You're talking to Tony*: radio comedian launches world's first non-boring 'history of something' book.

 At long last, after several lockdown-caused false starts, The Moonee Ponds Club: Celebrating 125 Years was launched on 6 December at the Club's premises at 622 Mount Alexander Road, Moonee Ponds. 

3AW's Pub of the Week raconteur/gastronome/comedian/CouldbeenChampion/Moonee Ponds notable Tony Leonard emceed the launch of the iconic club with a laugh-generating off-the-cuff ramble ranging over his upbringing in neighbouring Footscray, the price of Ben Ean moselle in the 1980s and a snub of his alma mater: he once launched a book for Xavier College - an Eastern suburbs school for social-climbing Catholics - in which the attendees descended on the book table, grabbed copies and immediately turned to the index to find out how many 'mentions' they had. (I had been discussing with him prior to the launch that very reason why we had strategically decided not to include an index in my book.)

Tony Leonard even kindly offered to purchase a copy of the book, so impressed was he with its design and content. It is unheard of for a celebrity launching a book to actually purchase a copy at the launch event. The brief for the book was to make it entertainingly readable for its target market: thanks to designer Ted Crystal of Clarity in Design we succeeded in this aim, in a genre of publication that can often be stultifying, irrelevant, poorly designed or boring. 

The launch concluded with a midday feast worthy of the gastronomic reputation of the Moonee Ponds institution, featuring pre-lunch drinks and those things alternately called appetisers, hors d'oeuvres, crudites, canapes, antipasti, amuse-gueules, amuse-bouches; or, coarsely, nibbles. These were followed by a parsley-flecked leek soup starter, a Vietnamese-influenced prawn entree and a main course of either an escarpment of perfectly grilled (crisp outer, pink inner) eye fillet resting on a tectonic plate of crisped roesti and seasonal vegetables, or a roasted barramundi fillet topped with a Thai sweet/sour/bitter/salt cashew-crusted and turbo-grilled thatch, all accompanied by regional varietal wines. 

*'You're talking to Tony' refers to a famous on-air Couldabeen Champions segment in which talkback 'callers' rang the 'open line'. The 'callers' were voiced by a member of the panel who developed a suite of characters including 'Peter from Peterborough', 'Wayne from Wantirna', 'Merv from Moorabbin' and 'Timmy from Thomastown'.