Gordon I think his name was -- at the Sonesta Beach Hotel.

But her evening could have gone with an altogether different swing had she visited The Beach bar on Front Street.

According to a newspaper ad, the watering hole was holding an open bar, with the price of tickets varying depending on when you wished to make your entrance. Turn up at eight o'clock in the evening -- a full four hours before the big midnight countdown -- and a ticket was yours for $50. Arrive two hours later at 10 p.m. and a ticket set you back $40.

But what really struck Hester as the best deal of the night was the offer to early birds. For if you showed up at 12 p.m. -- midday -- the bar was yours for just 30 bucks.

Hester was all set to show up straight after her mid-morning aperitif until she spotted a rather sternly worded notice at the bottom of the ad -- "Unruly behaviour will not be allowed''.

How The Beach's proprietors expect anyone to be well behaved after 12 hours knocking back the pink gins is anybody's guess -- particularly when their clientele don't seem to manage it on an average Friday night, never mind New Year's Eve.

Now she may not be a fully paid-up member of the Par-la-Ville Road staff, but Hester feels she should show a certain loyalty to her pals at The Royal Gazette .

It is therefore without malice that she has to scoff at the recent PLP media poll in which surfers were invited to vote on which news service they regarded as being the fairest in the land.

VSB news came top with 32 votes, with The Royal Gazette trailing in third place with 29 supporters.

Nothing wrong with that, you may argue. Or at least not until the question of where VSB gets its news from in the first place is raised.

Now admittedly there's nothing Hester enjoys more than being gently awoken every weekday morning by the soothing tones of radio anchorman Chris Lodge reading out the headlines.

But while Chris is up with the larks, evidently the station's newswriters are on permanent vacation. For everything that Chris reads out seems to have been lifted word-for-word straight from the pages of that morning's freshly printed daily.

I'm not surprised if the boys and girls at The Gazette demand a recount.

Still on the subject of `polls', here's another reason why those electronic media hacks should always check through what's put in front of them before reading it out on the air -- be it a pristine copy of The Gazette or a tatty Police press release.

Hester's friends at the Police Media Relations department got their wires crossed this week after releasing an enlightening press statement concerning Tuesday's accident in which a Belco utility pole was smashed to pieces by a passing vehicle.

And my fellow female newsie, Ceola Wilson over at VSB's "in-action news,'' -- never one to doubt the validity of a Police press report -- read out word for word: "A road traffic accident occurring along the North Shore Road, near Blackwatch Pass has recently occurred. A Belco utility police has been knocked down as a result...'' The fact that Belco has utility police is news, even to the all-knowing, all-seeing Hester.

Perhaps the utility police can help those poor residents of the Cox's Hill, Pembroke area who are plunged into darkness with timetabled frequency.

Hester's faithful readers may remember that in this column of December 21, it was asked if anyone knew when, or indeed if, US president-elect, George W.

Bush had visited our fair shores for some R&R.

A gentleman who obviously does not let much pass him by contacted The Gazette to reveal that indeed, GeeDubya had graced the exclusive Coral Beach Club on South Shore in Paget in 1981 or 1982.

Sadly, Hester has not been able to confirm this fact as she was unable to contact any of the management at the hoity-toity club.

Anyone who can confirm the great one's visit is invited to contact the offices of The Royal Gazette and give Hester the juicy details of young Bush's exploits, which may not have come to light during his FBI background check.

Ex-Environment Minister Arthur Hodgson might claim he was not referring to his former boss when he gave a speech on leadership to the Hamilton Rotary Club this week but Hester isn't fooled.

So what was it that gave the game away? The reference to taking good leadership for granted? Or the observation that "the roar of the crowd must never seduce us into substituting power for service or emotion for reason''? Actually none of the above. What really brought the message home was the devout MPs Biblical quotation, something along the lines of: "It was Christ himself who taught that true leaders did not remain aloof from their followers but washed their feet.'' For some strange reason a picture of our very own Madam Premier stretched out in first class having her bunions soothed instantly sprung to mind and the until-then ambiguous message became instantly clear -- our Jen is getting too big for her boots. Subtle Arthur, very subtle.