Remember "The Man Who Sued God", the 2001 Australian comedy film starring Billy Connolly and Judy Davis? The screenplay for this film was written by Don Watson, former speechwriter to former Prime Minister Paul Keating.
(He also wrote the screenplay for "Passion - The Story of Percy Grainger", a 1999 drama film about the pianist and composer.)
If that wasn't enough, he's also written over a dozen books, including "Recollections of A Bleeding Heart", the authorised biography of Paul Keating's four years as Australia's Prime Minister, and "Death Sentences", a short book that is often mistaken for a treatise on good grammar and plain English, but which is really in the nature of a pebble thrown at the unstoppable tide of managerialism and the stupefying language it has visited upon the world, and "Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words", the two latter taking pride of place in my library in the section "Linguistics".
In my recent wanderings through the local op-shops, I also picked up a copy of his book "Watsonia - A Writing Life". And what a find it has been!
Of course, I could listen to this bloke for hours. And I did - click here.
