Sideswipe

TV One's Wendy Petrie (left) and TV3's Carolyn Ryan.

Same day, same haircut, same suit - different channel: It would've been hard to know which news you were watching on Tuesday, with TV One's Wendy Petrie and TV3's Carolyn Ryan taking a homogeneous approach to newsreader style.

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Audio highlights of National leader Don Brash offering love advice on Christchurch radio station RDU last year have come back to haunt him. The audio has been posted on the Scoop website - Listen to the mash-up - after Brash's regular RDU ring-in last year. Dr Brash's advisers felt that dispensing relationship counselling to the Canterbury public might not assist in winning votes, says Scoop, and the show ceased. But the audio files live on. Here's what Brash has to say about attraction ...

Brash: I think we do react initially to a woman's outward appearance. I think that's long ingrained and programmed. But as you get to know someone better, clearly the inner woman becomes pretty important also. I've never forgotten once going out with a beauty queen and she was stunningly good looking ... she was blonde ... she was certainly very, very attractive. But I realised half way through dinner I couldn't conduct a conversation with her.

RDU Host: ... She didn't know anything about GDP?

Brash: Or a number of other things either ...

Go to Scoop.co.nz, search for "Brash Love Advice" to hear what the Opposition leader has to say about female body hair.

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You can't handle the truth: Strangely, the cover story for Newsweek for Europe, Asia and Latin America is How the US Lost Afghanistan, but the US cover story is Annie Leibovitz: Thru Her Lens.

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A die-hard fan of late Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin plans to feed his baby son's placenta to giant lizards in a bizarre tribute to his reptile-loving hero, he said. Australian zoo reptile keeper Wil Kemp hopes the offering will help bring his son - born the day after Irwin was killed - closer to the cold-blooded world of the creatures loved by he and Irwin. Kemp named his son Tai Irwin Kemp - Tai in honour of the Taipan snake and Irwin as a tribute to the slain wildlife daredevil. (Source: Australian Associated Press.)

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The public must be on hyper-alert for any potential celebrity deaths after Irwin and Brock and Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond's close call. At 5am yesterday the Herald got an email asking, "Is it true that Orlando Bloom died this morning?" We can reassure Orlando's fan club that as the paper went to press, he remained very much alive.