Latest / Rusty's Garage / Merrick Watts

Transcript

Merrick Watts · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:14
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:27
  In this episode, I'm in Sydney at the home of Podcast One.
• 0:31
  Normally I'm on the road talking to most of my guests, but today's has spent plenty of time here entertaining listeners from purpose-built studios just like this one.
• 0:41
  But nowadays Merrick Watts is spending more time back on the road, where it all began with stand-up comedy.
• 0:47
  His quick wits and genuine nature are matched by a proper love of cars, bikes, as well as the odd resto project he's bought over a long lunch.
• 0:57
  Mez is proud of his roots and loves to share the yarn about growing up in the same place as some great Aussie racers.
• 1:04
  Merrick Watts, hello.
• 1:05
  Pleasure to be here.
• 1:06
  How did you get here today?
• 1:07
  What did you drive?
• 1:08
  What did you ride?
• 1:09
  I came in the car today only because it was raining.
• 1:12
  Otherwise, I would normally take my motorbike into the city.
• 1:16
  Today, I drove an Audi A4 wagon.
• 1:19
  Very family.
• 1:20
  But Euro, though.
• 1:21
  You were surprised.
• 1:22
  You really thought I was going to say HSV.
• 1:24
  Exactly.
• 1:24
  In my head straight away was HSV.
• 1:27
  It used to be.
• 1:27
  It used to be until the children ruined my dreams.
• 1:31
  And now I drive around in a German wagon.
• 1:35
  Das ist gut, ja.
• 1:36
  It's a great car.
• 1:37
  I will say this straight off the bat.
• 1:38
  I think it is possibly the best car I've ever owned.
• 1:41
  Next to, actually just slightly below, the HSV GTO Monaro I had, which was the greatest weapon I've ever had.
• 1:49
  We will get to that in the podcast.
• 1:51
  You grew up in Eltham in Melbourne.
• 1:54
  What were the family cars back then?
• 1:55
  And a couple of legends grew up in that part of the world, Mo.
• 1:58
  There's a bit of sort of automotive heartland almost, isn't it?
• 2:01
  Absolutely.
• 2:02
  Eltham is in the Diamond Valley, just outside on the outskirts of Melbourne.
• 2:07
  And I went to Eltham High, and that, of course, is the home of Peter Brock.
• 2:10
  Brockie went to my high school.
• 2:12
  obviously before I was there.
• 2:13
  And that man had a profound influence on the region and a profound influence on the young men in that district.
• 2:20
  Lowndes, just up the road as well at Diamond Creek, which is the second high school I went to.
• 2:25
  Let's not talk about how I was expelled.
• 2:26
  Whatever.
• 2:28
  Nothing car related, just other poor behaviour.
• 2:32
  So, yeah, there's always been a kind of a pedigree there of car enthusiasts and footballers.
• 2:39
  It's a kind of great area for both of those.
• 2:42
  But, yeah, having Peter Brock...
• 2:45
  living in your town, going to your high school, really was quite a big effect on a lot of it.
• 2:52
  Yeah.
• 2:52
  Mate, there was so many ranas.
• 2:54
  It was hilarious.
• 2:55
  Was there?
• 2:55
  Yeah, heaps.
• 2:56
  Heaps of blokes owned ranas.
• 2:57
  What was in the family garage back then?
• 2:58
  Well, that's a funny thing.
• 2:59
  My old man and my brother and myself, we all like cars, but different types.
• 3:04
  My old man was never actually...
• 3:06
  He was never into Bathurst or racing cars, but he was a guy who liked cars.
• 3:12
  So he really liked European cars.
• 3:14
  Okay.
• 3:15
  And I think that was probably more to do with his age because when he was growing up as a kid, there was no Australian manufactured cars.
• 3:21
  Okay.
• 3:22
  So, he was into, he liked Jags.
• 3:26
  He didn't, I don't think he ever owned them, but he liked Jags and he liked B&Ws.
• 3:31
  He owned one or two B&Ws.
• 3:33
  He owned a Holden later on in life.
• 3:36
  And he used to drive Mercs because he was an advertiser, my father.
• 3:38
  So, he was a massive wanker.
• 3:42
  See where I get it from?
• 3:43
  Yeah, I do.
• 3:44
  The love of two wheels kicked in at a very early age too, didn't it?
• 3:47
  Courtesy of your cousin?
• 3:49
  Is that right?
• 3:49
  Tell us more about that.
• 3:50
  Yeah.
• 3:50
  Well, my cousins, my mum's side of the family from Broken Hill.
• 3:53
  And in Broken Hill, dirt bikes and motorbike riding is, certainly as I was a kid many years ago, was just so available there because you literally could just go out of town a little bit and you would have hundreds of miles where you could just cut loose in the desert.
• 4:12
  My uncle was a miner and my cousin was a miner and they lived on an estate which was owned by Pasminco, which is one of the big mining companies like BHP.
• 4:23
  And so they had this incredible area where you could ride go-karts and motorbikes on a sealed road and then there was a dirt road kind of adjacent to it and you could cut sick and there was absolutely no repercussions.
• 4:37
  What were the bikes?
• 4:38
  What were the bikes?
• 4:40
  Oh, well, this is embarrassing.
• 4:42
  The first time I ever stacked a motorcycle was a scooter.
• 4:46
  And, yeah, I'd ridden motorbikes before, but I was on a scooter.
• 4:51
  I don't even know where it came from.
• 4:53
  It was at my cousin's place.
• 4:55
  And I can't even remember why it was there, but we'd been riding go-karts, which had motorbike engines in it, and we got off the go-kart, and I remember getting on the scooter, and I said, oh, watch this.
• 5:05
  Classic last words in Australia.
• 5:07
  Watch this.
• 5:08
  Watch this just before some guy jumps off a roof and knackers himself.
• 5:13
  I said, watch this.
• 5:14
  And I tried to take a sharp turn with a scooter and kind of flick it around like you do with a dirt bike, pull it around your body and go in the direction.
• 5:23
  So like, you know, a full 180.
• 5:26
  But with the scooter, and anybody who knows anything about motorbikes, scooters are bottom heavy, and I didn't know this, and the engine's mounted to the back wheel, and it just kind of didn't quite get around, and I slipped, and my hand went on the throttle, and it dragged me, and I smashed into a corrugated fence, and it dragged me about 10 metres along the fence, along corrugated, so it was... On a scooter, and my cousin to me goes, how did you stack a scooter into a fence like an old Vespa?
• 5:53
  Being good cousins, they wouldn't have laughed much either, did they?
• 5:56
  Oh, they were in hysterics.
• 5:58
  They were in hysterics.
• 5:58
  I think my uncle heard it from inside and came out and he goes, what is going on?
• 6:02
  And just right down the fence was all the evidence of where I'd scraped it.
• 6:06
  So you brought this up, right?
• 6:08
  How much bark have you lost over time?
• 6:10
  How many crashes?
• 6:11
  Oh, look, I've come off bikes a few times.
• 6:14
  I've been very, very fortunate.
• 6:15
  I've never really sustained any real injury.
• 6:18
  I do gear up a bit, particularly if I'm out on the open road.
• 6:22
  I'm in full leathers and kidney protectors and back protectors and stuff.
• 6:26
  I take it very seriously.
• 6:27
  I've got really top flight gear or Danese gear and Alpine stars.
• 6:32
  I use the good stuff.
• 6:35
  I came off the bike.
• 6:36
  I think the last time I came off, I was on a dirt road out the back of Bathurst.
• 6:41
  Been around the mountain at the regulated speed.
• 6:47
  We're not editing this, by the way, ladies and gentlemen.
• 6:49
  Keep going.
• 6:49
  I was on a Ducati and I went out on an unsealed road and they had just done some road works and they put water down, and it was clay, and they put water down.
• 6:58
  And without thinking, I was only doing about 15Ks, 20Ks at the most.
• 7:02
  And without thinking, I touched the front brake, just feathered the front wheel with the right hand as opposed to just paddling off the back.
• 7:10
  And it just went...
• 7:11
  and stacked it at about 15km and just got up straight away because it wasn't hurt and covered in mud.
• 7:17
  And my mates just went, how did you stack?
• 7:20
  You've just been around the mountain and you stack it here in the middle?
• 7:24
  And so I think over the years I've had probably three or four spills, but I've been very fortunate.
• 7:30
  They've all been low speed.
• 7:32
  The first motorcycle accident I had, I had a couple when I first started riding bikes because I actually had a motorbike before I had a car.
• 7:40
  I wanted a motorbike because I wanted to ride to school and also too because I was working in the city at pubs in the city.
• 7:47
  And motorcycles, you could just park on the footpath.
• 7:50
  So I wanted a motorbike because it was cheap and it was easy.
• 7:53
  It used to cost me about five, six bucks in petrol for a whole week.
• 7:56
  It was awesome.
• 7:57
  So-
• 7:59
  What was it?
• 7:59
  Yeah, what was the first bike?
• 8:00
  I had an old Kawasaki, a quacker, a 250 LTD, and it was a great bike.
• 8:06
  It was really good.
• 8:07
  Blew it up, of course, eventually killed it, wring the neck out of it, trying to make it do things it couldn't do.
• 8:12
  But I was riding along the main street of Eltham as a young man, and...
• 8:19
  I saw this young woman on the other side of the road and I just probably took too much of a cursory glance, bang, straight in the back of a car and damaged my bike.
• 8:31
  And I was a little bit hurt, but I was okay because I had gear on.
• 8:34
  And there was a bloke on the other side of the road saying, he goes, did you get a good enough look?
• 8:38
  And I said, yeah.
• 8:40
  And he goes, was it worth it?
• 8:40
  And I said, not really.
• 8:42
  They're the worst, aren't they?
• 8:43
  The little low speeders or when someone catches you.
• 8:46
  I had, same deal, like a little 15K an hour crash going into the car park of Channel 10 in Sydney.
• 8:54
  It was a wet day and you sort of, you come off, I think it's called Saunders Street there.
• 8:58
  Saunders Street, I know.
• 8:58
  And then down into the, just the change.
• 9:00
  I know exactly what you're talking about.
• 9:01
  The little change of direction and just went wolf guard.
• 9:03
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 9:04
  I could never see anybody having an accident in that circumstance ever because it would be ridiculous that a person could make an error there.
• 9:11
  Highly embarrassing, exactly.
• 9:12
  I bet it is.
• 9:13
  The security came and – Yes, yes.
• 9:16
  You were born in the 70s, so was I. I'm a little older than you and I've got the grays to prove it.
• 9:20
  Looks it.
• 9:20
  Yes.
• 9:22
  But invariably when you get to kind of, I guess, age 10 – I mean, you talked about Ranas before, Taranas, right?
• 9:28
  Was it the A9X?
• 9:29
  Was it the XU1?
• 9:31
  What were the cars that you loved back then?
• 9:34
  I did like the Tiranas, and a few of my mates had Tiranas, but they were, I mean, A9X, no one was having an A9X, except for Brockie, who had them on tap.
• 9:43
  But there was, you know, LJ Tiranas I liked, but my favourite, without doubt, was an SLR 5000.
• 9:48
  I loved them with the drop tank, and, you know, they just, particularly if they were in black and white, but there was, you know, there was a few around at the time, and I was lucky that I never came to any grief,
• 9:58
  driving around with my mates, although I wasn't driving them.
• 10:01
  My mates had them and, you know, there was a little bit of youthful exuberance driving in the back roads because Eltham is out in the sticks and in the suburbs of Melbourne and between it, there's a big passageway through the hills there to- Great piece of road.
• 10:17
  Yeah, for cars and bikes.
• 10:19
  It's just wonderful.
• 10:20
  But the thing is, unfortunately, there's a lot of dangerous roads there and there's a lot of widow-makers' trees that, you know, if you take the bend incorrectly, you will come to grief.
• 10:28
  And a lot of people have, very unfortunately.
• 10:32
  There's a great story of a guy called Dave who was a bit of a local legend.
• 10:37
  He had an SLR 5000 and it was worked to within an inch of its life.
• 10:41
  You could hear it on my life.
• 10:42
  Drop tank and everything you talked about before.
• 10:43
  Yeah.
• 10:44
  Oh, it was unreal.
• 10:45
  And Dave, we'll call him Dave because that's his real name.
• 10:49
  Dave had an SLR 5000 and another guy I went to school with, Glenn, again, real name.
• 10:57
  Glenn was living out in the sticks, out in the bush, somewhere probably near Warrandyte.
• 11:03
  On an old road.
• 11:04
  And those days, you know, this is like back in the probably late 80s, early 90s.
