Robbins Team: Margaret Scott, Anthony Morgan, Rove McManus.

McCrossin Team: Rod Quantock, Amanda Keller, Joanna Sweet. 

[Paul comes out]

[crowd goes off]

Paul:  Don't patronise me.

Welcome to Good News Week coming tonight from the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House as part of the month long celebrations for our 100th Program.

And the big news...

Medical Science: Is there nothing it can't do? A 60 year old Italian man is recovering from a pioneering transplant using a heart which had already given life to two other adults. I don't think I'd really want a heart that seems so keen on getting out and meeting people. But the surgeon says, despite it already being in two people, the heart is pumping strongly. And yet, both the previous owners died of brain hemerages. Doesn't that sound like the heart might just be pumping a little too strongly?

Kerry Packer says he'd never accept a third-hand organ. He'd only trust a heart if he'd torn it out of the chest of the original owner himself.

But transplant breakthroughs don't stop with internal organs. According to American doctors, a complete face transplant should be possible within a few months. [to someone in audience] And I heard you say thank God there, Sir. And so did your wife.

    Potential patients would receive a new face from a dead donor, as long as they promised not to go round to the dead donor's house after the operation and thank his relatives. But if they don't time the transplant just right, you could spend the rest of your life with a 5 o'clock shadow at 11 am. Then, for several weeks, face transplant recipients are kept in a haemedically sealed recovery chamber, completely free of airborne irritants. One sneeze, and you could blow your new face clear across the room.

In less flashy, but still very important medical news, British doctors have developed a pill which they believe will help people overcome chronic shyness. The pill called Seroxat has been extensively tested on animals, so if you know anyone who's in the market for 10 thousand white rats with charming outgoing personalities...

But the idea of making shy people drug dependant is a bit disturbing. Why don't they just get pissed like the rest of us? Shy people everywhere will come out and tell the world they're proud to be shy. They'll be shy clubs where the bashful can meet others with similar interests like.. blushing. They could even celebrate their social orientation by staging the world's first Shy Mardi Gras, featuring a parade of brightly coloured floats they could all hide under. Sadly, distribution of Seroxat could be a problem: many of the people the shyness pill is intended for are too shy to ask the chemist for it.

Mikey: It's just so typical of you, making fun of the shy, making fun of the transplant people..

Paul: Ladies and Gentlemen, Mikey Robins.

Mikey: No, this is serious right. You talk about the transplants.. like, you know, a lot of people want to stay young will take monkey gland.

Paul: Monkey gland.

Mikey: Transplants.

Paul: Monkey transplants.

[Mikey looks at Paul (AKA Monkeyboy)]

Mikey: Some people take these monkey gland transplants to the point where they become almost simian Paul. Almost peeling a banana with your feet like Paul.

Paul: Thanks very much, Mikey.

Mikey: Let's face it Paul, if you died, we could use your skin as a flacati rug.

Paul: And if you died Mikey, we could put a zip from your arse to the back of your neck and use you as a bloody bean bag. "Oh, oh Mummy, Mummy, look, the nipple on the bean bag is getting erect."

Mikey: Ok Paul, we put a zip up your back, mate, you could be one of those cute sort of furry things that people stuff pyjamas up. If you haven't done that already.

[some tummy thumping]

Julie: Boys..

[breaks them up]

Mikey: Julie McCrossin.

Julie: While you're talking about transplants, I just want to say, Kate Fisher [holding breasts!] thanks a lot. I'll be given them back after the show.

Mikey: Also after the show I'll be giving Jamie Packer back his brain [holding arse!]

Paul: And that Ladies and Gentlemen, is the good news.

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[newspaper clipping explosion]

[Good News Week theme song]

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What is the story?

[About the Fashion Cafe chain of restaurants hitting financial trouble]

Rove: I think I'm thinking models.

Margaret: I'm thinking restaurants, I'm thinking food.

Anthony: So am I.

Mikey: What else are you thinking?

Margaret: I'm thinking it's very difficult to come from Tasmania at the moment. When you see that Olympics icon, all those spikes, as the comb of a mad chicken, you can never see it right again!

Mikey: Margaret, can I ask, were they serving drinks on the plane?

Margaret: I knew you'd say something like that.

Paul: Could someone not in the group of senile dementia answer this question?

Anthony: Rove, that'd be you.

