2023 was certainly the year of VHS Revue. With no writing work on Mad as Hell for the first time in a decade, I figured I’d go all in on the video tape-based web series I’ve been dabbling on since 2008. And I reckon the hard work paid off.
I made 16 episodes to bring the total to 50. This one is probably my favourite:
I thought I’d try doing some PR this year too. I ended up appearing on three radio shows, eight podcasts, plus three TV appearances! Here’s me shitting myself on Studio 10 shortly before the show was axed:
And here I am on Today Extra a mere 34 hours after getting back from Sweden, not entirely sure if any of this was real:
Then there’s the show’s growing audience on social media – especially TikTok – which started the year with about 12k followers and ends it at more than 27k, with one clip gaining more than one million views – a first for me on any platform.
Those 16 new episodes were also just enough to reach the magic 4,000 watch hours on YouTube within a 12 month period, thus finally allowing me to become a partner and start getting a slice of that YouTube ad money. So far I’ve made 28 cents.
The Patreon account has been a bit more successful. Currently the show has 52 paid subscribers. Thanks, you people! And thanks to everyone else who’s helped me make the show – or just watched it – over the last 50 episodes.
But what does the future hold for VHS Revue? Well I’ve certainly got no shortage of tapes…
Other work things and back in March I was in a TV commercial for Seek.com.au.
More of that please.
I had a little writing work on a TV quiz show and wrote a bit of website copy but nothing like Mad as Hell unfortunately. Doesn’t feel like there’ll be a show like that again any time soon, which is a bit of a shame (speaking as both a writer and viewer).
Still panelling radio at SEN. Pushed the buttons for the usual things: AFL, NBL, BBL, AFLW. I also panelled SEN’s first ever netball radio broadcast and did some of the FIFA Women’s World Cup coverage.
The Australia v. France penalty shootout was a pretty special sporting moment to be part of. You can see me on the video through the glass here.
See if you can tell what went wrong…
I also did a few days on Trade Radio and ended the year with three weeks panelling Afternoons with Jimmy Smith and The Run Home with Joel & Fletch on 1170 SEN Sydney.
The Sydney studios were out of action in November/December for refurbishing so all their programming had to be panelled from other studios around the network. It also resulted in my first on-air appearance on said network. Despite working for Crocmedia/SEN since 2012 and being referred to on various shows by everyone from Rex Hunt to Tim Gossage, I’d never actually been on air. Mainly because I can’t talk about sport. Still, The Run Home guys invited me on to say hi and once Jimmy Smith found out I was a comedy writer, well I had to give him something:
[display_podcast]
It’s been so long since I’ve hosted a radio show, I do kind of miss it. So it was cool this year to be part of a podcast pilot called ‘Back in Those Days’ with Isabella Valette, which we recorded at the fabulous HitMaker Studios in Port Melbourne. Hope we can make more of those.
Annika, Gus, Rockley and I have settled into Coburg. We’ve got our favourite cafés, playgounds and local landmarks (ie. The Cat House – if you know, you know).
One of the highlights of the year was our olive harvesting party, where we had some friends round to hang out, eat nice bread and pick the olives off our seven olive trees. We got 62kg of olives, which we had turned into 6 litres of olive oil.
There were still a few buckets left on the trees so I also preserved some in jars, a process I found surprisingly enjoyable. The black ones in particular turned out great. Probably won’t bother with the green ones next time (a bit too acidic. Probably best to use those for oil).
In June/July we spent a month in Sweden for midsommer. It was my first overseas trip since the pandemic, our first long haul flight with a baby and probably the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. But once we got there it was quite nice.
We introduced Gus to Annika’s side of the family. My Mum and her partner Nigel came too and they met all the Swedish relatives. Basically a lot of time with family and friends; eating, drinking, saunaing and enjoying the long summer days outdoors.
