DINNER PARTY INTEL: Vincent Smith’s millions

1. Member with millions

Four years ago, when ANC MP Vincent Smith was leading an investigation of Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s SABC, he was widely admired. Now he seems to be just another party hack on the make. This week it was revealed that he had assets of R46m. Even if he had saved every cent of his R1m-plus a year salary from when he became an MP in 1999, he wouldn’t have accumulated that much.

2. Let it snow

With the Olympics Games in Tokyo drawing to a close, the countries that have snow will be looking to next year’s Winter Games — where they won’t have it. Beijing, which was chosen ahead of Almaty in Kazakhstan, has assigned the Nordic and Alpine skiing events to almost 200km to the north, on the edge of the Gobi Desert, where it will cost billions for a water transfer system to create artificial snow.

3. Once our best villain

There was a time when it would have made page one in our public prints. But when William Smith died last month it was in the obscurity of a California hospital. With his dark looks and a grim demeanour, the actor was typecast as a Hollywood villain, most notoriously as Anthony Falconetti in the TV drama Rich Man, Poor Man (the Dallas of its day) where he was the one everyone loved to hate. He was 88.