Rove: Fashion cafe are going broke because of the fact that once someone eats the food they have to go to the toilet to throw it back up again.

Anthony: What can you buy at a supermodel cafe apart from heroin?

Rove: "I'll just have the salad."

[Rove takes a sip of water]

Rove: "Oh I'm full". Yes, fashion cafe, stinking up big time.

The fashion cafe chain of restaurants - the supermodel's answer to Planet Hollywood - is in financial trouble and may be forced to close. Claudia Schiffer and Niomi Campbell have even stopped talking to each other - not because they are fighting - they've just run out of words they both know.

Julie: Is there any evidence that supermodel's aren't smart?

Paul: No, but we thrive on stereotypes in this show. That's the nature of comedy.

The crisis began when the multi-millionaire founder of the chain walked out, turned left, turned right, and then walked back in. The good news is that supermodel's have come up with an idea they think will save the fashion cafe's: A hamburger for vegetarians. It'll still be made out of meat, but the cows they use will only be fed grass.

What is the story?

[About the Tasmanian tiger]

Rod: People go to Tasmania not to see them because they're extinct. They're a tourist attraction by being extinct and if one is found, tourists won't come to see it because it's not extinct!

Julie: The helicopter's out there searching.

Rod: They'll kill it, because then it'll be extinct again. Brilliant! They say it's elderly poets next.

Margaret: I know the answer, but I better not tell you.

Julie: I was labouring under the misconception we had the answer.

Paul: Yeah I think they do have the answer there, Margaret.....

Margaret: It's a million dollars.

Paul: It's a million dollars you are right.

Mikey: For a million bucks I'll put the suit on.

Paul: "That's a big Tasmanian tiger"

Mikey: Can I be the vertically striped Tasmanian Tiger.

Hoping to drum up business for the state, Tourism Tasmania has taken out a million dollar insurance policy against the reappearance of the Tasmanian Tiger. Even somewhere as isolated as Tasmania, it's hard to believe a creature could hide away unnoticed for 60 years - but Margaret Scott was just waiting for the right moment!

Margaret: I'm just afraid the gene pool must be getting a bit small.

Paul: Don't look at me!

Some experts believe the tigers actually take great delight in eluding capture. In fact, a month or so ago, there was a Thylacine in one of the Sunday papers, pretending to be Dog of The Week.

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[The Gadflys]

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Tuesday, 2 am.

I sat in the gutter. Head in my hands. 

I had found the head in a wheelie bin on East 42nd Street.

I had a pretty good idea who it belonged to.

Male. Carcasian. Blood-stained. No head.

I tried to place the face. 

I stared into it's eyes, and there was my next clue: we were both the same height.

3 am.

Couldn't sleep.

Head appeared to have nodded off.

I heard a knock at the door.

'Who is it?' I ejaculated.

I hate it when that happens.

Suddenly, a police officer burst in and held a gun to the head.

The head squeeled.

I tried to eavesdrop. 

When I moved to within earshot, he shot my ear off.

I frantically sort out a friend, a Roman, or in desperation, a countryman to lend me one of theirs.

Eventually, the head was charged, but it wouldn't stand up in court. It kept toppling over.

The Judge was lenient.

Judge Lenient gave the head a short sentence, for there is not way it would have survived another paragraph.

It's a cruel world.

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Three headlines about the same subject, but their identity has been cost-effectively concealed by the name WARREN.

Mikey's team

The headlines:

* $25 million WARREN con-trick revealed.

* Archbishop warning over cult of WARREN

* WARREN the heroine entrenched in popular culture.

Who is this alleged WARREN?

Anthony: Greg Norman.

Rove: $25 million Greg Norman contract.

Anthony: He bought some jewellery for his...

Margaret: I think it's female.

Anthony: .. Partner... Yes, that's what I'm saying. Greg Norman's partner is female. What are you suggesting about..????

Mikey: Greg Norman's partner is a man??

Margaret: NO!

Anthony: There's not enough going on in Tasmania if you're thinking things like that. Who on earth would speculate about Greg Norman's sexuality??.... He bought some jewellery for his partner, and ahh.....

Paul: Anytime you're ready, Rove.. I'm going to give it to your captain in 3 seconds.

Rove: I'm going to go out on the biggest limb and go I reckon it's ahh... The Princess of Wales. Diana. Di.

Paul: Is Mr. McManus right?

