pursuit, sharing equal second spot. In fact, Kyle and Jackie O are up to their old tricks again, taking over as number one in Breakfast, unseating GB's Ben Fordham. It's going to be on for young and old for the rest of 2024. When I came down to Sydney as a young boy in the 1940's my Aunty Glad was listening to John Harper on 2KY, the Labour station. When I left to go into country radio, ten years later, she was still listening to John Harper. Sydney loved this bloke... "'Arper 'ere". He came from the stage in 1932 moving straight into the 2KY studios where he stayed for over a quarter of a century. He was still broadcasting 'til just before his death in 1958, at the age of only 57. The man they christened "Old Gravel Voice" was the original "shock jock", famous for breaking records he didn't like on air and celebrated as the greatest of ad libbers. Some of these got him into a bit of trouble from time to time. They reckon he was sacked about twenty times in his career but always managed to be back in the 2KY studios for the next shift. This classic is part of our industry folklore... "You'll see all the girls at Bondi lying on their Dickies... Dickies, the best beach towel you can buy". John Harper – truly one of the greats from the Golden Age.

One of the toughest assignments in our trade lately is having to monitor US TV news, which – like the whole country – is divided Right and Left. And they absolutely hate each other. There is virtually no chance of any middle ground which gives you the Congress they have today in Washington. And let me tell you these differences are fundamental. They're not going to go away. News coverage gets worse and worse by the month. The major players really don't even bother to try to hide their bias anymore. It's turned out nasty over there. There is widespread pessimism across the country. Bret Stephens said it best in the New York Times: "Brokenness has become the defining feature of much of American life: broken families, broken public schools, broken small towns and inner cities, broken universities, broken health care, broken media, broken churches, broken borders, broken government."

I just keep going on and on about my long campaign to restore rural Australia, with special attention on underwriting the nation's train routes. We need to switch more and more freight on to our railways and off the trucks, returning sanity to our motorways. This is also a critical time for governments to make key decisions on where all these extra Australian immigrants pouring into the country are going to live. Remember one of the last warnings we had from former Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe was about "our choices... about where we live, how we design our cities... and how we invest in and design our transport systems". I now credit a most unlikely source, "Hut News" from the Blue Mountains Conservation Society, in finding further support for my campaign in favour of our train network. The latest edition of the magazine quotes the former Editor of The Financial Review, Alan Kohler, in a recent address which sought to solve the nation's "great housing mess". His answer is TRAINS. In brief, let's stop packing more and more people into the big cities and start developing provincial centres 150 to 200 kilometers away, connecting the two with high-speed trains. Families buy an affordable house in say, Bathurst, and commute with high-speed trains to their jobs in Sydney. You're going to spend an hour driving or taking public transport in Sydney's peak hour anyway, so why not spend that hour on a fast train doing the same thing... And paying around half for your house. A bit of lateral thinking there from a noted financial commentator. I worked with Alan briefly when he did financial analysis for us at 2DAY FM. I suspect that channel nine's excellent financial specialist Chris Kohler is his son... It must be in the DNA.

For hundreds and hundreds of years humans have asked the question: What price does it take for a man to sell his soul? They've even written plays about it. Now, after all those years of searching, GOLF has finally given us the answer.

So here we are, just a month or two from one of the world's great sporting spectacles, The Olympic Games, and this time it's Paris '24, bringing back all those images from "Chariots of Fire" . Right on cue the international computer giant, Gracenote Sports, pounds away at all of its whiz-bang technology to come up with its famous four-yearly predictions... Australia will take home 48 medals overall, 15 of them will be gold. This would put Paris just short of the astonishing 17 gold medals we won in Tokyo... Wow! The one thing I need to point out before you get too excited... The IT experts are allowing for ten of the first-places to come via the pool. I'm listening to little warning bells saying that Australia can't keep depending on our swimmers to continue at their current winning rate... Surely, sooner or later they have to suffer a setback. These sort of histrionics can't go on forever, can they? So let's take a little pressure off the swim team and predict a more conservative seven gold medals. Can Australia make up the difference? Can we still hit 15? I'm immediately grabbing two on the water, rather than in it, from rowing, yachting, kayaking, canoeing – absolutely achievable. Add one in cycling and another strong possibility in equestrian and the Avis IT team already has us hitting eleven. We've got to sneak another four from a range of sporting possibilities – shooting, surfing, BMX, skateboarding, beach volleyball, surfing and hockey. I'll take anything we can get when it comes to the Olympics.

