John O’Sullivan and others in these parts often cite Tim Blair’s website when it comes to matters antipodean. If memory serves, my first contact with Tim came a year or two before 9/11 when he invited me on his Australian radio show. By the time I got around to replying, Oz broadcasting had canceled him. But so what? He found a home on the Internet and made himself the master miniaturist of the blog form. Today’s item on an attempt at the world irony record is why many of us go to his site. A lot of his running jokes have run around the planet, such as the Gore Effect, the meteorological phenomenon in which a visit to your town by the Nobel Prize messiah for a speech on global warming is invariably accompanied by plummeting temperatures and record snowfalls; or the Head Tilt of Compassion, to which so many caring progressives are prone (or at any rate angled).

When I went to Oz a while back, I was asked, after the meetings with the Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition and other minor figures had been penciled in, who else they should clear space in the schedule for. I immediately said Tim Blair. It turns out this is a fairly routine occurrence. Filming in Australia, John Malkovich was asked who he’d like to meet while he was in the country. He too said Tim Blair, whose blog he’s a fan of, and went round to Tim’s pad for a very convivial dinner.

Tim announced today he has cancer, and will be going in for major surgery next week. He’s one of the great glories of the blogosphere and, if he’ll forgive me getting a wee bit tilty, the world needs him back at his keyboard as soon as possible. John Malkovich and many other Americans will be rooting for him.