Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / The King of Late Night TV, Steve Vizard

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The King of Late Night TV, Steve Vizard · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Get a humans, the world's biggest comedy festival is still underway.
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I copped down to Melbourne, I did a 10-hour live-streamed sub-stack marathon with five
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of the greatest comedians in today's fourth thrilling installment of Beyond Comfortable
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Conversations Comedy Extravaganza, Steve Weissard, Australia's Jolly Carson, the king
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of 1990's Late Night.
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Tonight Live with Steve Weissard was Australia's Tonight Show in the 90's, Weissard
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and previously created two of the highest rating most successful Australian comedy shows
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of all time.
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That was sketch comedy shows, full frontal and fast forward.
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Steve joined me to recount tales of the golden age of late night television, the
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mishaps of hosting a live show every single night, Kimmel Colbert, and how broadcast TV
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is evolving.
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It was a huge honor to sit down with the one the only Steve Weissard.
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We're back on the live stream with really Australia's Jolly Carson.
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We could say Steve Weissard, we could say that.
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One could say that.
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One could say...
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...the Australia's finest butterfly.
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That's it.
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For example.
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No, really the only late night television host who Australia ever produced in terms of
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the American late night format.
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And doing it five nights a week.
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We hear a lot of shows once a week.
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Yes.
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And they were good.
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Yeah, well, some of them were bad.
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There is something that they were on.
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They were on.
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But you were on every night and then you had the band
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and you had the desk and you had the...
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I even had in Australia, the equivalent of a New York skyline.
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And I say the equivalent, it was a New York skyline.
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Was it?
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Well, you know, when the guys who do scenery cut the sky scrape.
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Yeah, yeah.
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The giveaway to me is they had the...
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What's that one with the, you know, the Chrysler building?
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Chrysler building.
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Right.
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You had the Chrysler building.
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I had the Chrysler building.
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Honest set in Melbourne because...
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Oh, that's so depressing, is that?
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It just looked really...
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But it's so cringe about being Australian.
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I almost wandered every night, I came on to bring a...
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A dingsaw.
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And cut off the pointy bit.
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I mean, if you were in Sydney, maybe you could get away
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with your opera house and have a bridge or something anyway.
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It was a generic setting.
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The point being that it was late at night.
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We...
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You know, when you think about it, the talk show,
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the late night talk show, is...
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It's a US invention.
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Yes.
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It's pretty much just television.
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And did you know, this is...
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I always found this fascinating that the...
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It was done...
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It was invented by a person and you'll find this amazing
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who invented both the morning show and the tonight show.
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And he worked for NBC.
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He was a really early TV executive.
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Right.
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And he got it in his head that if we can own the eyeballs,
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the viewer at the start of the day,
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wake them up in bed and be hungry at the start of the day,
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and then we could put them to bed at night,
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then we own everything in the middle.
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And so it was basically the tucked people in the bed at the end of the night.
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The today show and the tonight show.
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I never even thought about the fact that they have the same name.
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Exactly that today show.
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The tonight show.
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And the person was, get this, famous movie stars father.
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He was a big dog,
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exekin' NBC, Pat Weaver.
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So Gordy, we used to have.
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Get out.
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Get out.
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What?
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So he invented the today show and the tonight show format.
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There's an interesting wrinkle in the whole today show,
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wars against, you know...
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You know, how about all the power and all this stuff.
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I was just reading one of the books about one of the several books
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that have been written about the wars between both the tonight show
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and also the today show.
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The channel that people have on at the end of the night
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is usually the channel that they leave on when they wake up in the morning.
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And most people don't bother to change the channel.
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So if you have a strong late night show,
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then you have a strong morning show.
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I mean, this was back in the day.
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It's probably different now with streaming.
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Now that you've got a remote control.
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Well, yeah, but even with remote controls,
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it actually quite people are...
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Yeah, they said what?
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...let much more resistant than you would think.
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Yeah, they just turn on the television.
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And if there's something there, then that's what they watch.
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It's with podcasts.
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It's actually not about technology.
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It's about human beings inhabit.
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People like rituals.
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And they can switch it.
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You can modify it.
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You can push it a bit.
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But people like to do certain things.
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Even given no technology.
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They'll go to the same restaurant.
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They'll walk the same way down the street.
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They'll sit at the same chairs at a table.
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Let's do it the way the human mind.
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Because people are looking to belong to a community.
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And they're looking for a place in that community.
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Which is basically the whole premise of a tonight show.
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Yes.
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Let's give them the habit, the place of belonging every night.
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Make them feel good about the day.
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They probably had a shit day.
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And boy, did I cap it off?
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You know, I'm not so weak.
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There are many things I want to ask you, Steve.
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But why are you wearing a cheap straw hat in an indoor studio?
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Well, you're not going to get sunburned.
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Because it's necessary?
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I have just come from a meeting.
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I was at my farm, basically.
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Oh, OK.
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Do you know the auditioning for farmer wants a wife?
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Or something?
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No, no, no, no.
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I've come from my...
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And look at that hat too.
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It's a pretty shitty hat.
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I'm going to run out of your pedigree.
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The big things that looks fairly sore.
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OK, now it's down on the ground.
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Good.
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Because I was coming from my farm,
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where I've just put some grapes in.
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And I was hoping...
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There'd been a grand for one year.
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And I had it in my head at this time, one year later.
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I hadn't thought it through.
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I'd been drinking my own.
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And I just...
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What is the lead time on a...
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It turns out it's about five years.
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Right.
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OK.
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But I had it in my head.
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I almost sort of designed the label.
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Yep.
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It was thinking about marketing.
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It's a picture of you wearing that hat and the holding it.
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And restaurants.
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I had already placed it in certain restaurants.
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And I was quibbling with a restaurant too.
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It was about whether I supplied them or not.
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But as it turns out after a year,
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you don't...
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There's not even...
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Forget wine.
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There's no grape.
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Right.
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And...
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Yeah.
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Did you think about inquiring into the...
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I should have...
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Mating cycle.
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I should have asked more about the gross cycle of...
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What are we going to call...
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Is it Chateau Chateau?
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We're on the top of the mountain.