• 11:10
  If you saw someone on the side of the road hitchhiking out in those areas, because there was no bus services and there's certainly no trains because you're out in the bush.
• 11:16
  If you saw someone on the, you know, walking along the side of the road, you would pull over and offer them a lift.
• 11:22
  down to, you know, Warrandyte to the train station or to Diamond Creek or Hearst Bridge or wherever it was, you'd help them out.
• 11:28
  It was kind of a good community thing that you would do, right?
• 11:31
  So my mate Glenn's walking along in the middle of nowhere one day and this Tarana comes.
• 11:37
  bouncing through the hills and he could hear it, right?
• 11:40
  And he probably might have guessed at that stage it was Dave's.
• 11:42
  And it has come flogging around the corner and then pulled up right in front of Glen and Dave who was driving it.
• 11:49
  He was very well-known, Dave.
• 11:51
  Um,
• 11:52
  Oh, I said, do you need a lift?
• 11:53
  And he goes, yeah, if you could drop me off the train station, that'd be great.
• 11:56
  He goes, all right, no dramas.
• 11:58
  Gets in.
• 11:58
  Dave has absolutely floored it.
• 12:01
  Like he's going at absolute top speed through some really, really dangerous roads.
• 12:06
  So Glenn turns around to Dave and said, look, mate, would you mind maybe not driving so fast because it's- We don't need to qualify here.
• 12:14
  Yeah, because it's borderline lethal.
• 12:16
  Do you reckon you could back it off a bit?
• 12:18
  And he goes, oh, no, I can't because if I do, the coppers will catch me.
• 12:22
  And Dave had pulled over mid-pursuit.
• 12:26
  To pick him up.
• 12:27
  Mid-pursuit to do the customary thing and pick up a hitchhiker.
• 12:32
  He was mid-pursuit in a police chase, stopped the car, picked up Glenn and drove him to the train station.
• 12:39
  And they didn't get caught by the cops.
• 12:41
  We love Dave.
• 12:41
  He did his community service before he even got caught, didn't he?
• 12:44
  Dave's dead now.
• 12:44
  Oh, is he?
• 12:46
  No, he's actually not.
• 12:47
  But isn't it?
• 12:48
  I always thought that was one of the great urban myths, but it's not really an urban myth, but I always thought that was one of the great Tarana stories.
• 12:55
  Did you get your licence first ago, and in what car or bike?
• 13:00
  I got my driver's licence.
• 13:02
  I got 98%, I think, when I got my driver's licence.
• 13:06
  But the first time I wanted to get my bike licence, I failed it.
• 13:11
  Now, I know that I've heard you talk to Shane Jacobson about him losing his license before he got it.
• 13:18
  And still in the circumstances, I went to go and get my motorbike license.
• 13:22
  And because I'd ridden motorbikes before and I thought, you know, all you do is just ride a bike.
• 13:26
  That's what you do is get on a ride a bike.
• 13:27
  So I did none of the road rules.
• 13:29
  Why would I bother?
• 13:31
  I've got my learners.
• 13:32
  All I have to do is just go and just do the ride and we'll be done.
• 13:35
  And the blokes in those days, they used to follow you around.
• 13:38
  I don't know what they do now.
• 13:39
  Was he like a real autocratic kind of strict?
• 13:41
  Yeah.
• 13:42
  I mean, these guys were just seriously...
• 13:46
  They were like the Gestapo.
• 13:48
  Anyway, this bloke is following me around and I knew that I'd done everything right.
• 13:52
  And I came to a stop sign and stopped.
• 13:57
  But anyone who knows with bikes, you can stop.
• 14:00
  And then if you're good enough, you just feather out the clutch a little bit and lay on the throttle.
• 14:06
  And you'll just pick up momentum again before you actually need to put your foot down.
• 14:09
  It's classic.
• 14:10
  That's good writing.
• 14:11
  In my book, that's a sign of exemplary writing.
• 14:14
  Forget your slow ride.
• 14:15
  That is textbook.
• 14:17
  And he said, no, you failed.
• 14:18
  And I said, why?
• 14:19
  And he goes, because you're at a stop sign.
• 14:21
  Didn't fully stop.
• 14:21
  And I said, well, I'll stop, mate, because I wasn't going anywhere.
• 14:25
  And he said, you need to put your foot down on the ground.
• 14:29
  That's a stop on a motorbike.
• 14:30
  And I went, but I wasn't going anywhere.
• 14:32
  That stopped.
• 14:33
  Anyway, so we had a discussion.
• 14:38
  Two weeks later, went back, got my license.
• 14:40
  Very good.
• 14:40
  You're in the media nowadays, but it was, as you said before, stand-up to begin with on the Kawasaki.
• 14:46
  What was the first gig?
• 14:48
  How did you get there?
• 14:48
  Was it on the Kawasaki?
• 14:50
  How did it go?
• 14:51
  How did the first gig go?
• 14:53
  I think by then...
• 14:57
  By the time I did my first gig, I would have had my Valiant.
• 15:00
  I think I might have bought my Valiant by then.
• 15:03
  That was my first car.
• 15:03
  Is this the brown one, the 1970?
• 15:06
  Yes, 1970 VG Coupe.
• 15:10
  It was brown because I picked the ladies.
• 15:14
  I like to pick the colours for the ladies.
• 15:15
  Very attractive, Miss.
• 15:16
  I like to pick...
• 15:17
  A colour that says to the ladies, I'm available.
• 15:20
  I'm really available.
• 15:22
  Brown with a vinyl roof, cream vinyl roof.
• 15:26
  So the ladies would just go, stop us, hold us back.
• 15:29
  That guy is amazing.
• 15:31
  But it was a brilliant car.
• 15:32
  So I think I might have actually driven that car.
• 15:34
  That would have been to my first gig when I was 21.
• 15:37
  And so that would have been 20 years of age, I think.
• 15:41
  So I would have been driving that at the time.
• 15:44
  Stock.
• 15:45
  It was.
• 15:46
  It had a 245 Hemi in it, which was stock at the time.
• 15:49
  And like motorbikes and everything else, eventually you find a way to blow those up.
• 15:54
  Blew that up on the Easter freeway.
• 15:55
  Smoke pouring out.
• 15:57
  I've still reckon I've got one of the cylinders of blown.
• 16:00
  So it was, you know, it was past as used by date.
• 16:03
  And I still, that's what's great about those Hemis.
• 16:05
  I still drove it.
• 16:07
  probably another 20, 30 Ks down to Valiant, who are my mechanics.
• 16:11
  And within a week and a half or something like that, we'd switched in a 265 back on the road.
• 16:16
  Beautiful.
• 16:16
  Unreal.
• 16:17
  Such a good car.
• 16:18
  Are you any good on the tools?
• 16:19
  Like, could you do the basic maintenance?
• 16:21
  Oh, I used to do... Nah, not great maintenance.
• 16:23
  I used to do oil and stuff like that.
• 16:25
  And those cars too, you know, they were so easy.
• 16:26
  I used to switch the thermostat out, you know, with each season because living in Melbourne in winter would be freezing and in summer it would be boiling hot.
• 16:34
  And so if you're stuck in traffic...
• 16:36
  you know, it could boil over and in winter it'd be a slow start.
• 16:39
  So I used to change the thermostat around and do little bits and pieces on it.
• 16:42
  But, cause you could, it's the same with motorbikes then, you know, you could, you know, I used to change the throttles and levers and stuff like that.
• 16:49
  Some of the basic stuff on change the chain, stuff like that.
• 16:52
  But now...
• 16:54
  No way.
• 16:55
  Would not.
• 16:56
  I swear to God, I get challenged by putting windshield wiper fluid in my car now.
• 17:01
  I swear to God, I don't even know where it goes anymore.
• 17:03
  It's in German.
• 17:04
  I go, where is it?
• 17:06
  Is that windshield wiper?
• 17:07
  And then you think, what if I put water where the oil's going?
• 17:09
  It's so confusing.
• 17:11
  So, no, I used to do a little bit, but I would never say I was particularly handy, but enough to kind of get by.
• 17:17
  Whatever happened to the brown valiant?
• 17:19
  What became of it?
• 17:21
  I moved to Sydney when I was 25 and I still owned it, but I didn't bring it to Sydney because it was probably not in great shape by that stage.
• 17:34
  And I loved it, but it was a boat to drive.
• 17:37
  I loved driving.
• 17:38
  God, I thought I was good in that car.
• 17:40
  Yeah.
• 17:40
  You could have fitted heaps of mates in it, I would have thought too.
• 17:42
  Oh, mate, you know what?
• 17:43
  We used to go, I remember one time Rosso and I went away for a boys weekend and we're talking about, they go, there's not enough beds or something.
• 17:50
  I said, don't worry, I'll just whack a bed in the boot of the Valiant.
• 17:53
  And I did.
• 17:53
  I just got a whole mattress, like a huge futon.
• 17:56
  It was like a queen size thing.
• 17:57
  Just put it straight into the boot of the car and then just shut the lid.
• 18:01
  And went, that's it.
• 18:02
  There you go.
• 18:02
  Sort it.
• 18:03
  Straight in because it had a massive boot space.
• 18:05
  You could fit a whole family in there, not that you would, but you could.
• 18:09
  So, yeah, it was a very, very handy vehicle.
• 18:13
  But I think the Valiant, I think, was one of those cars that is not so suited to Sydney as a city.
• 18:25
  And I knew that pretty quickly, so I didn't bring it up here.
• 18:27
  And so now I think I gave it to my brother, and then I think he gave it to a mate of his or something like that, and they were a valiant enthusiast.
• 18:36
  But by that stage, it wasn't really worth much.
• 18:37
  I paid two grand for it, and I didn't increase any value in it.
• 18:42
  I swear to God, the stereo was probably the most valuable part of that car.
• 18:45
  Was it a column shift auto?
• 18:47
  What was it?
• 18:48
  On the tree auto.
• 18:48
  Yeah.
• 18:49
  On the tree auto.
• 18:50
  So, and that's a funny thing.
• 18:51
  You know, I've owned several cars over the course of my life and I like driving.
• 18:55
  I love driving and, you know, I'm really into it.
• 18:59
  But I've never owned a manual car in my life.
• 19:03
  No way.
• 19:03
  Never.
• 19:04
  You can drive one though, surely.
• 19:06
  Yeah, of course I can drive them.
• 19:07
  I can flog them.
• 19:08
  Jesus Christ, I'm not an idiot.
• 19:10
  We only get certain people on this podcast.
• 19:12
  If you told me you couldn't drive a manual, I think we'd be going over, wouldn't we?
• 19:15
  No, no, I can drive them.
• 19:17
  I like driving them.
• 19:18
  But people say to me, well, why do you drive auto?
• 19:22
  Because a lot of the time, when I've been driving V8s particularly, you've got plenty of throttle.
• 19:27
  Because people go, you don't get any power unless you've got manual.
• 19:29
  Well, that's rubbish.
• 19:30
  You know, you've got an HSV and an auto, you're actually going to go faster than you are if you're driving a manual anyway.
• 19:36
  Yeah.
• 19:37
  Around the city, which is where I've always lived, it's a lot easier, you know, driving an auto.
• 19:44
  But the big thing, I reckon, is because if you're in a motorbike like I am, that's real gear changing.
• 19:50
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 19:50
  You know, that's really, really in it.
• 19:54
  So if you like that aspect of controlling your speed and controlling your entry and exit with your gears, motorbikes will do that for you.
• 20:05
  And so I ride very powerful motorcycles, and that kind of gives me that.
• 20:10
  You know, that sense of driving that I don't get, I can't really get from a car.
• 20:16
  I think you get more of it from a bike.
• 20:17
  Motorcycle.
• 20:18
  Yeah.
• 20:18
  It's really tangible.
• 20:19
  You mentioned Rosso before.
• 20:21
  Tim Rosso, you've had a great partnership with over the years in different projects in radio.
• 20:25
  He's a bit of a car guy too.
• 20:26
  I want to say somewhere that he had an EK or an EH Holden.
• 20:29
  EH.
• 20:29
  EH Holden.
• 20:29
  Yeah.
• 20:30
  He had a baby poo brown EH.
• 20:34
  And I mean, like, it was worse than my Valiant.
• 20:37
  And that was, like, proper, like, almost that weird.
• 20:40
  Like Venetians in the back and stuff, I think, did it not?
• 20:42
  Oh, it was baby.
• 20:43
  It was really, and it was, I think it had a cream roof as well, steel cream roof.
• 20:48
  And he had an old Citroën DS as well.
• 20:51
  Remember those?
• 20:51
  Yeah.
• 20:52
  Have one of those.
• 20:53
  He's had a couple of weird cars or so.
