Robert Hughes Prepares Notes For Future Essay On Ian Thorpe’s Oeuvre

The world of “celebrity” is filled with slashies, that is, people who can’t resist sliding a slash between their various careers. Actor/model, model/actress, muso/entrepreneur, gardener/male stripper – the list goes on. Well, Ian Thorpe is keen to become the first swimmer/pearl-necklace peddler/visual artist with his painterly effort for a charity auction, darkly entitled My Pain, My Gain, featuring a stylised Thorpedo – ahem – “powering through the water with tiny human figures all over him”.

“When I was a kid I used to imagine within my body there were all these mini people and the people in my goggles were the control room,” Thorpe said.

“They were kind of like lemmings and they used to power everything in my body. I was always whipping them to make them work harder. That was my form of visualisation.”

Umm, yesss, that’s very good, Ian. And did anyone check what was being put in the water in Thorpedo’s training pool? Was it chlorine mix, or was it in fact ketamine? Might be a story in that, Today Tonight. Just sayin’.