This week’s restaurant column should be a lot of fun. I’ve got food poisoning. Not all that bad, but bad enough. I got it from a cabbage roll I bought at a Russian deli not far from Ramos’s flat that’s run by two blokes I reckon are KGB agents. The bastards.

However, even though I was crook, the worst case of food poisoning I’ve ever had was in Hawaii. The new book I got coming out involves these Korean hookers in Honolulu so while I was there I thought I’d sample the cuisine at this place behind the International Markets. It was a sort of self-serve and I got all these odds and ends including some chicken that was sort of a glowing orange colour and this green gunk I thought was spinach. The whole lot was off and what I thought was spinach was seaweed.

As soon as I got a few mouthfuls down I knew everything was a bit suss. Especially the spinach. It tasted like when I fell over drunk one time down near the rocks at North Bondi and landed face first in this tidal pool at low tide, that had been baking in the sun all day full of cigarette butts and stale old seaweed. I bolted back to my hotel room and tried to get this Korean food out of me. But to no avail. I used epsom salts, soda water, hot salty water, milk of magnesia, bat’s blood: anything. Nothing worked, I was up all night on and off the throne, bucket next to the bed. When I did doze off from sheer exhaustion I kept hallucinating and having nightmares. The headaches and stomach cramps were just about indescribable. The only thing I could find to ease the pain was these tablets called Menudal. Sheilas take them for period pain. I took the whole box in two swallows. They’re good pills. They not only helped the food poisoning, they completely cured any lingering PMT I had. But that was the sickest I’ve ever been in my life and I’ve never eaten Korean food since. Nor do I linger near rock pools at low tide.

So there I was, wandering around Bondi, not feeling a hundred per cent and trying to get a bit of fresh air. I didn’t bother putting on a disguise. My face and skin was all pale and waxy and with the kind of brown and black tracksuit top I was wearing I looked like Commander Data, the android that runs the console in the new series of Star Trek. I was walking near the pavilion when who should I bump into but a nurse I used to take out years ago — Mavis. When I first met Mavis she was a bit on the thin side, had a good personality and liked dancing. Now she’d filled out, wears glasses and her hair in a bun and in her cardigan and dress she reminded me of Mrs Doubtfire. But she was happy to see me again and she hadn’t lost her personality. She’d been married, now she was divorced and worked at the Glebe Coroners Court. I told her my story and how I wasn’t feeling the best. Mavis agreed. She told me the water police brought in bodies of eighty-year-old men that had been in the ocean for over a week looked better than I did. Thanks, Mavis. The good ol’ gal that she is. She slapped me on the back and said what I needed was a good night out on the piss and a bit of rock ’n’ roll. I said, yeah why not. I couldn’t feel much worse than I did at the moment. But first we’d go to the pictures. So we bussed and trained it into the city and saw Natural Born Killers with Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, aka Mick and Mallory.

I honestly don’t know how to describe this film. It’s not a movie in the true sense of the word. It’s a kind of amalgamation of everything with a droning soundtrack and you view the whole schemozzle through a kaleidoscope. One minute it’s a film, then it’s a TV show, then it’s a rock video clip, then it is done like a scene from a TV soapie, then it’s a scene from an actual TV soapie, then it’s the 6 o’clock news, then it’s 60 Minutes, then it’s a cartoon and that’s not when it’s switching from colour to black and white and back to colour. It’s weird. I won’t bother trying to explain the story because there isn’t one. Mick and Mallory kill various people, get sent to gaol and escape. It’s entertaining in parts, I suppose.

I liked it when Mallory punched out this redneck mug in a bar; for a skinny sheila she’s got a great straight left. And Mrs Doubtfire said she liked the part where the Australian TV journalist went mad during the prison breakout and got in on the action with a .45 himself and blew a few people away. After two hours of violence shot through a kaleidoscope however, along with Micky and Mallory’s droning, mid-west American accents we were both glad when it was over. What Oliver Stone was trying to say with his film I’m not quite sure. Some message against violence? But knowing your average seppo psychopath, I imagine it won’t be long before various American wallys run out with an automatic shotgun and a .45 Magnum and blow a dozen or so people away trying to emulate Micky and Mallory.

And why not? If they didn’t it would not only be unheard of but unconstitutional as well. God bless the flag. And God bless the United States of America.

So after a gutful of violence it was time for a gutful of booze and boogie. And where better than the Cock ’n’ Bull at Bondi Junction to see The Cockroaches. And what a top night it was for a paltry $5 a head. I like The Cockroaches and so did Mrs Doubtfire. We both got drunk and got down and bless my soul if we didn’t get back up again. The Cockroaches are a top pub band. There’s eight of them and they all look like the boy next door only with heaps more personality. The punters around us were all singing and dancing and cheering, so I know it wasn’t just me and Mrs Doubtfire having a good time. And why not?

‘Permanently Single’ is a great song and for a good old, foot stomping rock ’n’ roll you can’t help yourself when they play ‘Kiss You Tonight’. I only wish some of those myxomatosis-diseased morons on radio would check bands like The Cockroaches out and play some of their songs. But not a chance. Why play some good Oz rock when you can slop out Billy, Elton, Johnny and Mariah. I’m sorry, I almost forgot to mention The Eagles and Jackson Browne. After a sensational night of boogie Mrs Doubtfire and I jumped into a taxi where she took me home and … tucked me into bed.

And now here it is. The news some of you have been waiting for. This is my last column for Nine to Five. Apart from all the other strife I’m in, my work load has caught up with me. I’ve got places to go and people to see. A movie to get together, a range of T-shirts to organise, another Les Norton novel to write and a book tour coming up that will take me all over Australia. But it’s been fun the last few months.

However I have noticed one thing going by the letters that come in. There are still some serious-minded boofheads out there in the community that can’t laugh at themselves. What a shame. But to them I just say, don’t worry. If you can’t, somebody else will. And if they don’t, I know I’m a special.

Adios, adieu and dat’s all he wrote.