Every time I hear of yet another medical study that "proves" that one thing is good for you while another is bad, I'm again reminded of the £300,000 of taxpayers' money spent by two scientists from the University of Oxford on a three-year study that proved that ducks like water - click here.
In the interest of advancing medical knowledge, I started my own study forty-five years ago, at Christmas 1974, while sitting on the beach in Lae in Papua New Guinea. Assidiously - which means with great care and perseverance, Des! -, I continued this study on the beach at Wewak, on the Return to Paradise Beach in Samoa, at the poolside of the Al-Harithy Hotel in Jeddah, and in front of my little beachside shack at Pallarenda.
Twenty years later, at Calvary John James Hospital in Canberra, the results were in: chess causes cancer, especially if played on a tropical beach --- and I have a huge A-shaped incision on my back to prove it!
P.S. Oh, and by the way, my mate Noel died in 1995. He was part of yet another study that all of us are engaged in: proving that life is terminal!
