How police used Kim, then threw her out
Ben Hills reports
KIM Hollingsworth always wanted to be a police officer like her father. But along the way her career took a number of interesting turns - shop assistant, waitress in a Chinese restaurant, flower-seller, university student, model.
Ben Hills
IT was the knickers that brought him down. One day Alan Gold was king of the esoteric world of marketing, with a swanky office in North Sydney, a staff of 20 and a shelf-full of awards for his campaigns to sell Scotch whisky, tissues and batteries.
The next, he was sitting in the Supreme Court as a judge branded him a liar, said he was responsible for the biggest balls-up in Australian marketing history and declared him liable for a compensation bill that could run to more than $1 million.
Was he the greatest broadcast voice of all time?
A farewell to Alistair Cooke
Ben Hills
If it happened in or around America in the past half a century, chances are Alistair Cooke or, at least, his golden voice was part of it.
In 1946, the BBC's augustly titled Director of the Spoken Word suggested to Alistair Cooke that he start a weekly radio broadcast from New York, "... about, well, all the things in American life you've talked to me about. Anything and everything."
Alistair Cooke's Letter from America is broadcast on Radio National at 11.45am and 7pm on Sundays.
The Australian way of death. How our funeral homes are being taken over by foreigners
Ben Hills
As luck would have it, I am just in time for "an insertion". The steel door is flung open, revealing the roaring orange maw of the furnace, the trolley is trundled into place, and two strong men heave the heavy wooden coffin into the flames.
The soul of Mrs Jones, as we'll call her, may be on its way to heaven. But within 60 to 90 minutes, depending on her size, the 1,100-celsius inferno will have reduced her mortal remains to ashes, calcified pieces of bone, blackened tooth fillings, artificial joints, and any other pieces of imperishable medical hardware.
Peter Blazey, tourjours gai - farewell to a friend.
Ben Hills
"YOU haven't had such a bad innings," I tell the wasted figure lying among the electronic monitors ticking his life away, with the plastic tube of a feeding drip up his nose, "13 years would have to be close to the record for someone with AIDS."
"Seventeen," corrects Peter Blazey, his dark sunken eyes suddenly alert, "I wasn't diagnosed until 1984, but I got it four years earlier in New York. I remember the night well.
"I met this gorgeous black man and we went back to my hotel. I can't tell you how good the love-making was." He waves his hand to shush a protest from his current partner, Tim Herbert, who is sitting on the bedside dabbing the sweat from his face. "It was worth it ... yes, it was worth it!"
Harry Seidler. The architect Sydney loves to hate comes a cropper
Ben Hills
For once in his life, the operatic Harry Seidler was playing it cool. "There might have been a few antics and histrionics beforehand, but when the moment came he was quite calm and businesslike," said Tony Caro, the trusted lieutenant who was at his side for the final showdown.
Harry Seidler walked into that meeting Australia's most prominent architect, with buildings worth $1 billion on his books.
He walked out less than an hour later, having kissed it all - or nearly all- goodbye, for the sake of his professional reputation.
Eight months later, the man who has done more to change the shape and scale of Australian cities than anyone alive, ridiculed as "wishful thinking" his rivals' suggestions that he may have built his last skyscraper.