Cliche of the Week 82 – Out of the Woodwork

Worms are crawling out of the woodwork to drill into the worlds of sport and entertainment. The holes in the grain appear more than 300 times a month, mainly when there is a contest.

"First-time Ford driver David Reynolds and my fellow Kiwi Fabian Coulthard could be two to emerge out of the woodwork and have strong seasons" (New Zealand Herald, March 4).

"Toni' Berrios may be in for a battle against Will Guzzardi, a former journalist who has come out of the woodwork" (Chicago Sun-Times, March 4).

Cycling: "The `race to the sun' starts tomorrow: the first big event of the year, a bloody hard eight days with a real history behind it and the first time some of the Tour contenders come out of the woodwork" (The Guardian, March 3).

"Even celebrities like actor Kevin Costner came out of the woodwork to promote new clean-up systems" (The Times-Picayune, March 2).

"Perhaps next week's event will draw a Sonny and Cher or a Peaches & Herb out of the woodwork" (The Telegraph, New Hampshire, March 1).

"Watch Cornwall's ageing hippies crawl out of the woodwork for this one" (Cornish Guardian, January 12).

Cliche of the Week appears in The Australian newspaper Mondays. Cliches in the media are tracked across the world using Factiva and Dow Jones Insight.

Chris Pash's book, The Last Whale, a true story set in the 1970s, was published by Fremantle Press in 2008.

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