Who would make a pinata out of this man? (Image: AAP/Dean Lewis, Private Media)

Sheridan stay At the birthday party of which grizzled veteran of Australian right-wing politics on the weekend was the best gift — from another grizzled veteran of Australian right-wing politics — a Greg Sheridan pinata? We’re not saying who, but a Tips associate sighted the object, which was made of a foam dinosaur, the head festooned with stickers of the great man’s face and the body filled with cheap toffees. If Greg was feeling a little bruised and battered on Sunday, it was a case of voodoo…

Clapton all clapped out The Washington Post is running a “what happened” piece on Eric Clapton, the newly minted middlebrow bard of the anti-vaxxer set (alongside Van Morrison). The Post seems baffled by “Slow Hand” Clapton’s late career turn as apparently: “For 56 years, Eric Clapton never brought politics into his music.”

We’d suggest that Clapton’s rant at the Birmingham Odeon in 1978 had some political overtones, not least of all in his repeated calls for a vote for Enoch Powell:

Surely got to be said, yeah, this is what all the fucking foreigners and wogs here are like, just disgusting, that’s just the truth, yeah. So, where are you? Well, wherever you are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country. You fucking … I don’t want you here, in this room or in my country. Listen to me, man! I think we should vote for Enoch Powell. Enoch’s our man. I think Enoch’s right, I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I’m into racism.

You utter Creighton We may have finally reached peak Adam Creighton. His coverage since he was given the plum role of The Australian‘s Washington correspondent has been to continue doing precisely what he was doing before: shrug that we could stand to lose many thousands of lives in avoidably agonising and lonely circumstances.

Anyway, he got COVID-19, and those expecting a Bevan Shields-like turnaround will be disappointed:

What’s the big deal? Creighton, who is vaccinated, didn’t have that bad a time, so, hey, who gives a shit? We’ll give him full marks for consistency.

Bega cheese It’s December 2021, so you’ll have to forgive us if we can’t do the following footage justice. All we can do is share it. It’s Lou Bega playing his one hit in a splashy, colourful show for Polish troops stationed near the eastern border during a migration crisis. Las Ketchup was there too! And the lead singer of Ace of Base!

Of course, it’s a pretty candy-coloured array of stars for what is seen by many as a state-sanctioned human rights tragedy, with hundreds of migrants and refugees reportedly dying while attempting to cross the border between Poland and Belarus.

Separately, late ’90s pop-dance is having a real moment, politically speaking. At the beginning of the month, among the pomp and circumstance of Angela Merkel’s send-off ceremony, came a reverent audience for Darude’s “Sandstorm”.