Princess Diana Credit:Rick Stevens The presence of Mercury, Everett and Rocos diverted revellers' attention and Diana was able to order drinks undetected, Rocos recalled. Diana, the ex-wife of heir to the British throne Prince Charles, lived under the glare of the paparazzi and died in a car crash in Paris in 1997, pursued by photographers. Mercury, loved for his spell-binding live performances and enduring Queen hits, died in 1991. AFP

Punters get peep at revamped grandstand About 2000 members of the Australian Turf Club will put Randwick's $150 million grandstand renovation through its paces at a trial race day on Monday. Another 500 tickets, at $15, to the eight-race event will be available to the public on a ''first-come, best-dressed'' basis from 11.30am before the first race at 1.20pm, club media manager Larissa O'Connor said. While the event is the first race day at Randwick since last year's spring carnival, Ms O'Connor said the club was trying to hose down any hype. ''We very much want to communicate that it is a test event, and it is important for the club to check that everything is up and running,'' she said. She suggested the public should save their excitement for Black Caviar, the undefeated mare who will run on derby day, April 13, the first public unveiling of the new grandstand. Monday's line-up would be like a normal midweek race, except the crowd will be the first to experience the spectacular ''theatre of the horse'' parade ring and the betting ring on the ground floor of the partly completed grandstand.

The grand opening of the completed grandstand is scheduled for September. Julie Power

Wee dram to help drown sorrows at St John's Beleaguered St John's College appears to be drowning its sorrows, with a whisky night planned in its patrician library. The University of Sydney college will host a ''sensory journey'' this month in aid of the new Glenmorangie Ealanta Private Edition scotch. The college may do well to stay dry at the moment, given the scrutiny under which it finds itself. St John's can claim to be considerably more aged than the 19-year-old Scotch - it is the oldest Australian university Catholic college - but in light of dehumanising bullying allegations, is perhaps not as distinguished as it once saw itself. As a side note, a look at the history of its Wikipedia entry suggests any hints of scandal may have been carefully removed - a flurry of activity denotes November 6, when Cardinal George Pell withdrew his support for the college amid revelations of degrading initiation rituals at the institution.

Still, whisky is better than a mix of dog food, shampoo and alcohol, or other such specialities for which the Camperdown college has become known. Priest has his two bob's worth on Pope's trampling on tradition Leave it to straight-shootin' Father Bob Maguire to give the Catholic Church a kick up the proverbial. The outspoken one-time man of the cloth gave a prod where, possibly, a prod was due when speaking on ABC News on Good Friday. ''The bosses in the churches have a ritual of washing people's feet,'' he said. ''All I'm saying is it would be good now if we could segue into not only washing people's feet ritually but in fact doing it in real life, by maybe disposing of assets that are no longer of use to us, or even those that are of use to us, because we have to do something actually outrageous, almost, to let the world know that the Catholic Church has actually been reborn.'' Maguire, a former Melbourne priest, could have more in common with Pope Francis than some local acolytes may care for. ''[The Pope's] got the stamina and the personality to actually say, 'Hey, listen, we better get this show back on the road'. So I reckon it's great.''

He may well have appreciated Sunday's grip of the neighbourly. Cassocks and cathedrals aside, driveways, barbecues and cul-de-sacs throughout Sydney were potential scenes of community goodwill on Easter Sunday, as Neighbour Day attempted to instil a touch of the saintly among all creeds.



STAY IN TOUCH WITH ... THE PARIS CHAINSAW MASSACRE It was a heist that had all the makings of an airport fiction shoo-in. Louis XIV, a chainsaw, the National Museum of Natural History, Parisian gendarmes, Versailles, speeding Peugeots (probably). The Gallery of Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy at the Paris museum was the scene of an audacious attempt to make off with the tusk of a centuries-old elephant on Saturday morning. Using a chainsaw, a 20-year-old man is said to have hacked one of the tusks from the beloved beast, given to the Sun King by the King of Portugal in 1668. The creature lived in the menagerie at Versailles, its ostentatious surroundings in life not far from its showy resting place at the Left Bank gallery. The man was stopped in a street close to the gallery and the three-kilogram tusk seized. Museum official Jacques Cuisin told BFM-TV he is confident the retrieved ivory, worth thousands of euros on the outlawed goods market, can be reattached. Not that this would be the elephant's first transplant. The popular attraction's tusks were a late addition to the original skeleton.

SIGHTINGS OF THE BOSS Where the Boss treads, rumours of near-sightings and future sightings are sure to follow. And so Bruce Springsteen's Australia tour watchers turn to Byron Bay's Bluesfest. The festival's organiser, Peter Noble, set tongues wagging in December when he jetted to the US, hinting at a search for unmentionably big signings for the event. Now, the likelihood of a sighting of the Boss at the Byron Bay showpiece has been whipped into a bigger frenzy yet, after a Saturday gig by Irish punk band the Dropkick Murphys teased the crowd by saying ''Ladies and gentlemen, Bruce Springsteen …'' Connections between Bluesfest and the E-street band are many and well-worn, and there's an emerging adage that if we wait long enough the New Jersey crooner will make it to the festival one day. It's rumoured the Boss could join Bonnie Raitt in Monday's line-up - not only does his schedule allow for it after an outing at Hanging Rock, but Raitt presented Springsteen with his 2013 MusicCares Person of the Year award. Elsewhere at Bluesfest, all eyes were on Sunday afternoon's performance by The Voice winner Karise Eden.