Latest / Rusty's Garage / Alison Drower - Part 1

Transcript

Alison Drower - Part 1 · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:17
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:27
  My guest today doesn't think her status quite fits the bill for Rusty's Garage, but I beg to differ, and I've done a bit of arm-twisting to get her on.
• 0:34
  If you're old enough to remember the awesome Channel 10 magazine-style motorsport show, RPM, then you'll definitely remember Alison Droher.
• 0:42
  If you don't, then let me introduce you to the easygoing, likeable newsreader.
• 0:47
  who made the transition to our screens covering all sorts of cool motorsport yarns and being trusted to bring out the personalities in our sport at a time when the code needed it.
• 0:57
  TEN had acquired the rights to what became supercars and amassed this portfolio of categories that made the station the home of motorsport at the time.
• 1:06
  That wasn't just a slogan.
• 1:08
  It really was the place to get your fix.
• 1:11
  From MotoGP to World Rally, touring cars and later Formula One.
• 1:16
  I was fortunate to play a little part in it and it remains the most joyous time of my working life.
• 1:22
  Yes, it came with stresses and strains.
• 1:24
  That's because some good people behind the scenes pushed each other to be the very best in covering the premier two and four wheel classes with an Australian flavour.
• 1:34
  There's a bit of pioneering stuff in all that too back then.
• 1:37
  We digest stuff.
• 1:38
  differently now right so we'll probably never see a show like this ever again or certainly not to the same impressive lengths they went to anyway as you'll hear allison got to work with the legendary announcer the late doug mulray on triple m and spent time at mtv as well
• 1:56
  We'll relive a couple of unforgettable moments, like the time she made Neil Crompton blush and burst out laughing with a gag while they covered Target Tasmania.
• 2:05
  Plus, what she's doing now, how motorsport is still a big part of her life and how her son is impressing on the supercar's pathway, having starred in Toyota 86s and a whole lot more.
• 2:17
  Here we go.
• 2:18
  Hope you enjoy a blast from the past on Please We've Tracked Down, Alison Droa.
• 2:25
  Hello, Alison Droa.
• 2:26
  How are you?
• 2:26
  I am super excited to think that I've made the cut.
• 2:31
  Well, I've made the cut, mate.
• 2:33
  You know, they always say there's a milestone in one's career.
• 2:36
  This is it.
• 2:37
  This is it.
• 2:38
  Oh, stop it.
• 2:39
  No, it's a pleasure to be here.
• 2:41
  I'm still dumbfounded, but excited to have a chat here about the old days.
• 2:47
  It's great.
• 2:48
  It's great to catch up on so many fronts, right?
• 2:49
  So let's kickstart with early kind of life and time where you grew up.
• 2:55
  I'm told you were a school captain too.
• 2:58
  Is this true?
• 2:59
  Yeah, yeah.
• 3:00
  I'm a Wollongong girl.
• 3:01
  I was school captain.
• 3:04
  And yeah, so, you know, Wayne Gardner was God in our world.
• 3:06
  Actually, Wayne didn't live far from us.
• 3:09
  Really?
• 3:09
  Yeah, he used to tear up the nature strips, just...
• 3:13
  drive everybody crazy.
• 3:15
  And I went to school with his sister.
• 3:17
  So, yeah, so, you know, that was sort of, he was God, God in our world.
• 3:23
  But, no, I was school captain.
• 3:26
  I was a little bit of a, you know, Pollyanna.
• 3:29
  But I always loved my music, you know, like, and I sort of really thought that career-wise, you know, I would be heading into something different.
• 3:38
  with music up to, you know, fleetingly thinking about a flight attendant, you know, career.
• 3:43
  But, yeah, I ended up in my local radio station.
• 3:47
  And that's kind of how I kind of got into media.
• 3:52
  Cool.
• 3:52
  So let's talk firstly about the love of music, right?
• 3:57
  Because I would imagine, because you're celebrating more or less 40 years, aren't you, in media basically, right?
• 4:03
  Yeah, yeah.
• 4:04
  You're young.
• 4:05
  You're young.
• 4:06
  Now, does that mean, was it in excess, the models?
• 4:10
  What were the bands that were, you know, the flavour of your childhood kind of thing?
• 4:15
  Oh, Aussie Crawl at Dapto Leaks Club, mate.
• 4:18
  You know, front row of InXS and the Shaboo Shabar days at Coromal RSL.
• 4:25
  You know, like that was, you know, the idea of being able to get up close and personal to that genre of
• 4:33
  of rock and roll in those days is just so different to the huge festivals and things that kids go to these days.
