Brian Rogers Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz

One quiet night this week, when trying to
figure out how to write a RR column incorporating the Royal Wedding and Mark Todd, the inevitable happened. I decided instead to write about the first thing that sprang to mind.
I know – you just love it when I do that.
Unfortunately for a certain daily newspaper, their telephone canvasser chose that moment to ring.
Now, I don't particularly like telephone canvassers at the Best of Times, but when they call from the Worst of Times and especially while I'm on the cusp of creating a column, well…what can a poor boy do except take the Mickey, relentlessly?
Recent telephone canvassers calling the Rogers household during inconvenient hours have been re-assigned a number of tasks including:
1. Talking me through my wife's difficult child birthing – while a strange malfunction with our telephone means we can receive calls, but not phone out.
2. Talk me down from the balcony of the seventeenth floor, where as a distraught, failed sharebroker who has gambled all my investors.
3. Help me, the renowned designer Parsley Sage, decide on the finishing touches to Kate Middleton's wedding dress – ruffles or lace – because I've only got a few days to secretly finish it and get it to London.
4. Convince the canvasser they've called the Tourettes Syndrome Volunteers chat line, therefore requiring them to listen to a barrage of abuse and reply in equally abusive and obscene language so as to not offend the duty person.
5. Tell them they've been patched through to Virgil in Thunderbird 2 and get them advising on a particularly risky assignment with International Rescue to extract Mark Todd, two gerbils and a jar of Vegemite from a particularly tight horse box.
Omelettes
So anyway, I had the lovely Rosemary on the line telling me I should buy their newspaper, including the ‘Big Bay Weekender' which now comes out on a morning. (Odd, I thought, since I already own some newspapers, why would I want to buy one?)
And coming out in the morning? Isn't that what George Michael did?
Anyway, this seemed a little strange for an afternoon paper, but Rosemary didn't think so.
I asked if it was a bit confusing, having a paper called ‘The Big Bay Weekender' when there was also a paper called the Sun Weekender.
She rightly corrected me that it is ‘The Weekend Sun' I was thinking of, and really, it didn't rate in the scheme of things because it was more like the Omokoroa Omelette.
Further enquiries with Rosemary revealed she didn't realise the Weekend Sun goes to 62,750 homes and the Omelette goes to about six, including hers, at Whakamarama.
She couldn't tell me how many papers the BOP Times actually sold on a Saturday morning – that was a question for a specialist sort of person.
This was of little consequence really because I just happen to know that the BOP Times put out less than 21,000 on their best day, about a third of the circulation of the Weekend Sun (62,950). But you'd think a phone canvasser would know their facts, such as how many people think the paper is worth buying. Or maybe that's not information that gets bandied about since the number of people who think it's worth buying has been decreasing steadily for years.
At this point we got into a really interesting discussion about content in papers.
I mentioned that guy Rogers, who writes for the Weekend Sun and said that it wasn't just because our name was the same, but it was an interesting column and why didn't the Bay of Plenty Times have it?
Rosemary thought it was a good suggestion for the editor Scott and she would pass it on to him. Incidentally, Scott, she says, is now allowing phone calls to him at 2.30pm one day a week from the general unwashed public.
'Just like an audience with the king?” I asked, thinking quietly that maybe here was, finally, a link to the royalty.
'No,” she said, shattering any thoughts of regal ramblings, 'it is a really groundbreaking attempt by the new editor to connect with the people”.
I marvelled at this idea, since at the Sun, we are far too connected. Anyone can call up anytime and yarn with the editor.
I am consequently thinking of restricting my incoming phone calls to certain times of the day and will consult with the executives at The Omelette – which is just like the Sun – to see how they handle such lofty ideals as ‘connecting with the people' and see if we should allow the minions to speak directly with our hoity royal personages.
Rosemaryism
Eventually Rosemary and I, who by now had developed quite a strong telephonic bond, got back to the subject of weekend papers and I asked if she thought it was a bit confusing that there was a Weekend Sun, and now the new, non-afternoon,
Big Weekender.
That is when she dropped the bombshell: It's not really called the Bay Weekender. That's just what she calls it. So the title is really a Rosemaryism. It's actually called the Saturday weekend edition or something similarly catchy and enthralling.
She didn't really have an answer when I suggested I could read the same news in the Herald online a day earlier than when it came out in the Waste of Times; or I could pay nothing and get even better, faster, free news on SunLive.co.nz
Then on the subject of having Rogers write a column in the Times, Rosemary announced that already Tommy Kapai had stopped writing a column there and was writing for the Weekend Sun. This was also gobsmacking news, because it's the first I've heard and probably is news to Tommy too.
I had to cut the conversation short because I wanted to tie up the deal with Tommy before those scheming executives from the Omelette got wind of the fact that Tommy was up for grabs.
Anyway, I will keep you posted on the developing relationship I have with the lovely Rosemary.
For now I must away as Mr Parsley Sage, designer to the rich and famous, I have an outfit crying out for a few more ruffles here and there.
And apologies to Kate, Wills and Toddy, who despite earlier suggestions, don't really rate much of a mention.
Apologies to Vegemite for associating them with gerbils.