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Charlotte Parsons

An unusual artist is performing at the Fringe. His name is Benjamin Zephaniah, and he's a famous rap poet.

What first set him apart from other writers was the fact that he couldn't write.

And no, that's not just Lai See  being catty.

For two decades, undiagnosed dyslexia and a racist education system kept him from mastering the mechanics of writing.

That didn't mean he wasn't a wordsmith though. Poems began forming in his head when he was still a child. They couldn't travel on to paper, but escaped as rap music.

Today, Mr Zephaniah is a world-renowned artist with a double doctorate.

But Lai See  likes a story he tells from the time when his work had only just begun to receive recognition.

He was 21, and had just joined an adult education course.

'The other students said 'didn't I see you on television?',' the rap poet recalls.

They had.

He was introduced as 'Britain's new black writer'.

We suspect there was a puzzled silence in the classroom.

The course was 'Basic Writing'.

Heeere, witty Kitty ditty: We thought we knew how far Hello Kitty was willing to go in her bid for global domination.

But she still managed to surprise us.

We see men in Hello Kitty ties and brush against felined bags. We've been subjected to her music, to her cat-shaped jello, we've even caught a whiff of a Hello Kitty cappuccino.

For most, an assault on five senses would be enough. But not her.

Now she's even invaded the sixth sense.

No, we're not saying that Hello Kitty claims to see dead people.

We're talking about her tarot card deck.

A tarot card deck reviewer (no, we didn't know they existed either) gave it a three-and-a-half star rating and described it thus: 'A very cute deck that uses the traditional Rider-Waite tarot scenes but the creator has used Hello Kitty as the main character'.

And it's not just the cat. Her entourage of cutesie hangers-on are also featured.

The death card, for example, shows that bunny friend of hers on horse-back wielding a scythe and chasing a fleeing herd of terrified cuddly animals.

No doubt an omen of impending cat-astrophe.

Still. In one sense, Lai See is pleased.

Hello Kitty is annoying.

It's about time someone decked her.

Guide boob:  All new publications have teething pains.

So it's no big deal that the second edition of Food Guide has a small typo on its cover.

But there was something distinctly Freudian about this particular slip-up.

Lai See suspects that a man wrote the headline-in-question while eyeing a photo of the story's subject.

It says: 'Miss Hong Kong, May Wu, is bressed with gourmet happiness'.

Fresh towel please:  The Novotel hotel chain in Australia and New Zealand just sent us their survey of travellers' habits. Their researchers mapped out some of the differences between male and female guests.

We're told men tip better and drink mini-bar beer, and that women were responsible for 69 per cent of last year's hotel car-park accidents.

Men are more likely to sleep through wake-up calls, use laundry services and complain about the non-smoking policy.

But this, we feel is the most important finding:

Men are more likely to lock themselves out of their rooms, nude, mistaking the room door for the bathroom door.

Graphic: whee12gbz



TV tips off said poet's society