It's a long time since I drew up my original list of Top Ten Movies. Time now, I think, to revisit some of those that didn't make it.

11. "The Wizard of Oz". What boofhead would come up with a Top Ten List and omit "The Wizard". Guilty as charged... I'm your boofhead. This is an iconic Hollywood treasure as Judy leads her team along the Yellow Brick Road.

12. "North By Northwest" – I know the aficionados will be yelling out "Rear Window", "Vertigo" and "Psycho" but this is the ultimate classic Hitchcock: a wonderful crime drama and the greatest performance in Cary Grant's illustrious career. Know what? Grant didn't even get an Oscar nomination and nor did Alfred the Great. What was going on there in Hollywood?

13. "Henry V" – Olivier takes us from backstage out on to the battle field in Shakespeare as he'd never been done before (or since). You think you're not into the bard? Well, just settle back in your seat and let him work his magic with the greatest poetry of the English language.

14. "The Red Shoes". If anyone asks you to describe the ballet, just get them a ticket to see "Red Shoes", up on the big screen. This just oozes ballet: It's extravagant, totally over- the- top and absolutely stupendous.

15. "Sense and Sensibility"... An Asian directs Jane Austen and it's a masterpiece? How did that happen again? There's no flaw in this... I even love Hugh Grant.

16. "A Streetcar Named Desire"... Marlon was apparently superb on Broadway. Well, he must have been pretty good if he bettered this effort on the silver screen because this is one of the most powerful films I've ever seen, capturing every brooding nuance of Tennessee Williams (and he's got a few nuances I can tell you).

17. "Red River"... I keep mulling over all those John Ford/John Wayne western classics but just keep getting dragged back into "Red River". Yes, it's in good, old fashioned black-and-white but you put John Wayne, Montgomery Clift and a wonderful Walter Brennan muttering away in the background together and you've got yourself the greatest cattle drive in history.

18. "Singin' in the Rain"... A joyous, feel good musical with Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds dancing themselves into a frenzy. And who doesn't adore Kelly's masterpiece where he does actually go singin' in the rain?

19. "Rebecca"... Hitchcock is well into his gloomy phase here with Olivier taking Fontaine home to his dark mansion where the new wife runs into Australia's Judith Anderson, a very nasty piece of work indeed.

20. "Moonstruck"... Ok, call me a hopeless romantic. Send me insulting emails... Don't care. From the moment the Met's prop van is seen sidling around the streets of New York and we hear Musetta's waltz song I'm totally gone on La Boheme, Cher and that moon... Which just seems to be hanging a couple of metres above the skyline... Like you could reach out and touch it. La Luna!

Oh, and so you know I'm the only person in the civilised world who didn't like Openheimer. It won everything... Even the bloke who cleaned the floors in Studio C won an Oscar for Best Broom. But I didn't connect with the movie. It just didn't grab me... Totally uninvolved.

And let's pay tribute to the intrepid sailor Kay Cottee.

"The night seemed interminable, the rain squalls passed over again and again... We were only eight miles off the coast and I couldn't see a thing... We had almost made it... I got on to the radio to yell, 'I'm going for it now – I'm heading straight in.' Dad was the first to answer, 'Go for it Darling...' There were dozens of ferries, luxury cruisers, put-putts and tiny runabouts... To the sounds of a canon, horns, cheers and clapping of thousands of hands and my own hiccoughing sobs we crossed the line at 1232 hours on fifth June, 1988. 189 days at sea – 21,000 nautical miles."
– First Lady by Kay Cottee, 1989

Kay was the first woman to sail around the globe, solo, non-stop and unassisted. She is an absolute Australian hero.

Frank Avis Memoirs Continue

2015-09-21T12:00:00+10:00

I'm leafing through the latest Sydney radio surveys and finding the trend now seems to be pretty well settled... Well, for the immediate period ahead anyway.

2GB is king of the overall stats with Alan Jones and Ray Hadley dominating their timeslots but, as always in this business, the devil is in the detail. Those GB figures are massively skewed towards the middle and old-aged category. When you look into the prized demographic of 25-40's it's KIIS, SMOOTH and WSFM battling it out for the big dollars. But the FM arena is log-jammed with a lot of volatility in the trendy market. It's a jungle out there, a bit like running a top flight restaurant in Sydney: one minute you're turning them away at the door; a week later all the tables are empty. The plight of 2UE is now clear with this one-time giant now battling to hang on to the 5% barrier. Once you slip below that level, especially under 4% you're obviously in serious financial difficulty. My old station 2DAY FM, incidentally, sagged to 3.5... Woo... But has since clawed its way back over 4.