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And the name of the property...
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I've got five kids.
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And I threw it open to all the kids.
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What will we call the winery or the property.
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And they came up with every name under the sun.
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Four forgot to reply.
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And my advertising son, who lives in New York at the moment,
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came up with some names that were...
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You know, those sort of funny names.
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If I was promoting sort of a balloon company or something,
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you know, just stupid names.
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And so I had to go back to basics.
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So being on the top of the mountain,
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it's called Arthur's Seat.
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We're at the end.
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It's the name of the hill.
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I've called it the Seat.
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The Seat.
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I like Arthur's Seat as well.
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And by implication, the Seat is shit.
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The Seat.
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The Seat.
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The Seat.
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No, that's not for a one.
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Not for the one.
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No, no, no.
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Okay, that's just the vineyard.
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I'm still eating.
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Okay, good.
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Yeah.
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Because I would think buttocks.
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I would think.
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No, this is just my head.
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I think this is more about you.
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The seat.
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The seat.
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Okay.
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The throne.
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The throne.
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The throne is more shit.
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It sounds like a vernacular.
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No, it sounds like a toy.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Okay.
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Anyway, so it comes along.
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I've literally come from my vineyard.
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Okay, vineyard.
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All the way into Melbourne to converse to us about comedy,
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about late night television,
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about the state of comedy in Australia and the world.
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Having said that, yeah.
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Do you get feedback from your people at all?
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Do you get any two-way feedback?
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Yeah.
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Yeah, we do.
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I mean, only in the sense that people who subscribe
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from sub-stack comment on what they've heard.
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What they've heard.
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What they've heard.
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Would it be too presumptuous?
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Hmm.
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It would be.
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If anyone's got any great names for a wine.
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One.
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Okay.
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This is the label of the wine.
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Yeah.
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So the vineyard is the seat.
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The wine itself.
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The wine itself.
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What's the great names?
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What's some of the great names of wines that we've heard
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in the past?
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If anyone had one.
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Okay.
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I'm prepared to steal it.
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Shatto.
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Shatto.
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Tonight's live.
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No.
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Tonight's live was the name of the show.
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Tonight's live with Steve Visor.
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Five nights a week.
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Five nights a week.
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And if you'd asked me how many years did tonight's live run for
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I would have said, oh, I'll probably have 15.
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For three years.
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Four.
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Four years.
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That's what I said.
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Four years.
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I think it seemed like 15.
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But I guess it was at a moment.
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So Letterman was just moving over from...
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No, he hadn't yet moved.
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He was still on NBC.
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He was on NBC.
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Well, I'm sure.
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The late night wars were heating up in the States, right?
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That was just about that.
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Right.
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But Carson was about to retire.
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Yeah.
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Letterman was about to get the tonight show and then knocked
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out the tonight show and then get the tonight show again.
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Len, I was about to steal.
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Yeah.
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Letterman's a glory.
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Letterman was about to go over to CBS and start the late show.
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All of that.
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And at the same time, you had the bright idea.
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So what were you doing in the late 80s?
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So in the late 80s, I was being a lawyer.
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Yeah.
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I was a lawyer first, but I wrote comedy on planes.
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Because I was flying it.
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I was doing international deals.
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Right.
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I was so bored on planes that the...
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Well, Laura, I was talking about this fantastic, but she was boring.
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What kind of law?
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International, like a big international financing lawyer.
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Right.
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I worked for...
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Where I ended up was working on big deals to do with a mining company
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and making steel using new technology.
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You don't even want to know about it.
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Okay.
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I was based in Germany, Japan, Switzerland, London, traveling a lot.
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Right.
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All the time.
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And...
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So you're sitting there and you're sitting on a business class switch and you're going crazy.
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Find yourself.
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And so I would write comedy scripts and sell them.
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Because I've been at uni, I've been in all the reviews.
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Then I got into law.
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I just got engaged.
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I was flying around the world.
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I had intended to.
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And so I'd give these comedy...
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I'd do them.
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I'd write jokes.
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I'd write sketches.
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All sorts of stuff.
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And so then the big comedy boom happened in Australia.
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And so when you say you were writing sketches, Americans might be familiar with this sort of trajectory
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from like the Koname Brian types and the Harvard lampoon where there'd be people who were studying law and doing that.
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But they were also nerds and they were comedy.
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So you're a frustrated comedy person, but you're also a lawyer.
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But who were you selling the scripts to?
10:59
Are they to sketch comedy shows that are on the air?
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To sketch comedy shows, to comedians, to everyone.
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So I'm basically a writer.
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Freelance writer.
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But I'm happy just to be that.
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Anyway, a bloke called Ian McFadgin got a show up called The Comedy Company.
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Yes.
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Which was a Saturday night live.
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Not except it wasn't live.
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It was a sketch comedy show.
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It went up on Channel 10, one of the channels here.
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Went an hour a week.
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They didn't know where to put it.
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They put it up on Sunday night.
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Primetime.
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Biggest slot of the week.
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Against 60 minutes at the time on Channel 9.
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Thinking it's going to die and then we've tried it.
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It ended up after about five or six weeks.
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Beating 60 minutes.
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Becoming the hottest property in Australian television.
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So it's pummeling 60 minutes.
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730 on a Sunday night.
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All of Australia is watching it.
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Basically just a comedy show.
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Very suburban.
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Funny.
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Full of good characters.
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Corn the fruiter.
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Uncle Arthur.
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All these characters in the comedy company.
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So Channel 7 with whom I'd had an association in the past.
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I'd sold them some stuff.
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I was in Zurich.
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And I got a call.
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It's so international.
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Sitting here in a straw hat.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Exactly.
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You're counting your Swiss.
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You're counting your nutty gold in the Swiss beer pot.
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Yeah.
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In the most expensive hotel paid for by.
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Not me, but of course the law firm.
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Yeah.
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But called the Barra Luck, which is the beautiful hotel,
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ancient hotel overlooking the lake there.
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And I get a call from the programmer, Channel 7,
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a local Gary Fenton, who basically said,
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listen, reminding me who he was first.
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And saying, listen, we've got this show on Channel 10
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that's killing administrators, doing great business.