[Answer is Princess Di]

Rod: We knew that, we wouldn't have bothered with the Greg Norman shit.

Rove: Building up the suspence.

....

Paul: Have we all finished fighting and bickering? Can we move on now?

Amanda: Actually I think I know what happened to Greg Norman's jewellery: He choked on it. It's a golf joke.. my first ever. Golf jokes don't come easily.

Rod: They don't come easy.

Amanda: You've got to take 'em where you find 'em.

Rod: Can we have a bonus for that?

Paul: NO.

The University of Wales is offering a course on the life and death of Diana, examining the mass out pouring of grief, how the media handled the tragedy, and her impact on Britain. It's a crash course and only..

[laughter]

It's a crash course and only 1 in 4 get through it. Your homework is getting a Corgi to eat your homework, and the end of term exercise is to hunt down and kill James Hewitt. But out of respect for Diana, non of the assignment will have a deadline.

Anthony: Well we knew it was Diana, we were trying to temper it with that Greg Norman thing because Greg Norman's got quite a good driver.

Warren

Julie's team

* Bidding war for WARREN sex saga.

* WARREN's complaint: No calls, no kisses.

* WARREN's considerate Aussie hunk - yuk!

Joanna: It's about sex that isn't sex that is sex. Warren is Monica Lewinsky.

Mikey: Paul, I think Anthony wants your attention.

Anthony: Just incase they fiddle faddle around for nearly as long as we did - I think it's about Maggie Tabbera's (? spelling) new book.

Rove: That could work, that could work.

Paul: Let's just have a look to see if Joanna is right.

[she is right]

In the US a Milwaki lawyer has started a support group called '...Monicas with Attitude for all the 'innocent' good women who have been heckled, ridiculed, shamed and mamed.' The group offers Monicas a 12 step program- The first step: Get off your knees. There was also a Monica hotline but sadly they had to scrap it. Clinton kept ringing up and asked if they home delivered.

Odd one out.

[Guest to sing: Luka Bloom]

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The Sandman

How to exhilarate someone. 

I choose to start this story.. now.

They're my lines.

I'd just watched Jake swing Shona around by the arms. To see Shona screech with such delight as she whirled around his body was delicious. 

So, with that in mind, I went up to Sky Salsbury and asked her if I could swing her about, like Jake had done to Shona.

She said 'Ok'.

The moment I put my hands on Sky's forearms I knew I was in trouble. Oh, I got her started alright, but I couldn't keep sky consistently off the ground. She kept skimming off the concrete.

When we stopped spinning, it was bad. REAL bad. She just lay there. 

So, I did what our family's always done in times of trouble: I RAN.

If you intend to exhilarate someone, make sure you have the strength of two, and don't stand on cement.

The End.

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[Bad street theatre]

The actors inside the big Mickey, Minnie and Donald costumes at EuroDisney have appealed to the French Government for protection after being continually punched, pinched and kicked by excited young fans.

Who's the mouse

who finds his arse

is kicked by kids all day?

Smash his face

Break his knee

Every child can play

Kick the mouse,

kick the mouse,

Grab his drawers

and pull the wedgie

high, high, high, high.

Kids who enter the park are now being told to pick on someone their own size, so they're beating the crap out of Hewie, Dewie and Louie. To make matters worse, the EuroDisney operators completely misunderstood the concept of the Mikey Mouse Club, and thought it was a lump of wood with a nail hammered through it. It's actually on sale in the gift show right now.

Amanda: I am so bad at mime. I'm so anxious about this I might be walking against my own wind.

[Amanda does some bad street theatre]

[Anthony runs over and gives her some lillies (a clue from strange but true)]

[Amanda gives Anthony a pash.]

In the first year of dairy cow drug testing at the Royal Melbourne Show, two out of five champion cows returned positive results for performance enhancing drugs. One dairy farmer was caught because he was waiting for the cows to come home - and they actually did, shaving 10 seconds off the previous record. One cow, who asked not to be named, said the pressure to win was intense - there's an abattoir just across the road. The cow's trainer was allegedly behind the infamous East-German cattle doping program in 1969. Sadly, these cows will never give their medals back - they were eaten in 1970. It's terrible to see what happens to some of these young heffas. When they enter the industry, they're naive, sometimes as young as 2 or 3. Pretty soon they start chewing a bit of cud, because, hell, everyone's doing it. Then they're doing hay. Before they know it, they've got a nose ring and someone's initials branded on their backside. The drug scandal has now prompted a review of the records set by the cow who jumped over the moon. They also suspect that the dish ran away with the spoon because it contained traces of a banned substance.

