My name is Michael; my karma is bad!

Sunday night couch potatoes may have been laughing along with My Name is Earl while they bide their time waiting for Wanganui mayor Michael Laws to spin across the floor in an episode or two of Dancing with the Stars (or as some watchers have uncharitably christened it, Poncing with the Losers) before getting the shove by discerning judges and viewers.

Like the eponymous Earl Hickey, Wanganui’s hapless mayor has stumbled into late middle age leaving a trail of bad-karma-inducing acts behind him. In one last desperate grab to be taken seriously as a "celebrity" (now how hard can that be in the very small pond that passes for celebrity-dom in Godzone? – Ed) he put himself forward as the born-loser of the 2007 series of the tired, overwrought and passed its use-by date DWTS.

Just over ten years ago he and then dance partner Antoinette Beck slow-waltzed from the hallowed halls of Parliament into ignominy and disgrace; since his third-rate cha-cha into the Wanganui mayoralty partnered by the likes of Nicky Higgie and Sue Pepperell, he’s made more stumbles and falls than Tim Shadbolt and Rodney Hide put together on a bad day – especially when he’s in front of TV cameras.

But this afternoon, just 11 days from his debut with the latest TV One stable of fellow dog-tucker nags like Paul Holmes and Suzanne Paul, Michael Laws breathlessly tells us he danced into a whole new self-generated publicity frenzy by BREAKING … wait for it Watchers … HIS BIG TOE!!!

Here in the LawsWatch cave we’ve been getting a mixed response to this SHOCK!! HORROR!! PROBE!! D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R!!! Some Watchers say it serves the little crawler right … others say that in view of the fact he’d be gone by lunchtime if he’d fronted up to the start line of DWTS it’s more than a fortuitous accident. Remember, they say, his oh-so convenient scratching (due to oh-dear so unfortunate injuries) from the 2006 Mayoral Mile and the Twin Towers climb. Not to mention his failure to deliver on his threat to appear naked in the main street of Ohakune when the Overlander was saved.

Remember, say the Doubting Thomases (and Julians, Dicks, Annes, Georges and Timmys), his ignominious exit from Julie Christie’s Trashy Celebrity Treasure Island after a couple of episodes in which the contempt of his fellow wannabe-celebs was almost palpable?

Could it be, they insist, that Cunning Mickey did the numbers and figured he’d get more column centimetres (certainly from his old pal Mas at the Wanganui Chronic) and seconds air time by bumping his BIG TOE and scratching himself from the BIG EVENT, where he was sure to be an also-ran? Or does he figure (as one National Radio commenter posited) that if he does limp up to the birdcage he’ll get a “sympathy vote”. Certainly, his constant faked self-deprecation about flat-footedness would have worn thin by the second ad break and txters all round New Zealand, desperate to get him out of their lounges, would be boosting TV One and Telecom’s profits.

As an aside, LawsWatch – ever concerned about the health and wellbeing of Wanganui’s one and only mayor – admits to having been more concerned in recent days about the threat to Michael Laws’ typing digits, such has been the overactive commenting emerging from the Laws camp after kids' bedtime and during the 9-noon news and commercial breaks at Radio Live. As Watchers have pointed out, much of it, especially the evening frenzy, has been quite breathlessly obsessed with the bodily attributes of Mickey’s 20-something dance tutor.

Curiouser and curiouser … because as the 11am news hit the Radio Live frequencies this morning the dedicated commenter who some Watchers have christened anonymickey (because he’s got Mayor Mickey’s inimitable style down to a tee) made this prophetic contribution to this blog:

That dancer girl is beautiful. How come a prick like ML gets all the breaks. It is enough to make me lose my faith in karma.

Perhaps he too is an inveterate watcher of My Name is Earl and, as Mickey Hickey must have worked out by now:

When you do good things, good things will happen to you, do bad things and they'll come back and bite you in the ass.

Let’s hear what you think, Watchers? But with all due concern for our poor Mayor we would urge anonymickey to give it a rest and keep that BIG TOE of his RICED (Rested Iced Compressed and Elevated) and to save his typing digits for his next BIG PRESS RELEASE to Mas.

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