• 4:39
  But, um, I always, yeah, every Friday night we'd go out and, um, get on the, uh, Matus wine and have a bit of a dance to moving pitches or, you know, cold chisel would come to town.
• 4:54
  So it was always, um, you know, and, and then turn up the next day to, to rock a breakfast shift with a 4am start.
• 5:02
  So, um,
• 5:03
  Yeah, that's what being young is all about though, isn't it?
• 5:06
  A lot of love for that sort of music in supercars, which is a part of your world now.
• 5:10
  The Shabu Shabbar takes me back because I, as a little tacker, I don't know, it would have been maybe 11, I can't remember, I made a successful phone call to 2SM Rock of the Power in Sydney and I won that album.
• 5:23
  It was the first ever thing I'd done on kind of radio as an 11-year-old and I still have it.
• 5:28
  I love that album, Shabu Shabbar.
• 5:30
  Classic, classic album.
• 5:32
  So cool.
• 5:32
  And I bet Charlie Fox was the DJ that gave that away.
• 5:36
  And it's so funny because later on in, I used to listen to Ian Grace and Charlie Fox and Ronnie Sparks and 2SM.
• 5:42
  I was with you.
• 5:43
  Same kind of, we're the same vintage.
• 5:46
  And then to actually have Charlie as my content director a little bit later on in life, you know, I used to sit there and shake because, you know, 2SM was as big in those days as what Triple M was in the 80s in Sydney.
• 5:59
  It was a huge part of the culture.
• 6:02
  Was there ever a plan B for you or was it sort of in high school, you were in love with media, you only ever wanted to kind of follow that path?
• 6:09
  Well, I really wanted to sort of be a music programmer, you know.
• 6:14
  I played classical violin as a child.
• 6:17
  Really?
• 6:17
  Yeah, and then gave it up forever because Countdown, you know.
• 6:22
  Mum said it was a lot cheaper to just, you know.
• 6:24
  uh, put countdown on and pay for violin.
• 6:27
  But so music was sort of always something I sort of thought I love, I love radio.
• 6:30
  I used to listen to it late at night.
• 6:32
  I used to love the, you know, the, the way they used to schedule songs and things, but I went to do work experience and they ended up putting me in the newsroom because they really didn't have work experience for anyone in, in content.
• 6:46
  And, uh, yeah, that's how I ended up in news.
• 6:50
  I actually had to really work and, um,
• 6:52
  They had a few people down sick, so I ended up going to court, a 16-year-old going to court.
• 6:57
  Oh, my God.
• 6:58
  So it was quite – and then I thought, hey, this isn't too bad either.
• 7:03
  Every day is different, which is what I loved.
• 7:05
  Right.
• 7:06
  What was the first car?
• 7:07
  Oh, God, I knew you'd ask me this.
• 7:11
  It was my grandmother's and it was a Morris Marina car.
• 7:19
  Hot orange.
• 7:20
  And then I graduated.
• 7:22
  I know.
• 7:22
  I know.
• 7:23
  It was terrible.
• 7:25
  It had, I blew so many head gaskets going back and forward from Sydney to Wollongong.
• 7:31
  It just, anyway, so I traded up.
• 7:35
  I traded up to a Toyota Corona.
• 7:38
  Beautiful.
• 7:40
  And then eventually got into a hold of Gemini.
• 7:44
  Yes.
• 7:45
  And then my first, you know, I guess, you know, beloved car was my Toyota Celica.
• 7:53
  I got into it.
• 7:53
  So it's kind of funny, isn't it, that I'm now technically at Bates and I had quite a few Celica Toyotas in my life.
• 8:00
  Yeah.
• 8:01
  Excellent.
• 8:01
  We'll come to that in this conversation.
• 8:04
  The first proper, I mean, once you got through –
• 8:07
  Letting go of wanting to be a flight attendant and falling in love with media and doing that work experience and so on.
• 8:12
  What was the first kind of proper job in media?
• 8:15
  Was it in a newsroom and what station and so on?
• 8:18
  Yeah, well, I started out in 2WL in Wollongong, which is now Wave FM.
• 8:24
  And then I was there as a cadet journo.
• 8:26
  I never went to uni.
• 8:27
  You know, there was nothing formal.
• 8:29
  It was all very much hands-on, on the road sort of training in those days.
• 8:34
  And then I ended up at 2WS, which is where I met Billy Woods.
• 8:39
  Excellent.