• 20:54
  He's a weird guy.
• 20:56
  If he's listening now, he knows that.
• 20:57
  He'd agree to that.
• 21:00
  So, yeah, he loves those kind of cars of an era.
• 21:05
  Yep.
• 21:06
  You know, in a different kind of way.
• 21:08
  Like, I like cars...
• 21:11
  If I could have any car now, I'd probably have an SLR 5000.
• 21:15
  I just love them.
• 21:15
  I think they're great.
• 21:16
  I used to like the Harweys, and I'm not necessarily Ford or a Holden man, but there's just something about a Rana.
• 21:24
  They just look brutal.
• 21:25
  They look brutal.
• 21:26
  Even now.
• 21:27
  Yeah, an A9X, of course, but, I mean, the reality is that, you know, I'm not going to get one.
• 21:32
  But an SLR 5000, I think, is a beautiful car.
• 21:35
  Whereas Rosso kind of sees, you know, the EH is a period car.
• 21:39
  It's a period piece.
• 21:40
  It signifies a certain time in Australian motoring history, you know, and it's kind of its start of its motoring history, as opposed to being associated with racing or associated to the glamour of, you know, Brockie or Bathurst or any of that.
• 21:54
  When you got to a point in your career where, you know, you could feel a bit more comfortable, you perhaps weren't going gig to gig and things like that, and you could afford to lash out and buy a new car, what did you treat yourself to?
• 22:05
  What was the first new car?
• 22:07
  Okay.
• 22:07
  So my first car was the VG Valiant, which I loved.
• 22:10
  The next car I bought was when I was here in Sydney, and this goes against everything that I just said about not owning a V8 in the city.
• 22:16
  Yeah.
• 22:17
  I was driving past a car dealership and I saw a powder blue Mark 1 Mustang 73 model and it had the big black stripes up the bonnet and the Mark 1 badging and I just went, that car is unreal.
• 22:32
  And I just went, I'd never thought about buying a Mustang ever, but it had the 351 Cleveland in it and I just went, and it was in mint and I just went, I'm having that.
• 22:43
  So I went to the dealer and I said, what happened here?
• 22:44
  And he said, oh, this old guy bought a new Ford.
• 22:48
  He bought an FPV and his wife said, you have to get rid of one of the cars.
• 22:52
  So he traded this in and he had another old car.
• 22:55
  So I went, well, it's been looked after.
• 22:57
  It was part of the Mustang club, I bought it.
• 22:58
  And I only sold that about two years ago, three years ago.
• 23:01
  Had it for a long time.
• 23:02
  It only did about 180 kilometers in that time because I live in the city and it was a stupid car to own in the city.
• 23:07
  But jeez, I looked cool driving it.
• 23:09
  Didn't your dad say you were a bloody idiot when you bought it too?
• 23:11
  Of course.
• 23:12
  Of course, because I am an idiot.
• 23:14
  And then, so I bought it, living in the inner city of Sydney, I bought a V8 and then I went, oh, you know what, I should just have that just as like a weekender.
• 23:25
  And what I need to do is get a more sensible weekday car because I live all
• 23:30
  almost five kilometres away from where I work in my home, five kilometres away.
• 23:35
  So what I should probably do is get there in the fastest weapon I can afford.
• 23:40
  And the first new car that I ever owned was a GTO Monaro, the first edition.
• 23:46
  I remember seeing the billboard ad for those Monaros, and I just went, that is everything that I want in a car.
• 23:52
  Six litre, I think.
• 23:53
  Is that right?
• 23:54
  The first one was the five litre.
• 23:56
  Okay.
• 23:57
  And it was, I think it was just a tick under 300 kilowatts.
• 24:03
  And it was the black one.
• 24:04
  That was before they had the nostril flares at the start.
• 24:07
  But I got one of those as well.
• 24:08
  Don't worry about that.
• 24:10
  Oh, I went full idiot.
• 24:11
  So I had a black one first, and then when they came out with it, I think it was the Gen 3 or whatever it was then, it was just before the last of the GTOs.
• 24:19
  It was the last of the GTOs.
• 24:20
  I bought a red one, and I love that car.
• 24:23
  That's probably my favourite car of all time.
• 24:25
  That was a weapon, an absolute weapon, and was just beautiful to drive.
• 24:29
  Yeah.
• 24:31
  Sure, I only live five kilometres away from work, but, jeez, I could get there.
• 24:35
  I could really get to work.
• 24:36
  It really helped me to get to work.
• 24:39
  Like, when I needed to get to work, I could get there in that car.
• 24:44
  In that car.
• 24:45
  My ears pricked up when you said you sold the Mustang.
• 24:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 24:48
  A couple of years on, how do you feel?
• 24:50
  Do you regret selling it?
• 24:52
  Nah.
• 24:53
  Nah.
• 24:54
  I have at times, but I don't because old cars, vintage cars, have got to be loved and they've got to be used.
• 25:00
  Yep.
• 25:01
  If they're just sitting around, I couldn't put my kids in it.
• 25:03
  It didn't have seatbelts for kids.
• 25:05
  I'd have to put in a whole lot of mountings.
• 25:06
  It was going to become very, very difficult because I had lap sashes in the back.
• 25:09
  And, you know, to do that then I wasn't really –
• 25:14
  with having small children in that car.
• 25:20
  And I went, you know what, I'd rather somebody else use it and drive it and give it the respect that it needs than just sit around.
• 25:26
  And I thought, at another time, when I'm older, I'll be that guy and I'll buy somebody else's car.
• 25:32
  And I think that's a great thing about cars.
• 25:34
  Cars do have owners and they have stories.
• 25:35
  And I don't think you can ever – you don't have to hang on to something for dear life forever.
• 25:40
  Yeah.
• 25:41
  Did you keep it as it was when you bought it from the dealership?
• 25:44
  Yeah.
• 25:45
  Yeah.
• 25:45
  Yeah.
• 25:46
  I mean, I just did.
• 25:47
  I just made sure that it was mechanically A1 and that it was, you know, everything was in good order and the electrics.
• 25:55
  I had to fix up some of the electrics because of the conversion.
• 25:57
  Yep.
• 25:58
  But it was pretty standard.
• 26:01
  Mark 1, pretty cool.
• 26:02
  Oh, it was a beautiful car.
• 26:03
  Beautiful car.
• 26:05
  In the early days of your comedic career, I guess, were there some key people that influenced you?
• 26:11
  I grew up here in Sydney, so I can vividly remember listening to Doug Mulray, king of FM radio in Sydney.
• 26:17
  I mean, he loved his cars, all different sorts of cars, commentated at Bathurst and things like that.
• 26:22
  Who were the people that were comedically the influences for you?
• 26:25
  Comedians, look, I have to say the DG guys, absolutely.
• 26:29
  You know, I was really influenced by them.
• 26:31
  Strangely enough, you know, having done 20 years in radio, I was never...
• 26:35
  ever influenced by anybody on radio.
• 26:37
  Really?
• 26:38
  No.
• 26:38
  Okay.
• 26:39
  No.
• 26:40
  I never used to listen to radio.
• 26:42
  And yet it's become a staple for you in many ways.
• 26:45
  I love it.
• 26:46
  It's like some people, they like eating, but they don't like cooking.
• 26:49
  It's certainly influenced by the usual suspects of Blackadder and scripted comedy from the UK and a bit of stuff from the US.
• 26:57
  But also, too, I was a big reader.
• 27:00
  I really like Groucho Marx.
• 27:01
  Oh, wow.
• 27:02
  I read a lot.
• 27:02
  I've read his books several times and, and one of his books called Groucho's Letters really, uh, inspired me in so many ways.
• 27:10
  He's a brilliant, brilliant comedian and a massive smart ass.
• 27:14
  Um, um,
• 27:15
  So I was always a student of it.
• 27:17
  And John Clark, massive.
• 27:18
  John Clark was a huge influence, even though I've never done anything remotely similar in the way that his comedy was made.
• 27:27
  I just loved the way he used to write and the way he used to create comedy.
• 27:33
  He inspired me enormously.
• 27:34
  Just before I started doing comedy, my old man...
• 27:37
  gave me a book of his, of his interviews that he did in, this would have been end of 92.
• 27:45
  And I read that book and was absolutely –
• 27:52
  blown away by how clever his writing was.
• 27:55
  And it was a two-hander.
• 27:57
  It was a classy two-hander.
• 27:59
  So Clark and Doors, you know, for their interviews.
• 28:03
  And it was a classy two-hander, and I always liked those two-handers.
• 28:07
  I've always liked dialogue.
• 28:09
  And I think that's why I like, you know, working in a duo, like working with somebody else.
• 28:13
  Bouncing off somebody.
• 28:15
  Yeah, you can do a lot in a duo that you can't do in an ensemble and you can't do in, you know, working in solace.
• 28:23
  So they were huge influences on me, those guys.
• 28:26
  So invariably when you drive around, I guess you must spend a little bit of time thinking about topical stuff, things that make you laugh, you know.
• 28:38
  Even though you've established in this, Chad, you don't live very far away in driving terms, but do you spend a bit of time with you?
• 28:44
  Do you impersonate when you're behind the wheel?
• 28:46
  What do you do, mate?
• 28:46
  What do you do?
• 28:47
  It's really kind of a bit disturbing.
• 28:49
  Actually, we do a lot of road trips as a family.
• 28:52
  We've driven over the Nullarbor and we drive all over the place.
• 28:55
  Awesome.
• 28:56
  We're a real road tripping family.
• 28:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 28:58
  And I love it.
• 28:59
  I've spent heaps of time this year driving all around three, four different states at least.
• 29:05
  So I really enjoy it.
• 29:06
  And it's a funny thing in the car, when I'm in the car with my family, you know, I talk and we kind of, you know, we act as a, I suppose as a family would.
• 29:14
  But when my family's not there, I become, when I'm driving, I become quite creative and I become quite creative.
• 29:22
  I think of funny things and I say jokes and I can talk to myself in that little confined space.
• 29:28
  You can talk to yourself and you don't look like you need to be locked up because no one can see you.
• 29:33
  Whereas like if you just go and do that on the street, somebody's going to call me.
• 29:38
  the emergency services.
• 29:40
  So, you know, you can have that little moment to yourself in the car where you can act things out.
• 29:45
  You can act out characters, you can act out jokes and you become quite creative.
• 29:49
  And over, over the course of a long trip, which is why I love doing them, you can really kind of bed in creative thoughts.
• 29:57
  So I drive across the hay plains, which I hate, but I find it,
• 30:01
  quite good in some ways because it gives you a long period of time between Adelaide and Sydney to really just not have to think.
• 30:09
  You know, there's no real obstacles out in the Hay Plains.
• 30:12
  Anyone who's been out there knows there's nothing.
• 30:15
  And so you can just kind of let your imagination, you shut off one part of your brain and the creative part of your brain starts to come to the fore.
• 30:24
  It's the complete opposite.
• 30:25
  with motorcycle riding.
• 30:27
  I know you spoke to Robbie Madison about this, and it was a real takeaway for me because I agree with him.
• 30:32
  When you spoke to him, he said that you concentrate so much when you're riding a motorcycle that you actually relax.
• 30:39
  you are so focused on what you're doing.
• 30:41
  Like, I don't really get creative on a motorcycle.
• 30:43
  No, because you're constantly thinking about where's that guy going?
• 30:46
  Who's backing out of that driveway?
• 30:47
  Is that a branch?
• 30:48
  Is that a snake?
• 30:49
  Is this, you know, is that a true corner?
• 30:52
  Where's the camber?
• 30:53
  Those sorts of things, you know, like you're trying to pick out those nuances of the road to keep yourself alive, particularly if you're at pace and particularly...
• 31:00
  particularly if you're in dynamic corners on hills and, you know, you're looking for rubble, you're looking for, you know, has it rained recently and washed, you know, small stones under the road?
• 31:09
  Is that going to put me into a corner?
• 31:10
  Is it going to compromise my corner?
• 31:12
  All those things you're constantly thinking.
• 31:14
  So you're exhausted at the end of the day.
• 31:16
  But what happens is you get to that point where you are so –
• 31:22
  so heavily concentrated.
• 31:23
  Immersed in it.
• 31:24
  And what you're doing, you actually become quite relaxed.
• 31:28
  And I find it's meditative.
• 31:31
  You know, like you go into a kind of meditative state where you, everything else you just shut everything off.
• 31:37
  You don't have time.
• 31:37
  That one with the bike.
• 31:38
  Yeah, man.