The one thing you've got to say about the future of 2GB: Yes, it's audience is essentially in the plus-50's but so is the future demographic of Australia. We're living longer, working longer (or will be soon) and the oldies are increasingly occupying a larger chunk of the overall national demographic.

So maybe Alan and Ray are on to a good thing here. They're dominating an audience which is getting bigger every decade. 60 is the new 45. Fellers, you don't have to go out and meet your audience... They're coming back to meet you. (Incidentally, can you imagine my humiliation when I have to admit publically that I'll need to seek the advice of my trade Insider Andrew Kilpatrick to find out what SMOOTH FM is and where it came from.)

Nothing dramatic to report on the TV scene lately although 7's crime drama Winter with Rebecca Gibney was welcome. Well acted and directed with good production values.

I've been telling my family about an early Montgomery Clift movie The Search set in post-war Europe which I remember very fondly. They're interested enough to have a family screening one Saturday afternoon in the near future with the proviso from daughter-in-law Jo that you can only watch a Saturday arvo movie if you've got a good supply of choctops... Oh yes and I'll bring a few Jaffas. Maybe someone can roll 'em down the aisle. I hope they all enjoy this early Clift offering. Maybe nostalgia is affecting my judgement of this old classic? Monty of course reached his greatest heights in From Here to Eternity... And don't forget co-starring with John Wayne in Red River. By the way, a little housekeeping announcement here. When we specify choctops for our Sat movie I'm not talking about those pre-packed frozen imposters. I'm talking here about watching the ice cream come out of the machine, curling disarmingly into a cone held by a human being behind a counter who then takes the ice cream cone and dips it in real chocolate. That's what I'm talking about. I remember I was going to see a movie in the city one day and I just hungered for a choctop to kick things off. They sold me one of those mass-produced things where everything is frozen solid.

I took a bite in the foyer and couldn't get through the ice. It was like cement. So I took a bigger bite and the whole thing exploded in my face. Ice cream and chocolate covered my face and ran down my shirt and on to my coat. People looked at me with their eyes raised but I still sat through the movie.

Incidentally, I'm putting a list together of movies you may not have seen but really should consider if you get the chance.

Three Days of the Condor, 1975, with Robert Redford

David Shipman buckets the movie in his Video Guide calling it "incomprehensible and unconvincing" but I just sat back and enjoyed this CIA romp. The first 30-40 minutes are especially excellent as the killer wipes out everybody in the office except Redford who goes on the run, trying to figure out who really are the bad guys.

The Taking of Pelham 123, 1974, with Walter Matthau

Yes, David and I are on the same page here. He gives it 3 stars and you'll love Walter at his deadpan best as he searches for the gang responsible for holding a subway train and its passengers hostage. Don't miss the scene with Walter doing a tour of the central transit operations room with a group of visiting Japanese officials. He does this stuff so well.

Zulu, 1963, with Michael Caine

Loved it, especially the battle scene as a few stoic and stiff upper-lip Brits have to defend against 4,000 zulus. Mr Shipman managed to give it 1 star, not a roaring endorsement really.

Heaven Knows Mr Allison, 1957

Marine Robert Mitchum is stranded on a Pacific Island with a nun Deborah Kerr and the Japanese soldiers are closing in fast. Really nice movie, with Bob and Deborah in top form. Having John Huston as director sort of helps a lot, too. 2 stars from our video guru.

They Might be Giants, 1971, with George C. Scott

Scott is stark raving mad (a wonderful case of type casting if ever I heard one) and taken in for psychiatric care believing he is Sherlock Holmes. He is treated by a psychiatrist, Joanne Woodward, who is... Yes, come on... You guessed it... Dr Watson! We all know where it's going after that don't we? Can't find David's review... Sorry.

The Ghost Breakers, 1940, with Bob Hope

Bob ends up in a haunted castle off the coast of Cuba. Not a good move, although his companion is Paulette Goddard so there's a bit of a trade-off there. It's not Ghostbusters but it's really fun viewing. Mr Shipman gives it 3 stars which is even higher than my rating... You're starting to mellow David.