• 8:40
  And then I ended up, and they were all proper jobs.
• 8:43
  I couldn't believe I was being paid a massive $185 a week to do this work.
• 8:51
  And then I moved over.
• 8:53
  I got offered a job at Triple M doing, you know, the weekend, doing all the crap shifts and reading news there.
• 9:00
  And I just had to jump at that because at that particular point, Triple M was just, you know, rocking the city.
• 9:09
  A powerhouse, wasn't it?
• 9:11
  It was a powerhouse of people.
• 9:13
  And that's kind of what always drove me is the people that you would work with
• 9:19
  and have or had the option to just sit down the hall from but and learn from you know because at that age I think when I went by the time I got to triple M I was 21 so I was I'd already you know I started in media at 17 and a half straight out of high school I had a week before I I kind of hit this hit the professional world but you know
• 9:45
  never really thought I missed out on anything, you know, like a gap year or something, because that was just what I wanted to be, to do.
• 9:52
  Yeah.
• 9:52
  We are a little bit last bastion like that in terms of being hands-on, that hands-on learning thing.
• 9:57
  And I still think that is such a valuable asset now, but you would tell, you know, youngsters who are potentially wanting to follow in your, in your footsteps, look, you need a, you know, a degree of some kind, but then
• 10:07
  what you learn when you're in, you know, at the station or whatever is so invaluable.
• 10:11
  So were they kind of mentors?
• 10:12
  Was it people like Billy or others that gave you little bits of help along the way?
• 10:17
  Yeah, yeah.
• 10:17
  Well, Glenn Daniels sadly passed away now.
• 10:22
  He was a terrific influence.
• 10:26
  Goodness me.
• 10:27
  Like mentors, everyone was a mentor, you know, David White, Margie Bates.
• 10:33
  You know, there were a lot of content people that were mentors.
• 10:38
  you know, Hardy Parslow.
• 10:41
  But I guess the biggest mentor for me, who was there through many aspects of my career, was Scott Young.
• 10:51
  who I met at Triple M when he was a cart boy and I was the junior journo.
• 10:57
  Just explain that.
• 10:59
  When you say a cart boy.
• 11:00
  It's the gopher.
• 11:02
  It's the gopher of the station, you know.
• 11:05
  It's the guy that goes and gets anything you want, you know, which is a worry at Triple M. And, again, having his career kind of –
• 11:17
  ran concurrently like in that he ended up at MTV at Channel 9 and they were looking for someone to help write Richard Wilkins scripts as host because MTV came to Channel 9 in the 80s before it became, you know, a Foxtel or a 24-7 station.
• 11:36
  And then Scott, of course, moved from MTV to Channel 10 for the motorsport.
• 11:42
  Yeah, at RPM.
• 11:43
  So that's kind of...
• 11:45
  how my career sort of divergently followed him.
• 11:49
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 11:51
  He's gone on to do some great things, hasn't he?
• 11:53
  Massive things.
• 11:54
  He's got an amazing, amazing title now and working very successfully in Europe and the UK.
• 12:01
  You've piqued my interest in a couple of things here, just on the Triple M side, if we can explore that, if you don't mind.
• 12:05
  So you go there in the heyday, right?
• 12:08
  What are we talking?
• 12:08
  There are probably like a million listeners.
• 12:10
  I mean, it was off the scale compared to now, wasn't it?
• 12:13
  Yeah, I mean, they talk about Kyle and Jackie O at the moment doing well with, what, 11%, 12% of the audience.
• 12:21
  Doug Mulray's show in the 80s was pulling 30%.
• 12:26
  Crazy.
• 12:27
  Crazy, crazy figures.
• 12:30
  So to be part of that juggernaut, and it was a different time too, though, Rusty.
• 12:39
  It was where media was very much part of the entertainment industry.
• 12:44
  You felt really part of it, you know.
• 12:46
  It wasn't that corporation pressure of shareholders and bottom lines and, you know, that sort of world.
• 12:56
  You didn't really...
• 12:58
  Either you didn't want, they didn't tell you about it, but they didn't have to because they were just, it was just the 80s.
• 13:05
  And the 80s was something that, you know, it's very hard to explain that to the generation these days, that what you did get up to in the 80s and it was pretty wild.
• 13:15
  We probably have to hire a bondage and discipline room to get a word out of him.
• 13:20
  Oh, Doug.
• 13:21
  I wrote all my best stuff for you.
• 13:22
  You remember both those things?
• 13:24
  Yes, I do.
• 13:24
  And I haven't seen much since.