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You do sketch comedy and stuff.
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And we know you're great.
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Would you mind getting a shot for us on Channel 7,
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a competitive show?
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And I said, yeah, sure, Gary.
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So anyhow, I said, love to do it,
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without consulting my future wife.
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And then you rang back and said,
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you realize you're going to have to be in it.
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Like, you're going to be on air.
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I said, I don't think I can achieve that.
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He said, look, we want you in it.
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You can produce it.
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You can make it.
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You can write it.
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You have to be in it.
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You can put it all together.
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Pick your cast.
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Do everything.
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Amazing.
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And we'll fund it.
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And this is sketch comedy now that he's sketch comedy.
13:31
Yeah.
13:32
Yeah.
13:33
One hour sketch comedy shot.
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So I said, I went downstairs to the bloke.
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I was working with a bloke called John Calder,
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who was fantastic.
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We were the only two.
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We flew around doing everything.
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And John was a genius.
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John had been working doing this sort of stuff.
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He was much older than I was at the time.
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I'm sort of his age now.
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And he knew every good restaurant in Europe
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because he'd been doing this a long time.
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So we did this, we'd work long hours.
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But then we'd stayed the best hotels.
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We'd go to the best restaurants.
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I'll tell you a story in a second about one of them.
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But I went out to John and said,
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John, I've just had this call.
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Because we were, you know, we were intimates.
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We spent all of our time talking, filling in hours.
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And he said, I said, I've been offered to do a TV show.
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And he didn't even know write comedy.
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And I said, it's a chance to do a TV show.
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They've offered me eight episodes.
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It's eight hours, eight weeks.
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Yeah.
14:26
What do you think I should do?
14:28
And I don't want to let you down, John,
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because we're immersed in some very big deals
14:32
with some huge German corporations,
14:36
like Krup, Krup and Kloknerverks and Deutscher Steel.
14:40
And there's massive deals.
14:41
Yeah.
14:42
All of them who'd actually continued to trade
14:45
through two world wars.
14:46
Right.
14:47
Yeah.
14:48
Yeah.
14:49
And then everyone, heaven knows who owns.
14:50
In fact, we know who owns them.
14:51
And when you, and when you tell German executives
14:54
that you're leaving and you can't handle their case anymore,
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because you're going to write comedy.
14:57
Yeah.
14:58
We know what happened.
14:59
We know it.
15:00
They're famously easy going.
15:01
And, yeah.
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So John came in.
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We were in the middle of that five-course meal,
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as was a typical night for us.
15:07
And I said, but I don't want to let you down.
15:09
I don't want to let the company down.
15:10
He did the best thing anyone's ever done
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in terms of career advice,
15:13
although at the time I found it hugely insulting.
15:16
There was a glass of water like this in front of me.
15:19
And I said, I don't want to leave a gap and, you know,
15:22
I don't let you down.
15:23
And he said, he did this.
15:24
He put his finger into the water and took it out.
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And he said, see the hole at that left.
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And I said, yeah.
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He said, that's the hole you'll leave in the organization.
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And I went, I was at first, I was really insulted.
15:40
Yeah.
15:41
Probably good, you know.
15:42
Thanks for the vote of support.
15:43
Really, you know, like, really?
15:45
And then he said, no, seriously.
15:48
He said, these things come along once in a blue mode.
15:51
Just do it.
15:52
And he said, corporations.
15:53
He said, I'm not, he said corporations
15:55
will go on long after we're both gone.
15:57
And they're thankless.
15:58
They won't care whether you work for us or not.
16:00
Follow, do it now.
16:01
And he said, and by the way, come back in eight weeks
16:04
when it fails.
16:05
We'll come back and we'll keep working together.
16:08
Yeah.
16:09
So I took that as, you know, maybe it's just my, I'm literally a glass,
16:13
literally a glass apple person.
16:15
But I took that as a vote of confidence.
16:17
So I quit.
16:18
We got up the sketch comedy show.
16:20
I just, I literally got back.
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I had this tiny little office.
16:24
I had a, you know, a typewriter, you know, was in those days.
16:29
And they said, just pick anyone you want.
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So I went and got Magdars Avansky, Jane Turner, Gina Riley.
16:36
People, you know, lovely now.
16:38
When I say got them, they all agreed to,
16:40
yeah, buying to this stupid idea.
16:42
Yeah.
16:43
Michael Vich, Peter Moon, a variety of people
16:48
who we got to do the sketch comedy show.
16:51
Was there any constraint on what the sketch comedy show was?
16:55
Did you have to come up with an idea of what is,
16:57
what is this thing?
16:58
How does this differentiate itself
16:59
from the comedy company?
17:00
I think Channel Seven, at that point,
17:02
was so the ref of management.
17:04
And the end of viewers,
17:06
that they basically said, we do what you want.
17:08
Give us that.
17:09
I did have a premise.
17:10
The premise was really simple.
17:12
The premise was people spend so much time watching TV
17:17
and being saturated by the media.
17:19
And in those days, there was only broadcast TV.
17:22
So you were locked into whatever the channels were.
17:24
And it came out in an order.
17:26
Forget time shifting or in your own time.
17:28
It was what, you know, is how it came out.
17:30
So all of the shows that were in front of people
17:33
were shared by everyone.
17:34
It was great synchronicity.
17:35
Everyone shared the same universe.
17:38
So my idea was essentially, why don't we just take
17:41
and compress a week's viewing across everything
17:45
and use all the shows that have conveyed the information
17:48
as our touchstones.
17:49
And that lets us do parodies of shows.
17:51
It lets us do the characters.
17:53
It lets us do any news and stuff like that.
17:56
And then I had...
17:57
This was the only good idea I've ever had in my life.
18:00
The other advantage of doing that was,
18:02
because basically a week's viewing
18:04
compressed into an hour.
18:05
Right.
18:06
The other great advantage of that was,
18:08
I call the show Fast Forward.
18:09
It was because you could literally
18:11
fast forward through any shit pits.
18:13
So we could change channels.
18:16
This was the only good idea I had,
18:18
was that we could halfway through a sketch
18:20
that was going badly.
18:21
Yes.
18:22
Change channels.
