Even politicians go off the deep end, of course. Take Senator Lowell Weicker and Representative Bill Alexander, who began the August congressional recess with a three-day stay under water off Grand Bahama Island. The pair, both boosters of oceanic research, joined two scientists in the 16-ft. hydrolab operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Apart from a malfunction that sent the lab's temperature soaring to 90DEG at one point, the amateur aquanauts had little trouble adjusting to their watery environment, or to their spartan diet of soup, fruit, peanut butter and crackers. "Unlike the space program 15 years ago, the facilities already exist for expanded underwater research, and thus it can be done with a minimum of expense," enthused Weicker after bubbling to the surface. "Almost anyone can work down there --as my doing it proves."

Add one name to the list of Richard Nixon's secret campaign contributors --at least according to William A. Arnold, Nixon's first press secretary in Congress. In his memoir of the former President's early political career, Back When It All Began, Arnold tells of a Democratic Congressman who handed over a $1,000 personal check to Nixon's 1950 Senate campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas. The donor: John F. Kennedy. "He explained that the check should be used in Nixon's campaign for Senator," writes Arnold, "and that its intention was partly due to admiration of Nixon and partly due to a preference for [then] Congressman Nixon over Congresswoman Douglas ..." Arnold says that he accepted the gift, but came to have some regrets a decade later "When Nixon and Kennedy were the opposing candidates for President," he reflects, "we could have used a photostat of that check to good advantage."

The beard looked a little suspicious from the start, and the chest hairs were certainly of dubious origin. No wonder, since the face behind the 5 o'clock shadow belonged to Actress Karen Black, 33, who had dressed up as a male homosexual for a film by Sherwin Tilton, 22, a student at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. Black, who collects up to $150,000 per picture these days, donated a spare Sunday to Tilton's project after he had asked her to be his leading lady in a $7,000 movie entitled Owen. She agreed, provided she could be a leading man instead. "It's an exciting challenge for an actress, and really fun trying to project the male outlook," said Black, who began her Hollywood acting career by playing semismart, bed-prone bimbos. "This is the only chance I'll probably ever have to play a man on the screen." Undoubtedly.

For a buck private in the Greek army, Banking Heir Alexander Andreadis, 30, serves in style. With Rome sweltering in 91DEG heat, Andreadis and his bride of three weeks, Shipping Heiress Christina Onassis, 24, turned up in Rome's most luxurious shopping district. After a stop at Valentino's dress shop, they adjourned to Gucci, where Christina bought several leather handbags, and to Battistoni, where Alexander picked out some very civilian silk shirts. Then the pair jumped back into their Rolls-Royce and drove off. "That's one of the problems with the Greek army," reflected a former officer afterward. "There's never been any problem about leave for the idle rich."

He was a gumshoe in patent-leather footwear, a master of misstatement, a helpless fanatic for creme de cacao, soft, sweet chocolate and Russian cigarettes. Still, Hercule Poirot, famed Belgian-born detective--and literary creation of Mystery Writer Dame Agatha Christie, 84 --never failed to solve a case in all of 37 novels. "An extraordinary little man!" Christie once wrote. "Height, five feet four inches, egg-shaped head carried a little to one side, eyes that shone green when he was excited, stiff military mustache, air of dignity immense!" Alas, last week Christie announced that the archetypal armchair detective, who had been portrayed on film by Actors Tony Randall, Albert Finney and others, had finally finished his long career. Old, infirm and wheelchair-ridden, he would meet his end in her next novel, Curtain --or Poirot's Last Case. Although Poirot's final exploit was originally written in 1940 and locked away until now, the business-wise author declined to reveal any details, preferring to keep them a mystery until Curtain's publication this fall.

"Why shouldn't Brenda suffer like the rest of us?" mused Cartoonist Dale Messick, 69, after revealing that Brenda Starr, girl reporter and glamorous comic-strip heroine in 150 newspapers, was finally going to be married. Though she accepted the proposal of the ever-faithful Larry Nichols last week, Brenda will probably end up at the altar in November with the dashing Basil St. John, her boy friend of 35 years, revealed Creator Messick. "After all, Brenda has been everywhere and done everything, but she's still a virgin. In fact, she only got a belly button five or six years ago."

She made her screen debut at 60, playing a wrinkled cardsharpie in The Queen of Spades. Now 87, veteran Stage Actress Dame Edith Evans seemed as peppery as ever last week on the sets of Cinderella, her 17th movie, currently being filmed in London. "When we get to the ballroom scene, I do trust I'm going to be allowed to dance?" asked Dame Edith, who portrays a dowager queen opposite Richard Chamberlain as Prince Charming and Gemma Craven as Cinderella. With London suffering through one of its muggiest summers in years, the indomitable Dame has been arriving for work promptly at 8 a.m. and surprising her co-stars and Director Bryan Forbes with her endurance. "Feel fit, and you are fit," she explained simply. And her secret for good health? "I wash my face in cold water every morning and that's it."

"I was trained as a lawyer. Almost all my friends are lawyers. The books I read are related to the law." And so it was with obvious satisfaction that UPI Alger Hiss, 70, became the first disbarred lawyer ever to be reinstated by the Massachusetts bar. Hiss, a former State Department official, had been drummed out of the legal profession in 1952 after a congressional anti-espionage investigation, spearheaded by California Congressman Richard Nixon, led to his conviction for perjury and more than three years in federal prison. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court last week found that Hiss had shown "moral and intellectual fitness" and ordered his reinstatement in Boston. "I intend to start practicing law the minute I am sworn in," he announced, but added that he would hang on to his Manhattan job as a stationery salesman as well. "One cannot practice law in a vacuum," he said, "and so far there has not been a line of waiting clients."

He is still a couple of notches below his late father's four-star rank, but Major General George Patton III, 51, has surely been following in Daddy's tank tracks. At Fort Hood, Texas, Patton has just taken charge of the famed "hell-on-wheels" 2nd Armored Division, the 16,932-man command that earned the nickname while training under blood-and-guts General George Patton Jr. during the 1940s. "His reputation is not in any way a handicap," says III. "In fact, I enjoy the hell out of it." Maybe, but the major general, a veteran himself of the Korean and Viet Nam wars, may never completely escape the Patton legacy. Just 20 minutes before accepting his new command last week, he visited the base chapel for a few moments of reflection. "While there," Patton later recalled, "I not only felt the presence of God, I also felt the presence of my father. This happens to me from time to time. Every once in a while I see my father sitting at the corner of a building, sort of gazing at me."

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