REGULAR SHORTS

CHANNEL 10 is promoting Falling in Love, with Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro, as one of its big film drawcards this season. But for its Valentine's Night movie, the station chose Short Circuit, featuring a military robot gone haywire. Other heart-warming programs on offer last night were The Terminator, a half-man half-machine with a murder fetish, Olive, an actress battling with cancer, and the icy opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics.

AND with all the delicacy of a condom manufacturer, Ansell chose Valentine's Day to launch its new "extra-strength" sheath, which the company claims offers"greater protection - without loss of sensitivity".

DR Ross Fitzgerald, a senior lecturer in politics at Brisbane's Griffith University, received a phone call last week from an alleged senior member of the Corrective Services Department. When he answered "Fitzgerald speaking", the caller launched into a tale about a potential witness to the Fitzgerald Inquiry being threatened. After several minutes, the caller stopped, and when Dr Fitzgerald said nothing, asked: "Aren't you interested?" Dr Ross was very interested, but suggested that perhaps the caller was looking for Mr Tony Fitzgerald, QC.

SOLO round-the-world sailor Kay Cottee threw a parcel of undeveloped film overboard near the Falkland Islands, wanting it sent home to Australia, and included $20 for postage. Waiting men from the islands' Fisheries Department picked up the parcel, and forwarded it on. When the package arrived last week, the money was still with it - you don't have to pay postage in the tiny islands colony.

THE FIRST sign of winter? Seen on a city-bound 426 bus: a woman knitting a woolly jumper.

ONLY say it's Australian, and you can be sure it won't founder in this Bicentennial year. Just as the public's purse floated the First Fleet Re-enactment when it ran aground in Rio, the troubled History of Australia -The Musical looks likely to survive in similar fashion. When the cast and crew announced they would perform for nothing to keep the show on stage in Melbourne last week, the public responded by filling the house to capacity every night - and pledging more than $25,000 for advertising costs.

WANT that warm radioactive glow in your tummy? Seen outside a delicatessen in Roselands shopping centre was a basket of jams produced in Kiev, the Soviet city near Chernobyl, selling for the bargain price of $1 each. A white cardboard sign in the basket read "From Russia with love".

SHEILA Kennelly, of Channel 7's new drama Home and Away, received a fan letter from a viewer in Mackay, Queensland, who had read in a magazine article that Ms Kennelly lived on a farm in the Hunter Valley. It was addressed to: "Sheila Kennelly, a farm, Hunter Valley, NSW." It reached her in under a week.