An Unfinished Life, 2005, with Robert Redford, Morgan Freeman and Jennifer Lopez

Ok, this is a midday movie. So when you watch it, make sure it's midday. Ok? That wasn't that hard was it? Anyway, when it gets to little girl meets grandpa she didn't know she had, wild bear is set free to wander happily out in the forest and angry old grandpa gets to like his daughter-in-law after all... Well, I love that stuff. Cast is really good, including J.Lo. Too late for our video reviewer but the site Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 68% approval rating.

King Solomon's Mines, 1950, with Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr

Terrrific outdoorsy epic including the most wonderful stampede scene. The stars are good especially the native Watusi. Shipman gives it 2 stars but says it's inferior to the 1937 version. Are you kidding me?

The Big Sky, 1952, with Kirk Douglas

Our video man rates it 1 star and says it should have been shot in colour. A bit picky. I loved this trip along the Missouri River in the 1830's as Kirk leads the boys into Indian territory. Lots of adventure and one of the crew gets to fall in love with a genuine Indian Princess. Do they end up together? Huh huh... You'll have to watch it now won't you?

Laura, 1944, with Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney

Tough detective falls in love with gorgeous woman. Unfortunately she's already dead and he's supposed to be solving her murder. But don't give up on the romance... All is not what it seems.

If you don't like the movie just close your eyes and listen to one of the greatest themes from Hollywood. Shipman goes for 2 stars.

Choose a winter's afternoon, grab a coffee, settle back and enjoy some oldies but goodies. You could even get in the odd choctop.

In politics, I've been following the Greek financial drama which has been threatening European Unity (oh and there's a nice turn of phrase... How often have we actually seen any European unity?)

But Greece, affectionately known as "the Somalia of Europe", has finally buckled down and agreed to actually operate to a budget. Oh that's so funny. The European spin doctors are now busy coming up with an agreement which will attempt to convince us that all of this money will eventually be paid back. Well here's a 2015 "reality check" Europe. You're never going to see those Euros again. They've gone into a black hole called Greece. There is no way Athens can pay this money back or even wants to try. These "loans" are donations. We can't of course say this publically because it'd spook the markets. Plus other European countries would start lining up and asking for some of the same. People keep saying to me, "Why didn't the other nations do something about Greece five years ago, ten years ago?" But I hasten to point out to them, the question should really be, "Why didn't GREECE ITSELF do something about its borrowing?"

Oh, and in a recent piece I think I recalled that the Indian Ocean was green. I recently saw this wonderful photo of the Ocean and Ã¢â‚¬â€œ oh dear how embarrassing Ã¢â‚¬â€œ it's actually just as blue as my beloved Pacific.

Time for a bit more embarrassment. I recently discovered an Australian who won three Oscars more than 50 years ago. Orry-Kelly was the costume designer for classics such as Some Like it Hot, Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon and Arsenic and Old Lace (gee I love that movie). So here I am as a movie fanatic who's never even heard of this bloke. He was born in Kiama so you can't get more Aussie than that. Which got me thinking about who are our REAL Australian Oscar winners. Well, the girl with a record haul, Catherine Martin, is definitely from the heart of Downunder - born in Sydney.

But there are some serious question marks in the rest of the list.

The celebrated Peter Finch was born in London. Yes, he came out here and started his acting career but he is British born. Nicole Kidman? Born in Honolulu. Mel Gibson? Born in New York.

I get surprised to hear how Russell Crowe is Australian. Russell was born in Wellington. Unfortunately it was Wellington New Zealand, not Wellington in outback NSW. He is a Kiwi folks. Luckily for our Oscar records, Cate Blanchett was born in Melbourne. Heath Ledger hails from Perth and Geoffrey Rush is as dinky di as you can get - born in Toowoomba.

Domestic politics: just as I put this piece to bed comes word that the Coalition MP's just can't help themselves, sending in the white ants to unseat a Prime Minister. Despite all the evidence from the recent Labor turmoil, Malcolm Turnbull staged a late night coup to end the Prime Ministership of Tony Abbott. For any political observer it is incredible to watch this stuff.

Julia Gillard is already one of the most reviled figures in Australian political history. Now, given the overwhelming evidence of what Australians think of this sort of hatchet-job, Malcolm and Julie join forces to do exactly the same. Have they any idea how this act will be recorded in our political history, and did either of them pause for a second and ask: how will this look overseas... What harm are we doing to our country's international image?