• 13:33
  Triple M, 13 degrees, 6.34 as we embark on a totally fine weekend.
• 13:38
  Top of 21.
• 13:38
  Good morning.
• 13:39
  Alison Drower with News Update.
• 13:51
  From one star in the television industry to another, you just have to check out Bill Woods in the garage.
• 13:57
  There are so many stories that you have to hear from the journalist and broadcaster, including a running with the authorities.
• 14:03
  I present to you, Bill Woods, at large.
• 14:06
  Hanging around waiting for Stiffy to finish his thing and then this copper comes up to me and says, are you Bill Woods?
• 14:13
  Yeah.
• 14:13
  Is that your car over there?
• 14:16
  I said, well, yeah.
• 14:18
  Well, it's a hire car, but anyway, he goes, did you drive it here?
• 14:21
  I said, yes, I did.
• 14:22
  And he goes, well, I'm going to have to arrest you because that's so illegal.
• 14:25
  You know, there's so many laws you've broken doing that.
• 14:28
  And I'm thinking, how do I get out of this?
• 14:31
  So I go, well, I work for Channel 10.
• 14:33
  Does that help?
• 14:34
  I said, oh, we're doing the Rally Australia.
• 14:36
  This is good for tourism.
• 14:37
  I'm just telling him all the shit I can think of.
• 14:39
  Anyway...
• 14:41
  After a while, I hear this laughter coming from behind the stage.
• 14:45
  There's Baz literally falling over with laughter.
• 14:48
  And finally, the cop starts to laugh as well.
• 14:50
  He did a great job, that copper.
• 14:52
  He really had me going.
• 14:55
  We'll get his details and get him reported as soon as we can.
• 14:58
  Rusty's biggest issue with the authorities is running a stop sign.
• 15:02
  All right, on we go.
• 15:05
  You rattled off some legendary names that were a part of it all back then from, what did Dougie call him?
• 15:11
  David Marone and White.
• 15:12
  David, David White.
• 15:13
  Mighty Whitey.
• 15:14
  Mighty Whitey.
• 15:15
  Mighty Whitey.
• 15:16
  Yeah, yeah.
• 15:16
  And even behind the scenes, some of the others that you've crossed paths with along the way.
• 15:21
  Some of them that actually would end up at RPM and so on.
• 15:24
  Yeah.
• 15:25
  Doug, listeners will be firstly very interested in him because he would regularly pop up on the Channel 7 motorsport coverage with touring cars and particularly at Bathurst and he brought his unique kind of humour that we loved on Triple M to the 7 coverage of motor racing.
• 15:44
  He properly loved cars and racing, didn't he?
• 15:47
  Oh, he loved it.
• 15:47
  He was a Jaguar freak, you know, and he loved his bikes and he loved, you know, that commentary that he brought to Bathurst was, you know, if you listen to it today, it's just as funny, you know.
• 16:02
  And that's the thing about his genius is it transcended.
• 16:05
  I think he made comedy for the listeners where sometimes these days with radio, you know, stars, they rely a lot on the listeners to provide music
• 16:14
  the comedy.
• 16:16
  So, you know, it was a real craft.
• 16:18
  And I think, you know, Doug just was above and be all anyone when it came to that.
• 16:25
  And they worked hard, you know, Denton and then later, you know, Club of Edge was another amazingly talented duo.
• 16:33
  Yamartina Malloy, you know, all of that, you know, to be...
• 16:39
  on level 25 at Bondi Junction for, you know, five years doing with that model.
• 16:45
  It was actually longer because I did one stint in the 80s with Doug and read news for him there and then I went off to MTV and then I came back in the 90s and lo and behold, Doug came back as well.
• 16:58
  So...
• 16:59
  Yeah, it was quite serendipitous, as they say.
• 17:03
  Pretty special to be around all that.
• 17:05
  Yeah, yeah.
• 17:05
  Some of those, you know, genius people that you talked about.
• 17:08
  I mean, Denton and, you know, all the creativity around all that sort of stuff.
• 17:12
  Now, in the motor racing world, you do cross paths in the Triple M space with one Neil Crompton, don't you?
• 17:20
  Can you remember the early days of it?
• 17:23
  This is our big chance, man.
• 17:25
  He's not here to defend himself.
• 17:27
  And he'll learn.
• 17:28
  He'll know about this.
• 17:29
  So, I mean, kneels on wheels is what Dougie kind of affectionately called him, didn't he?
• 17:33
  And he was very much a part of that framework, wasn't he?
