How do you get my husband, my mother and pornography in the one story? More easily than you might think.....

First, some background… Those of you familiar with The Tribune will know that we owe our beginnings to our beloved local wine bar - The King of Tonga (164A Tennyson St, go check it out, don’t forget to mention this publication and garner more free drinks for your editors).

Well, a few weeks back the King decided to run its own Australian Idol/KOT Idol competition.

Everyone who knows my husband would not be surprised to learn that he was absolutely thrilled by the idea of an entire bar full of people watching him perform, so he pranced up to the plate immediately.

The only difficulty he encountered was that KOT Idol performances were on a Tuesday night - when we have all three kids at home. There was some wailing and gnashing of teeth over this, until my mother very generously agreed to babysit and thus cleared the last stumbling block from my beloved’s path to fame and fortune (with his supportive and admiring wife looking on).

So, he made it through the first round and on to the semi final, where he rocked the bar with his jazz rendition of Sir Mixalot's ‘Baby Got Back’.

Fulfilling my role as the supportive and admiring wife, I bought along a video camera and after elbowing my way to the front of the cheering, sweating crowd, I recorded his performance for posterity and YouTube (link is coming, honest, can't get the bastard video software to work).

We stayed for the rest of the acts and several celebratory pints and then headed home to where my mother was waiting with much patience (and no pints).

Again, those of you who know my beloved will not be surprised to learn that the first thing he wanted to do when we got home was watch the video of his performance. He plonked himself down on the couch next to my mother, picked up his MacBook and proudly announced that she didn't have to miss out, as they could watch the video file together before she went home (I believe this was his way of expressing his gratitude to her for looking after the kids).

God bless the Macintosh “intuitive” iMovie software, which started importing the video file and simultaneously opened up his “last viewed file” in another window... treating my mother and me to an extremely close up view of a dubious blonde (actually, no, not dubious at all, she was most definitely NOT a natural blonde)... umm... naked and... entertaining herself for the camera.

A few seconds later another window popped open to show the video of his performance at the bar…again the “intuitive” Macintosh software demonstrating its superiority by carefully placing the two windows next to each other on the screen, intuitively realising that he would WANT to show his mother-in-law footage of himself belting out Baby Got Back lyrics ( “I want 'em real thick and juicy”) side by side with the video of the girl and her incredibly active hands….

As I said earlier, I'm a very loving and supportive wife, so I dealt with this crisis by falling to the floor and laughing so hard I almost made myself vomit.

My beloved meanwhile, overwhelmed by horror and pints, could do nothing but sit, dumbfounded, and watch as both video files played on and on and on…

It's a very good thing that my mother has a marvellous sense of humour and instead of screaming, fainting or breaking a bottle over his head, she just sat there giggling merrily to herself and watching interestedly as he turned purple and started desperately banging on the keyboard, trying, in vain, to make it all stop.

I think he was so horrified by the fact that he was showing porn to his mother in law that it just didn't occur to him to simply close the lid of the laptop and walk out of the room.

Eventually, just as he was about to hurl the Mac to the floor and start jumping on it, I managed to drag myself up off the floor, put my still giggling mother into a taxi, extract my husband from under the couch and head off to bed; where I lay chortling away for hours as he tried to suffocate himself with a pillow.

It's possible that a truly loving and supportive wife wouldn't put this story up on the internet…but, what can I say…no-one's perfect…

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