"I only know what I read in the paper," said Australian Songwriter Peter Allen, 30, commenting on reports that his wife Liza Minnelli, 28, will marry Movie Producer Jack Haley Jr., 40. Then he signed official divorce papers, saying "When you've been separated longer than you were married, it's time to get a divorce." Peter and Liza were married in 1967 but have lived apart since 1970. He denies that marriage to an ambitious star maimed his own career as a singer. "I found out I was a writer rather than a performer." Now Peter is working on an album of his own songs. "I wanted to call it Overnight Success," he said ironically, "but I've settled on Just Ask Me, I've Been There."

Back home in Sydney for only the second time in 23 years, Australian Soprano Joan Sutherland, 47, wasted no time in exercising a native's prerogative. She criticized the city's flamboyant new $148.5 million opera house that perches on the harbor like a multiwinged gull. "I can see it's too small," said 5 ft. 10 in. Joan before she made her operatic debut there in Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann. "The designer is even making my costumes smaller so the scale is right." Then she added, "What you need now is an opera house." She grew more conciliatory later, after an audience of 1,547 acclaimed La Stupenda rapturously at the opera's end, pelting her with 600 red roses specially sent to chilly Sydney from Holland for the occasion.

He is an improbable easy rider. At San Clemente, the President's press secretary Ron Ziegler, 35, has abandoned his car and makes the 16-mile run between the Western White House and the Laguna Beach press headquarters by Honda CB-360. Ziegler, donning crash helmet and tennis shoes, leaps on the borrowed bike and threads his way through traffic more easily than he picks his way through reporters' questions. To show off his new skills, Ron even gave a demonstration to a posse of reporters on a back road, only to run out of gas and | wheeze to a halt under the unblinking gaze of a herd of Herefords. Said one wry observer: "After Evel Knievel has jumped the Grand Canyon, Ron is going to top his act--he's going to try to jump the credibility gap."

Wake up, America.

Come January, early-morning television will once again be burnished by a blond. Not the ill-fated Sally Quinn but John V. Lindsay, 52. ABC is putting up to bat against NBC's highly rated Today show their own news-cum-interviews program, AM America. Former New York City Mayor Lindsay will appear once a week as a guest commentator and interviewer. After many years' experience in amateur theatricals, Including political conventions, Matinee Idol Lindsay will also make his movie debut soon. This week in Paris he joins the cast of Otto Preminger's Rosebud, playing a cameo role for which he probably feels well rehearsed--that of a U.S. Senator. He wouldn't say whom he is modeling his performance on, "The part is a tiny bit pompous, so I have much to choose from." The film is just a diversion ("Traveling in Europe," he explained, "is expensive"), but Lindsay is more serious about the TV show. In Manhattan, Barbara Walters noted that her partner on Today is still undisclosed and sounded alarmed: "I wonder if NBC has thought of asking Mayor Beame to be my co-host?"

The 1973 Triple Crown winner Penny Chenery Tweedy has been out of the money all year. Wonder Horse Secretariat, whom she sold to a syndicate for $6,080,000, appeared at first to be a stud failure. Then her Meadow Stable's most likely comers, Capital Asset and Capito failed to win a stake. Now it turns out even Mrs. Tweedy's husband Jack finished up the track. "We were married for 25 years and things just ground to a halt," said Penny last week from Long Island about her impending divorce from Jack, an executive V.P. of the California-based Oil Shale Corp. A major problem occurred when he moved to Los Angeles. Obviously aware that East Coast fillies have not done well In the West, Penny explained, "I realized I was never going to move out there. You can call it a conflict of careers."

The U.S. v. John Lennon? The U.S. Justice Department announced that if ex-Beatle John Lennon, 33, does not shake American dust off his boots by Sept. 10, he will be forcibly deported. In 1968 a gallant Lennon pleaded guilty in London to possession of enough grass for 40 joints in order to avoid, he said, dragging Pregnant Yoko Ono through the courts. But when John and Yoko arrived to live in the U.S. in 1971, John only got a six-month visa--unrenewable, it turned out, because of his conviction. John appealed his fate. Last week the appeal was rejected by the immigration service, and now his lawyers plan to take the case into federal court. If that fails, John, who is now sulking in Los Angeles, still has a prayer. In Manhattan, his estranged wife Yoko Ono said, "Let's think positively. I believe in prayer, and so do millions of people who love him."

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