TV

One thing about free-to-air TV programming on public holidays here is that you're subjected to variety and award shows -- repeats and sometimes from a year ago.

But yesterday, it was good. I finally got to watch the recent Grammy awards. It was telecast live on Monday morning but I slept through it -- 9am really is too early for me. There was an encore telecast at prime time later that night but I worked through that.

What I really wanted to watch wasn't so much the award presentation or the stars, I just wanted to watch the Police open the show. I wanted to know what they look like now. Quite interestingly, Sting, the good looker of the trio 20 years ago is now the baldy guy. The others still have full heads of hair. Must be retribution.

I wondered why of all their hits, they chose to come back with Roxanne. That rather brings to mind a Sting concert in Australia. He had performed all his solo hits, all the Police hits, came back for encore after encore and still the crowd wanted more. What else hadn't he done, he asked the crowd. And in one voice, they sang: "Roxanne..." And Sting started to beat his head against the microphone and groaned: "Every single f***king day of my life..."