I’d been to Sweden three times before but this was my first time driving a car there. Thanks to those skills I picked up on our honeymoon in the US though, it wasn’t nearly as terrifying. Just like riding a bike.
Couldn’t quite say the same for the kayak…
That year 8 canoeing camp didn’t do squat.
Oh and I saw a moose for the first time! Which I’m told is actually quite rare. It was munching on some grass in the glade just outside our house. Had to get out the video camera for that one:
Thankfully the flight back wasn’t as bad.
God if there was ever a time to have a row to yourself…
There a Bob Odenkirk stand-up bit that gets recited quite a bit in our house:
“At some point your kids kinda mutate. They go from being beautiful miracles of love into the worst roommates you’ve ever had. Because they become roommates who: don’t help, who you have to drive around, who don’t think you’re funny, kinda hate you… you have to feed them or you go to jail. YOU go to jail if you don’t feed them. And you’ve had bad roommates but the worst part is you love them. You love these bastards.”
And he’s only 18 months…
No surprise I didn’t watch as many things or read as many books this year. Basically every free moment I had went into VHS Revue. But I did read ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ by George Saunders (2017), which was absolutely brilliant. Very original and full of many funny choices.
My favourite TV show at the moment is ‘For All Mankind’, now in its 4th season and the best Australian show this century returned with the season 2 of ‘The Newsreader’ on ABC TV. I highly recommend all of the above.
Sometimes I reckon I hit the genetic lottery (I mean, just look at that lush head of hair with nary a grey in sight) but I think this might have been the first year where I’ve started to see the cracks of middle age appearing. Particularly while editing VHS Revue, I saw a noticeable difference between the batch of episodes I shot in November 2021 compared to January 2023. It might have something to do with me becoming a parent in between and losing all notion of a good night’s sleep. Or maybe it’s because I shot 16 episodes in a single weekend, I don’t know.
But I’m 36 now. I can injure my back just by reaching for the shampoo in the shower. It’ll be my 20th high school reunion next year! And I’m getting closer to that point where there’s actually more years behind me than ahead. That’s if I’m lucky. Which of course I am.
There have been some horrible, disturbing and disappointing things happen in the world this year. War in Gaza, the failed referendum, global warming, AI, the soaring cost of everything, Elon Musk ruining Twitter. Right wing authoritarianism. It feels like we are teetering on some sort of precipice.
I spent all of January in the zero Covid paradise of Adelaide, watching the crazy events in the United States on TV as their infection and death rates skyrocketed, a violent mob of right-wing conspiracy theorists literally stormed the Capitol Building and their political system teetered on the edge of collapse. It was quite horrifying to be honest. All you could do was watch and hope they held it together.
Luckily those brilliant scientists whipped up some vaccines in record time and adults were allowed back into the White House. But I feel it’s only a matter of time before a new variant returns and starts wreaking havoc. A new variant of Trump I mean. Also the virus.
Summer in Adelaide was surreal. People were walking around in the sunshine and in packed supermarkets, or sitting in a crowded theatre like in the before times. No masks. Almost as if the pandemic and the Melbourne lockdowns were just something I dreamt. It was nice though. Even though I was still very sad about losing my brother just before Christmas and my wife was stuck in Stockholm until April after travelling to visit her dying father, it was good to be among friends and family again.
One way I dealt with my grief over Luke was to throw myself into a new season of VHS Revue, my video tape-reviewing webseries. I had written 10 episodes in the latter half of 2020 with the intention that I’d shoot all my pieces to camera in Adelaide. And that’s exactly what I did, with the help of my good friend Alexis Kotlowy.
I basically spent 3 solid weeks in January editing every night into the small hours and by the end of the month I had 10 new episodes, which I released over the first half of the year. There were times when I was editing where it felt like Luke was sitting on the couch next to me, occasionally offering suggestions just like he used to 20 years ago when I made little cartoon animations in Microsoft Power Point.
One joke in particular I reckon came straight from Luke. The animated Pierce Brosnan line-up in this episode:
He would have laughed hard at that one.
