Overington is Greg’s poet laureate

Everyone wants to share in the success of our golden girls at the Olympics. And the NT News — everyone’s favourite community-minded tabloid — wasn’t about to be left out of the celebrations. However tenuous the local link.

Today’s edition splashed freestyle aerials champion Lydia Lassila across its front page with the “Territory connection” that helped her snatch gold. Now, try and follow us here: Lydia has a brother called George, who used to live up north. He doesn’t any more, but he’s very proud. What’s more:

“George said his sister had also travelled to the NT to compete in national championships. Her parents still have a shot of their young athlete doing a hair-raising handstand at the top of Kakadu’s Ubirr, which is hanging on the wall at home.”

Helpfully, the NT News has provided a photo of a bikini-clad Lydia — “wearing the sort of winter gear she would need if she lived in the NT.”

Which would take out the weekly Wankley in any other week, were it not for Caroline Overington’s heartfelt love letter to Liberal Party pin-up Greg Hunt. After Imre Salusinszky declared his devotion for Climate Change Queen Penny Wong, Overington insisted on balancing the ledger in yesterday’s Australian with a love poem to the Coalition’s warming warrior — with his “little hands” and “pretty voice” (not the “gay” one).

You know Greg Hunt, he rides a bike

But will he let me feel his Newspoll spike?

It’s wrong on every level. Adding another Wankley to Overington’s crowded mantelpiece. Or rather:

Oh Caroline, your prose is so trite

Won’t you stick to reporting things with more bite?

For a journalist with such a track record

Those Wry Side columns are becoming a blight.