• 31:40
  And then it becomes all about the feel, you know, the throttle, the lean, and, you know, those forces that you get that are, you know, through your body, the G-forces and the pressure and, you know, all those kind of really tangible physical aspects of riding a motorcycle that you don't get necessarily driving in a car.
• 31:58
  In a car, to get that, you have to be on a track and flogging it, whereas on a motorcycle you don't need to be going as fast.
• 32:06
  and you can be on an open road.
• 32:08
  When you get to that point, that is joyous, but I'm with you.
• 32:11
  At the end of the day, I'm spent.
• 32:13
  I'm spent.
• 32:13
  Man.
• 32:14
  But it's good for us.
• 32:14
  That's actually quite a good thing.
• 32:16
  Sleep like a log.
• 32:17
  Yeah.
• 32:18
  If you ride between four and six hours, particularly if you're riding in dynamic stuff, four hours over the course of a whole day, you should be tired.
• 32:27
  You should be exhausted.
• 32:28
  You shouldn't be doing any more than that.
• 32:29
  Like in really dynamic stuff, you're going through the Alpine Way or, you know, into mountain territory and you're doing a lot of corners and a lot of hard leaning.
• 32:38
  You should be knackered.
• 32:39
  Yeah.
• 32:40
  You should be knackered at the end of the day and you should sleep like a log and wake up a bit sore.
• 32:44
  It's great.
• 32:44
  I'm glad that you take the family on road trips because in many ways, modern life is less and less about that.
• 32:50
  I mean, my folks used to take us always on holidays to the Gold Coast from, you know, that-
• 32:55
  1,000 k's from Sydney to the Gold Coast almost became a well-worn path.
• 32:58
  Yep.
• 32:59
  It's great that you do that.
• 33:00
  Is there a favourite piece of road either for the family road trip or when you're riding?
• 33:03
  I do, yeah.
• 33:05
  Look, motorcycle riding, Alpine Way, it's just...
• 33:10
  It's just beautiful.
• 33:10
  And Chain of Ponds, which is up in Adelaide as well, I love.
• 33:15
  There's lots of places I love to ride for different reasons.
• 33:18
  With my family, two points, right?
• 33:20
  You raise a really good point with kids and with cars, right, is that now they're all on iPads.
• 33:24
  Yeah.
• 33:24
  And I was saying before about how you can let your mind go as a driver.
• 33:28
  Remember, as you were a kid, you didn't have iPads.
• 33:31
  You couldn't colour in necessarily.
• 33:33
  So what you'd do is you'd look out the window and you'd use your imagination.
• 33:37
  Imagination.
• 33:39
  Remember that?
• 33:40
  Kids don't have those anymore.
• 33:41
  Now they have iPads.
• 33:42
  They don't need imaginations anymore.
• 33:44
  So it's actually good to strip them out in the cars.
• 33:46
  We strip out the technology so the kids have to fight.
• 33:52
  Fight with each other.
• 33:53
  But I think there's a real thing there where they can, you know, just looking off into the distance creates an imaginative landscape for them.
• 34:03
  But to answer the other part of the question, where is it a piece of road?
• 34:08
  There's a place called Wellington on the Murray River, not far from Talon Bend or Murray Bridge in South Australia.
• 34:17
  You're coming into Adelaide, towards Adelaide, but it's a little bit further south, down towards the mouth of the Murray, down towards Goolwa.
• 34:24
  And you cross over at Wellington on a little punt.
• 34:28
  So you come down this road.
• 34:30
  Old school.
• 34:31
  There's no one there.
• 34:32
  And then you get to this old punt.
• 34:34
  And the punt takes you across the Murray River to the other side.
• 34:38
  And then you go towards Strathalbin and there's beautiful roads, you know, Bull Creek.
• 34:42
  There's some really good roads for motorcycles there.
• 34:45
  And it's a great place.
• 34:47
  And Langhorne Creek is around there.
• 34:48
  You have to go through Langhorne Creek.
• 34:50
  And for me, always, whenever I go into Adelaide, which is a lot, I take my family there a lot, whether I'm in the car or on the motorbike,
• 34:56
  And a friend of mine does the same thing.
• 34:59
  You divert out of your way to avoid the normal route to Adelaide.
• 35:03
  You go down south, down to Wellington, cross the punt, and it is like –
• 35:09
  It's a change, a mental change.
• 35:11
  It's a shift.
• 35:13
  I just become instantly more relaxed.
• 35:15
  I feel like I've completed a journey and you feel like you're entering God's country.
• 35:19
  It's beautiful down there.
• 35:20
  You go through wine regions, hills.
• 35:23
  It's just magnificent.
• 35:24
  For me, that's my favorite moment on the roads is when I cross the punt at Wellington and I move into the greater aspects of Adelaide.
• 35:33
  Great stuff.
• 35:33
  Great stuff.
• 35:34
  We were always a road tripping family as a kid.
• 35:36
  My dad used to drive us because my mum was from Broken Hill, where my cousins were from.
• 35:41
  And so we used to drive from Melbourne where we lived up to Broken Hill two, three times a year.
• 35:48
  And my old man was the classic, we're getting there in eight hours.
• 35:53
  We're getting there in eight hours.
• 35:54
  One stop.
• 35:55
  Everything.
• 35:56
  You will eat four dim sims, take a whiz, have a can of Passiona, and then we go to Broken Hill.
• 36:03
  That's it.
• 36:04
  So we'd get the car in Melbourne, drive straight to Mildura, and it was like, seriously, it was like a pit stop.
• 36:09
  It'd just be, get back in the car!
• 36:11
  You're taking too long!
• 36:12
  We're on the clock.
• 36:13
  Eight hours!
• 36:15
  Eight hours!
• 36:15
  But that's a nine-hour drive.
• 36:17
  Eight hours!
• 36:19
  Get in there, and he would just be flat stick trying to get there for three o'clock so he could have a couple of cold tinnies on arrival, and that was classic 70s Watts family.
• 36:29
  Love it.
• 36:30
  I've seen a post of yours on Instagram.
• 36:32
  You were buying, quote, unquote, another resto project on Gumtree after a few beers.
• 36:38
  How often does that happen?
• 36:40
  And what's Georgie's reaction?
• 36:43
  Oh, this is so bad.
• 36:46
  What happens?
• 36:47
  You just line up, I've got to have that.
• 36:49
  I'd been drinking.
• 36:50
  I got a gum tree.
• 36:54
  And because I'd seen this bike, funnily enough, in Adelaide, I'd seen this old bike.
• 36:59
  And I went, that looks great.
• 37:01
  It's an ex-police bike, isn't it?
• 37:02
  It's an ex-police bike.
• 37:03
  Just buy a 1981 Honda CB750 former police motorcycle.
• 37:10
  Panniers on it, the whole, only the sirens and lights have been stripped from it.
• 37:15
  And it was in concourse condition.
• 37:17
  Anyway, so I thought, oh, sit, wonder if it's on eBay.
• 37:21
  Had a look on eBay?
• 37:22
  No.
• 37:23
  Had a look on Gumtree.
• 37:24
  Oh, there it is.
• 37:25
  Buy it.
• 37:26
  Just buy it.
• 37:27
  And I bought it.
• 37:28
  And then I literally woke up the next day and I went, God, I had the...
• 37:31
  weirdest dream last night.
• 37:33
  Oh my God, I bought a police bike.
• 37:37
  What was I thinking?
• 37:39
  And then it was like, and it wasn't even like in Adelaide.
• 37:43
  It was like miles away, out in the middle of the desert, had to get a guy in a tow truck to bring it to Adelaide, transport it to Sydney.
• 37:52
  Then I had to get it completely, you know, redone, and I went mad and put on new carbies that I brought in from America.
• 38:01
  Original colour?
• 38:02
  Original white police colour?
• 38:04
  I left the motorcycle chassis completely.
• 38:07
  Only under the covers.
• 38:08
  I only changed the carbies and the pods and stuff like that.
• 38:13
  And just basically just to give it better performance.
• 38:17
  And, oh, yeah, I've still got that.
• 38:18
  That's at my house.
• 38:20
  Ask me when the last time I rode that was.
• 38:21
  Yeah, when did you last ride that?
• 38:22
  Not this year.
• 38:23
  Not this year.
• 38:24
  It hasn't been ridden this year.
• 38:25
  So are those conversations with Georgie like, gee, we're not really getting much use out of that?
• 38:29
  Oh, God.
• 38:31
  One time, this is even worse.
• 38:34
  This just makes it sound bad.
• 38:35
  But this one time, Rosso and I, we were with some mates having lunch.
• 38:41
  And we used to, on a Friday, the boys and I would go and have lunch.
• 38:45
  We'd finish work, breakfast radio.
• 38:47
  And then Friday afternoon, sometimes we'd go out and get on the tinnies.
• 38:51
  And we'd had a few.
• 38:52
  Do your best thinking on the tinnies, don't you, too, about buying stuff like this?
• 38:56
  And we used to just read unique cars.
• 38:59
  Just, you know, we just, car magazines, we just sit around and just look at cars.
• 39:02
  I don't know why.
• 39:03
  One time Ross and I were just looking at some cars and we went, how funny is that?
• 39:06
  Leyland P76.
• 39:07
  Oh, no.
• 39:07
  Two of those in Queensland.
• 39:10
  One of them's peeling me a grape purple.
• 39:12
  The other one's cream.
• 39:14
  Then, I'm not even kidding, we went, how funny would it be?
• 39:17
  Because they weren't very expensive because nobody wanted them, or did they?
• 39:20
  And then I remember Ross and I...
• 39:23
  speaking to our PA on the Monday and she said, the cars are going to arrive from Queensland next week.
• 39:31
  And we literally went, what cars?
• 39:34
  And she goes, the two cars that your boys bought on Friday.
• 39:36
  And we went, what?
• 39:39
  And she said, don't you dare.
• 39:41
  She said, are you serious?
• 39:44
  And I said, what has happened here?
• 39:46
  And she said, you two rang me blind, made me buy two cars from Queensland, and they're coming down next week on a trailer.
• 39:56
  Two Leyland P76s on their way.
• 39:59
  And we went, oh, God.
• 40:02
  What did you do with those?
• 40:03
  Sold one of them to a radio station straight away.
• 40:06
  Sold one of them straight away to a radio station.
• 40:08
  He's a great promotional vehicle.
• 40:10
  We bought this new promotional vehicle and we sold it for the exact amount of money that we bought both of them for.
• 40:16
  And we got a free car.
• 40:19
  That's brilliant.
• 40:19
  There's a message to the kids out there.
• 40:21
  Be dishonest.
• 40:24
  I had that for years, that car.
• 40:26
  It was great.
• 40:27
  You gave a great piece of advice once.
• 40:29
  Mums listening might disagree with this.
• 40:31
  But you told some motoring colleagues, always buy a car that your mum will hate.
• 40:37
  Yes.
• 40:39
  Why and what is the Merrick Watts criteria?
• 40:42
  I think if you don't buy a car that your mum just looks at you and is not...
• 40:46
  They've got to look at you with total disappointment.
• 40:48
  Yeah.
• 40:49
  Like, it's the equivalent, because two reasons.
• 40:52
  Number one, if you bring home a car that your mother hates, that's going to soften her for the blow for when you bring home a girlfriend or a wife.
• 41:03
  They've already had the experience of not liking something you're very close to.
• 41:09
  Number two, I think that genuinely you've got to have that moment.
• 41:13
  I reckon some blokes like myself and probably you as well, many people listening would be recidivists in this and they've got a history, but you've got to have that one thing, that one time in your life where you just go, I just did that entirely for me, where that was –
• 41:30
  not necessarily an impulse buy, but more about having that moment where you feel as though you've bought a character possession as opposed to buying something that's perfunctory, something that serves a purpose.
• 41:42
  You've bought something that says, this is how my character is right now.
• 41:46
  This is how I want to be seen.
• 41:48
  And that may be a brown valiant with a vinyl roof and everyone goes, your character is suspiciously dodgy.
• 41:54
  And you go, yes, it is.
• 41:58
  So, the term practical doesn't venture into that definition, and I guess cool kind of means not something expensive euro that you'll hope will turn, what did you say, David Cosh into Johnny Depp, but by that you mean the epitome of cool.
• 42:13
  So, is that what the Mustang was all about, mate?
• 42:15
  Is that what the...
• 42:16
  Oh, man.
• 42:17
  I saw that car.
• 42:18
  I remember I'd seen it in one of the Bond movies.
• 42:20
  There was a red one in- Oh, Diamonds Are Forever.
• 42:23
  I think it was, yes.
• 42:25
  And it was one of the very few times you saw James Bond drive an American car.
• 42:29
  Got up on two wheels, I think, Sean Connery in that.
