Ah, the novelty of recently found fame. Idols winner Sasha-Lee Davids’s people have been fast off the mark. I noticed an ad for booking the Woman from Atlantis for an appearance this morning and requested a quote. (I said it was for a website launch in East London, that auspicious home to wits and blog Wondergirls) and this is the reply I got within about an hour:

Good day Gill

Thank you for your request.

Sasha Lee Davids starts from 21 600.00 ZAR excluding VAT, technical & backstage requirements (as per artist’s rider), return flights, accommodation, ground transfers, all meals and refreshments for a 45 minute performance (please note that these fee’s are subject to change on confirmation of her rates yet to be set.)

Please note that the above is NOT a quote. If you require further assistance, please feel free to contact me.

Yours in Entertainment,

LAYLA @ ENTERTAINMENT-ONLINE.CO.ZA
(Speak to me for general information, request referrals and status reports)

All I can say is: “Mamma Mia!”  R22 000 for 45 minutes, without flights, accommodation, taxis, food, drink and the PA system.

Guys, I’ll do appearances for free if you put me up in a hotel for the weekend and provide me with free food,  wine and a car hire!  Give me enough booze and a gay man, and I’ll even do Dancing Queen!

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Five things you need to know about SA today

1. This is top of the pops today! The Dispatch’s wayward Port Alfred correspondent Dave Macgregor, who has a special talent for ferreting out oddball people, has a story about a man in Hamburg (a little coastal resort between Port Alfred and East London) who is converting the farmers in the area into fine imported coffee that he serves up from a trailer. His children, Kei and Che, are making cookies to sell from the traveling business so that they can save up and buy a tractor. My favourite thing in the story is this nifty turn of phrase:

Investing R50 000 in state of the art roasters, a grinder and coffee machine, after four months in Hamburg, McConnell has already converted longtime chicory chuggers into caffeine junkies.

Chicory chuggers — I love that! Read the story here.

2. Cope’s Allan Boesak says that the ANC needs to give the DA and Helen Zille a chance in the Western Cape after promising last week to give her major uphill. Quite so, Reverend, who said the ANC’s response to losing the Western Cape to the DA smacks of a “child-like”  tantrum. Read the story here.

3. Unfortunately, the ANC is ignoring this call for constructive opposition politics, with ANC heavyweight and Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana calling Zille a “witch” while in Dutywa in the Transkei at the weekend. Read the story here. Honestly, someone as senior as the minister should not be going around trying to give Julius Malema a run for his money.

4. And while we’re on the DA, their former leader Tony Leon (writing in the Sunday Times at the weekend) about his hope that Jacob Zuma will usher out an era of frosty Mbeki politics in Parliament, suggested that the party’s parliamentary leader could be either Ryan Coetzee or Atholl Trollip. It will be interesting to see. Read the story here.

5.  Sasha-Lee Davids from Atlantis won Idols last night. If, like me, you can’t be bothered to follow the show but are curious about how she sang click here to go to KykNet, which has a range of Idols videos up from the finale. Be warned, thouhg, there’s lots of buffering and it’s a tad slow.

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Check out today’s cartoon by Cuan Miles at the Daily Dispatch about the importance of the youth vote in the next election. I must confess I might be biased because, living in East London, I start my day with the Dispatch but I really rate Cuan. He’s even beginning to rival the great Zapiro.

Cuan is a former graphic arts lecturer, a retiring, thoroughly decent East Londoner and is consistently excellent. He’s particularly good at connecting two unrelated news events — or a news event and an unrelated trend — to produce a wry comment on the country we live in. Looks at this Idols-inspired cartoon about Zuma-mania showing up Kgalema Motlanthe’s lack of charisma from February:

For more of Cuan Miles’s cartoon click here.

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Jacob Zuma’s alter ego Zu-Mad competing in Idols in the TV pilot of Z News series, featuring puppets based on cartoonist Zapiro’s caricatures, that the SABC backtracked on airing:

Read the full story

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The best things about Idols is the weird auditions:

Read the full story

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