I was quite happy with these new episodes. Got some nice comments and about 200 new YouTube subscribers this year. I also launched a Patreon account and acquired some wonderful financial supporters too. With that money I was able to buy a better video camera and some other equipment so the 8 new episodes I’m working on at the moment will all be in high definition (1080p at 50 frames per second).
Yeah, I think I’m done with the degraded VHS look. It’s too much trouble and I wonder if it deters people from clicking on the videos? I’m sure the YouTube algorithms kick non-HD videos to the back of the queue. So look out for those shiny new ones in 2022.
In February I drove back to Melbourne just in time for Lockdown 3. That one was only a few days so compared to the other ones it hardly counts.
Went straight back to panelling radio at SEN. Panelled all the usual stuff: AFL(W), tennis, A-League, horseracing, cricket (BBL and The Ashes) plus a bunch of shows around the network, from Perth to Adelaide to Tasmania to Brisbane and now New Zealand.
Panelling radio is a strange job really, especially when I’m not in the same room as the on-air talent. One of the Big Bash League cricket matches was played in Sydney. The commentators were in Perth, calling the match off a TV screen. And I was pressing the buttons for it at head office in Melbourne, sitting in a studio on my own. There are people I’ve worked with for years, talk to regularly, and have never met. Or even seen their face.
For the second year in a row the AFL Grand Final couldn’t be held at the MCG due to a Covid outbreak, so Optus Oval in Perth staged it. I panelled one of SEN’s four calls, all going to different radio markets. They had two commentary teams in Perth and another two calling off the TV in Melbourne. I upheld tradition and wore a suit. Not the best lighting in those upstairs studios…
Annika was due to fly back to Melbourne from Sweden in late March but Melbourne still hadn’t resumed hotel quarantine for international arrivals, so her flight was changed to Adelaide.
In April I drove back to Adelaide during that brief period where there were no cases anywhere in Australia and all the state borders were open.
I visited her towards the tail end of her two weeks isolated in Peppers Hotel in the city. Gave me a good opportunity to test out the zoom on my new video camera.
We drove back to Melbourne via a couple of days in Halls Gap. Beautiful country.
In May I was back writing on Season 13 of Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell. Was great to be back in the office again without the masks. Unfortunately that didn’t last long and on May 27 we were back in Lockdown 4.
The studio audience was all set to return as well but the ABC pre-empted the official lockdown and made the call on May 25 – literally just before taping the first episode – that we were going ahead without the audience. Probably the right move.
Lockdown 4 lasted a couple of weeks and was notable for us because we got our rescue cat Rockley. I’ve always been more of a dog person but I think he’s converted me. We love him.
So I wrote from home for a couple of weeks before we were allowed back into the office and by episode 6, the studio audience had returned. It was so great to hear the sound of laughter again. I’d forgotten what it sounded like. But alas, it was short lived as the 12-day Lockdown 5 began July 15.
We were really jerked around this season. It was annoying for sure, but I understand the reasoning. The “let it rip” alternative would have been far worse.
Couple more weeks writing from home before the office opened up just in time for my last 2 writing days before closing again for Lockdown 6. That was the big one. And things didn’t open up again until November when 80 per cent of Victorians were double vaccinated.
Made a couple of cameos this year in between lockdowns, with various face coverings.
I was relieved when I finally got my Pfizer vaccines. Would have been nice to get them a bit earlier and maybe avoid some of those lockdowns but I think Scott Morrison had a photoshoot with a bird feeder or some time sensitive rorting to do or something. Understandable.
So it feels like – in Melbourne anyway – we spent about as much time stuck indoors this year as we did last year. Consequently I read about 10 books. I think that’s a PB.
The best of them was Van Badham’s excellent “QANON AND ON”. Very well researched, fascinating and deeply disturbing. Reminded me of (my favourite) Eric Schlosser and his style of non-fiction writing. I highly recommend. I read quite a bit of it while queuing up at the drive-through testing clinic outside Chadstone Shopping Centre.