• 42:32
  I don't know how he did that.
• 42:33
  I'll tell you those things.
• 42:34
  They are a ship.
• 42:36
  If they didn't have power steering, my God, you'd have arms like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
• 42:41
  Yeah, I think that was definitely, that was a character and a personality purchase for me.
• 42:46
  I just loved the colour with the black, that really nice powder blue, and it just looked tough.
• 42:53
  And I really like, I love muscle cars.
• 42:56
  I think they are fantastic.
• 42:57
  They're impractical.
• 42:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 43:00
  And as you have kids, you just realise more and more how practical it is, which is why I drive a wagon now because I just have so much crap I have to carry everywhere all the time.
• 43:09
  It's just constant stuff in the boot of my car.
• 43:11
  So I think at some stage you should always have that purchase where you just go, this is just for me and for me when I'm driving it.
• 43:20
  And it's a good thing to do, I think, if you do that young –
• 43:23
  you can experience that.
• 43:24
  And then when you're older and you have kids, if you do choose to have kids, then you've done that.
• 43:30
  You've parked that.
• 43:33
  This is Greg Rust and you're listening to Rusty's Garage.
• 43:36
  More with Merrick Watts in a moment.
• 43:39
  Mark Webber is one of the most determined racers you'll meet.
• 43:43
  From humble beginnings, his Aussie grit saw him rise to crazy heights in Formula One before helping Porsche's World Endurance Championship sports car program, bringing some brilliant people together to make their iconic 919 title winning race car.
• 44:00
  So then we got that up to like 30 people and started to reinvest in areas where we
• 44:05
  It was going to be more comfortable for us.
• 44:06
  I said, if we invest in these departments, there's going to be less mistakes from the drivers.
• 44:09
  The car's going to be more predictable.
• 44:11
  We're going to have an easier product to use in all conditions, even in the rain, at night, on slicks, whatever, you know.
• 44:17
  Listen to the full episode with Mark Webber here on Rusty's Garage.
• 44:32
  Bench seat.
• 44:33
  One continuous seat from door to door.
• 44:35
  Similar to a park bench and usually is poorly constructed.
• 44:40
  Your young bloke won an indoor go-kart race.
• 44:43
  Wow, you've done some real research.
• 44:45
  Bit of fun 12 months ago.
• 44:46
  That was a big day.
• 44:47
  I was going to say, I would have thought as a dad, you would have been quite proud of that.
• 44:50
  Is he passionate about cars like you?
• 44:53
  Does he sort of dig it?
• 44:54
  Because the reason I ask this is...
• 44:57
  My kids are a similar age to yours, and I fear, mate, that it will just become the driverless box on wheels that comes to pick them up, and you and I feel differently about that.
• 45:08
  Yeah.
• 45:09
  I think that's a real sadness that we're going to see.
• 45:11
  It's going to be a huge cultural shift globally, and particularly in countries like America and Australia, in the UK, Europe, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, everywhere, essentially everywhere, where...
• 45:26
  Those driving experiences are not going to be the same.
• 45:30
  It's going to be about transportation.
• 45:32
  My son is, I think, I think he likes cars.
• 45:38
  He loves being in the front seat of the car.
• 45:40
  He likes the feel of cars.
• 45:42
  He doesn't really, he loves the Mustang.
• 45:44
  He should just go and sit in it.
• 45:46
  And to the point where we're going, is he all right?
• 45:49
  He's just sitting in the car there.
• 45:51
  This car's not going in.
• 45:52
  There's no keys in it.
• 45:53
  He's just, you know, he'll just comfortably just go and sit behind the wheel of the car.
• 45:56
  That's cool.
• 45:58
  I think he likes cars.
• 46:00
  He loved it when he went to go-karting and he'd never done it before and he had three races and he got first, second, and I think third in three races.
• 46:09
  And I was like, oh, how good is this?
• 46:11
  Yeah.
• 46:11
  How good is this?
• 46:12
  That's very proud.
• 46:13
  Could not have got the camera and the Instagram going any faster if I try it.
• 46:18
  Any other photos of him on any other days?
• 46:19
  No, no.
• 46:20
  Just that time that he won some go-kart races that meant nothing to anyone?
• 46:24
  Yep.
• 46:24
  Heaps of photos of that.
• 46:26
  I think he'd actually be quite good for it.
• 46:30
  He's got good reflexes.
• 46:32
  And as you know, a lot of motoring is actually, it's reflexes.
• 46:35
  Yeah.
• 46:37
  and a bit of perception.
• 46:39
  So I'd love it if he got into cars because I think he may be, that kind of may be potentially the last generation of people who were into it.
• 46:47
  Yeah.
• 46:49
  And I'd be happy for him if he did that and stayed away from motorbikes, to be honest.
• 46:52
  Really?
• 46:53
  Yeah.
• 46:53
  It's hard though because, I mean, you ride them so.
• 46:56
  I still love them.
• 46:57
  Yeah.
• 46:58
  Love them.
• 46:59
  I'll get another motorbike.
• 47:00
  There's no way knowing that I'm done with motorbikes.
• 47:03
  Not just yet.
• 47:03
  Your fear, though, is clearly born out of the fact that on the road, other people are not as aware and as, you know.
• 47:11
  People don't see them.
• 47:12
  And, you know, unfortunately, you know, you've got very little protection.
• 47:17
  You know, and it's out on the open roads.
• 47:21
  You know, there's so many variables that can get you to become a cropper that it doesn't make sense.
• 47:29
  You know, and I think some of the times when I've nearly, nearly had accidents compared to the ones, the accidents I've had on motorbikes have fortunately been, you know, very, very soft, very, very minimal.
• 47:41
  And they've been error-based, but...
• 47:44
  circumstantial.
• 47:45
  Whereas, you know, a couple of times, it's been a few times on the open road where I've just been very lucky and I've had a good machine and the machines probably helped me a little bit.
• 47:57
  And there's been a few times in traffic where I've just gone, wow, I would have been dead, absolutely dead if I hadn't seen that or if I- Wasn't aware or alert.
• 48:08
  Yeah, yeah.
• 48:08
  The best thing is I always say to people-
• 48:10
  if you ride motorbikes early and you ride them first, you'll be a better driver in a car.
• 48:15
  You won't have accidents as often because you know you can't afford to have an accident.
• 48:19
  So, you know, just because someone's got an indicator on, that doesn't mean they're in, that doesn't mean they're going to do that.
• 48:24
  Don't ever think they're going to do that.
• 48:25
  Watch the, I always say, you know, watch, watch where the wheels are.
• 48:29
  The wheels tell you where the vehicle's going to go.
• 48:31
  not where the driver's looking, not where the car is actually pointing.
• 48:36
  It's always the wheels, you know?
• 48:37
  So if you see somebody with their wheels pointing towards you, there's a good chance they're going to come towards you.
• 48:41
  There's a term in motorcycle, I think this came from, I read this in Keith Code's book, Twist of the Wrist, which is an incredibly good read.
• 48:50
  If you ride motorbikes and you've got to read that, you've got to get a copy of that and read it.
• 48:54
  California Superbike School.
• 48:56
  And I've done lots of advanced riding and stuff like that, courses, and I'm right into it.
• 49:00
  But...
• 49:00
  There's a term called negative fixation, and I believe this in life.
• 49:06
  I apply it to life as much as I do to motorcycle riding.
• 49:09
  So negative fixation is when you see something that is potentially hazardous, that is potentially dangerous, and you know it's there, and then you focus on it knowing that it's there to the point where you focus on it so much, you draw so much attention to it, you end up going into it.
• 49:25
  So in motorcycle terms...
• 49:28
  You're going into a right-hander, and there's a great big right on the bend there.
• 49:32
  There's a massive Widowmaker on the outside of the left lane there, and it's just a huge gum tree.
• 49:37
  And you go, geez, I wouldn't want to hit that because that would hurt.
• 49:41
  So then you keep looking at it and looking at it, and you're not looking.
• 49:44
  It's like a magnet.
• 49:44
  Exactly.
• 49:45
  You're now not looking in the right place.
• 49:47
  You're not looking through the corner.
• 49:48
  You're not looking at the apex.
• 49:51
  You're looking at this huge tree.
• 49:53
  What are you driving to?
• 49:54
  Mm-hmm.
• 49:54
  You ride your bike straight into the tree, negative fixation.
• 49:57
  You don't focus on wherever your vision is.
• 50:01
  Your head will follow your eyes and your body will follow your head.
• 50:05
  So it goes eyes, head, and then your bike.
• 50:09
  So if you have a negative fixation, and I believe that with...
• 50:12
  with show business and with life in general, if you focus on the negative and you're too aware of the negative, that's where you're going to draw to.
• 50:21
  That's where you're going to go to naturally.
• 50:22
  So just don't.
• 50:23
  Just focus.
• 50:24
  Look through the bend with life.
• 50:25
  Just look through the bend.
• 50:27
  Find the exit.
• 50:27
  Look for your exit.
• 50:28
  Look for your exit.
• 50:29
  Don't go into the bad stuff.
• 50:30
  Love it.
• 50:31
  Great piece of advice that applies to both worlds, both motoring and life generally.
• 50:35
  Yeah, I'm going to write a book about it.
• 50:36
  Yeah, you should.
• 50:37
  It's a very short book.
• 50:38
  In fact, it's one page.
• 50:39
  It just says negative fixation.
• 50:40
  Don't do it.
• 50:41
  Here's a leaflet I prepared earlier.
• 50:45
  It's a flyer.
• 50:46
  My autobiography is a flyer.
• 50:49
  An award-winning flyer.
• 50:51
  You've talked about the family planner.
• 50:52
  You've talked about the ex-Honda police motorcycle.
• 50:55
  What else is in the Merrick Watts garage right now?
• 50:59
  I've got a BMW K1200R motorcycle, which I love.
• 51:04
  That is the only motorcycle that I've had for more than three years, I think.
• 51:09
  And I love it.
• 51:10
  I will flip it at some stage.
• 51:12
  Why do you love it?
• 51:13
  Because it's, I say to people, anybody who wants to buy a motorcycle, let the bike choose you.
• 51:19
  Don't you choose the bike.
• 51:21
  Meaning, throw your leg over a few and pick the one that feels right for your body.
• 51:25
  So me getting on a little 250 Aprilia is a dumb thing to do.
• 51:29
  I'm too big.
• 51:30
  It's not my size.
• 51:32
  It's not the right thing.
• 51:33
  But then you see people at traffic lights and they've got tippy toes touching the ground on the lights because they've picked a bike that's too high, too big, too much power, and their frame's too small.
• 51:43
  It doesn't make sense.
• 51:44
  It's got to be hand and glove.
• 51:46
  The bike has got to be as close to feeling like it's a glove on your hand.
• 51:51
  A part of you.
• 51:52
  Yep.
• 51:52
  Absolutely.
• 51:53
  Because it is.
• 51:54
  Essentially, when you're riding, it's an extension of your body.
• 51:56
  So the BMW...
• 51:58
  I was never into them.
• 51:59
  I was riding Ducatis before that.
• 52:01
  And I liked the look of it.
• 52:04
  And I went, I'm going to give that a ride and just see it.
• 52:06
  But I had no intention of buying it.
• 52:09
  And I told the guy, I said, I don't want to buy it.
• 52:10
  And he goes, ride it down in the National Park.
• 52:12
  And he goes, you'll come back and you'll buy it.
• 52:13
  And I said, mate, I'm not here to buy a bike.
• 52:15
  I said, I've got a Ducati.
• 52:16
  I'm very happy.
• 52:16
  There won't be any problem here.
• 52:18
  And I took it for a ride.
• 52:19
  I came back and I said, I want that bike.
• 52:21
  But with every single extra that there is, I want all of it.
• 52:24
  As much of it as you can put on that.
• 52:26
  So pipe, chip, whatever.
• 52:28
  Everything.
• 52:28
  All of it.
• 52:29
  Chip, shield, everything.
• 52:31
  A lot.
• 52:32
  New system out the back, you know.
• 52:34
  Got a Remus pipe, carbon fiber.
• 52:36
  Love it.
• 52:36
  Only ride with carbon fiber pipes.
• 52:38
  Yeah.
• 52:40
  and I've loved it ever since.
• 52:41
  And I feel very comfortable, and there's been a few circumstances too, one time up in the chain of ponds in Adelaide where I came around the corner and there had been a lot of heavy rain and there was a lot of rubble on the road, and I came around into a right-hander.
• 52:53
  and it's got traction control, and I'd never ridden a bike with traction control.
• 52:57
  And I'd never had necessity to kind of, you know, I'd never felt it kick in.