Finally if ever you wanted a phrase to sum up the times it is the following revelation. 48% of all defamation actions now before our legal system are a direct result of social media.

Frank Avis Post Radio

2010-02-24T12:00:00+10:00

There's not a lot happening in my old trade: it's mostly superficial.

I guess the big headline in recent weeks is the legal action by veteran journalist Ray Chesterton who has taken John Laws and 2UE to court, alleging defamation.

As mentioned previously I used MOVIES as a central plank in my news content. I always ran the highest grossing US and Australian films weekly and actually did 30-second movie previews at some stations, eg 3MP which was regarded as pretty adventurous in those days.

Not only that but when I ran a story about a major movie coming out in the US I always tried to answer the audiences' question: When can I see it here? My staff and I always attempted to put ourselves in the position of our audience, so that we were able to fulfill their expectations. We really tried to "own" this whole movie-theatre entertainment area. Indeed I remember when Cats was opening in Sydney we managed to track down one of the top cast members from New York so that in the 6PM news on Sydney's opening night our audience heard the star say, "Hi. I'm so-and-so and I play so-and-so in the Broadway production of Cats. Everyone here in New York wishes Sydney a magnificent opening night. May you run as long as we have here on Broadway." It was about targeting the audience and happily reminding them about that. Often.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that showbiz has always been a major interest. With that in mind I offer another list: Frank's Top Ten Movies.

The Third Man
Gone With the Wind
Casablanca
The Maltese Falcon
Shane
Dr. Strangelove
The Best Years of our Lives
The Philadelphia Story
On the Waterfront
Some Like It Hot

I hate leaving out Henry V (Oliver's), The Red Shoes, A Streetcar Named Desire, Rebecca and Singin' In the Rain.

The "arts sector" will never forgive me for omitting Citizen Kane while I apologise to lovers of European movies for failing to include Z, Bicycle Thieves, Rififi and The Cranes are Flying.

Strangely enough my top choice, The Third Man wins by a length. Few will agree with me I know.

An astonishing script, Carol Reed's direction sneaking through the bombed out streets and tenements of Vienna after WW2, a wonderful cast headed by Orson Welles and Valli plus the most extraordinary gathering of minor characters ever assembled and finally, oh yes, that pervading zither of Anton Karas as it leads you further and further into the sewers of Vienna.

Never watch The Third Man on TV. Wait 'til you see it listed for a reprise on the big screen. Four of the greatest scenes in movie history are up there in just this one film: Welles lecturing his friend Joseph Cotten up on the ferris wheel; the first sighting of Welles hiding in a doorway; the shadows of Welles as he tries to escape through the sewers; and, the most wonderful closing shot, along a Vienna boulevard. If you're a real movie fan just sit back and enjoy the camera as it captures Cotten waiting for Valli as she walks towards him. He knows he hasn't got a chance but waits for her still hoping. She doesn't give him a sideways glance, and the zither plays out to the end.

Most of the others are obvious. GWTW is the iconic Hollywood movie. I mean how could anybody make that in the 30's? Casablanca is everyone's favourite - somebody designed Bogart and Bergman to make that movie. The Falcon is another masterpiece with Bogey.

If anybody ever asks you how to direct a movie just tell them to get a copy of Shane by George Stevens. It's virtually a blueprint of how to do it.

Dr Strangelove... Ah, Doctor... There's black comedy and then there's this amazing film. I always love the line when the US President has to stop a brawl breaking out saying, "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here... This is the War Room."

Ok so Best Years is corny I know, but it is so good. Even tough men have been known to reach for the handkerchief.

We had to get Jimmy and Katie into the top ten and what better vehicle than Philadelphia Story. I think critics of the day would have called it "smashing".

No one's made a better movie than Waterfront and has any actor been more brilliant than Brando as the longshoreman who takes on the union?

I don't think Some Like it Hot is the best comedy I've seen but overall when you look at everything that makes up the film it is very, very good. Few people forget it and I love Tony Curtis sending up Cary Grant.

(I'm not sure I should put this in writing but when it came to film comedy I would have liked to have included a Marx Brothers epic or, don't you dare laugh, Arsenic and Old Lace. There I've said it in public at last!)

In TV my favourites include:
Waking the Dead, Seinfeld, Prime Suspect, Fawlty Towers and MASH.