• 17:39
  Oh, look, you know, and motorsport is part of the Triple M framework quite over the years.
• 17:44
  They've sponsored cars, you know, all sorts of things.
• 17:46
  I first met Neil when I was, again, just starting at Triple M. And this guy used to ring in, you know, on weekends with these reports.
• 17:57
  And, you know, news on FM radio is not substantial, let's get real, you know.
• 18:02
  And he'd rattle off and he'd still be banging on, you know, 60, 90 seconds.
• 18:06
  And I'd say, hey, hey, hey, Crompton, Crompton, because it was always Crompton.
• 18:10
  We need 15.
• 18:11
  I need 15 seconds.
• 18:12
  I've got to get the footy in too, mate, you know.
• 18:15
  So, oh, but, mate, this is important.
• 18:17
  This round is important, you know.
• 18:19
  And I'm going, yeah, no, just anyway.
• 18:21
  And I just, you know, edit him to my own...
• 18:25
  you know, needs.
• 18:27
  But then he sort of said, hey, one day he said, I'm going to start.
• 18:30
  And he was quite progressive.
• 18:32
  One of the first projects I ever worked on was a very tacky, I should keep going, a very tacky weekly motorcycle video, which came out on VHS.
• 18:46
  And it was Crompton and I hosting.
• 18:47
  I think Mark Fogarty might have even produced it, one of, you know, the famed motorbike rider, the motorsport rider.
• 18:55
  And it was terrible, you know.
• 18:57
  And I didn't know what I was doing.
• 19:00
  Crompton, you know, just loved being in front of a camera.
• 19:04
  But I've still got a copy of that in the garage, which I threatened to bring.
• 19:08
  Yeah, yeah, I'll have to drag it out one day when I see him.
• 19:11
  But he, again, total professional.
• 19:15
  Very, I think was very torn for a while there between whether he was going to be a great race car driver or a great commentator.
• 19:23
  And that was that period there where he had to really make that choice.
• 19:26
  And lucky for us and all the supercar fans out there, we went down that road.
• 19:32
  Brock was invariably a part of all this because he was obviously teammate to him and Triple M was often on the Brock cars and so on.
• 19:38
  So Peter was sort of in the mix as well too, wasn't he?
• 19:44
  Yeah, he was.
• 19:45
  You'd see a lot of him in and out of Triple M. But it's interesting because whenever I think of Brock, of course, I think of Neil Crogton and that's a bizarre kind of, I guess, connection for anyone that's listening now.
• 20:01
  But I actually had the dubious honour of calling Neil and breaking the news to him about Peter Brock's passing.
• 20:11
  Wow.
• 20:13
  Yeah.
• 20:14
  At the time, I've done a lot of news management, so I was running a news team for Southern Cross Austereo Regional here in Canberra.
• 20:23
  And we got word from my husband, Rick, one of his mates was at Target West and was actually not far, was on one of the corners at the stages that unfortunately...
• 20:36
  led to Pete's death.
• 20:39
  And he rang and he said, he rang Rick and Rick rang me and he said, we'll never believe this, but we think, you know, we think that Rocky's gone.
• 20:49
  I went, what do you mean gone?
• 20:50
  You know, you don't know he's gone.
• 20:51
  Anyway, I said, oh, goodness.
• 20:52
  Okay.
• 20:54
  How do you confirm this?
• 20:55
  How do you confirm this?
• 20:57
  Yes.
• 20:58
  And so I thought, oh, I'll just give Neil a call, you know.
• 21:03
  And I think he was driving down a road somewhere and he had the family in the car, you know.
• 21:07
  And he said, oh, hi, I haven't had you for a while.
• 21:09
  I said, look, mate, I am ringing you for a reason.
• 21:12
  And I told him and he said, no, no way, no way.
• 21:15
  And then, of course, subsequently he said, look, try and ring this person, and I couldn't get through anywhere.
• 21:21
  And, you know, an hour or two later we had confirmation.
• 21:24
  But, yeah, I still feel a little rotten about that.
• 21:30
  But, again, that's the fine line.
• 21:33
  It's the fine line between verifying because it could have been very, you know, I think there was...
• 21:39
  a media outlet that went to air a little bit too soon on that news where I think it's important how do you use your connections to verify rather than end up with a really terrible mistake, you know.
• 21:55
  That's a really tricky thing because on the one hand you're talking ethics, which is super important, right?
• 22:01
  But obviously, you know, you've developed a friendship with Neil by this stage and, you know, you've known each other at this point for 20, 30 years, whatever it may have been.
