Luck On Sunday
The Sun Herald
Saturday October 8, 1994
"You don't happen to be pregnant do you?," inquired Brother Ojas, Tarot card reader and resident quack, on the John Mangos morning show.
"No, I can't do that any more...," said the disembodied woman's voice on the phone, somewhat forlornly.
"Well there is certainly pregnancy around you," continued the bearded one, who while perhaps in harmony with the Cosmos for the next millenium, was clearly getting a touch panicky about how the next 23 seconds might pan out.
"I didn't think it was you...but I just thought that it might have been, er, in that way...so, consolidate - don't sort of get out and do too much. There is a freedom aspect around you and you need to have some freedom, the concept of freedom, so I'm not sure how things are going to work out for you there.
"Just get out of this year and I think you will find things will be okay."
"Yes, and don't be nervous," said John, the compere with the grin that makes Larry Emdur seem like a manic depressive.
"Brother Ojas only does good readings...positive readings."
Except, it seems, to pregnant women who can't have children.
Someone really should do something about the quacks and charlatans on morning television but then again maybe not. If the public is as gullible as that they probably deserve to be manipulated thus.
I suppose they are harmless enough but you do have to wonder. I recall I once got into terrible trouble when I was co-compering Good Morning Australia for being gently dismissive about the show's tame astrologer.
"Well, there's an easy way out of this," I said. "Just don't get me to introduce the segment". And they didn't.
I was breathlessly informed that "all the surveys" had shown that the reader of bats' wings and goats' entrails was one of the most popular segments of the show and shortly after I was shown the door and nice Terry Willesee came on board.
As far as I know young Tezza said nothing unseemly about the soothsayer but I had my doubts that she really could see the future.
I was informed, for example, that the said diviner of the heavens taped her prognostications a week in advance.
"So why can't she tape them all at the start of the year and save herself some trips?," I said, somewhat churlishly.
Anyway, take it from me the stuff isn't foolproof.
She failed dismally to detect the demise of the show which folded shortly afterwards.
And as I always said as a I tugged at the toga of Mike Lattin, "Beware the Ides of September".
* In a late program change, the ABC has postponed tonight's Australian Women in Politics reported on page 30.
© 1994 The Sun Herald
