Which one will die?

There was a sharp intake of breath in the loungeroom last week on reading that Simon Katich will be a contestant on Celebrity Masterchef. Oh stop it. Stop that right now. How much can a koala bear?

I’ve had a bit of a thing for Mr Katich ("S. M. Katich", as K. J. O’Keeffe would say) for a while, which Thing was cemented by his pleasing display of hirsuteness as Mr February in the McGrath Foundation "I Only Buy It for the Charity" Men Of Cricket Calendar, which Hirsuteness (yes, I can keep this up all day) was also clearly appreciated by the ladies in attendance at this year’s Allan Border Medal, who voted him best in the calendar show, pipping even Mr Dimples Mitch Johnson to the post.

But his on-field persona is about as far from the domestic sphere as you can get, if "trained assassin" is as far from the domestic sphere as you can get. In another one of those vox pops they had on SBS during the (snif) Ashes, the players were asked what was the funniest thing they had ever read about themselves, and Katich referred to a piece that described the way he watched the ball when batting: instead of going for the usual "like a hawk", it said "like he wants to stab it".

Not just balls, either: on at least a couple of occasions, Greg Matthews, doing run-downs on Australian "body-language" in the field, summed up Katich’s presence as "just wants to kill ya". "Look up and there's the Kat at silly point, looking like he wants to kill ya."

Then there was that off-field throttle incident... My cricket friend Sue says Katich has something called "Balkan Haut" (Sp? She pronounced it "hort", and I’ve interpreted it as the French haut = "high", but given the lack of evidence on the interwebs I’m starting to wonder if she actually said "Balkan Hawk"...). When she heard about the Katich-Clarke altercation, she was all "well, of course, it’s the Balkan Haut", which is apparently a cultural trait that manifests itself as a sort of imperious... stabbiness.

So how would that translate in Celebrity Masterchef terms? Virtuoso knife skills? Razor-shaved garlic à la Goodfellas? Stupendous pressed "pork"-belly dish that is then revealed to be fillet o' George Calombaris?

On top of it all, I read today in the Herald’s food section that Simon Katich has no sense of smell! Curiouser and curiouser. What an unexpected bundle of properties this man is turning out to be. It just shows that you can't tell everything about a person from staring at them for days and days while they play cricket. Who knew?

It says on the Celebrity Masterchef site that Katich is in Heat 4 with Wendy Harmer and Alex Perry. Turn it up, I say! Also whenever you try to click on or message Katich on the site you are directed to Eamon Sullivan. My money is on Eamon or Alex to be the first to "go"...