David Penberthy, Maslin beach, bad puns and a Taliban approach to nudity

There's no doubt about it, and it has to be said. David Penberthy is inclined to twittery to fill up the column inches, and when he twitters on The Punch, it truly does become Australia's dumbest conversation.

Penberthy, in It's time to tackle the nudity question, spends 974 words explaining why Maslins Beach, a nude beach in South Australia, should become a clothed beach.

He leads with what he considers perhaps the best joke of all time:

Why was the sommelier kicked out of the nudist colony? He was walking around with a semillon.

WTF? What does that say about a sense of humor reared in South Australia, distilled in oak casks and then decanted to breathe?

But then it gets even more bizarre. Penberthy obviously has a hang up about nudity. You can always tell this, when somebody starts off by saying "I have nothing against (insert blatant prejudice here) but ... (I hate, insert blatant prejudice here)"

I have nothing against nudity per se. There’s a time and a place for getting nude. The shower is good, as is bed, not to mention the middle of the MCG if you’ve had a couple.

And call me old-fashioned, but the sight of a passing car full of youngsters, one of whom has his bare arse hanging out the window, should always be met with hearty cheers and enthusiastic honking.

But in the wrong setting nudity makes other people feel awkward - church, job interviews, and worst of all, at the beach.

Yep, it's the old I have nothing against, but, this time written from a Taliban perspective about the ugliness of nudity, on a beach of all places. Is he channeling the spirit of Bondi beach bikini inspectors? Talking as he does about the ...

... scourge of nudity. And in particular, the way it is still permitted by law in South Australia, in one of the last remaining vestiges of the counter-culture era when drugs such as LSD helped convince ugly, hairy people that they looked good in the buff.

Cue some lame stuff about cannabis, brown rice, Joan Baez and Donovan being silenced (so why hasn't anybody been able to shut up Bob Dylan) and John and Yoko love-ins.

It's also a chance for Penberthy to indulge in a bit of lame nostalgia about Don Dunstan getting it wrong, and how Penbo as a brave lad once went to the beach with three of his mates and took his gear off. But then Pendo is clearly deeply disturbed:

As a teenager growing up in SA the very word “Maslins” carried an erotic charge, sounding like some fantastic Garden of Eden.

I expected that on arrival, once I’d left my scruds in the glove box of Doug’s old Renault, I’d be approached by a woman who looked like Elle Macpherson in the Tab commercial, running in bouncy slow-motion, who’d come and lie down on the towel beside me and whisper gently in my ear that there’d been a recount, and the Sturt Football Club had actually won the 1978 SANFL Grand Final by one point after all, and then insist that I have sex with her.

It was - shake your laptop from left to right - all a dream.

Yep, Penbo was one of those lads who probably got terribly excited looking at the bra ads in women's magazines, got an erection when contemplating the shapeliness of a naked table leg, and perhaps even today still collects copies of the Victoria's Secret catalogue as a visual aid. So you can imagine why he was shattered with Maslins:

I was approached instead by a man who looked like Thomas Keneally, wearing nothing other than a straw boater and said, chillingly: “Hello young man.”

The only women I saw all looked like the enormous American feminist Andrea Dworkin, and appeared to have had some sort of crazy bet to see who could grow the most pubic hair. They were all doing terrifically well at it.

This is no way for people to behave. These are things no teenager should ever have to see.

What a shocking, scarifying thing. People comfortable with their own skin and their body, just out and about on a beach. Why they must be bloody weird:

(Don Dunstan) effectively declared one of the greatest beaches in Australia off-limits for anyone who isn’t an exhibitionist and, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit of a weirdo.

OK, so that might be an unfair generalisation. Not everyone who swims at Maslins is a weirdo. A lot of them are though. In fact the whole joint has a sort of weirdness about it because most normal people would never step foot there, making it an unknown, otherly place, even though it’s effectively in the middle of suburbia.

Well (a) it's not one of Australia's greatest beaches. It's okay, if you think a beach should have waves the size of a pancake and you don't mind the cold that croweaters must take as normal. And (b) the cliff-lined beachfront (which ensures privacy on the beach) runs for some 3 kilometres and only the southern half is reserved for nude bathing.

If you can be bothered to make the trip, you can find plenty of space to cavort in clothing if that's your particularly weird desire and preference. But spoilsport Penberthy wants to end that half of the beach dedicated to fun for the "weirdos".

Trust me Penberthy, it's you and the Taliban who are the weirdos.

Which makes it all the more post ironic mock fun to see down below in The Punch's tepid conversation a piece by Roger Coombs on Indecent dressing doesn't deserve a flogging.

Which is about how a woman has been assigned forty lashes in Sudan for wearing trousers. Wherein Coombs gets agitated about all the killing in the Sudan when the only fuss has been about women caught wearing trousers.

Well actually it's the mad religionistas and the wowsers who are a symbol of what's wrong. If you think nudity is offensive, and women wearing trousers even more disturbing, please settle down in a nice theocracy ... say Iran.

And take along with you Penberthy's light hearted attempt to be our very own brand of Taliban, persecuting hapless nudists.

Hmm, I guess that's the solution for Penberthy. When he catches those weirdo hippies in flagrante delicto, why not give them forty lashes? Kinky fun for the whole family.

And why stop there? Anybody eating brown rice and listening to Joan Baez, for starters.

Just one question? When can we get to flog the Taliban and David Penberthy?

(Below: a scene from Maslin Beach, an actual Australian soft core flick shot on the beach, and one of the top contenders for worst Australian movie. It used to turn up late at night on network Nine, and doubtless David Penberthy has watched it over and over again, grinding his tape down to a layer of magnetic particles too thin to hide the depravity).