Other achievements include finishing a puzzle my sister Hannah sent me and also finishing GTA San Andreas to 100 per cent. Man that NRG-500 Challenge is a bastard.
Oh yeah and last year’s season of Good Afternoon Adelaide won the Antenna Award for Outstanding Sound (two in a row!). Had the ceremony been scheduled for one week earlier, it would have just snuck in before the lockdown chaos but nope. They rescheduled a couple of times but it just wasn’t happening so they finally decided to do it remotely. Fortunately community television has that capability, what with being a television broadcaster and all.
And in fact due to sustained community pressure, the federal government caved once again and gave Channel 31 and Channel 44 extensions to their broadcast licences. Swish!
I was also a guest on a few live streams. They were good fun. It’s sort of like television except I’m on it.
It was nice the SA border opened up again just in time for Christmas. Of course, it has lead to over 1,000 cases a day in Adelaide but it also meant I could see my family for the holidays. So… roped off swings and roundabouts clogged with cars lining up to get tested.
We’re back in Melbourne to see out the end of the year. The cat was happy to see us after spending 5 days in a cattery. His meow sounds a little different now though.
Something new for 2022, and a decade since I moved out of Coburg, I’ll be moving back as we’ve somehow bought our first house. Looking forward to being north side again. The last few years in Malvern have been a little sterile. Although it could just be because I’m sliding into middle age… Well we’ll see about that.
I get the feeling things are still going to get a bit worse before they get better what with 21,000 cases in New South Wales today. But if we’ve all come this far… well what are ya gonna do?
Well the results are in for 2020 and, yeah not so good.
I began the first day of the decade by panelling some radio on SEN for that fabulous public holiday money, then heading to the beach at Black Rock with Annika. I remember feeling a bit guilty about lying on the sand in the sun while on other beaches around the country, people were being evacuated in landing craft by the navy as the ‘Black Summer’ bushfires raged through communities. Of course, our prime minister pissed off to Hawaii and then had his office lie about it so maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on myself.
In the days that followed, Melbourne became choked with smoke and briefly had the worst air quality in the world. You knew it was bad when you started seeing white people walking around wearing masks.
For the 4th year in a row I was an audio operator at the Australian Open. Early on when they were testing the sound and light show, I saw a spotlight cutting a beam through Rod Laver Arena. My first thought was “oh, I didn’t think they were using the smoke machine for this?” No, they weren’t. That was just the smoke from the bushfires INSIDE the arena with its closed roof.
Then it was back to the ABC’s Southbank studios for the usual tomfoolery on season 11 of Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell. No better place to be for the 10th anniversary of my move to Melbourne.
The first half of the season was business as usual. Mum even came over from Adelaide to see a taping. That’s her in the yellow jacket and the same hair style as Michelle Brasier’s character:
My brother Luke enjoyed watching that on TV back in Adelaide:
But that little story about a new coronavirus outbreak in China turned into a story about people trapped on cruise ships, then the health system in northern Italy being overrun by cases, then Iran and New York and every day it seemed to just get closer and closer to home until quite suddenly the Grand Prix in Melbourne was cancelled and we got the call we couldn’t have a studio audience. Like, literally one morning Shaun was saying he reckoned we should be able to make it through the last 6 episodes with our audience and then a few hours later, nup. But I suppose we were lucky to be able to continue at all. Fortunately the ABC is an essential service.
The writers kept coming to the office for a couple more weeks and then we all just wrote from home. We were also only allowed at the taping on the Tuesday night if we were an extra in a sketch. Otherwise, we could watch a live stream at home or just wait til Wednesday night and watch it on TV with everyone else.