• 22:09
  And you're having to have a conversation like that and that is tricky, Alison, isn't it?
• 22:15
  That's not easily done.
• 22:17
  Yeah, it is.
• 22:18
  And also, you know, the way Neil held himself with that eulogy that day.
• 22:25
  He was brilliant.
• 22:26
  Absolutely brilliant.
• 22:27
  Yeah.
• 22:28
  Is something that he should never, ever, you know, he should always be proud of that.
• 22:33
  That was incredible, incredible, the words he wrote that day.
• 22:38
  And people often forget that.
• 22:41
  He's a really good eulog.
• 22:43
  writer, producer, and he's a wordsmith, and he's one of the best, yeah.
• 22:50
  Well, we're kind of on, you know, this tone very sadly about, you know, Brock passing and so on.
• 22:58
  We've lost in the last little while a couple of them from the Triple M family like that.
• 23:03
  I mean, not long now in real terms since Doug Mulray left us.
• 23:08
  True.
• 23:09
  A couple of others closer to home, Lou Dimovich, who was, you know, part of the... Part of the RPM family for a while as well.
• 23:15
  Yeah, exactly.
• 23:15
  Yeah, yeah.
• 23:16
  And, you know, Stuart Cranny.
• 23:18
  Was it the rock dog?
• 23:19
  You know, we've, we had, and the beautiful thing is we did have the opportunity last year to get together for the 30th anniversary of the Triple M generation at that time.
• 23:32
  And it was amazing.
• 23:34
  fantastic doug was there rod muir was there um yeah everyone was there and he didn't look great doug you know uncle doug but he was he was there with lizzie and yeah it was just a lovely a lovely way to to reconnect and um and really um get an understanding of of the specialness of that particular era of broadcasting um
• 23:59
  It's something that, you know, we all hold very dear.
• 24:01
  And even now, I was down at Winton the other weekend.
• 24:03
  Zach, my son, was doing a production car race with one of his sponsors.
• 24:08
  And this guy came up and he just started talking about tripling.
• 24:13
  You know, oh, I used to love it.
• 24:14
  I loved it when you did Porno Traffic with Club Veg.
• 24:17
  That was cool, you know, and all of that sort of stuff.
• 24:20
  I loved it when you broadcast from that port-a-loo, when you gave away the house at Tenrath or Paget.
• 24:25
  Like he just, he knew everything.
• 24:26
  You know, what's this guy doing?
• 24:28
  Yeah, so it was, it's still, it still connects.
• 24:30
  And I think probably Carl and Jack are really the only team at the moment that are coming close to having that real generational connection.
• 24:40
  Yeah.
• 24:40
  Yeah.
• 24:42
  What I did love about Doug back then, I would have it somewhere.
• 24:44
  I mean, some of the characters that they did, the skits that they did, and the writing was very clever.
• 24:50
  And that's probably what sets that period and that chapter apart for me, most definitely.
• 24:56
  Now, we've brought together Neil Crompton.
• 24:58
  We've brought together Triple M. Yeah.
• 25:00
  Let's bring together Rally to that conversation.
• 25:04
  Because you two did a Rally interview.
• 25:08
  together now i can vividly i can vividly recall an rpm story which we'll get to but was this first ever rally you did not targa was it something else what what rally was it where were you and how did that all come come together no it was my first ever rally target tasmania i mean if you got to do a rally let's start with target
• 25:28
  And we'd been invited, RPM had been invited to put a Neil Crompton in a car.
• 25:33
  It was just an MG.
• 25:34
  It wasn't anything, you know, it was just a bit, it was just a showroom category, you know, and it was just going to be three days.
• 25:45
  And they said, okay, well, let's turn it into a story for the show.
• 25:49
  And I went down as a co-driver.
• 25:52
  I was clueless, you know, just totally clueless.
• 25:55
  Who taught you, though?
• 25:56
  Did you go and learn some pace notes?
• 25:58
  Yeah.
• 25:59
  I went and sat at Coral Taylor's kitchen table and she gave me, you know, a navigating for dummies overview, you know.
• 26:10
  But the other thing, too, the pace noting came the second year.
• 26:14
  The first year, it was really, we had some dispensation because we were only in the car as kind of VIP people.
• 26:21
  you know, immediate people.
• 26:24
  But no, Coral gave me some lessons there.
• 26:26
  I still, you know, right five into left five over crest 100, caution, all that sort of stuff.
• 26:32
  But Neil, Neil didn't really like it from memory.
