TOPICS: Baird reveals screwball comedies top movie list

Because there’s conjecture over this. Mr Baird’s wife Kerryn set tongues wagging at Sunday’s state Liberal launch, telling delegates his two faves are The Naked Gun and Dumb and Dumber.

Opposition leader Luke Foley later unleashed a Bill Shorten-esque zinger, saying the government’s ‘‘Smart and Skilled’’ reforms were, in fact, ‘‘Dumber and Dumber’’. Burn. Tony Abbott, mercifully, kept schtum.

But was Mrs Baird having us all on? Topics, you see, had read a David Marr piece in The Guardian detailing the Premier’s affection for Rudy, ‘‘a 1990s [American] football weepy in which young Rudy Ruettiger overcomes poverty, dyslexia and prejudice to make the Notre Dame football team’’.

That doesn’t sound much like Naked Gun or Dumb and Dumber or, for that matter, Happy Gilmore, does it? So who knows Mr Baird better: David Marr, or Mrs Baird? we demanded. Politely.

‘‘They are both correct,’’ replied the Premier’s office, promptly.

He’s a sucker for the work of Nielsen, Carrey et al, often pushing his family beyond groaning point.

But the official top three – revealed in an interview with Simon Marnie on ABC radio – are Big Wednesday, Shawshank Redemption and yes, Rudy.

(This confirms our theory that everyone’s list of favourite films includes Shawshank Redemption. It’s a handy fig leaf of respectability, especially when the real answer is Deuce Bigalow or White Chicks). ‘‘I’d go with his top three list as the definitive guide,’’ advised a spokesman.

‘‘I DON’T know whether this is a coincidence, irony, oxymoron, omen or a convenience,’’ says Bruce Brown of Marks Point, ‘‘but a new single-storey building has just been completed on the Pacific Highway at Belmont and one half is occupied by a fitness gym for exertion, and its adjoining neighbour in the other half is a funeral parlour’’.

Topics is reminded of Merewether Bowling Club, which had (last we checked) a billboard at the end of the green advertising funerals.

SPEAKING of odd things in catalogues (Topics, March 24), Rob O’Brien of Caves Beach has received a suspicious offer.

‘‘I just got a Coles brochure in the mail offering to save me $20,’’ says Rob.

‘‘The problem is, to collect it I have to go down and shop at Coles in Lake Haven or San Remo.’’

Which makes Topics wonder: are Coles in Lake Haven and San Remo cutting the grass of Swansea Coles?

Break out the puns ...

JOHN Ure, of Mount Hutton, had a thought as he opened yesterday’s paper and saw Lewis’s factoon (pictured).

‘‘All that bloke needs is a sponge cake on his head,’’ muses John, ‘‘and he’ll be a trifle deaf.’’

John. Any more of that and you’ll be taken into custardy. There’s just no knead for it.