I hope I can get away with adding another unpublished golf story, written in early 2009. Maybe somebody will read this stuff years later and actually publish it.

The Curse of the 59'ers, by Frank Avis, Jan/Feb 2009

If you're a golf fan like me I guess you were glued to your Foxtel recently watching veteran Harrison Frazer fire an extraordinary 59 in the season's Q School, that annual battle to win a card on the rich PGA tour.

59! Harrison, what were you thinking? Hasn't anybody warned you about the dreaded "Curse of the 59'ers"?

Only four players have broken the magic 60 in elite competition and only one managed to survive "the curse".

Al Geiberger (Mr 59) was the first, firing a 59 in the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic of 1977. His once-in-a-lifetime round came on one of the toughest courses on tour with the temperature over the 100-mark and is regarded by many as the greatest round of golf ever played.

But it took just a short time for the ill luck to set in. Geiberger came down with a severe bowel disease not long after his magic round,which made it impossible for Al to play at his peak. He recorded several titles in the Seniors, playing under some difficulty, but only captured one more championship on the regular PGA tour. It was the start of the curse.

Chip Beck recorded the 2nd 59 in PGA Tour history during the Las Vegas Invitational of 1991. From that point "the curse" gave Chip a nice old working over. At least he managed to get one more PGA victory on his resume before the wheels fell off. After that final victory in 1992 Chip Beck virtually disappeared off the radar. He bobbed up from time to time as "the man who shot 59" but his game basically just vanished.

If Chip's collapse was mysterious what happened to David Duval borders on utterly bewildering. Duval shot his 59 in the 1999 Bob Hope Classic at La Quinta. And he fired it in the final round, with all the pressure on. As a matter of fact he canned an eagle putt on the final hole to join the short but magic list of those who went under 60.

For a time Duval was up there with the golfing Gods. He made two Ryder Cup teams, captured the 2001 British Open and, for a brief time, took over as the World Number 1. But The Open was his last PGA Tour win. Duval disappeared into a black hole. At one point he was fighting to keep his world ranking in the 800's. It was the sort of thing Stephen King writes novels about. I remember one day watching a PGA Tour event and seeing Duval break down in tears while being interviewed. Wow, I thought, David has just won on the Tour again. Nope. He'd actually just made a cut. You've got to hand it to Duval. He just keeps soldiering on,working desperately to recapture his winning form on the US tour. Never complains. Just keeps on trying. But his collapse is almost without parallel in golf: possibly in any sport.

Only one player has managed to defy "the curse" at the elite level. The superstar of Womens' golf Annika Sorenstam broke 60 on the 2001 LPGA Tour. She not only defied the curse but she looked it firmly in the eye and just kept on winning 'til her unexpected retirement 8 years later.

Several men have managed to return a 59 at the next level of competition. Notah Begay, Doug Dunakey and Jason Gore have done it on the Nationwide Tour. I hope they'll forgive me if I observe that none went on to become a household name.

"Lefty" Phil Mickelson smashed his way around 18 holes in 59 at the 2005 PGA Grand Slam,but this is not regarded as an official event,being played over just two rounds in what was virtually a glorified exhibition match.

And don't forget David Gossett had his fantastic 59 at the 2000 Q School, the same place where Harrison Frazer repeated the dose in recent days. Again, Gossett hasn't exactly set the house on fire on the PGA since then so the dreaded "curse of the 59'ers" remains reasonably secure.

What about Harrison Frazer? Is he destined to be the first man to stare down the curse and prevail on the main tour?

Well, I remain unconvinced. It's never easy to make predictions about golf but if pressed I'd be suggesting Harrison would find 2009 a pretty tough old assignment. You need to stay in the top 125 money earners for the year to keep your full playing rights for the following year. My feeling is he won't make it. Sorry Harrison but the curse is the curse. If David Duval couldn't beat it what hope do you have!

Frank Avis, 2009

(Editors note: Actually Harrison Frazer had the last laugh on Frank. He didn't make a lot of headlines in 2009 but he still managed to finish 112th on the money list, retaining full playing privileges for the next season.)

Well dear reader that's probably enough of my regular ramblings. I'll be back in a while with some cricket trivia including the best test team, as assembled by the legendary Australian opener Arthur Morris. I'll even toss in my best ever team and name the best cricketer I ever saw. If you disagreed with my movie choices imagine the fun you'll have with this lot!