The show itself was a little bit different without a studio audience and it took some getting used to the sudden absence of laughter, but I think we adapted quite well. Sometimes it was better actually because you could hear every word. Personally though, nothing beats a big laugh from a crowd to give a joke that undisputed tick of approval. And when it’s a joke you’ve written, it’s the best feeling in the world. I’ve really missed that this year and I’m sure my stand-up comedian friends have missed it even more.
Not to mention no end of season wrap parties this year.
Our whole society changed this year and a lot of those changes will probably be permanent. Like additional barriers between customers and employees at supermarkets, hand sanitiser dispensers at the entrance to stores and markers on the ground to help with social distancing. Now they’re installed, I think they’re just going to stay with us. And they’ll be incorporated into the design of new buildings.
Hopefully this will spell the end for the open plan office. I am yet to meet a single person who likes them.
In March I got a call from Crocmedia to let me know they had to stop all casual shifts because so much live sport had been cancelled. Panelling their radio coverage of AFL has been one of my main sources of income the last 8 years. But I only lost about a month’s worth of work before they got me back in under the JobKeeper scheme. I ended up panelling mostly the weekday afternoon show on SEN – ‘Dwayne’s World’ with Dwayne Russel – as well as SportsDay on 3AW with Gerard Healy and Sam McClure (both done out of the same studios). It was nice to have a reason to leave the house. The 2020 AFL Season eventually resumed, but man the logistics required to make it work this year are astounding. Will make a good ESPN documentary some day.
Crocmedia officially changed its name to Sports Entertainment Network this year and Hit107 in Adelaide changed back to SAFM, as it was called when I had my first radio panelling job there back in 2008. I don’t think it’s a real radio station unless it changes its name and/or frequency at least once a decade.
Although I didn’t panel the AFL Grand Final coverage, I did panel some of the pre-game and took the opportunity to keep the tradition alive of “wearing a suit to the big games” (as Rex used to say).
We thought things might be back to normal by the time pre-production for Mad as Hell season 12 rolled around in July but just as we started, Victoria’s second wave of Covid was ramping up.
My first day back at the office was day 1 of mandatory masks in Melbourne. I did 2 weeks at the office before we were all writing from home again. But on one of those fleeting office days, I wrote this Bunnings Conspiracy fake ad, which is probably my favourite thing I’ve ever written for anything, and so brilliantly executed by Emily Taheny and Stephen Hall.
Melbourne’s second lockdown was much more severe than the first. There weren’t many reasons we were allowed to leave the house and when restrictions were at their peak, we couldn’t travel more than 5km from home unless for essential work. So like all of Melbourne, Annika and I spent a lot of time staying in. We made the most of it. Watched all of Stargate SG1, Stargate Universe (underrated show – what are the chances of a reboot?), Schitt’s Creek, and a few other things I can’t remember.
With all the fun things in Melbourne closed, it was fortunate I had a big project to work on while stuck at home for all those months; that of editing season 2 of ‘Good Afternoon Adelaide’. Lucky for us we shot all the footage just before Christmas last year. And spending a large chunk of this year at my desk, staring at a screen and sorting through footage of my friends laughing really felt like I was still there hanging out with them.
Season 2 of GAA consisted of six half hour episodes, all of which are now up online. But if you’ve only got two and a half minutes, watch this:
And then this:
Oh and you may as well watch this one while you’re at it. And big thanks to John Hnatowych for the brilliant ident at the end and Yuri Worontschak for the Channel 9-eque music that goes with it:
And thanks to a hard won campaign to get community TV’s broadcast license extended for another year, the episodes did get to air on Channel 31 in Melbourne and Adelaide’s Channel 44, which was cool.
It was particularly difficult this time as the current Minister for Communications and The Arts, Paul Fletcher, apparently didn’t know what ‘community television’ is. Or what ‘television’ is. Or ‘community’. But I suppose it’s a bit ridiculous these days to expect a minister to have a basic understanding of their own portfolio. I mean, they only work 4 weeks a year or something.