18:23
And you'd have the static.
18:24
Yeah, the static.
18:25
And we'd change channels.
18:26
And then we could cut back to the sketch.
18:28
And we'd actually got some laughs.
18:29
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
18:30
And you could still some laughs.
18:31
Or we could fast forward.
18:33
And so that gave us two things.
18:35
It gave us a stylistic device.
18:38
But it actually gave us something that made the show incredibly
18:41
crazy.
18:42
Right.
18:43
Because we...
18:44
You didn't have to end a sketch.
18:45
And if you'd ever seen Monty Python or those sorts of things,
18:48
I was always...
18:49
I found their humour very absurdist.
18:51
But really interesting, like the Goons show,
18:54
because they had worked out ways
18:56
where you could walk from one sketch into another.
18:58
And I remember the
19:00
Spanish Inquisition sketch of Monty Python
19:04
walking into another sketch.
19:06
Right.
19:07
And I thought the character would literally walk off
19:09
and then they literally just begin...
19:11
...sing away between two different sketches.
19:13
That's what that's interesting.
19:14
But in a very old-fashioned kind of boardville sort of way.
19:18
And so this became a kind of new version of doing that.
19:21
A fast, more technological version of doing that.
19:25
And where did they put you on in the schedule?
19:27
They put us on a Wednesday night to start with.
19:29
But it was up against that sport in Sydney.
19:32
So it was split in the country.
19:33
They had rugby league in Sydney.
19:35
And Melbourne, it was free.
19:37
Because there was no sport.
19:38
Against the rugby league, it did okay.
19:40
But against...
19:41
Against the...
19:42
Against nothing.
19:43
Against nothing else.
19:44
We were killed.
19:45
And in fact, we did so well.
19:46
Within about six weeks, we were winning everything
19:50
and getting really good results.
19:52
So much so that Sydney program is decided,
19:55
I know, we need to put this giddish some clear air, as they say.
19:59
And so they put it up on a Thursday night.
20:01
And suddenly, the show took off.
20:04
And within a year, it was...
20:06
It wasn't just the top-riding show on Thursday night,
20:08
or on the network.
20:09
It was actually the top-riding show on Australian TV.
20:11
Amazing.
20:12
Within a year.
20:13
And then year two,
20:15
it was by far and away the most top-riding show on Australian TV,
20:20
to the point where,
20:21
about of all the sets in use in Australia,
20:25
about 40%.
20:26
Virtually half of Australia was watching the show.
20:29
It was massive.
20:30
Incredible.
20:31
Incredible.
20:32
So the upshot of that was the network basically said,
20:34
we'll take as much stuff as you can give us.
20:37
And it was on that hair-brained premise,
20:39
as much stuff as you can give us,
20:41
that single conversation,
20:43
that one of their executives,
20:44
a local Desmonda hand flew down to Melbourne,
20:46
so we're a year in the production, we're killing it.
20:48
We think we're pretty good by now.
20:50
Because you know, we don't...
20:52
We had no idea what we're doing.
20:54
We're just fluked in.
20:55
Are you making lawyer money yet?
20:57
We are making better than senior partner.
21:01
Really?
21:02
I'm really...
21:03
It's a year's type money.
21:04
Wow.
21:05
Like, we...
21:06
You can't do that anymore in television.
21:07
No, it's...
21:08
Or in law, as it turns out.
21:09
So it's all gone.
21:10
Yeah.
21:11
So we're going really well,
21:13
and Des flew down from Sydney,
21:15
because everything was based in Sydney.
21:17
He flew down to Melbourne,
21:18
where we were based on producing our show,
21:20
and said, listen.
21:22
There's a show in...
21:24
On the basis that we use this to match the comedy company,
21:27
there's another show on Telly that's troubling us.
21:30
And it's a show called Coast to Coast.
21:33
And the reason it's troubling us is because it's...
21:35
It's got one of the great stars of TV, Graham Kennedy,
21:39
who's made a comeback,
21:40
and he's doing a late night version of a new show.
21:45
It's literally reading the news,
21:47
but he's doing it in a slightly comedic flavor.
21:49
And it's killing us in two ways.
21:51
It's extending their audience into late night,
21:54
because people in Australia would normally,
21:57
you know, watch reruns and stuff.
21:59
Yeah.
22:00
They're watching this show particularly,
22:01
and we're losing dramatically.
22:03
So with that in mind,
22:04
would you be interested in doing a tonight show,
22:06
a five-nighter week tonight show?
22:08
To go up against Graham Kennedy.
22:09
To go up against Graham Kennedy.
22:10
Graham Kennedy was a titan of Australian broadcasting and comedy.
22:15
It's hard to know what the analogy in the States would be,
22:18
because he was so dead.
22:19
I think you mentioned Carson at the start.
22:21
But he didn't have a...
22:23
He didn't have a tonight show, Graham.
22:25
He did.
22:26
He did.
22:27
He did.
22:28
It was called Emelben tonight.
22:29
Oh, right, of course.
22:30
Yes.
22:31
Yes.
22:32
And that was Emelben based.
22:33
And it's how he cut his teeth.
22:34
He basically started from radio.
22:36
This is how old it was.
22:37
He started in radio.
22:38
It went from radio to TV.
22:41
And took his TV act.
22:43
And basically, like they did in the early days.
22:46
Did a radio show on television?
22:48
Did a radio show on television?
22:49
And that period,
22:50
when they had no expectations, no shape,
22:53
no structure.
22:54
But that was a variety show.
22:56
It was more like Ed Sullivan or something.
22:58
It was a cross between the Steve Allen show.
23:01
It was a big original guy.
23:03
And another one,
23:05
a big US show,
23:06
the show of shows.
23:07
Yep.
23:08
It was a big one.
23:09
And Ed Sullivan and Carson.
23:11
It mixed all of those shows together.
23:13
Right, right.
23:14
And it was free form.
23:15
And that was a great thing about those radio guys,
23:17
because they had no structure.
23:18
And no one had any ideas about...
23:20
And they couldn't move the bloody cameras around,
23:22
because they had these...
23:23
The elephants of the things with...
23:24
So it's a locked-off...