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[Sandy and Flacco sitting in audience]

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Mikey's team

Strange but true clues:

* a pillow

* the urn

* the lillies

Rove: The lillies obviously represent the name Heavenly Harani Tigerlily with regards to Paula Yates.

Mikey: Paula Yates who..

Rove: has been keeping the askes of her now deseased husband in her pillow.

Mikey: Apparently she's go what's left of Mick in a pillow. She had it in a throw rug before, she used to hang on the back of the door and stuff..

Margaret: And so it's not in the urn at all. In other words, I'm utterly superfluous [cos she is holding the urn].

Anthony: No, not at all Margaret. He was a good litle urner (earner) when he was alive.

Mikey: Apparently she's put Michael Hutchence into a pillow.

Anthony: Which I find odd because in my day, if your boyfriend died, he was dropped. If he's not breathing anymore - that's it. It's off.

Mikey: But now..

Margaret: Pop them in the pillow.

Mikey: Which isn't the first time for Michael apparently.

Paul: They are right, Ladies and Gentlemen..

And the finest explanation of this story comes from Sydney's Daily Telegraph, and I quote:

'Paula Yates has sown the ashes of her late lover, Michael Hutchence, into a small sequined pillow case, which she cuddles in bed, according to the recovering heroin addict with whom she had an affair while in a rehabilitation clinic.'

Make my words, that sentence is actually going to win someone an award one day.

Maybe Paula had to keep Michael's ashes in a safe place to stop her new boyfriend shooting them up. And he ended up as a sequined cushion, but then so did Elvis, and he was alive at the time.

Paula was going to make his ashes into one of those draught excluders you put behind the door, but that was a bit tasteless, even for her.

Sadly, while she's still in love with Michael, the reverse might not be true. This week, the pillow was spotted in a fashionable London restaurant having an intimate dinner with Helena Christianson.

Julie's team

Strange But True clues:

* suspicious clothing (stripey shirt and black masks)

* the award (a trophy with cheese on top)

* the pantomime weight (with 6t. painted on it)

Rod: [about the pantomime weight] I'll take that, cos that's mans work.

Julie: That's why it's hollow.

Rod: Mr. Quantock, do you know the answer to this? No I don't. I'm leaving it to the women folk.

Amanda: Believe it or not, someone has stolen a huge quantity  of extremely expensive cheese.

Rod: [looking at the clues] Could it be a champion award winning cheese? That weighed 6t?

Amanda: Where would you find that much cheese? Unless you looked for a giant mouse with very expensive tastes.

Julie: What I seem to think is whether this is a French cheese robbery because, you know, the classic stripey shirt, little beret, and a great big breadroll.. or.. whether it's an Italian cheese story and this is actually a little gondolear with a whole gondoleir full of cheese.

Rove: I thought that was the skin of a Tasmanian Tiger.

Anthony: This story is so obviously about the UFO sighting on King Island!

Paul: [back to Julie's team for an answer] Ahh, what are we saying?

Rod: Prize winning cheese was stolen, put your stolen glases on, creep creep creep went the stolers! Stole the prize winning cheese. It was worth $85,000.

Paul: They're right.

English cheese making is in turmoil after 6 tonnes of prime cheddar worth $85,000 and destined for the British Cheese Awards was stolen recently. Cheese maker Jamie Montgomery, described the raid as Industrial Esponage of the highest order - well he should have had better security than a big steel bar connected to the huge spring. Cheese competitions are big business in England. Given their track record in cricket, rugby, and the Commonwealth Games, the Pomes have found solice in something less demanding.

Officers are also investigating the pizza industry for evidence of hot cheese.

Mikey: Paul, I also believe the police are looking for a water cracker 50 metres wide.

But the cheese court is worried that so much cheddar released onto the streets may lead addicts to using harder cheese, and the increased sharing of fondu forks.

Mikey's team scored a Gooda 18 points.

Julie's team scored a Fetta 18 points.

So we say thanks for coming to our party, and leave you with the good news that the Tasmanian Tourist Board isn't the only organisation insuring against the return of extinct species. The National Party has taken out a similar policy against the reappearance of Pauline Hanson.

Goodnight.

[Paul sings Staying Alive]