• 53:03
  And I came around a corner and just hit a bit of loose stuff that I couldn't really see because it was dappled light, and I started to slide out, and the bike just cut the power off, came back up into line, and then, bang, pulled back on the handle, straightened me up and put me through the corner.
• 53:18
  And I thought at the time...
• 53:20
  If this bike didn't have that tech, I would have gone into the barrier.
• 53:26
  I might not have, you know, it wouldn't have been necessarily fatal, but I would have been the bike.
• 53:30
  But I thought that bike has definitely saved me a collision.
• 53:35
  And it's saved me a few times.
• 53:36
  It's a very, very good machine.
• 53:39
  And so I feel very comfortable on it.
• 53:40
  It's the right weight.
• 53:42
  It's the right setup.
• 53:43
  I don't get sore riding.
• 53:45
  And I've ridden it several times.
• 53:47
  I can ride it through, you know, alpine regions and it will burn.
• 53:49
  belt because it's fast.
• 53:51
  Yeah.
• 53:52
  But I can also get around the city on it, you know, relatively easy without it kind of laboring too much.
• 53:57
  So it does, it serves a lot of purposes and you can change the, you know, the setup on it quite easily, you know, from, you know, a comfortable ride to a tighter sports ride.
• 54:05
  So it's been, it's the only bike I haven't kind of looked to get rid of because it's been a great machine.
• 54:10
  So that's, that's, that's my, that's my workhorse.
• 54:14
  But eventually, like all, like all horses, you have to take it to a paddock and shoot it.
• 54:20
  What about other cars?
• 54:21
  Do you know that this is the first time in at least 16, 17 years, I think, that I haven't owned at least two cars at one time.
• 54:29
  I went from HSV and then for about a year I was working here in the station here and I was five kilometres away, not even that.
• 54:39
  So I was running to work or walking to work.
• 54:40
  So I had an HSV and I was just like, I'm not driving this anymore.
• 54:44
  And it was at one stage I realised I was averaging 25 to 30 kilometres a week.
• 54:51
  And I just went, what is this?
• 54:52
  Yes.
• 54:53
  This has got ridiculous.
• 54:54
  So I went, my wife had an Audi Q5, which was an excellent car as well.
• 55:00
  And I just went, well, look, we only need one car at the moment.
• 55:03
  So I sold the HSV.
• 55:04
  Yeah.
• 55:06
  Do you miss it?
• 55:07
  Was it the GDO, the last one that you had?
• 55:09
  Yeah, the GDO, the red one.
• 55:10
  I do miss it, actually.
• 55:11
  The problem is I miss it, but would I be using it in the same context?
• 55:17
  No, I couldn't use that now because I need a wagon now for road trips with the family, simple as that.
• 55:22
  I touched on it before GDO for memory.
• 55:24
  Correct me if I'm wrong here on some of the stats, but I think a six-litre, I mean, awesome VA, isn't it?
• 55:27
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 55:28
  Yeah, that's around a kilowatts.
• 55:30
  Absolute weapon.
• 55:31
  And just sounded good, performed well.
• 55:34
  It was a beautiful car.
• 55:35
  So I miss it, but I don't regret moving on from it.
• 55:38
  Okay.
• 55:39
  So at the moment, I've got an Audi A4 wagon, which is...
• 55:44
  You know, it's actually a really good car.
• 55:46
  It's pretty good.
• 55:47
  They're good cars.
• 55:49
  I mean, do I feel like a champion driving it?
• 55:51
  No.
• 55:52
  No.
• 55:52
  Am I slightly ashamed when people see me driving it?
• 55:54
  Yes.
• 55:55
  Yes.
• 55:56
  But, you know, having driven it, you know, right across the country, it's an excellent vehicle.
• 56:02
  It's safe and it's reliable and it's just a good car.
• 56:06
  You've done, over time, some crazy things with cars too.
• 56:09
  So, based around the Ford that was kind of made famous by Mad Max, you created the car-b-queue.
• 56:17
  Oh, yeah.
• 56:17
  A hundred and right.
• 56:18
  That was 56 grand on a car that could also cook a steak in the boot.
• 56:23
  Tell us about that.
• 56:26
  Okay.
• 56:26
  So, one time I was at lunch and I was drunk.
• 56:30
  It sounds like that.
• 56:31
  I was kind of, I don't, I had this idea.
• 56:35
  I don't even remember how it really came about, but I was working at Triple M and there was an idea for, that I had, I've been watching Mad Max a lot, which is not uncommon for me.
• 56:48
  And somebody, there was somebody from Barbecue's Glore said, oh, they want to do something in your radio show and have you got any ideas?
• 56:56
  And I said, yes, I do.
• 56:58
  I said, I reckon we should build a car like that.
• 57:00
  you know, like the Interceptor, and we should, you know, like an old-school Mad Max Pursuit Interceptor-looking machine where you've got...
• 57:10
  you know, matte black and dirty mags and just a filthy looking beast.
• 57:17
  And I said, then I think we should put a barbecue in the boot of the car.
• 57:20
  And everyone went, do you have any idea how much that costs?
• 57:25
  And I said, do you have any idea how much I don't care?
• 57:30
  So I thought at the time...
• 57:33
  I thought when we bought it, we bought an XA and Superbird, and we got it modified heavily.
• 57:44
  I think it was like about 20, 30 grand to buy it, and then we put a lot of gear in it and a lot of work, and it tipped over 100 grand, and I had no idea.
• 57:53
  I seriously thought it was about 60 grand.
• 57:55
  The engine could power the barbecue.
• 57:57
  Is that right?
• 57:58
  The engine could power the sun.
• 58:02
  Just.
• 58:03
  But it was great.
• 58:04
  And it was fantastic.
• 58:05
  And you know what's brilliant about that is that at the end of it, you know, we had this great radio moment where we was driving around, you know, it was going to the races, it was going to the V8s, and it was appearing as this kind of vehicle.
• 58:16
  And people still ask me about it all the time, and that's what I love.
• 58:18
  You know, the people, car enthusiasts go, what about the car-bacue?
• 58:21
  Where's that?
• 58:22
  Where's it at the moment?
• 58:23
  And the guy who actually...
• 58:26
  did a lot of the work on it.
• 58:28
  He bought it back from the station at a very discounted rate.
• 58:32
  He did very well out of it, very well.
• 58:35
  And so it still lives on.
• 58:37
  It's still out there somewhere.
• 58:38
  I don't know where it is exactly at the moment, but it's still out there and it's still on the road.
• 58:42
  And it's a great thing.
• 58:43
  And it was a great opportunity to take a professional organisation's money and just piss it up against the wall.
• 58:51
  When I say an organisation, I mean the people who right now
• 58:55
  are broadcasting this podcast.
• 58:57
  That's right.
• 58:58
  Thank you very much, SCA.
• 59:00
  Helping to pay back the barbecue.
• 59:01
  Exactly right.
• 59:02
  That's why I'm here, because I feel indebted.
• 59:04
  What was the engine in it?
• 59:05
  Tell us a bit about the power plant.
• 59:06
  It was a 351.
• 59:07
  Yeah, it was a 351.
• 59:07
  So it was not lacking.
• 59:08
  But there's just...
• 59:09
  I love that...
• 59:15
  I love that really kind of tangible sound and that rumble that you get in those old cars.
• 59:21
  And, you know, you're reminded when you get back into an old car and you don't get it when you get into a modern car.
• 59:26
  Even if you get into a really high-powered car like an Aventador or something, it'll sound really aggressive.
• 59:33
  but it doesn't shudder when you turn the key.
• 59:36
  So it turns on and you know that there is so much accessible horsepower.
• 59:40
  It's ridiculous.
• 59:42
  They sound awful and rough.
• 59:44
  And then the moment you kind of inject a bit of throttle, the whole thing comes to life in this glorious manner, mate.
• 59:50
  They're unbelievable.
• 59:51
  Yeah.
• 59:51
  I know what you mean.
• 59:52
  But when you see those old cars, you turn the key over and the car just kind of, you know, shimmers and it moves because the engine is so powerful and the car is so poorly constructed.
• 1:00:05
  It wobbles a bit like jelly, but you feel it's very tangible.
• 1:00:08
  It comes back and there's that kind of physical feedback loop that you get from driving old cars that, you know, that you get from riding motorcycles that you don't get when you get in a Prius.
• 1:00:18
  Absolutely.
• 1:00:19
  You know, you get into a priest, you feel nothing, and there's no tactile moment with that.
• 1:00:25
  In the midst of the comedy work, you've done some serious, a little bit of serious acting as well, and I can fondly remember you playing Marty Johnston in Underbelly, Tale of Two Cities.
• 1:00:35
  Worst acting of all time.
• 1:00:36
  I thought it was a great fit.
• 1:00:37
  It was terrible.
• 1:00:38
  Invariably, though, that means there would have been some cool things on set.
• 1:00:41
  Were there any cool cars on set in that movie?
• 1:00:43
  Did you get to check any of them out?
• 1:00:45
  Uh, there was actually, yeah, in the Underbelly they had lots of great vehicles.
• 1:00:49
  I never got to get anywhere near them.
• 1:00:50
  The car that, uh, I was supposedly dragged from and then executed in the wilderness from was a Jag.
• 1:00:58
  I want to say an XJ, um, from memory.
• 1:01:02
  I remember it was a Jag.
• 1:01:04
  Uh...
• 1:01:05
  But I didn't really get to get around the cars.
• 1:01:09
  I thought there was, when I first read the script, I remember the time thinking, oh, great, it's based in the 70s.
• 1:01:13
  There'll be wicked cars in this.
• 1:01:15
  There'll be great cars.
• 1:01:16
  I saw none of them.
• 1:01:18
  You know what I saw?
• 1:01:20
  I saw a revolver at the back of my head being shot in a forest and then being mercilessly stabbed after I'd been shot.
• 1:01:29
  I'm already dead, mate.
• 1:01:30
  He shot me in the head.
• 1:01:32
  What are you stabbing me for?
• 1:01:34
  I'm clearly dead.
• 1:01:36
  Stop hurting me.
• 1:01:37
  And, of course, whilst Damon Gamow is a fantastic actor and a great guy, he was responsible for killing me in the Underbelly series, which a lot of people were very grateful to him for.
• 1:01:47
  But, unfortunately, he didn't kill my acting career.
• 1:01:50
  He just killed me as a character.
• 1:01:52
  People were hoping for both.
• 1:01:56
  He had to stab me and I had to wear this protective inlay underneath my wardrobe as like a, it was kind of like a mesh.
• 1:02:08
  Yeah.
• 1:02:09
  And it's because they, even though they were using a fake knife with a retractable blade, if the blade locked and he stabbed me, it would punch me and kill me, right?
• 1:02:19
  So they had to take all these precautions and it was all really good.
• 1:02:23
  Nothing to fear here.
• 1:02:24
  Yeah, I mean, the fact that they used an actual real gun at the back of my head, I was a bit more worried about that, frankly, rather than the fake switchblade.
• 1:02:32
  But when I was on the ground, I had to pretend I was dead, and then Damon had to stab me repeatedly, and they had to reshoot it, like, probably three or four takes at least.
• 1:02:44
  So we calculated that I was stabbed anywhere between 150 and 250 times.
• 1:02:47
  Oh, wow.
• 1:02:50
  I threw all the takes.
• 1:02:52
  And what had happened is because, you know, he's a good actor and because I'm an excellent corpse actor, I laid there and he stabbed me.
• 1:03:00
  And then the next day I was completely black with bruises all around my ribs.
• 1:03:05
  And I think he may have split the intercostal in my ribs.
• 1:03:09
  But I'm such an excellent actor that all you see is a corpse on the ground because I'm that good.
• 1:03:16
  And the jag drove away.
• 1:03:17
  I was in agony.
• 1:03:17
  So you never got to do it.
• 1:03:18
  And then he drove away and the jag and I went, well, that was it.
• 1:03:20
  What a dream.
• 1:03:21
  Glad I was a big part of the Underbelly series.
• 1:03:24
  I want to get to the Hollow Men now, you know, working with the Working Dog production guys.
• 1:03:29
  Amazing.
• 1:03:30
  I love that show.
• 1:03:31
  Comedy about government policymaking units that is, I think, scarily accurate probably.
• 1:03:36
  Too accurate.
• 1:03:37
  Too accurate.
• 1:03:38
  Anyway, you meet a designer and builder on set, James Clark, and you guys start toying with the idea of modifying Honda CT110s, the mighty posty bike.
• 1:03:50
  Yeah, it was weird because we used to spend a lot of time.
• 1:03:52
  We actually would work together on the set of...
