When will politicians realize they are not the main event? 30 minutes of my life could have been better deployed watching the entertainment (below) at the mayoral dinner for World Design Capital 2014 identities in the city hall last night, if the too-many speakers didn’t feel obliged to genuflect to protocol and list the various politicians present, in order of precedence.

And there I was thinking decent designers was anarchic, like that beauty Sir Terence Conran. Mr. T trashed a whole herd of sacred cows and the SA Chefs Association for good measure when he hit town for the Design Indaba a few years ago. Mr. T on the feng shui water furrow in the Uitkyk tasting room? “How handy. A public urinal!” And the minder of his companion Lady Vicki, stole my Bic. Has the current crop sold out?

Alan Winde (above), provincial minister for something hugely important, volunteered his thoughts and vision at the Grand Café and Beach yesterday at a Namaqualand West Coast socks-off, but was shouted down by a cast of sea gulls (below) who would have made Hitchcock’s The Birds look like a fairy story.

And is there a special on c*nt jokes at the moment? The punch line for the one at the Grand was a mistranslation of keeping your kant clean while at the City Hall, it was Sol Kerzner comparing Gordon Ramsay to a cross-country jog with the latter being a “pant in the country.”

The dinner highlight was the 2007 Simonsig Cabernet Sauvignon (Pongraçz to start) and the talk from Paul Duncan (below), convenor of curators, who trousered the audience with the admission his dad designed the Tampon Towers on the slopes of Table Mountain. While over 600 admissions have been received for World Design Capital 2014, Paul warned there were not enough featuring science and technology or health, so curators would have to go out and lasso a few, like the asteroid Nasa plans to catch, perhaps.

My contribution to keeping Paul happy will be to ask astronaut Dr. Greg Olsen, who sold his Sensors Unlimited company for $600 million in 2000 to buy a Pinotage farm in Paarl, to design a smart phone camera to check the quality of extra virgin olive oil. Is there a more pressing health, science and technology issue in Constantia these days than decent salad dressing?