23:25
Yeah, yeah.
23:26
So they very slow to move these compasses.
23:28
Yeah.
23:29
So they did a lot of just stuff talking and chatting.
23:31
And, you know, they're like,
23:32
what we're doing.
23:33
But, you know, they'd have...
23:34
And then an elephant would come through.
23:36
Yeah, that was awesome.
23:37
What...
23:38
What are my favorite shows from early TV?
23:40
Then an elephant would come through.
23:42
That's what I want to do again.
23:43
I want to do, like, you know, the Dick Cabot show.
23:45
And then all of a sudden,
23:46
there are some dance music.
23:47
And talking to Orson Wersen.
23:48
There are some...
23:49
Yeah, exactly.
23:50
You've got Orson Wersen.
23:51
You'd have a...
23:52
You'd have a grand piano.
23:53
But it's...
23:54
It's amazing.
23:55
You see these old things at Dick Cabot.
23:56
There's a grand piano.
23:57
And they go...
23:58
There's, like, Satchmo Armstrong.
23:59
There's Gorvidol.
24:00
There's, like, you know...
24:02
And, as you say, an elephant.
24:03
And there's...
24:04
Dancing monkeys.
24:05
And then there's, like,
24:06
Gina Lola Brigida.
24:07
And they're like, yeah, it's just like,
24:08
what the hell is going on?
24:10
But I loved that free form.
24:11
I mean, people talk now about experimentation.
24:13
That was the golden age of experimentation,
24:16
because...
24:19
There were no expectations.
24:21
And there were no barriers.
24:22
Like, they had a studio.
24:23
It was...
24:24
They had lights.
24:25
And so, they would just do what occurred to them.
24:27
Yeah.
24:28
And so, I remember when I was a young kid.
24:30
So, TV's sort of early on now.
24:32
And I would turn on the TV.
24:34
I'm amazed that you could see anything.
24:37
And there was a show...
24:38
The pre-seeded The Kids Show.
24:40
And it was called...
24:42
It was called The TV Dentist.
24:44
I kid you not.
24:47
This was the show.
24:48
Okay.
24:49
They'd set up a dentist chair
24:51
in a studio with no props around.
24:55
And, you know, they sort of go backwards.
24:57
Yeah.
24:58
And there was a dentist,
24:59
and they had three lock-off cameras.
25:00
So, you didn't even get close in.
25:02
Right.
25:03
There was a dentist probing someone's mouth with tools.
25:06
And a really,
25:08
funny, dutty-looking nurse.
25:09
It wasn't even like they had a weather-presented type of drug.
25:12
Not a hot nurse.
25:13
Not a hot nurse.
25:14
Like, this is a really bad nurse.
25:15
A really bad nurse sitting there.
25:17
Right.
25:18
And he would...
25:20
And we'd happily watch that, thinking about it.
25:22
What would he say to you?
25:23
He's talking to me.
25:24
He'd get the drill going.
25:26
And you'd hear...
25:27
Like, seriously, this is television.
25:28
Every part of this deserves not to be watched.
25:30
It's a wide shot.
25:31
Hey, mom.
25:32
Are you boiling any eggs that I can watch?
25:34
It's anything.
25:35
I'll take any things.
25:36
I'll take any things.
25:37
And the dentist was on again.
25:40
The dentist was on again.
25:41
TV was so bad.
25:43
There was another kid show called the Happy Hammond Show.
25:46
And the Happy Hammond show.
25:47
Well, we were born during the Civil War Steve Meizard.
25:51
What if we don't marry him?
25:53
These things are extraordinary.
25:54
The Happy Hammond show.
25:55
The Happy Hammond show.
25:56
It consisted of a bloke.
25:58
And I'm not bad-mouthing happy.
26:00
He was a happy-had skills.
26:01
I'm sure I had a good way.
26:02
But they didn't include dancing.
26:03
Because he once...
26:04
He went on life on air.
26:06
To do one of those side-ticks.
26:09
And didn't land on his feet.
26:11
He landed on his hip.
26:13
From quite an altitude.
26:15
And broke his leg on life television.
26:17
Oh my goodness.
26:18
It was fantastic.
26:19
So happy, Hammond.
26:20
What's not so happy?
26:21
Not so happy anymore.
26:22
And he said he would go live on just what, dancing.
26:28
Happy wasn't the unhappy...
26:31
Anyway.
26:32
So you were clearly born during the Civil War.
26:35
You're watching television at a time when...
26:38
Not only is it a locked-off shot of a dentist with a homely...
26:43
No.
26:44
...dental assistant.
26:45
But presumably they're doing dentistry using wooden teeth.
26:49
At this stage of development.
26:51
Unfortunately, George Washington.
26:53
So because this is clearly pre-civilization.
26:57
And the kids' shows have live streams of deranged...
27:01
Non-dances, dancing and breaking their legs.
27:05
So they didn't have...
27:06
And I have to say, looking back...
27:08
And I don't mean to love at the time it was show.
27:10
But looking back on some of the people they had on the show.
27:13
All I'll say is...
27:14
They clearly didn't have police checks.
27:16
There was no background.
27:18
There was no background.
27:19
There was no background.
27:20
You didn't have a working weakness.
27:21
There was no visa certificate before.
27:23
No permits required in those days.
27:25
So into this hotbed.
27:28
You get a call.
27:30
So you've already got this big sketch comedy show.
27:32
Fast forward.
27:33
And then they say...
27:35
And by the way, are you at this point, at any point,
27:38
when it stops being just an eight-week gig,
27:41
but becomes like the full year long thing?
27:43
How do you start feeling?
27:45
Do you start thinking, oh shit, now I have to find a way to keep it going?
27:49
Or do you just not ask too many questions?
27:51
At this point, it's been going for like nine months.
27:55
Because we went where in March or so.
27:57
Yeah, but don't you still think, oh shit.
27:59
They've signed up more series.
28:01
That was a thing.
28:02
Yeah, but then you have to produce them.
28:04
Well, you know, compared to sitting on a plane permanently.
28:09
It sounds good, but I was over the plane.
28:11
It was up to me.
28:12
I'd sit on the plane.
