Once, when he was Archbishop of Paris, the late Pope John XXIII visited Rome to see Pope Pius XII and deliver a report to the papal secretary of state, Archbishop Giovanni Battista Montini. Afterward, says the Milan newspaper Domenica Del Corriere, Pope John's secretary and protege Don Angelo Rossi asked what had impressed him most about the trip; was it the audience with His Holiness? "No," was the reply, "I am always calm when I see the Pope. But if there is one personality I stand a little in awe of, that is Monsignor Montini. He always nitpicks my reports." Those reports could not have been all bad. Nitpicker Montini--now Pope Paul VI--eventually ordered an investigation, now in the works, of Pope John's qualifications for sainthood.

Heavyweight Champ Joe Frazier stepped into some jolting verbal punches at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, but he finished the bout without a mark on him. Many of the inmates, who were appearing with him on a TV talk show originating from the prison, were partisans of ex-Champ Muhammad Ali, whom Frazier defeated last March. "I don't think you beat him. It was the three-year layoff," somebody yelled. Ali had been in fine shape for the fight, countered Joe. "Before the layoff, I woulda beaten him up worse. He got suspended for a while. There's laws about this kind of thing. I believe in laws." "Doesn't it bother you, Champ, to know that some folks consider you the Great White Hope?" shouted another prisoner. "I was waiting for that," smiled Frazier, "and I'm gonna give it to you straight. The white man never had champs as great as black champs. But look at Clay. Every time I see him, he's got white folks in his corner. I call that the real Uncle Tom."

"For her own person," wrote Shakespeare of the great Queen Cleopatra, "it beggar'd all description." Right, says Edward C. Rochette, editor of the Numismatist. It beggared all description because it was so ugly. His evidence: coins struck during Cleopatra's reign and bearing her image. "Cleo was homely as a toad," claims Rochette. "Do you think a queen of her stature would permit issuance of coins depicting her as homely, if she were a raving beauty?"

Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney, who will be 30 next year, plans to celebrate his incipient middle age by forming a new musical group and taking it on the road. Members of the group--probably to be called Wings--will include his American wife Linda (who has written some of the songs they will perform) and perhaps Singer Denny Laine of the Moody Blues and Drummer Denny Silwell. McCartney says he has been trying to secede from Apple Corps, the Beatles' business firm, but so far, the other members are refusing to let him go.

That disclosure that he had paid no 1970 state income tax because of business losses really hurt California's Governor Ronald Reagan. "Listen," he told David Frost on television, "after what I took the last time, I don't care what exemptions I've got. I'm going to pay some tax in 1971 if I have to invent it." There have been other financial drains, the Governor said. When he and his wife Nancy moved out of the Governor's mansion in 1967 because they thought it was a fire trap, they rented a house for $15,000 a year. "The law says the state has to furnish the Governor a place to live," Reagan told Frost. "But I felt a little self-conscious about having moved out voluntarily, so we paid the rent." Not any more--since July 1, 1970, the state of California has paid the $15,000.

With a nudie of Scandinavian Actress Julie Ege on the cover and one of Playboy Publisher Hugh Hefner on a center foldout, the current issue of Britain's 129-year-old humor magazine Punch is startling the stuffing out of some Establishment shirts. The Playboy parody, put together with the aid of Publisher Hefner, also includes a pendulous feature on the Girls of Poland and leering homage to Perennial Illustrator Nicolas Varga, whose naked ladies have become an American institution.

Proclaimed Salvatore Micale, the mayor of Catania, Sicily: "The civic administration has decided to honor a famous personage, a son of our city, who not only never wished to Americanize his surname--clearly of Sicilian origin--but also one who on various occasions has displayed his regret that he has never been accorded a public homage in Italy." But what kind of homage for Hoboken-born Frank Sinatra (whose father was born in Catania)? A bust seemed to be the answer, until somebody remembered a national law that forbids statues of liv--ing persons. Catania will probably say it with flowers instead--by dedicating a Sinatra floral zone in the public gardens and giving Frank honorary citizenship--and with a festa and TV cameras and maybe even with Frank.

"American girls are dirty, with no makeup and hair down to here, because they are doing their own thing." U.S. Author Leon Uris (Exodus, Topaz) was sounding off in Sydney, Australia--a stop on a round-the-world tour to gather material for his eighth book. "Society's chief curse," carped Uris, is the birth control pill. "Sex has become such an open commodity that it has lost a lot of the affection a man and a woman should have for each other. By the age of 24 or 25, girls have had the romance bashed out of them. It is the age of the dirty old man in America now--at 24 or 25 every girl is looking for a middleaged, dirty old man." Uris is 47. His present (third) wife is 24.

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