It's always nice to hear that Australia's model bedding cricketing heroes are doing something for the kids - like WeetBix commercials, or cricketing coaching sessions at the local orphanage.

Or, if you're Michael Clarke, charging schoolkids $50 to have a photo taken alongside him. That's the Aussie sporting spirit, Pup!

Except, wait a second, it looks like it's the school's bright idea. Even better!

A Brisbane Catholic school has some of its flock in a flap after announcing a plan to charge kids $50 to have their photo taken with cricketing star Michael Clarke and his baggy green cap at their fete.

Clarke and fiancee Lara Bingle will attend the St Columba's Primary School fete on August 2 in an appearance agreed upon through his manager Chris White, whose children attend the school.

And while pictures of the future Australian skipper without his sacred green cap will be free, a snap of Clarke and the child with the cap on is being sold for $50 - with all money going towards the construction of an outdoor, undercover sporting shelter for the school in Brisbane's northern suburb of Wilston.

Well, that's kind of disappointing. It would've been better if the story had gone along the lines of Clarke charging the children $100 each just to talk to him, while he and Bingle teased them to the point of tears, and then said something like, "F--k this pie stand, let's go to the Hog's Breath Cafe" before turning over some fete stalls and riding out of the school on a Harley.

A girl can dream, right?

It was an innocent time, back when Lara Bingle strolled onto a pristine beach in a candy-striped bikini and asked us, playfully, "where the bloody hell are you?" A simpler time, when children could play without fear of... not really sure where I'm going with this one, but it's safe to say we all remember those ads.

As does Kevin Rudd, and perhaps with far less fondness than the national FHM readership (who were too busy touching themselves thanking God for sending them Lara "Intellegent" Bingle), as he has labeled the campaign a "disaster".

"That campaign, every place I have visited in the world, has been basically described as an absolute rolled gold disaster," he said.

"This government is now seeking to re-examine that because Australian tourism deserves better than that which (Liberal MP Fran Bailey) gave to us when she was minister for tourism.

"That campaign was a rolled gold disaster."

Wow, two mentions of the phrase "rolled gold disaster"! This must be the new "mateship"/"clever"/[insert political buzzword of choice here].

Anyone got any tips for the new tourism campaign? Personally, I suggest a vintage re-run of this little classic...

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Just last week it seemed the best thing They could come up with for Lara Bingle's career renaissance was to appear on an advertorial travel show on Nine; hardly worth all the fanfare her return to the tele was generating.

Hold your horses, then, because it looks as though Lara might have something even more spectacularly exciting in store for viewers: SHE MIGHT BE THE NEW ADRIANA XENIDES.

By that we don't mean she'll disappear from public view only to reappear in a haze of driving offences and bizarre medical conditions, but rather that Lara could well be the new "letters girl" on the revamped Wheel Of Fortune.

It's understood Nine is casting for the co-hosting gig of the new-look Wheel Of Fortune with Tim Campbell and Lara, who is currently employed by Nine as part of its Holidays For Sale program, is a frontrunner for the game-show gig.

A rep for Nine yesterday confirmed auditions for the job were being held in Brisbane but stopped short of naming Bingle as one of the starlets in line for the job.

"We are auditioning for the part of co-host at the moment but we would never say who is taking part in those auditions," the spokesperson said.

"I can't say that she is or isn't being considered for the role. I cannot say either way."

Good lord, man/woman, don't keep us hanging like this! IS SHE OR ISN'T SHE?! You are toying with the nerves of fans of crappy afternoon light-entertainment!

We feel Lara would be great for the role. It would finally afford her the chance to learn to read and spell.

We were reading yesterday about Lara Bingle's new gig at Channel Nine, which comes as a surprise of sorts after more or less being dropped from the payroll after a nothing-much year at the network and we're sure has nothing to do with her fairly high-profile engagement to Michael Clarke.

In any case, when we went back to post on the topic, we couldn't help but notice how a few bits of data had been "massaged" in the transition from news.com.au 'news' to Sunday Mail 'entertainment' stories over the course of the day.

Here's how the Mail breathlessly described Bingle's new role:

Bingle, 20, filmed her first episode of Channel 9's new travel series, Holidays For Sale, on Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays last week.

The model has been hired as a travel reporter to co-star with veterans Shelley Craft and Laura Csortan as well as Underbelly actor Frankie J. Holden and swimmer Sam Riley.

"Travel series"! A "travel reporter"! That sounds awfully professional and exciting! And what a great cast, too!

However, travel (ho ho!) back in time eleven hours or so and News.com.au tells a noticeably different tale:

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We're almost - almost - starting to feel sorry for New Idea magazine these days. To say it's been an eventful few months would be an understatement, and things just seem to be getting worse.

Apparently editor Mirella Cestaro - who is only a month into her role as the women's mag's editor - decided to cough up mad bucks for the Michael Clarke and Lara "Intellegent" Bingle engagement story. Problem is, if New Idea's competitors' decisions are to be believed, her readers probably don't even want to hear about Bingle.

The Pacific Magazines title paid a massive $135,000 for a two-part love story of the blonde couple's engagement, despite ACP competitor Woman's Day pulling out of negotiations at $80,000 - saying it wasn't worth more because Bingle does not resonate with female readers.

Following poor sales after Monday's "exclusive", billed as such despite the fact the news had already broken, Cestaro is understood to be facing criticism for orchestrating an overpriced and unsuccessful deal.