• 26:36
  He's definitely a circuit dude.
• 26:39
  God, yeah.
• 26:39
  Yeah.
• 26:40
  He prefers his... Can I interject here?
• 26:42
  Can I interject here?
• 26:43
  If memory serves when you did this story, A, you made him blush, B, you made him laugh really loudly...
• 26:50
  Because you used a line about kids, if you're listening, this is a gag or a play on words, right, which you're great with from your radio days.
• 26:57
  You said something about crompo, can I show you my mappetazzy or something or other, didn't you?
• 27:03
  It was awesome.
• 27:04
  Mate, I've never seen him speechless, but I teed up with the cameraman, Dean Henderson.
• 27:11
  I said, Dino, I'm going to play this joke on Crompton.
• 27:15
  We're going to do a piece to camera to set up the day, yada, yada.
• 27:18
  We're sitting on the...
• 27:19
  And I've got the map out, you know, and Crompton's getting all technical about tire wear and blah, blah, blah.
• 27:25
  And I was just sort of said, well, Crompton, he goes, yes, Ali, because I bet you never thought you'd be sitting here looking at my map, Tassie.
• 27:32
  And he just went.
• 27:36
  And I said, tish boom.
• 27:38
  And it's so funny that, again, that's something that, you know, that sits with the motorsport, the RPM fans for all those years ago, you know, like that you do get that every now and again.
• 27:49
  But also Crompton was very gracious enough to understand that, you know, RPM was entertainment.
• 27:55
  You know, that was the brief that we got when we started that show.
• 27:59
  It's we're going to try and make these guys, you know, the guys doing the
• 28:03
  the V8s, we're going to make them household names.
• 28:06
  So we're going to find their personalities and we're going to find that entertainment in the product.
• 28:12
  Yeah, that was one of them.
• 28:14
  Let's delve into that topic a little bit if we can because it'll represent a good chunk of this pod, right?
• 28:20
  So firstly, you're at MTV.
• 28:22
  which was kind of groundbreaking at the time.
• 28:24
  Richard Wilkins is there, as you talked about, and so on.
• 28:27
  How long were you there for, and at what point does the opportunity to go to RPM for Scotty Young and, you know, I mean, 10 obviously acquiring the rights in whatever it was, 97 and stuff, was that the time that it all kind of started to come together?
• 28:40
  Yeah, well, I –
• 28:42
  I kind of finished up with MTV, sort of finished up about 91.
• 28:46
  And so I went back to radio and I really, that was my full-time gig.
• 28:51
  And I was, I might've been a little earlier than that.
• 28:55
  I can't quite remember because I was at Triple M for the Sydney Olympics.
• 28:57
  I remember that.
• 28:59
  But so MTV kind of wrapped up in the, in the late eighties, early nineties.
• 29:05
  And I went back to Triple M, got a new job, got, got back into, I've been a little ginger about TV after that because it was,
• 29:11
  You know, it was a different genre and I was pretty happy to be back in radio.
• 29:14
  And it was through Scott going from MTV to Channel 10 when they, as you said, they ended up with that huge sweep of motorsport that they said, let's create a showcase program for that.
• 29:28
  And quite, I'll be really blunt, we need a token female.
• 29:33
  And because I'd had, you know, association with Scott, Crompton, Billy Woods, you know, it, it,
• 29:43
  It was a very easy kind of fix and I was quite happy to just sort of have a dabble because I really didn't know what I was doing, I'll be honest.
• 29:51
  I was pretty clueless.
• 29:52
  So we started just as a bit of fun on the weekends and I would go out and do pretty well the light fluffy stuff.
• 30:02
  First time at Sydney Motorsport Park was, I think I did some box spots with the drivers on Saturday.
• 30:09
  you know, whether they have sex before or after a race.
• 30:11
  It was something stupid like that, you know.
• 30:14
  It was a very, I still remember Mark Scaife looking at me like, what the hell is this about, you know.
• 30:22
  But again, it was part of that ability to find that personality, you know, and bring something that was a little bit lighter to a Sunday afternoon program.
• 30:36
  you know, a lot of it, a lot of it seemed a little bit sort of magaziney or lightweight, you know, in the content context.
• 30:43
  But it, the other thing is we wanted more women to watch the program, you know, and, and these days, you know, you only have to look at Drive to Survive, but a 45%, you know, females, you know, audience skill with that, with that.
• 30:57
  And, and,
• 31:00
  I didn't mind.
• 31:01
  I had a full-time job, so it was just more a bit of fun on a weekend, to be honest.
