“The Third Man” is one of the great classic movies - some say the greatest. It’s about someone exploring a mysterious event where, as the story unfolds, there are more witnesses than first seemed to be the case - there were actually two witnesses and then, you guessed it, there was a Third Man.
I know Tony Abbott exceptionally well. This is hardly surprising as we were born on the same day at the same London hospital, went to the same schools and did the same courses at the same universities. We’re of similar stature and dress in the same style but have different speaking voices. (Apparently I have sounded like Peter Ustinov since my Oxford days, whereas Ant sounds like, well, like Tony Abbott.) Although our lives have moved on, we still speak 50 or 60 times a week. And I was with him the whole of THAT day. In those days many of us had multiple nicknames and I was one of the very few who always called him “Ant”.
Patchy (his nickname was a tease on his less than robust memory) used to pop up quite a lot around the campus and I clearly remember that he never answered the simplest question without a very long pause - sometimes 7 or 8 minutes. Some said this was because he was a very deep thinker, but I had a different theory. So I’m not surprised it’s taken him a few decades to come out of the woodwork on this one.
Let me assure you: IT NEVER HAPPENED. Ant won’t be pleased with me in saying this but I’m going to say it anyway. At the party there were fog machines, a mirror ball, stroboscopes and more than a few flagons of cheap wine. Several of the Lefties looked stoned. Ant approached Barbara and, to get her attention, clapped his hands over his own head. He then congratulated her and most of us left. A few of us left with Ant and we all jumped into a cab (they were pretty cheap in the 70’s). Ant wanted to go to the Bald Rock but we decided to go to one of the jazz pubs in Balmain. Others joined us. One of them said “I just overhead one of those commos say they would stitch up Ant but, in the interests of political advantage, might keep the idea up their sleeve for a few decades”. We all laughed.
So, you see, I am the Third Man.
It’s all true. I’ll swear a stautory declaration confirming all this. Now that I’ve said all that, I should be guaranteed front page coverage in tomorrow’s SMH.
Manning of Wingham