• 1:03:58
  Thank God you're here.
• 1:03:59
  Okay.
• 1:04:01
  And on the Holloman as well.
• 1:04:02
  And we'd started just talking about bikes whilst I was backstage.
• 1:04:06
  I should have been paying attention to what I was doing on the show, but we'd always been talking.
• 1:04:09
  No, seriously.
• 1:04:10
  There was one time we were literally talking about motorcycles and Shane Bourne had introduced me for, and please make him welcome, Merrick Watts.
• 1:04:19
  And I was out the back.
• 1:04:20
  I wasn't even, like, it's meant to be standing where the door is.
• 1:04:24
  So I ran.
• 1:04:25
  I just, it's gone, Mary, Mary.
• 1:04:26
  And I ran and I made it look like it was part of the bit.
• 1:04:28
  But really, I wasn't paying attention.
• 1:04:32
  Anyway, so, yeah, James and I had this discussion about,
• 1:04:37
  about motorcycles and about posty bikes and modifications.
• 1:04:41
  And there was lots of people, you know, like Deus, obviously, by that stage had been making bikes, and they were converting like SR400s and things like that.
• 1:04:48
  But the premise for us was rather than trying to...
• 1:04:53
  have a wolf in sheep's clothing.
• 1:04:55
  We said, you know, let's put a sheep in wolf's clothing.
• 1:04:58
  I love it.
• 1:04:59
  So what we did is we got a really piss-weat bike and then made it look a lot more dangerous than it was.
• 1:05:05
  Yeah.
• 1:05:06
  And it was kind of...
• 1:05:09
  It was a really fantastic journey and a great thing that we were doing, but, you know, it was making no money.
• 1:05:18
  So little money.
• 1:05:19
  I think on one bike we made $100 and we were wrapped.
• 1:05:22
  And we've just gone, we've spent a lot of time on this motorcycle.
• 1:05:26
  This is a terrible business plan.
• 1:05:28
  So we stopped making them.
• 1:05:29
  But we made probably about, I think probably about half a dozen.
• 1:05:32
  And I regret there was one, I regret two things.
• 1:05:36
  There's one called...
• 1:05:38
  Dear John, they gave them all different names.
• 1:05:40
  It was an army green that had knobby tyres and stuff like that.
• 1:05:44
  It was great.
• 1:05:44
  One of the guys from Two Wheels borrowed it from me for a test ride and didn't want to give it back.
• 1:05:51
  And I said, are you serious?
• 1:05:51
  He goes, mate, I love this bike because we stripped out a lot of the weight.
• 1:05:54
  They were very, very light.
• 1:05:55
  We had just a kickstand as opposed to a prop-up stand.
• 1:06:00
  And they were really good.
• 1:06:01
  So you could pick them up and carry them.
• 1:06:02
  I literally used to carry it upstairs.
• 1:06:04
  Yeah.
• 1:06:05
  He didn't want to return it.
• 1:06:05
  I love that.
• 1:06:06
  That was my favourite one was this one.
• 1:06:07
  It was army green and it wasn't like an army green, like, you know, mash green or an Australian army green.
• 1:06:14
  I went through an old catalogue and I found a Russian tank green that I love.
• 1:06:19
  Ooh, like a drab kind of green or something.
• 1:06:22
  Yeah, okay.
• 1:06:22
  Because I didn't want it to be army green.
• 1:06:24
  I said, it's got to look a little bit different.
• 1:06:26
  It's got to be a different type.
• 1:06:27
  So we found it, and then we had customized Brooks leather seats and saddlebags and stuff like that.
• 1:06:32
  So like I said, you end up going, you sell it, and you go, that's $100 we've just made there.
• 1:06:39
  And we sold that one, and that was the one where I went, oh, that was my favorite.
• 1:06:42
  Should have kept it.
• 1:06:43
  Yeah.
• 1:06:43
  And then I saw it for sale at maybe the start of this year.
• 1:06:48
  I saw it for sale on the side of the road, and I thought, I should buy that.
• 1:06:52
  And then I went, if I come back home with a bike that I've already owned, somebody in my household that's not me is going to ask me why.
• 1:07:05
  Why?
• 1:07:06
  So I went, ooh, I was tempted.
• 1:07:08
  And I went, no, I don't think I will.
• 1:07:10
  But they were great fun.
• 1:07:11
  I love the notion of it because effectively what you did was take the humble postie, make them cafe racer spec.
• 1:07:18
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:07:19
  The fact that you lightened or took a lot of weight out of it, because I think they came out with, it was like seven and a half horsepower, six kilowatt or something.
• 1:07:27
  They were really underpowered.
• 1:07:28
  That probably made quite a difference by lightening it, didn't it?
• 1:07:30
  It did, actually, because we were able to strip out quite a lot of weight, and it actually did.
• 1:07:34
  It increased performance and increased speed, and we put on a carby, better carby, cleaned up the carbys, put on pods.
• 1:07:40
  Pipes.
• 1:07:41
  Yeah.
• 1:07:42
  You know what?
• 1:07:43
  We did actually, we changed pipes on one or two of them, but we didn't do it universally on it because the pipes were actually quite good.
• 1:07:49
  You know, they had that stainless steel cover over the pipe.
• 1:07:54
  So we didn't kind of hatchet the hell out of them.
• 1:07:58
  But we just, you know, put on, you know, things like, you know, new mirrors because the mirrors on the posty bikes were naff.
• 1:08:03
  And just stripped out at the back of the bike, of course, had- To carry the sacks for the- Stripped off that a lot of the time and just put on a single lightweight seat.
• 1:08:15
  Some of them are really, really light.
• 1:08:16
  So we could strip out 20, 30 kilos, I reckon.
• 1:08:21
  Get it down.
• 1:08:21
  I think one of the bikes weighed about 90, 95 kilos.
• 1:08:24
  So it was weighing less than me.
• 1:08:27
  wow, that just shows how fat I was.
• 1:08:29
  And they were good like that.
• 1:08:32
  And now I see, commonly I see post-it bikes that have been done similar to ours.
• 1:08:39
  And to be honest, not quite as good, but they were similar to the way we made them.
• 1:08:42
  And I'll look at them and I'll go, hang on a second, is that one of ours?
• 1:08:45
  Because I have seen a couple of post-it bikes that we made floating around.
• 1:08:50
  And I go, is that one of ours?
• 1:08:51
  And then I go, no, it's not.
• 1:08:52
  What do you reckon the thing about them is, or the fascination with them is?
• 1:08:56
  Because I had one until about November 2017, and I got rid of it.
• 1:09:00
  It wasn't modified like yours.
• 1:09:02
  It was absolutely standard.
• 1:09:04
  Did you buy it ex-posty, or did you buy it, or you buy the new ones?
• 1:09:07
  No, it was a 2011 model.
• 1:09:10
  Honda Australia helped me source it, and it had been used as a proper posty, and they got it from Australia Post.
• 1:09:15
  Yeah, because they're better.
• 1:09:16
  Posty bikes are...
• 1:09:19
  a modified motorcycle.
• 1:09:20
  They're not the CT110.
• 1:09:22
  So you can get a posty bike, a CT110.
• 1:09:24
  You can, I don't know if you still can, but you can purchase those from Honda.
• 1:09:28
  But they're not as robust as the posty bikes.
• 1:09:33
  So I can't remember what the main specifications were, but I think it was the forks, the front forks particularly.
• 1:09:40
  And a few other modifications were made to be a little bit harder because they had to mount kerbs.
• 1:09:45
  So the post-it bikes would be able to hit gutters, mount kerbs, be a bit more robust, yes.
• 1:09:50
  So I think the ones you could buy from Honda Direct might have been a bit lighter and might have been, but might not have been quite as robust as the ones that were made for Australia Post.
• 1:10:02
  So they were a different bike.
• 1:10:03
  So you like them and then you went off and built a few of these.
• 1:10:07
  My buddy Lee Diffie, who commentated the V8s here for a few years and now works on IndyCar in the States, he took his with him to America.
• 1:10:13
  Oh, they're huge there.
• 1:10:15
  Grant Denyer, who I'm about to talk to, he's fully restored one, Candy Apple Red.
• 1:10:19
  I think it's got eight bars on it.
• 1:10:21
  I mean, what is the thing with the posty bike?
• 1:10:23
  Why posty bikes?
• 1:10:24
  I think it's because they're iconic because only Posties had them, you know, and then the public got access to them.
• 1:10:32
  So it was something that you couldn't access, that you essentially denied access to, and then all of a sudden we were able to get them and we were able to ride them.
• 1:10:40
  And now hipsters have made them look cool.
• 1:10:43
  And, you know, they're trying to, you know, I think a lot of hipsters actually like to leave them raw and, you know, put like a milk crate on the back and, you know, try to keep them as true to form as they were.
• 1:10:54
  But I think that the appeal of them is the fact that a lot of Australians used to get their post delivered to them.
• 1:11:01
  Buy those most of them.
• 1:11:01
  Buy those things, yeah.
• 1:11:02
  I mean, great irony.
• 1:11:03
  I don't even know.
• 1:11:04
  Does the post service even exist anymore?
• 1:11:06
  I don't know.
• 1:11:06
  I mean, a guy in a van comes to my house and it's got courier's please written on his shirt and he gives me a box and he says, your missus just spent 500 bucks.
• 1:11:14
  And I go, when you come back, can you punch me in the face?
• 1:11:18
  And he goes, no, I'm not allowed to do that.
• 1:11:19
  Great irony that hardly any power, drum brakes, step through semi-auto.
• 1:11:24
  I can't understand it, but we love them.
• 1:11:25
  We do love them.
• 1:11:27
  Right.
• 1:11:27
  Let's get to a couple of key things here.
• 1:11:29
  Grail car is something I ask about in this series.
• 1:11:33
  If Georgie was cool with it, if you had unlimited budget, what would you have to – because, I mean, clearly you would like a little something back in the garage now.
• 1:11:42
  What would you get if you could?
• 1:11:44
  Money, no object to Aston Martin.
• 1:11:47
  That is the king of cars.
• 1:11:49
  I just think- Have you driven one?
• 1:11:50
  Even a press car or something like that?
• 1:11:52
  No.
• 1:11:52
  No.
• 1:11:52
  Well, who would let me?
• 1:11:55
  But if you've got one you'd like me to drive it, I will do that for you as a favour.
• 1:12:00
  Please email me it.
• 1:12:01
  I mean, I love the vanquishes.
• 1:12:02
  I love, for me, Aston Martin is the perfect combination of style and class with brute muscle.
• 1:12:13
  Yep.
• 1:12:13
  Yep.
• 1:12:14
  And it throws back to those days of pre-Shelby Cobra when the Brits were making really good and aggressive sports cars.
• 1:12:24
  And then the American muscle that came with the Cobras was applied to those British stylings, but it had that dirty big Ford V8 motor in it, put into a British style open wheeler.
• 1:12:38
  And I think that with Aston Martin, there's that kind of sense of beautiful, understated styling with brute force underneath.
• 1:12:49
  Underneath.
• 1:12:50
  And the sound and the pipes.
• 1:12:51
  And you used to go, that car can do everything that it looks like it could do.
• 1:12:57
  And I like that.
• 1:12:57
  I really like Maseratis for the same reason, whereas I don't look at Lamborghinis and think, oh, that's my car.
• 1:13:05
  I don't look at Ferraris and think, that's my car.
• 1:13:07
  McLarens, I don't look at them and think, that's my car.
• 1:13:09
  You know, those cars, I've driven an Inventador, and that was an amazing experience, but I would never own one.
• 1:13:15
  I wouldn't feel right in it.
• 1:13:18
  It's just not me.
• 1:13:19
  But I could see, you know, it's not going to happen.
• 1:13:23
  But if money was no object, I'd drive an Aston Martin.
• 1:13:27
  I just think that's stunning.
• 1:13:28
  Classic car that you would love to have.
• 1:13:31
  SLR 5000.
• 1:13:31
  Yeah.
• 1:13:32
  SLR 5000 without a doubt.
• 1:13:34
  That's probably more likely.
• 1:13:36
  That's got Merrick White's midlife crisis written all over it.
• 1:13:41
  My Tirana SLR 5000, drop tank, there we go.
• 1:13:46
  My old boss at Channel 10 had one, and he tracked back some of the history on it, and they had found out that it was a test mule used by Colin Bond in the Holden dealer team days.
• 1:13:56
  It had done a bit of rallying and things like that, and he had Gary Rogers, who runs a supercars team, help restore it.
• 1:14:02
  I mean, amazing.
• 1:14:03
  They're an amazing car, mate, aren't they?
