A big day for ... Bear Grylls

Matt Buchanan and Scott Ellis

August 31, 2011

THE DIARY

Making an entrance ... Bear Grylls jumps from a moving speedboat onto Blues Point reserve, as you do. Photo: Ben Rushton

If anyone knows how to make an entrance, it's Bear Grylls. And the professional adventurer was in fine form when he arrived in Sydney yesterday, leaping from the deck of a moving speedboat to run up a ramp into Blues Point reserve and pour a can of soft drink on his head. Even for a bloke who parachuted into the desert to quaff a snakeskin full of his own urine, it was a surreal moment. But it was all done for a reason and all done, Grylls insists, in fun.

''It's the classic Solo man thing isn't it?'' he said of wearing more of his drink than made it to his mouth, ''and you've got to have a laugh at yourself with these things!''

The ''thing'' he was referring to was his new role as ambassador for the aforementioned soft drink, which has brought him to Australia to take on 10 competition winners in everything from a table-tennis match to a paintball game.

It's all part of the growing ''Brand Bear'', taking the former soldier and mountaineer away from risking his life for our entertainment and into more regular celebrity arenas.

His other gig in Sydney this week, for example, is the Bear Grylls Live show where he chats with his fans and might - if encouraged - even belt out a tune on his guitar.

''I've spent six years sweating my nuts off in the jungle and stuff so it's actually great to have the chance to come somewhere like Sydney and just have some fun,'' he said. ''There's a time for work and a time for play.''

EDELSTEN DIRTY OVER GREY WATER

The colourful former doctor and, latterly, backer of Aussie road movies (Dust & Glory), Geoffrey Edelsten, says he has fallen victim to the dirty dealings of a man with two names who spun him a murky tale about grey water. In an affidavit filed with the Supreme Court of Victoria on Monday, Edelsten alleged he had pumped more than $300,000 into developing a grey water recycling device - only to see much of it siphoned off by business partner Paul Main for personal use. Edelsten also alleged his American Express card had been used by Main to spend about $1500 on items including sports goods, alcohol and musical instruments. At the core of the stoush are patents supposed to protect the Enviro Water Boy, which Edelsten says is a ''particularly clever device'' designed to let householders divert grey water from their sink, shower or bathtub without having to call in plumbers. Edelsten alleges one of his payments to Mr Main was $50,000, given to ''protect'' patents over the product, that were to be registered in the name of the two men's joint venture, Greywater Recycler International. But according to Mr Edelsten's affidavit, searches of the government's intellectual property database instead show that while a Paul O'Callaghan had registered patents for grey water recycling products, those patents ''lapsed some years past''. Mr Main ''is one and the same person as Mr O'Callaghan'', Mr Edelsten alleged. In his affidavit, sworn on August 16, Mr Edelsten said he entered into a joint venture with Mr Main early last month. ''I was particularly impressed with the grey water recycler and saw its commercial potential,'' he said. ''The project required expertise in strategy, promotion and management, which I was able to provide or source.'' He said he transferred funds into a company account at the National Australia Bank and also arranged to finance cars for Mr Main.The case is set to return to court for a directions hearing tomorrow before Chief Justice Marilyn Warren. Mr Main's solicitor, Philip Linacre, declined to comment, as did Mr Edelsten.

LITTLE MAN STANDS TALL

Some film festival goers among the Diary readers will have seen the documentary film Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure, directed by Matthew Bate and produced by Sophie Hyde, but many more we expect will have heard the buzz - a buzz that is likely to get louder over the next few months. The doco, which screened at the Sundance and Sydney film festivals this year, tells of Eddie and Mitch, two young San Francisco men who, in 1987, moved into the apartment next door to the oddest of odd couples, a very extroverted gay man (Peter Haskett) and his homophobic housemate, Raymond Huffman, whose drunken, disputatious, abusive, lengthy and loud daily exchanges they recorded through the paper-thin walls. Their audio cassette recordings were soon being shared among friends and became a tragicomic ''cult hit''. (These days we would say it went ''viral'', but back then, in the pre-YouTube era, the term ''to go viral'' had yet to go viral. Besides, there's something suggestive of a shared sensibility in the phrase ''cult hit'' that we lose, to our detriment, with the entirely promiscuous ''viral'', but we digress.) The film was named yesterday in the best documentary category for the inaugural AACTA (Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts) Awards - previously the AFI (Australian Film Institute) Awards - which will be held in January 2012. The other nominees were Life in Movement, Mrs Carey's Concert and The Tall Man. The contenders for best short animation and best short fiction film were also announced and can be seen online at aacta.org.

BIG HEADS, BIG PROFITS

So, a chief executive walks into a bar. ''Why the long face?'' asks the barman. ''It's because I'm not very good at my job actually,'' he replies, ''thanks for asking.'' It's not much of a joke, but it might as well be the summary for a recent study set to be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Run by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the study of 55 (male) CEOs of publicly-traded Fortune 500 companies concluded the wider the face, the better the financial performance. ''In our sample, the CEOs with the higher facial ratios actually achieved significantly greater firm financial performance than CEOs with the lower facial ratios,'' researcher Elaine Wong said. It's a bizarre finding, one sure to send those at the top end of town rushing to the mirror with a ruler, but it was no surprise to the research team, which had already seen previous studies which showed ice hockey players with wider faces tended to be more aggressive. All of which explains why so many business leaders and rugby champions tend to have heads like bowling balls. And here we were thinking it was just fashionable.

STAY IN TOUCH ...

WITH FORBIDDEN FRUIT

IT'S A fine distinction but evidently one worth noting: nightclubs in Miami may encourage you to go bananas but not to go with bananas. The Miami Herald reports that when the younger sister of pop superstar Beyonce, Solange Knowles, tried to escort a 1.5-metre inflatable banana into Club Cameo, she was denied entry, after which, according to the Miami Beach Police Department, she became hostile and started alleging racial discrimination. Apparently authorities said an off-duty police officer working at Cameo took Knowles across the street to have a little chat on the rejection. That's when Knowles said an officer pulled a weapon, believed to be a knife, and threatened to deflate the banana. Miami Beach police confirmed on Monday that the incident occurred, but said race played no factor in defusing a showdown with a hostile singer and a giant banana. Not so, according to the tweeting Solange. ''I have literally had my last leg with discriminating police! Miami police department will be notified,'' she first tweeted. ''A police officer just pulled a weapon on me I have done NOTHING illegal, against the law, or anything of the sort.'' Miami Beach police said on Monday in a news release they had launched an internal affairs investigation into the incident. Knowles's public rant, which made no mention of the banana, spanned nine tweets. The lesson from all this? A little banana is a dangerous thing.

WITH HACKING

CELEBRITIES who heaved a sigh of relief when the News of the World phone hackers were put out of business need to brace themselves - there's a new pack of cyber sneaks targeting the showbusiness world. Hollywood Leaks, a group of hackers in the US, have wormed their way into computers and phones owned by anyone remotely famous and are now posting what they've found online. Already, they've hacked rapper Kreayshawn's Twitter account to upload nude pictures from her phone and posted the script to Tom Cruise's next movie. And there's more to come. ''We're sitting on several unreleased movie scripts and enough [phone] numbers and emails to keep phones ringing for the forseeable future,'' one member told the US website Gawker.

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