Mr Pot is alive and well and living in Thredbo
You shoulda been there. Who would have thought that beneath tons of rubble and amid the nighttime chill, someone could survive.
Rescue workers have been labouring all day and all night on the side of Australia's highest mountain, hoping to find life among the debris. Then on Thursday last all their efforts and prayers were rewarded. A man of Asian extraction was pulled from beneath the rubble and dirt.
The discovery and rescue was too late to catch the six o'clock news, so you may have missed it. Only a brief announcement was made by the victim's newly appointed press agent, who informed the waiting media that Mr Pot was resting comfortably and that the story of his ordeal is sure to be serialised as soon as delicate negotiations for publishing rights have been concluded.
But a local source told me that Mr Pot was no newcomer to the limelight.
It seems that before coming to Thredbo, Mr Pot was for many years something of an identity in Cambodian politics. The part-time chairlift driver may have kept so much to himself for good reason. While hints about his past may be simply a manoeuvre to up the asking price for his story, Patrick Arthur Pot may turn out to be none other than Saloth Sar (aka "Pol" Pot), the notorious leader of the Khmer Rouge.
If this turns out to be the case, then the slopes of the Snowy Mountains have indeed yielded up a tale much more exciting than the one about the colt from Old Regret who got away. With an ace like Pol Pot in the hole, Mt Kosciuszko will no longer be simply viewed as an inordinate amount of indigenous rock annually topped with winter frosting.
Just think, below the "Chains Must Be Worn" sign posted along the Alpine Way can now go another: "Pol Pot Slept Here".
How Pot came to be at Thredbo is sure to be a story in itself. Preliminary inquiries I was able to make suggest that as part of the deal brokered by Labor Senator Gareth Evans a few years back, not only were the Khmer Rouge to be given a cabinet guernsey in the new Kampuchea, but Pol Pot's insistence on frequent R&R was to be met with a regular holiday down under, away from the steaming jungles of Indochina.
The chance to get in some skiing while the rest of the world thought him dead apparently appealed to Pol Pot's wicked sense of humour. "Where can one holiday in Cambodia these days?" the erstwhile president was reported to have said. "All the best spots are full of mines, and there's never anyone around to carry your bags."
So instead of being incarcerated somewhere in the jungles of his native land paying for his alleged crimes, Pol Pot may indeed be elsewhere. With a hefty media cheque to help pay his way, Patrick Arthur Pot will soon be out of hospital and back on the ski slopes enjoying a life that the tragic history of Cambodia seemed always to deny him.
"Having a wonderful time", he could then write back home, "Wish you were all alive to be here."
By Dave Riley