• 31:05
  And it wasn't really until I got to Bathurst that I sort of thought, far out.
• 31:11
  This is cool.
• 31:12
  This is really cool.
• 31:14
  So, I mean, you look now at some of the programs around women in motorsport and so on.
• 31:21
  I don't know that that was necessarily perhaps something you thought about back then, but you're obviously reflecting on it.
• 31:29
  you know, among those that were pioneering kind of into that space in some respects?
• 31:32
  Do you pause and think about that now?
• 31:35
  Yeah, I do a little.
• 31:37
  I've kind of quite liked the idea of trailblazing, you know.
• 31:43
  I have found myself at various times in my career being the token and working out how to find that fit in the product or the shuttle or the content.
• 31:58
  And it was, it is very different now, you know, and I look at the Rihanna Cree and I look at Jess Yates, you know, back in the 90s at RPM, you know, the idea of having a female anchoring a motorsport.
• 32:14
  coverage, it would just never have really even been tested, to be honest.
• 32:20
  So to see Jess doing that now and doing it so confidently is just terrific.
• 32:28
  And Rihanna, she knows her stuff, you know.
• 32:32
  She can read the race.
• 32:34
  They're not faking it, you know.
• 32:36
  They are there because they're the real deal.
• 32:38
  And I think back in my day,
• 32:42
  I really had a crash course, for want of a better term, in trying to get a grip on quite a few genres of motorsport, you know, like rally and MotoGP and, you know, but also being able to...
• 33:00
  hold your own in what was a very male-dominated space for a very long time.
• 33:06
  Much, much fun, though.
• 33:07
  I've always enjoyed working with blokes.
• 33:10
  I've just found myself, you know, in situations where, yeah, it's never been difficult.
• 33:18
  It's never been – I've never had any issues.
• 33:20
  It's always been – it's always been –
• 33:24
  a very generous, nurturing, inclusive environment, which I think a lot of people don't think it could be, but it is.
• 33:35
  It is.
• 33:37
  A lot of that creativity that you had enjoyed over at Triple M, I think, you know, brainstorming ideas and coming up with story concepts and so on, Scotty, and the crew behind the scenes were great at that.
• 33:49
  We would often have those Mossman characters
• 33:52
  get-togethers pre-season and bounce around all sorts of crazy ideas and what we're going to do here and how we're going to achieve this.
• 33:58
  And they were awesome because, you know, even if three or four really significant things came out of it and if you could get those done during the year, you know, from...
• 34:09
  dirt bike rides with supercars drivers to, you know, you name it.
• 34:14
  And I'm told you did do a story with one John Bauer, didn't you?
• 34:21
  Tell us about this.
• 34:23
  Tell us about this.
• 34:24
  And JB was a bit horrified, wasn't he?
• 34:27
  He was mortified.
• 34:28
  Okay, let's do a story on John Bauer Driver Training School.
• 34:31
  Let's send Ali, you can't drive a manual.
• 34:35
  And let's send her to Winton.
• 34:38
  And so we get to Winton and he goes, okay.
• 34:39
  And he goes, I can't drive a manual, John.
• 34:42
  I can't.
• 34:42
  I'm sorry.
• 34:43
  He goes, well, I don't have.
• 34:47
  So he had to frantically look around for an automatic Falcon.
• 34:50
  Or auto.
• 34:51
  Not a Falcon.
• 34:53
  So there we are out going off into the daisies.
• 34:56
  He was so kind.
• 34:57
  I think there was another girl there and they actually substituted my hand movement on the gears on a proper, you know, on a manual so that I wasn't going to be too embarrassed.
• 35:05
  So in the magic of television, I looked incredibly confident.
• 35:09
  But it was more about, I guess, I think that was how do you become a race car driver story or something like that.
• 35:15
  But yeah, but Bowie still has brought that up to this day, you know.
• 35:19
  He's a good sport too.
• 35:22
  He's great fun.
• 35:32
  That's the end of part one of my feature episode with Alison Droher.
• 35:34
  But we're only halfway through this life and time GP with the former RPM reporter who was there in the early days of 10's rise to become the undisputed home of motorsport.
• 35:47
  When you're ready, there is a part two waiting in the garage library for you to enjoy, from magic moments making telly at the track, in the forest, and with an Access All Areas Pass that took fans on a backstage tour, to the work she's doing now, and how motorsport still plays a big part in her life as her son chases the dream of racing full-time in supercars.
• 36:11
  It's all ahead here on Rusty's Garage.