PEOPLE

Phillipe Cousteau, the 27-year-old son of French Oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, is trying, like his father, to document life in the sea. Jacques does it the hard way, but Phillipe is going him one better—or one worse. He intends to film the mating and birth of the gray whales while flying, by parasail, a few feet above them. Practicing in San Diego Bay recently, Phillipe was slammed into the water and knocked unconscious when his towline broke, but he left on schedule for the gray whale's mating ground, Scammon's Lagoon, in Baja California. One hopes he took a stronger tow-line. Scammon's Lagoon is full of sharks.

"Obviously, dahling, he threw it from San Francisco to my apartment," Tallulah Bankhead recently told a friend, explaining how the baseball Willie Mays had autographed for her made it to New York. For all Tallulah knows, he really did throw it, since, as she points out, "Dahling, I don't get my own mail. I don't go down to the letter box—my mail is brought up to me." Mailed, hurled or sent by dogsled, the baseball arrived, with "Tallulah" and "Best wishes, Willie Mays" written on it. Tallulah kissed it, adding a little lipstick, and now the ball is "hidden away" with some other prized possessions. Miss Bank-head has been a Giant fan since Willie was a boy and a Willie fan from the time he was grown enough to play for her team. "He thrills me," she says, "the way Caruso used to."

"It was the first time I ever went to El Morocco without getting stoned," Rocky Graziano reported recently. The historic occasion was a luncheon held to celebrate the launching of Weight Watchers Magazine, a monthly publication that has just gone on sale for 50¢ a copy. The launching was accomplished without champagne, since not drinking champagne is one of the things weight watchers do, but Rocky and the other assembled guests were offered Bloody Bloody Marys (Bloody Marys sans vodka), Dolphin's Delights (clam, tomato and celery juices), Mint Tulips (mint leaves, low-calorie sweetener and low-calorie ginger ale) and Sauerkraut Juice Cocktail (lemon juice, caraway seeds and sauerkraut juice). "Six of these," says Len Mogel, publisher of Weight Watchers Magazine, "and you don't get bombed." Bombed, no. Pickled, yes.

Anyone who wants to Buy British but has all the Pears Soap and Bovril he can use might send for a Ride-A-Roo, shown left and below Emanuel Shinwell, M.P. and Miss Lillian Board. The Ride-A-Roo is a red rubber ball, almost five feet around, with a handle. "The rider straddles the ball, grasps the handle and bounds up and down," our correspondent advises, "being careful not to bound over backward." Miss Board, Britain's star quarter-miler, says dubiously, "I guess it's quite good fun, but it does take a fair amount of lung power to keep it going. I mean, you've really got to make your legs work at it," and 83-year-old Shinwell, "Father of the House of Commons," says, "I did enjoy bouncing on the ball, but I'm not sure I conformed to all that is required." These seem rather cautious recommendations, and when one learns in addition that the ball has "a nasty tendency to explode" one is tempted to forget the whole thing.

During his tour of New Hampshire, Governor George Romney's sporting efforts were unimpressive (he undertook to show a women's bowling league how-it is done and had to roll 34 balls to knock down 10 candlepins), but he was looking a little better in Wisconsin last week. He turned up at the Milwaukee YMCA at 6:30 a.m. to run and play basketball. The Y's assistant physical director, Norbert Grisar, said that the governor managed to make a few shots "from 20 to 25 feet out, and that's pretty good." As for the jogging, "He told us he feels running consistently is more important than running hard every four or five days." No doubt Romney disapproves of those who say they don't run at all.

They are keeping busy in Canadian YMCAs, too. Governor-General Roland Michener, 67, recently led off the Cross-The-World run (we do not know why it is called the Cross-The-World run, unless the Y members all belong to the International Flat Earth Society) in a Montreal gym, where members propose to jog and sprint 40,000 miles. This will take them, symbolically, through 36 countries. His Excellency's two laps got the project off, symbolically, to a good start. Practically, the runners have 1,120,098 laps to go.

England's Prince Andrew will become a cub scout next month when he joins eight friends in the 1st St. Marylebone pack, which is already meeting, for security reasons, in the ball supper room of Buckingham Palace. "Mainly it was because we were the group nearest the palace and seemed to have the right religious orientation," says Pack Leader Leonard Clark. Religions represented are Anglican, Roman Catholic and Jewish, and the cubs' fathers include a chief fire officer, a bank caretaker and an upholsterer. Though he cannot join formally until after drew will attend his first meeting this week, "Just to go along with the rest, learning to tie knots and that sort of thing," as a palace spokesman puts it. Learning to tie knots may teach the prince a great deal, but he will never have the test in self-reliance that is going to face his fellow cubs when they have to meet the den mother.

TWO PHOTOS