CORBY FAMILY
Daily Telegraph - February 2007

Nothing makes my evening more than a good neighbourhood brawl on Today Tonight. You know, when everyone's in the driveway with no shirts on, shoving each other. So you can imagine how excited I am by the recent battle between the Corbys and Jodi Power. Yes, it's all there: betrayal, money, ill-defined “mental problems”.

But do the major players have the sort of form needed to take them over the finishing line of a stoush that looks set to continue for months? Here's my up-coming season rundown:

• JODI POWER: Walking a razor's edge between teary vulnerability and Judas-in-a-halter top, Jodi's believability is undermined only by her own glaring dodginess. Still, all expert tippers agree she will be in peak form this season and will put up a strong fight to retain her title as the nation's leading “former best friend”.

• JODI'S MUM: The joker in the pack. Don't underestimate this feisty Gold Coast blonde whose scatter-gun approach (It's not often you hear “I don't know if you want to print that” on live TV) masks the ferocity of a lioness defending her cub. Season highlight: “Of all my family Jodi is the most honest.” Don't sell the Power clan too short there, mum.

• JODI'S EX: It's hard to know where Michael Ripley fits with a line-up that seems strong enough without him. Full marks for portentous inhalations and disgusted shakes of the head, but he'll have to do better than bitching about his grasping wife if he wants to be anything more than the Kato Kaelin of this affair.

• MERCEDES CORBY: The star improver this past season, Mercedes has come a long way from the buck-toothed, fake Prada bag-wielding lunatic we saw two years ago. With form like this and a brood of cute inter-racial children, we may be looking at a new Susie Maroney. I hope someone at Channel 10's reality programming division is taking notes.

• WAYAN WIDYARTHA: There have been many references to the mysterious Mr Mercedes Corby but where is he? It's no good hiding star recruits on the bench.

• SCHAPELLE: A low profile since her foray into publishing could pay off for the Posh Spice of drug importation. While still reeling from last season's transfer to Malang, this battler has tricks up her sleeve and, now writing books is off the cards, she has more time to write letters to former cellmate Renee Lawrence, who still hasn't got the whole “looking pretty” thing down.

• A CURRENT AFFAIR: The team carefully chose to take the moral high ground over their rivals at Seven -- by running pre-emptive stories on the unreliability of lie-detectors in case Mercedes fails the one they set up.

• TODAY TONIGHT: Tonight, Mercedes and Jodi fight it out -- in a wading pool of jelly. And later, watch as Anna Coren tries to save Schapelle from lesbian cannibals.

© Brendan Shanahan 2008