His Bleakness
For a cartoonist, Bill Leak has a miserable name. Puzzle-wise.
A few years back I devoted a Wordwit to the dual Walkley winner and resident rascal in The Australian newspaper, highlighting the fact the bloke’s name entails ILL inside BLEAK.
Bill rang the Herald at the time to complain. With a cackle. Fact is he cherished the grim kink in his spelling. As you’d expect.
Well, the worm has turned. Or the pumpkin seed – or whatever Bill was trying to feed some parrots in Mount White, falling off a balcony on Saturday, and plunging seven metres.
Bill remains in a serious condition in Royal North Shore Hospital, his condition improving after two brain operations. Any more news is scarce. I’m sure I belong to a welter of fans, crawling the wires sweating on Leak leaks – the hope of an upswing, a defiant press release, that signature grin.
Ironically, the last time Mr Ill-in-Bleak suffered an injury of any kind was while solving a DA crossword. Here’s an excerpt from the cartoonist’s occasional column around Christmas time last year:
“”¦crossword solving is not for the faint-hearted, being at least as dangerous – possibly more so – than watching footy on the telly.
Like all daredevils, risk-taking is in my blood so, despite the setback, my passion for cryptic crosswords never waned. I thrive on the adrenalin rush a hard clue gives, oblivious to trivial concerns such as my physical safety.
It was this devil-may-care attitude that resulted in the injury that’s got me hobbling on crutches yet again. I was going for a personal best against DA…when I smashed a toe against the couch while striding through the lounge room in the dark, heading for the dictionary.
Down I went, like a felled tree, bouncing off the coffee table straight on to the floor. I crawled, wild-eyed and desperate, to the switch. I flicked on the light, only to see my poor mangled toe poking out at right angles to its mates”¦.”
One broken toe later, Bill completed my puzzle in a personal best time of 18 hours, 42 minutes and 53 seconds. Mate, from all of us, take as much time as you need and leave the parrots to experts. We love you and long for that inspired bleakness to pervade our lives yet again.