My long-term fans will be well aware that, after Demetriou, my next-favourite shouting topic is the Melbourne Grand Prix, and given that it starts this week, I think a bit of a yell is due.

I've been twice, with a AAA lanyard, which, dear peasants, is the ONLY way to go, but that's not really saying much. Wandering into marquees and watching hair-plugged mid-level execs spilling their drinks as they desperately try to chat up off-duty grid girls is fun for a while, as is strolling around The Paddock" (the area behind the pits) and seeing Michael Schumacher eating an apple. If you forget about free drinks, there are only two reasons to go to the Grand Prix, and they are both loud noises.

These cars are seriously fucking loud. Twenty-two of them accelerating out of Turn One on Lap One within a second is something that would've outdone the black obelisks from 2001 in encouraging primates to start using tools. After that it's all downhill, as they spread out and the procession towards the chequered flag grinds inexorably on, and Mark Webber fails yet again to make an impression "at home".

The other thing that makes the GP cool (and when you live where I do you don't even need to fork out for a ticket), is the fly-overs. I was watching the FA/18 Hornet a few years ago, then looked around me at all the bogans and I thought "Guys, when you're doing donuts at a thousand feet, surrounded by a couple of hundred million dollars worth of machine, you'll get laid. Doing it in Chapel St, you won't, okay?" (It is to the credit of humanity, however, that stupid young men will continue to try).

This year, as part of the Grand Prix Corporation's Great Austerity Drive/Please Keep The GP We Like Flying First Class On The Taxpayer, there are no Hornets. No Hornets. Despite this, we will hear yet again from Ron Walker that eleventy billion people attended, and the entire population of the Andromeda galaxy watched on TV and all of them marvelled at Marvellous Melbourne and there was a nerd in a Ferrari T-Shirt at the Bourke St Hungry Jack's so the economic benefit to Victoria is somewhere in line with the bonus packages at Goldman Sachs.

These figures are not to be examined, let alone questioned, as they come from the unimpeachable source of the Andrew Bolt Institute of Applied Crowd-Counting.

In other news: "Andrew Hilditch has said he is thrilled with the performance of opener Phillip Hughes". So long, Phil, that was a nice career.

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