Grasshopper Comes A Cropper

I am spoiled for choice! I was going to write about The Chaser's 'Make A Reasonable Wish' sketch (or 'skit' as some commentators insist on calling it) and indeed I have just heard on the ABC news that the manager who passed it for broadcast has been stood down, possibly after being named and shamed on Media Watch on Monday night. But rivalling that lapse in the immaculate good taste The Chaser usually displays was the story that broke on the weekend of John Carradine's unfortunate demise by his own hand in a Bangkok hotel room.


Left: The media was more of a friend to David Carradine in the 70s.

'There's nowt queer as folk' as my Yorkshire countrymen used to exclaim before their native wisdom was appropriated by the makers of first a UK and then a US series about gay people. What they meant is that truth is stranger than fiction especially when it comes to imagining bizarre human behaviour. Why the SMH and that crappy freebie MX newspaper feel free to publish allegations about Carradine's cross dressing and sado-masochistic predilections but kept relatively schtum about what Michael Hutchence might have been into is anyone's guess. Was the INXS singer more deserving of our reverence than Grasshopper himself? Anyway, even though his demise was not very zen, he died at 72 years of age still clearly in full & vigorous command of his faculties and probably feeling fairly euphoric! We could all do worse!