28:13
In hindsight, I'd sit on the plane.
28:15
But at the time, I was thinking...
28:17
The five star restaurants, the best hotel in the U.S.
28:20
Even saying that.
28:21
I was such a drag.
28:22
But now, at the time, I was loving it.
28:25
Because you know, you're getting made up,
28:27
you're mucking around, you're writing...
28:29
It was all new.
28:30
You're suddenly getting recognized in the street as well.
28:32
Well, there was that.
28:33
Right.
28:34
And a lot of my stuff, I just would...
28:37
Pathetically, I'd look at people and say,
28:41
there's a character in that.
28:42
Or I'd...
28:44
Or I'd situation.
28:46
I was literally that desperate for material.
28:48
I was jotting stuff down.
28:50
If a cab driver had a funny voice,
28:52
he'd be in the show next week.
28:54
And did you get to a point where you had a sufficiently large writing staff
28:57
that you could...
28:58
Were you head writer as well?
28:59
Writer at the start.
29:00
Yeah.
29:01
Then I did this fantastic thing, which was...
29:03
I met Andrew Knight.
29:05
Andrew Knight was a bloke who...
29:07
I'd been parallel career.
29:09
I'd gone to Melbourne Uni.
29:10
He'd gone to Monash Uni in Melbourne.
29:12
And we've both written for student theatre and reviews and staff.
29:16
We've both put on...
29:17
Been interested.
29:18
He'd gone actually into TV.
29:20
Started making TV.
29:22
And he...
29:23
But he was my age more or less.
29:24
And he...
29:27
He was a professional.
29:28
I was a complete amateur.
29:31
So we met up.
29:32
And I said, mate, I've got to turn this stuff out.
29:34
You know what you're doing.
29:35
And I...
29:36
Can we team up?
29:37
And he said, yep.
29:38
And I said, why don't we just form a company?
29:39
Even though I'd set it up, I said, why don't we just form a company?
29:41
We'll go 50, 50.
29:43
And you look after the day-to-day mechanics and stuff.
29:48
Because you are a really good writer.
29:50
Like he's a world class writer.
29:51
In fact, he's been nominated for an Academy Award for...
29:53
Wow.
29:54
...for, you know, for staff a couple of times.
29:56
He's written great shows.
29:58
I could have, of course.
30:01
But I've...
30:02
Yes, you decided not to...
30:03
You decided not to give the Academy a crowning direction.
30:05
Yeah.
30:06
And...
30:07
The Academy wasn't speaking to you at that time.
30:09
Yeah, yeah, to your side.
30:10
And the other person we ran into was a blog called Ted Emory.
30:14
Ted Emory is a very famous director.
30:16
He wasn't at the time.
30:17
We made him famous.
30:18
Good for you.
30:19
And he had been a director of a show that in Australia was...
30:24
Seminal kind of show.
30:26
It was called Countdown.
30:27
And it was the show that basically went on the national broadcast
30:31
at the ABC every Sunday night.
30:33
I think it was at 6.30.
30:35
This was a music show.
30:36
It was a music show.
30:37
Sort of like top of the pop show.
30:39
Top of the pop show.
30:40
Yeah.
30:41
It didn't exist in Australia.
30:42
They did it live from a studio.
30:44
And all the big bands of the day.
30:46
So this is in the 70s.
30:48
Would go into the studio.
30:51
And all the big international recording artists
30:53
would go in there as well.
30:54
So, you know, Elton John would be in there,
30:56
Billy Joel would be in there.
30:58
Anyone visiting Australia would be in the studio
31:00
because they're promoting their albums.
31:02
It's a national show.
31:03
They get to push their albums,
31:05
which is the big thing at the time.
31:07
He directed...
31:08
He helped invent the look of that show
31:11
and make it a hit.
31:13
And for basically three decades with Molly Meldrum
31:16
as a frontman,
31:17
that became the show for Australian music.
31:20
And it still regarded as, you know,
31:22
kind of the show that shaped popular culture in Australia.
31:26
Well, he was a director of that show.
31:28
But a funny guy.
31:29
And in fact, on that show,
31:33
famously, when Prince Charles,
31:35
now King Charles, was visiting Australia
31:38
and was asked to visit the set of the national broadcast
31:41
and to appear on Countdown
31:43
and be interviewed by Molly Meldrum.
31:45
On Countdown, to use the show to push the Princess Charity
31:49
or something, Molly froze.
31:52
And it took, I think, about 30 takes for Molly
31:56
to get out the question.
31:57
He was supposed to ask the Prince.
31:59
Because Molly's barely articulate.
32:01
And Molly's great, but he can't put a sense together.
32:03
And if you ever look at the art takes...
32:05
Good qualifications to be a host of television shows.
32:07
Of a television show.
32:08
You're a literate.
32:09
Anyhow, if you ever look at the art takes
32:12
of that interview, which are hysterical.
32:15
What's the Prince doing?
32:17
The Prince is kind of...
32:18
I don't think the Prince had ever met anyone like Molly before.
32:21
No. No.
32:22
Molly Meldrum is a very strange type of television host.
32:25
Perfectly.
32:26
He wears a hat almost as much as I do.
32:28
As much as I do.
32:29
Yeah, almost as nice as yours as well.
32:31
A Bushman's.
32:32
He wears a Bushman's hat.
32:33
He's a felt member.
32:34
But in the background of the art takes,
32:37
which go for about 30 minutes.
32:39
That's how badly it went.
32:41
Ted Emory, this director I'm talking about.
32:43
He's coming in.
32:45
And he's talking to Molly.
32:46
You can hear it all.
32:47
You can hear it.
32:48
Someone should just run that as a special.
32:50
It is one of the great 40 minutes of television.
32:54
He's coming to Molly.
32:55
It's okay, Molly.
32:56
Let's just...
32:57
The Prince is okay.
32:58
And he's getting massaging him on the show.
33:00
The Prince has never seen anything like this one by one of people.
33:04
I mean, he's sitting in a studio in Australia.
33:06
And I think he's wondering why is...
33:07
Why are we still a member of the Empire?
33:09
Absolutely.
33:10
What am I doing in this water?
33:11
There is a case for a republic.
