Sabrina sets the tongues wagging

FIFTY years ago next month Russia shocked the West by landing a space probe on the moon, while its leader Nikolai Krushchev made a historic visit to America.

But back in Brisbane that week most average males were more interested in the movements of Manchester stage and TV star Norma Sykes.

Sykes, better known to drooling men from one end of the Commonwealth to the other as Sabrina, was in Brisbane in 1959 for a two-night gig at Festival Hall, followed by a week at the Theatre Royal.

The newspaper ad for the concert described her as the "world's number one pin-up girl". Wherever she went that week Sabrina caused a mini-riot, culminating in a swim in at the old Oasis gardens in a bikini.

The Courier-Mail women's editor Patience Thoms took a decidedly sarcastic view of the starlet's arrival at Brisbane Airport, affecting to notice only her magnificent swept-up blonde hairdo.

"After the police shepherded Sabrina through the crowd closed in and I suddenly knew what a rugby scrum was like," Ms Thoms wrote.

"We swayed to and fro in a solid mass. A woman on my right said plaintively, `there's a small boy down there'.

"The child was hauled above the crowd, but what was he doing there? Maybe he likes aeroplanes?"

Even though Sabrina was surrounded by MALE reporters (Ms Thoms felt it necessary to capitalise the adjective) she managed to get a few questions in, ascertaining that:

• The star was waiting for the arrival of six suitcases of clothes.
• She had two watches showing different times, revealing that she never wound them up because other people always told her where and when to go next.
• She liked watching movies but had no time to read.

Television was only one month old in Brisbane at the time and got off to a slow start (QTQ9's service one day that week ran for only four hours), but even then TV producers realised a pretty face, like Sabrina's, was not a bad thing.

That week BTQ7 announced that Miss Queensland 1959, 19-year-old Nancy Knudsen, would join it as an announcer when it began broadcasting in October.

The ABC hit back, revealing the same day that 1955 Miss Australia Maureen Kistle would become its on-air hostess and compere.