The grand plan by former Chief Minister Paul Henderson to sponsor an annual Henderson’s Big Band Bash if re-elected was blown away by the political winds of change. Defeated and deflated, Henderson went to the rear of the whipped cream team to teach comrades the rousing hymn , No Longer Abide With Me , to the accompaniment of clanking , greasy soupspoons. However, the new dominant musical combo in town- the Mills Brothers and the Sheikhpersons of Scrubby Creek- are working on an imported musical act which it is confidently predicted will lift the roof on Darwin’s convention centre , and many other big venues across the nation .
While the project is top secret, a Little Darwin bug inserted under the velvet cushioned throne of Terry Mills has been supplying us with leaks galore. We understand Australia’s #1 talent agency - Barge Arse Enterprises (N.L) - has been in negotiation with one of the world’s most famous entertainers on behalf of the NT . A mysterious name , Le Petomane, came through on our spy wire before it was hit by a stray US Marine drone which went AWOL after a marauding cane toad jammed the controls. Knowing that our sea-going illustrator/ Grey Nomad goader /composer of Little’s Darwin Bulldust Diary , Peter Burleigh, is a Francophile , we asked him for the gen on this unknown entertainer with the French sounding name , Le Petomane . His response was nautical : “ Blow me down and shiver me deck timbers !” It turns out that Le Petomane used to be La Belle France’s NUMBER ONE wind player at the saucy Moulin Rouge , back in the naughty Can Can dancing days .
His audacious performances were world famous and caused amazed audiences to go into convulsions . Some modest madames , with tight whalebone corsets, collapsed on the floor in giggling, crying , incontinent heaps . Crowned heads of European countries frequently disguised themselves as the midget artist Toulouse Lautrec to attend . The management became suspicious when it seemed the place was knee deep in gawking dwarfs wearing gold crowns . Poor old Petomane worked so hard to please his huge audiences who demanded encore after encore that he eventually blew a valve , ran out of puff and was given a huge state funeral. Being a national treasure, more popular than the Eiffel Tower, he was cryogenically frozen - like Walt Disney- until the day he could be defrosted and blow audiences away once more.
Peter Burleigh warned Little Darwin’s Diplomatic Correspondent, Pierre Freeloader, last man to leave any Darwin embassy party, that the new NT government would infuriate the French if it arranged for the resurrected national idol to thaw out in Darwin . The angry French could retaliate by cutting off the supply of croisssants to the Cool Spot and the Nightcliff Sunday market . With musical and literary skills similar to Petomane, Burleigh searched the famous Paris book shop , Shakespeare and Company , on the Left Bank , and came up with the well - thumbed book ( above ) about the outrageous and famous le Petomane, who it is tipped will create a sensation when he performs before a select audience-the Big End of Town- at Government House next NT Cracker Night , which normally runs for 13 months of the year.