Drunkards, alleged domestic violence perpetrators, gold diggers, dorks - perhaps Cestaro should just make expensive cover deals with unpleasant people her "thing", and try and own this shaky time in New Idea's life?

We suggest a tell-all cover story about Ivan Milat's high school sweetheart, the readers will love that!

What wonderful news with which to start our post-long weekend recovery period! The papers have just informed us that Lara "Intellegent" Bingle and Michael "Pup" Clarke have gotten engaged while in New York for a romantic getaway!

Cricket star Michael Clarke and his model partner Lara Bingle are engaged to be married after the test player popped the big question while holidaying in the US.

Clarke, who turns 27 next week, asked Bingle to marry him in New York's Central Park - offering a five carat pear-shaped diamond ring, reportedly valued at $100,000.

$100,000? Expensive and impressive, sure, but not if you are Kylie Minogue's liver.

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We're fascinated by Lara Bingle here at Defamer Australia, though - it must be said - largely not because of her brainpower (really, who are we kidding - it's because of her norks).

So, we stifled more than a few guffaws when we read this morning that FHM, which is struggling for sales in the face of classier mens' rags like GQ and Men's Style, is apparently after Lara for a revamped style of photoshoot, to treat both model and reader with a little more intelligence.

Except, what's that? Apparently when it comes to News Ltd, FHM and Lara Bingle, there's no "i" in "team", and neither is there a second one in "intelligent":

But wait, there's more! It are evun moar intellegent!

Oh dear. We know that News Ltd's brilliance has little do do with FHM, but this sort of publicity - when you've just tanked $1m in phone sex advertising in order to lift the tone of your mag, and are talking about stories being written more "intelligently" - doesn't really bode well for your revamp.

Photographer Gavin O'Neill clearly hasn't realised that the media like their women to be either dirty sluts or helpless angels, as he is surprised at the "poor Lara" spin that's been put upon the reemergence of the nude photoshoot he and Bingle undertook some time ago.

Yes, the conservative media outlets can't imagine that a) a young model would choose to pose nude or topless for some otherwise sophisticated photos, b) that the photographer wouldn't have been taking advantage of her in working with her, and c) that she wouldn't be completely ashamed and resort to the usual "I was young and needed the money!" excuses if the photos were distributed after the fact.

Here's O'Neill's take on it all:

But while Bingle has been painted as the victim in a sleazy expose that just won't disappear, O'Neill says the images are beautiful and tasteful - an opinion shared by the Cronulla model's management at International Quarterback.

Bingle and O'Neill have maintained a close professional relationship since the nude shoot, working together on several commercial projects.

"Everybody has this perception that Lara is embarrassed by the pictures but she's not ashamed at all - she loves these pictures," O'Neill told the Daily Telegraph's Confidential.

"I spoke to her about it today and she really doesn't understand why people would think 'poor Lara'. She and her family have no issue with the images at all."

Personally, we're with O'Neill and Lara's management - in the scheme of "surfaced" nudie photos, these ones are lovely; Lara looks gorgeous and womanly (although, where has she been hiding those bazoongas??) and the whole thing is about as far from a shameful Zoo-style strip-down as you can get.

Now, if the media could stop treating her like their sheltered 16-year-old virgin daughter who lives in a bubble within which it is perpetually 1956, that would be very nice, thanks!

Remember last year in April, how topless photos of Lara Bingle "surfaced" on the German GQ website, and the resulting hordes of click-happy blokes crashed the site, and Lara was all "you betrayed me!" and the photographer was all "nuh uh!"?

Well, you best take your deja vu medication, because like the Time Warp, it's all happening again!

Yes, and while we're not sure the same photo can "surface" twice, that didn't stop News Ltd from breathlessly reporting the story and providing rudey nudey links to the shots without so much as an "NSFW!"

SHE looked like the girl next door when she was in Adelaide for the Gerard McCabe Jewellers Celebrity Tennis Challenge late last year. But Lara Bingle's topless past has come back to haunt her - again.

The Aussie model and partner of Aussie cricket captain-in-waiting Michael Clarke, who first got our attention as the star of the "Where the bloody hell are you" campaign, is on display on German website GQ.

It's the same website which last March caused Bingle grief and sent Australian males spending a lot of time with their PCs.

Yes, it's the same website - and the same photo, dudes! They even linked to it way back in April here.

Either we spend too much time looking at classy nude pictures of cheery tourism models, or someone at the News Ltd scandal desk needs to have their eyesight checked.

Or perhaps they're just confused because this time Lara doesn't seem to be shooting black starbursts out of her nipples?

We always feel a bit bad about poking fun at model and walking headline Lara Bingle; after all, the poor girl's been through the media wringer more than a few times, and, you know, she didn't know Brendan Fevola was married 'n' shit.

But there's a look in her eyes that suggests to us that it might be a bit mean to keep having a go at her. Something about 'mocking the afflicted' springs to mind. Here she is lending her celebrity (along with Jessica "Home & Away" Tovey on the left, and Deni "Vibrato" Hines on the right) to a tree-planting initiative in Sydney:

There's not much in those eyes, is there? Do you think she knows where the camera is, or is she looking for the "birdie", and disappointed to find no parrot on the shoulder of the snapper?

Oh well, as Socrates said, the only true wisdom comes in knowing that you know nothing.

Lara: "Dude, that's us!" *air guitar*