The Godfather: Peter Corris on hypos
What diabetics most fear are hypoglycaemic reactions or ‘hypos’ as we call them. This condition results when the blood sugar, through a lack of carbohydrate or an excess of exercise or insulin, causes the blood sugar to drop drastically below normal levels. The result...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on Canberra 50 years ago
I’ve been listening to memoirs by people who attended what Sir Humphrey in Yes, Minister referred to as ‘both universities’ – that is, Oxford and Cambridge. Geoffrey Robertson, Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens have all made their marks and, in different degrees,...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on Jack the Ripper
My interest in Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel murders was awakened when I saw Man in the Attic (1953), a film about the Ripper which starred Jack Palance. That was perfect casting in black and white – that craggy face, those staring eyes, that mirthless smile....
The Godfather: Peter Corris on illicit love
There is only one happiness in this life, to love and to be loved. – George Sand All You Need Is Love. – Lennon and McCartney When two people come together untrammelled, with no baggage, as it were – no romantic attachments to other persons, no guilt – it...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on depression
Listening to Stephen Fry’s autobiography (The Fry Chronicles, 2010) with its accounts of his black depressions, it dawned on me that, at the risk of sounding smug and not sufficiently empathetic towards sufferers, I’ve never experienced anything that could be...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on Anna Karenina
I first read Anna Karenina in 1960. It was a set text in English I at the University of Melbourne. Like the swot I was, I read as many of the set texts as I could before embarking on the course, so I must have been a few months short of 18 at the time. I found the...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on TV ads
Hands up those who mute the television when the advertisements come on. Hands up those who record programs rather than watch them at the scheduled time so as to be able to fast-forward through the ads when replaying. I watched advertisements on television for decades...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on Peter FitzSimons
I met Peter FitzSimons at a television studio in Wollongong. He was promoting his biography of Les Darcy and I was spruiking whatever Cliff Hardy had appeared that year. Never interested in rugby and not a reader of Sunday newspapers, I was only dimly aware of who he...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on sports songs
Certain sports have songs about them. Here’s a list of some that occur to me, starting, of course, with the greatest football game of all: Australian Rules Football: ‘Up There Cazaly’. Roy Cazaly, diminutive by today’s standards at 5 feet 11 inches, was a high-leaping...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on a bad book
I’m surprised to find myself writing about Ken Follett’s 1000-page-plus The Pillars of the Earth (1989), because it’s a very bad book. But some points are worth making. I’d read several Follett thrillers – Eye of the Needle (1978), The Key to Rebecca (1980), Night...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on his Celtic twilight
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree … ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ by WB Yeats It started a while back when I listened,...
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