• 1:14:05
  Big, big power and just brute-looking, bulky machine.
• 1:14:09
  Yeah.
• 1:14:09
  The thing I like, I mean, you look at Monaros, particularly like HRs, I love.
• 1:14:14
  And HQs for me started to, the styling changed a bit.
• 1:14:18
  But some of those earlier Monaros, I think they look absolutely brutal.
• 1:14:26
  I love the look, and particularly when they're in gunmetal and, you know, they're a good-looking car.
• 1:14:31
  But there's something particularly unclassy about the SLR 5000 that I like.
• 1:14:37
  It's not just brutal, it's bogan.
• 1:14:39
  It's real bogan.
• 1:14:41
  It's not even a bit bogan.
• 1:14:42
  There's no class to it.
• 1:14:43
  Even an A9X has still got a bit of class to it.
• 1:14:46
  SLR 5000 just says speed dealer, doesn't it?
• 1:14:50
  Just says the person who drives this car, as at some stage...
• 1:14:54
  It's driven drugs around.
• 1:14:56
  It's a drug.
• 1:14:57
  It's a drug mule.
• 1:14:57
  This car has done.
• 1:14:59
  This car has been involved in a police pursuit.
• 1:15:02
  It's transited drugs.
• 1:15:04
  It's done something horrible.
• 1:15:05
  It's got a really kind of nefarious kind of feel to it.
• 1:15:11
  I just think that's cool.
• 1:15:12
  I think it's a funny thing.
• 1:15:13
  Hence the reason for some of your hashtags on Instagram, cashed up Bogan and Kidult, I think that's you.
• 1:15:18
  Cashed up Bogan.
• 1:15:19
  So I said, don't give, that's why I say to people, don't give Bogans like me money.
• 1:15:23
  That's what we do.
• 1:15:25
  We get drunk and we go and buy Leyland P76s.
• 1:15:28
  On Gumtree.
• 1:15:29
  Motorbikes.
• 1:15:32
  What drives you mad on the road?
• 1:15:33
  I mean, you're a very aware motorcyclist and what habits on the road drive you mad?
• 1:15:39
  People who can't merge.
• 1:15:40
  Yeah.
• 1:15:41
  Adelaide, I'm looking at you.
• 1:15:42
  You cannot merge.
• 1:15:45
  Don't stop.
• 1:15:46
  You merge.
• 1:15:47
  The whole point of merging is if it was a stop, you'd have a stop sign.
• 1:15:52
  But you don't because it's a merge.
• 1:15:54
  So just move into the lane.
• 1:15:57
  One for one.
• 1:15:59
  Just merge.
• 1:16:02
  Also, too, the one thing that irritates me in Sydney that doesn't irritate me as much in Melbourne, Melbourne's got it because of hook turns, is that you can go out into an intersection in a green light.
• 1:16:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:16:16
  and you're turning right, you can go right out into that intersection.
• 1:16:19
  You can get two, sometimes three cars in that intersection, and then when the lights change, all of you can turn right.
• 1:16:27
  But in Sydney, there's go, just one car, just one car.
• 1:16:31
  I don't want to go over the line.
• 1:16:33
  Go forward.
• 1:16:34
  We're all going to turn right.
• 1:16:35
  We can get three cars in this light.
• 1:16:37
  In this phase, we will all be able to get around if you just move forward a little bit.
• 1:16:42
  But no, I'm too passive.
• 1:16:43
  I'm scared I'll get caught in the intersection.
• 1:16:45
  Whereas people in Melbourne, because they're used to hook turns, where you go right out and then you turn a really hard right.
• 1:16:52
  So those two definitely.
• 1:16:54
  You talked about taking the tech away from the kids when you go on these excellent road trips.
• 1:17:00
  Are you a podcast guy?
• 1:17:01
  Are you a music guy?
• 1:17:02
  What do you listen to when you drive?
• 1:17:04
  Recently, I listened to a few podcasts, a bit of music, and I do like silence.
• 1:17:11
  Yeah?
• 1:17:11
  Yeah.
• 1:17:12
  I think it's one of the few times- The engine, the environment, just take it all in.
• 1:17:15
  Yep.
• 1:17:16
  I think it's one of the few times now where, you know, maybe years ago would have driven you mad, but now we're so inundated with information, whether it be audible or visual, that we've
• 1:17:30
  can't escape from it and it's a good time to just look back
• 1:17:37
  and think.
• 1:17:38
  So sometimes when I'm driving for long periods of time, I will just have complete silence for a couple of hours until I get very bored of my own company.
• 1:17:46
  And then I'll just try to put on some musical or a podcast or something like that.
• 1:17:49
  But yeah, I do.
• 1:17:50
  And when I'm, when I'm motorbike riding, I never listen to music unless I'm, unless I've got a big, you know, like a three hour stint on, on a highway I've got to get through.
• 1:18:01
  Then I'll listen to some headphones or something like that through my helmet.
• 1:18:04
  But otherwise never.
• 1:18:06
  I just put an earplug, I put actually, when I'm riding motorbikes, I put earplugs in.
• 1:18:10
  Earplugs in, so do I, yeah.
• 1:18:12
  Because it just, and it just cuts it out.
• 1:18:14
  You can still feel everything, still hear everything, but it just cuts out some of that wind noise.
• 1:18:18
  And I just find actually, for me, I just get a better level of concentration.
• 1:18:24
  How many k's would you do a year, do you reckon?
• 1:18:25
  About 10.
• 1:18:26
  About 10.
• 1:18:28
  10 and a half.
• 1:18:29
  Idiot.
• 1:18:30
  I'm an idiot.
• 1:18:30
  I haven't done a big road trip on my motorbike for a while, but I'm due for one.
• 1:18:33
  So I'm going to be in touch with my cousin and hopefully we'll get down the Alpine way.
• 1:18:37
  Final one for you.
• 1:18:38
  You talked about little 15 kilometre an hour, you know, shunned spills and things like that.
• 1:18:44
  A little bit of YouTube gold.
• 1:18:46
  I once attempted very poorly to race a car at Winton in northern Victoria and the steering wheel came off, mate, and my colleagues have never let me forget it.
• 1:18:55
  Thankfully, it didn't crash.
• 1:18:56
  It was- At Winton?
• 1:18:58
  At Winton.
• 1:18:58
  I came off on the final turn and it went off onto the infield.
• 1:19:01
  Well, you could have gone anywhere.
• 1:19:01
  Mate, I could have.
• 1:19:02
  You could have gone anywhere.
• 1:19:04
  To heaven's one of those places you could have gone.
• 1:19:06
  Scaife, Crompton, all those guys, they were wailing when they saw this vision.
• 1:19:11
  Has there been an embarrassing motoring moment for Merrick Watts?
• 1:19:15
  Oh, I've had a similar circumstance where I was... Oh, my God.
• 1:19:21
  I've had a couple, actually, strangely, in the same, not the same car, but the same maker car, both Ford XBs.
• 1:19:28
  And I was driving my mate's XB once, and the accelerator pedal just fell off.
• 1:19:35
  Just as I was driving, it just fell off.
• 1:19:37
  It was gone.
• 1:19:38
  It was there, and then it just fell off.
• 1:19:40
  And I was just trying to then drive a car with just the nub on it.
• 1:19:44
  just trying to get that little nub there.
• 1:19:47
  And it was like, it was just, that was a very interesting, and I'd only had my license for about three weeks, and I was driving a car with the pedal had just come off.
• 1:19:56
  But another time, Blake, a young bloke lived across the road.
• 1:20:01
  He had an XB, and he was having some trouble with it, and he couldn't get it started.
• 1:20:07
  And I said, I can't remember what we did to it, but I remember it flooded the car with a bit of fuel.
• 1:20:13
  Oh, there's another story again.
• 1:20:15
  There's another XB story.
• 1:20:16
  Wow, there's three of them.
• 1:20:19
  So here, all right.
• 1:20:20
  Anyway, so I put a bit of fuel down the neck of the car, turned it over.
• 1:20:24
  It's gone.
• 1:20:25
  No dramas at all.
• 1:20:26
  It's all right.
• 1:20:26
  So we take down the road and we lived at the top of a big hill and we went down and I went, all right, no dramas here.
• 1:20:34
  As we're driving down, it's stalled again.
• 1:20:37
  It's conked out.
• 1:20:38
  So I don't know what the problem was.
• 1:20:40
  Power-assisted braking.
• 1:20:42
  Oh, no.
• 1:20:44
  No.
• 1:20:44
  Downhill in the heaviest car man has ever made into a massive, really tight right-hander.
• 1:20:53
  And at the bottom of it is a girls' school where I lived.
• 1:20:56
  There's a girls' school.
• 1:20:57
  They've all just come out of school.
• 1:20:59
  Oh.
• 1:20:59
  And there's just people everywhere.
• 1:21:01
  And I was literally just driving this boat down the hill thinking with no power-assisted brakes, just going, if I don't get – and power steering.
• 1:21:09
  Yeah.
• 1:21:10
  All the power's gone.
• 1:21:11
  Power-assisted braking, power-assisted steering's gone.
• 1:21:13
  I thought, if I don't get this around the corner, this is going to be on the news.
• 1:21:19
  This is going to be on the news.
• 1:21:20
  Whatever happened to Merrick Watts?
• 1:21:21
  And I'm just trying to restart it, just trying to restart it, just trying to restart it.
• 1:21:25
  And just as I got to the bottom, just got it around and just peeled it around the corner.
• 1:21:30
  And I went, I think you should call a mechanic.
• 1:21:32
  That's what you should do.
• 1:21:33
  So that was another time.
• 1:21:34
  Another time.
• 1:21:35
  All right, here we go.
• 1:21:36
  So Ross and I are in the car from two hands.
• 1:21:38
  Yes.
• 1:21:39
  It's well known, a lot of people know that.
• 1:21:41
  It's an XA.
• 1:21:42
  Anyway, similar vehicle.
• 1:21:45
  And it ran out of fuel at the lights in Pyrmont.
• 1:21:49
  And I went, oh, that's right, I've got a jerry can in the boot of the car.
• 1:21:52
  I'm not an idiot.
• 1:21:54
  So what I'll do is I'll just run out of fuel.
• 1:21:56
  I don't know why I'd run out of fuel, but I'd run out of fuel.
• 1:21:58
  So I just topped up the car and went, there's enough fuel in there.
• 1:22:01
  We'll be all right, five litres, that'll get me to a servo, no problems.
• 1:22:04
  I'll just put a little bit down the neck.
• 1:22:06
  So it starts first go because that's what you want to do, you know.
• 1:22:09
  Put a little bit.
• 1:22:10
  I don't know why.
• 1:22:11
  So I've taken the filter off the top, poured a little bit down the neck of the carby and got back in the car and started.
• 1:22:18
  Bang!
• 1:22:18
  Car on fire.
• 1:22:20
  poured too much down, kind of sprayed a little bit and ignited whole car and people are driving past.
• 1:22:28
  This is right where I worked.
• 1:22:30
  People driving past going, why is your car on fire, Merrick?
• 1:22:32
  I go, I don't know.
• 1:22:33
  How about helping me put it out?
• 1:22:35
  Fortunately, I also had a fire extinguisher on site and I just went, put the fire out and we're all right.
• 1:22:41
  And then how do you reckon I restarted it again?
• 1:22:43
  More fuel down the car.
• 1:22:44
  More fuel down the neck.
• 1:22:46
  I'm not an idiot, but I am, clearly.
• 1:22:48
  So there you go.
• 1:22:49
  So I've had three instances with three very, very similar cars and no one has been hurt.
• 1:22:55
  So what does that say?
• 1:22:56
  It says, I'm excellent at driving.
• 1:22:58
  Good result, good result.
• 1:22:59
  Mate, it's been fantastic to talk to you and have a great laugh about,
• 1:23:03
  some good stuff that you're clearly passionate about.
• 1:23:06
  You're doing some awesome things around wineries with stand-up, with colleagues and things.
• 1:23:09
  Yeah, we don't need to plug that.
• 1:23:11
  No, no, no.
• 1:23:11
  We wish you continued success with that.
• 1:23:13
  Thanks for chatting to us.
• 1:23:13
  You can't hear that.
• 1:23:14
  That was a pretty solid hand slap there.
• 1:23:16
  That was.
• 1:23:16
  It was pretty solid.
• 1:23:18
  Well done.
• 1:23:18
  Thank you.
• 1:23:23
  Rusty's Garage is written and presented by me, Greg Rust.
• 1:23:27
  Series producer and editor is Alex Mitchell.
• 1:23:31
  Audio production by Darcy Thompson.
• 1:23:40
  Listener.