33:12
Yes.
33:13
It's being made right in front of me.
33:15
I mean, what must he think?
33:16
When he goes to the BBC, I'm sure he's very...
33:18
Everything's very proper.
33:19
He's facing people capable of talking.
33:21
To bowing and the bowing.
33:22
To bowing and the bowing.
33:23
Well, there are also a capable of stringing a sentence together.
33:25
That's the one to say together.
33:26
Incredible.
33:27
He's got this guy mumbling with his...
33:29
And he's mumbling with his water.
33:30
He's getting massaged by a director wearing shorts.
33:34
It's...
33:35
And he says...
33:36
He says something less patented, whatever you know.
33:39
Yeah, appalling.
33:40
Wow.
33:41
Anyhow, they managed to get something out to wear.
33:43
I don't know how.
33:45
But they did.
33:46
And...
33:47
But anyway.
33:48
So Ted...
33:49
So you poached...
33:50
Ted...
33:51
Ted was between engagements.
33:53
I think Camtown had finished it.
33:55
And they'd put him onto some appalling things at the ABC wasn't suited to.
33:59
So we went to Ted and said, Ted, would you be interested in coming to our little...
34:03
You know, Triumvirate, which was Andrew Meyen and now to be Ted.
34:08
And Ted is a director, shaped to look at the show.
34:10
And it's suited him perfectly because...
34:12
Fast forward.
34:13
Yeah.
34:14
Because we were creating looks all the time.
34:16
So because it's an hour of TV in a given week, we do...
34:21
We do, you know, five of the top ads that are happening.
34:24
And, you know, to create an ad, the advertising agency was spending a million dollars on an ad.
34:29
And we'd recreate that look in an afternoon.
34:34
We'd do parodies of every single show.
34:36
From all of the old classics like I Love Lucy McCale's Navy, Gilligan's Island,
34:41
through to all of the current shows that were on news broadcasts,
34:46
each with different makeup hair sets.
34:49
Yeah, it's amazing.
34:50
And we turned them over.
34:51
Turn them over.
34:52
And Ted was uniquely skilled at martialing talent.
34:58
And making them still be funny.
35:00
And creating that look.
35:01
And in terms of just the writing question.
35:03
So once you've got...
35:04
Sorry, what's your partner's name?
35:06
Andrew.
35:07
Andrew on staff.
35:08
Then are you able to...
35:10
Does there come a point at which you go,
35:12
all right, I've got an idea to do a sketch about this.
35:15
Can you guys go and make that?
35:17
Like, what do we do a sketch about this?
35:18
A sketch about that?
35:19
A sketch about that.
35:20
Now I'm going to go...
35:21
So we've also got...
35:22
Of course, lunch.
35:23
In Melbourne, if not in Zurich.
35:25
And you guys...
35:26
You guys write it.
35:27
It's always a bit like that.
35:29
But, you know, if you're a comedy writer,
35:32
it's just as easy to write the writing thing
35:35
as explaining it to someone.
35:36
It literally is just as easy to...
35:39
Rather, say...
35:40
Now, this is the main point of the sketch.
35:42
And whatever you do, don't do that.
35:43
But we're writing a sketch about this.
35:45
And it's the funny part...
35:47
Just write the bloody thing.
35:48
It's almost like working with AI right now.
35:49
We have to spend more time telling the chat.
35:51
Correcting it.
35:52
Yeah, what you want it to do.
35:53
Then you'll be just to do the thing.
35:54
I've told you what.
35:55
Exactly.
35:56
Okay, good.
35:57
So that gives me an impression of where you are in the late 80s.
36:00
So you've...
36:01
Yes, you've got this huge...
36:02
So they've come and basically said you want to do a tonight show.
36:04
Do you want to do...
36:05
Do you want to go up against Graham Kennedy?
36:07
And I say...
36:08
And I say...
36:09
Stupidly...
36:10
Because I've had you ever watched...
36:12
I've never been on live TV.
36:13
Our...
36:14
Because our show's pretty recorded.
36:15
Yeah.
36:16
So I said, yeah, now I do that.
36:17
Never thinking I'd actually...
36:18
And I didn't know what I was thinking.
36:20
So five nights a week.
36:21
Yeah, now I can do that.
36:22
So I agreed to do a tonight show.
36:24
They gave us all the resources.
36:26
Our company was making it.
36:27
They just paid us for money.
36:29
And...
36:30
Which is always good.
36:31
Yeah, it's good, isn't it?
36:32
When you can produce it yourself.
36:33
At that point, I should have done a runner.
36:35
That was the point.
36:36
You should have just not gotten the Chrysler building.
36:38
Yeah.
36:39
Cheaper set.
36:40
And the difference.
36:41
Any...
36:42
Have the only thing I've built in...
36:43
Which was smart.
36:44
Because I know I've got the attention span of a net.
36:46
I'm really not good at sticking with things.
36:48
Once I've done something for a few weeks,
36:50
I feel like I...
36:51
Yeah, right.
36:52
I feel we've got that.
36:53
So I did build in that we could have a whole lot of guest hosts over a year.
36:59
So they had the right...
37:00
I had the right to bring one in.
37:02
But they had the right to say we don't want to use them again.
37:07
And that...
37:08
And so began a dance with the network.
37:10
Right.
37:11
Do you remember how many nights you were allowed to take off?
37:12
Well, in the first year, I did every night.
37:14
Right.
37:15
And in the second year,
37:16
I started to think I've been here and done this.
37:19
And we had great guests.
37:20
Like we had...
37:21
Because they were now like...
37:23
So these show.
37:24
Yeah.
37:25
We had everyone.
37:26
We had people from Charlton, Hesse, too.
37:29
And this was back in the day when huge stars actually traveled internationally.
37:34
They do it less now.
37:36
But back in the day before there was piracy, you know, internet piracy of movies.
37:40
Yeah.
37:41
Studios could stagger the releases.
37:42
So they'd have the US release.
37:44
Then they'd have a Europe release.
37:46
Then they'd have an Australia release.
37:48
And so the stars would fly around doing...
37:51
And they'd come here, big A-list stars.
37:53
Yeah.
37:54
Now most movies get simultaneous release globally because it's too easy for them to leave.
37:59
And in any event, they'll...
38:01
When the stars will be doing a junket,
38:04
they'll be literally in Singapore for an afternoon.
38:07
Yeah.
38:08
And people have to just come in and...
38:09
So you can have an eight-minute...
38:10
They're trying.
38:11
Yeah.
38:12
But they're here.
38:13
You know, they were...
38:14
And also, they're like coming to Australia at the time.
38:16
Yes.
38:17
So they'd be here for a week.
38:18
So, you know, big nights like Frank Sinatra, Shirley McClain.
38:22
We had brought, like, seriously big guests.
38:24
So Peter used to know of who I got to know a bit.
38:27
Michael Parkinson, I got to know really well.
38:31
And in fact, one of the other things we built into our show was that we would...
38:36
The show went really well.
38:38
But we started.
38:39
It was basically a rip off of the Letterman show.
38:41
It was a bit of a grain Kennedy show.
38:43
It was a bit of a tonight show.
38:46
I mean, it was very Letterman.
38:49
Yeah.
38:50
I mean, to the extent of almost having a top 10 list, right?
38:52
Did you have a top 7?
38:53
Yeah, because it was on Channel 7.
38:54
The big top 7?
38:55
Yeah, top 7.
38:56
Well, that was a network's idea.
38:58
Right.
38:59
But the big difference was, because we were a sketch comedy background,
39:04
we'd introduce a lot of sort of almost sketches into the show.
39:07
So it was a bit slightly, almost like Steve Allen sort of show early,
39:12
kind of a morphing in and out of a tonight show.
39:16
So you would throw it pre-recorded...
39:18
Packages?
39:19
Packages?
39:20
Or we'd move into something that looked like it was live on the show
39:22
that was actually a written sketch kind of thing.
39:26
Yeah.
39:27
And they got increasingly bizarre.
39:29
Like, I remember one was...
39:33
You know those old sort of barbers shop magazines
39:39
that on the back of them had...
39:41
You could buy it sent away, cut out a coupon
39:44
and you could get X-ray glasses.
39:46
I think this is from the era of the wooden dental teeth...
39:49
And this is from...
39:51
Yeah.
39:52
Happy with a barber.
39:53
I'm thinking not.
39:55
I'm familiar with the concept of a hair stylist.
39:59
A hair stylist to the salon.
40:01
Okay.
40:02
We had guys who were barely fit to operate scissors in our day.
40:08
But in those shops, they had these magazines that were appalling magazines
40:12
and they had these things you could send away...
40:15
I mean, kids or morons.
40:17
And you could get these glasses that were alleged to be X-ray glasses.
40:21
Right.
40:22
You could see through it.
40:23
Yes, I've seen this in the Simpsons.
40:25
So I actually...
40:26
Ah!
40:27
That's your reference point.
40:28
That's my reference point, yeah.
40:29
So I...
40:31
On air, I wondered, although it's pre-recorded,
40:34
what it would be like to send away whether they worked.
40:38
So we sent away for them on the Tuesday night.
40:41
And by the Thursday night, we've got them back.
40:43
You know, I opened the package on air and stuff.
40:45
And I put them on the camera just to see if they'd worked to see what would happen.
40:49
And we'd actually gone to the bar.
40:51
I can't believe we did this.
40:52
Of getting a whole audience in...
40:55
We shot it in an afternoon, but it was made to look real.
40:59
And they'd all come in.
41:01
300 people.
41:02
That was our audience.
41:03
Or nude.
41:04
I could tie nude audience.
41:07
We got all the camera men to be nude.
41:09
Right.
41:10
We got the band to be nude.
41:11
And so as they swung the camera round, our entire set was...
41:17
That's a whole bit.
41:18
Right.
41:19
The whole bit went for about literally, I don't know, a minute tops, a minute and a half.
41:23
It took a half days.
41:24
All the work...
41:25
That's the sort of shit that we would do because we were bored.
41:28
So we did another one where someone said there's a parallel tonight show happening in the next studio.
41:34
Someone's doing your show.
41:35
They're using the other studio.
41:37
And they're using all your guests.
41:39
And I went in there.
41:40
And I think we managed to get someone like Sir Peter Euston or someone to be the host of that show.
41:47
And we're using our guests when they came off.
41:49
Right.
41:50
And are you using your set as the fake, as the dummy?
41:53
Yes, the other one.
41:54
So we just shot that.
41:55
We did...
41:58
I know a show we did.
42:00
We were up against Wimbledon.
42:02
So our show we go to where we were against Wimbledon.
42:04
And we would in order to stop people switching to Wimbledon, zoom in to the tennis from time to time.
42:10
If it got to a...
42:11
I would up the camera operators.
42:13
It's anything good happening.
42:14
Right.
42:15
Can you let us know?
42:16
And I guarantee you studio audience, you people out there, that you won't miss anything because we'll attend to it.
42:22
We'll make sure...
42:23
What about the...
42:24
What are the rights?
42:25
You're a lawyer.
42:26
That was something.
42:27
That I probably should have explored a little more closely.
42:29
Yeah.
42:30
You might want to.
42:31
So we caught shit from the other network.
42:33
Of course.
42:34
So what we did was...
42:36
There was a week we went to where Wimbledon was rained out virtually every night.
42:41
It was permanently rained out.
42:43
So we got it in my head.
42:45
This was just an idea.
42:46
I had...
42:47
Why couldn't our show be rained out too?
42:48
And that way we don't have to work.
42:49
So we pretended to rain out the studio.
42:52
And we had people mopping the floor.
42:55
Right.
42:56
We had all of the...
42:57
All of the interviewees in their tracksuits all saying,
43:00
You know, I'm really ready to go.
43:02
And I'm in good form.
43:03
It was all done backstage, didn't it?
43:05
But you still had to make the show.
43:06
Oh, you had to make the show.
43:07
Yeah.
43:08
Where was the conceit?
43:09
Oh, yes.
43:10
It was a conceit.
43:11
I love it.
43:12
Got a human.
43:13
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43:17
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43:19
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43:21
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43:24
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43:46
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44:30
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44:32
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