So I guess community TV will be running the exact same campaign to stop the current federal government from killing the industry again in 2021. It’s been an annual tradition since 2014.
Speaking of Adelaide, state border closures in the wake of the pandemic (the first such closures in more than 100 years) meant I couldn’t visit my home town all year. The last few years I’ve been going back every month or two, mainly to see my brother Luke, who’d been steadily declining in health as he approached the final stages of a terminal degenerative condition called hereditary spastic paraplegia (or HSP). Our sister Alice had the same condition – she died in 2016.
After the first wave started to die down around the country in May, SA announced it would open its border to Victoria on July 24. I was really looking forward to getting over there. 7 months was already the longest I’d been away from my family and many close friends who still live there. But the case numbers remained stubbornly in the double digits and then started to take off, causing the border re-opening to be delayed indefinitely. I had a thought at that moment that I was probably not going to see my brother alive again.
Meanwhile, Annika faced a similar dilemma with her ill father in Sweden, who had been undergoing treatment for cancer the last few years. It can be tricky to drop everything and fly to the other side of the world in normal times, but now there’s the increased risk of getting Covid oneself, then the prospect of months waiting to get back into Australia, not to mention the increased cost of the flights plus two weeks of hotel quarantine upon returning. But she got permission to leave Australia on compassionate grounds and managed to make it there and be with him for a few days before he died on November 25.
I’d spent time with him the three times I’ve traveled to Sweden with Annika. He always made me feel welcome and I enjoyed his company and our discussions of history, movies and space travel. He had a keen eye for style and a great sense of humour and I’ll miss him.
Back in Melbourne, we had finally got the second wave under control and were now seeing weeks of zero new cases and zero new deaths – so called “Double Donut Days” – and South Australia had announced the Victorian border would be open again on December 1.
It really was an extraordinary effort by the entire Victorian community. Even more amazing when you consider that fighting on the side of the virus was also an opportunistic and inept state opposition, a buck-passing federal government lead by a part time prime minister and the Murdoch media pushing their usual agenda. On those days in July and August where we were seeing new cases in the six and seven hundreds, I think a lot of us had just about given up hope. But we pulled together in a way I’ve never seen before, and probably not seen by anyone round here since World War 2. Quite incredible. People will no doubt be talking about this for hundreds of years.
I was so relieved I was going to be able to see Luke after all. He had really been struggling to talk the last couple of months and he was having difficulty swallowing. That’s not good. I could still get him to laugh though when I busted out the Simpsons quotes during our video chats. He was looking forward to me visiting as well. His carers made up a sign on his shelf that counted down the sleeps until I drove over.
There was one more scare though. In November, a breach in Adelaide’s hotel quarantine and a subsequent cluster at the now infamous Woodville Pizza Bar lead to a sudden and severe lockdown. Thankfully they got on top of it and it turned out not to be as bad as first thought, but my heart rate was up for a couple of days there.
So finally on Tuesday December 1, after 11 months away, I drove from Melbourne to Adelaide. Had to stop at the border and quote a reference number to a police officer (even though the border was open, people still had to register online beforehand). It was actually surprisingly easy in the end. A few hundred metres later I was welcomed by a Stobie Pole guard of honour.
I drove straight to Luke’s house in Pasadena. When I arrived he was sitting in his wheelchair at his computer, watching Pimp My Ride (which seems to have been his favourite show this year). He was thrilled to see me and I almost couldn’t believe I was actually there. I sat and watched a couple of episodes with him and then put on some Rick and Morty season 4, which I’d been saving all year so we could watch it together. Lots of laughs, just like old times.
The next day I went back again and we watched more stuff. Then Dad and my sister Hannah and her partner Nick came round and we had pizza and watched Flying High in the lounge room. It was so great. After that though, Luke went downhill quite quickly. Thursday he lay in bed and we all hung out in his room and watched fun things all day. He still laughed a few times at Rick and Morty. Friday, he was barely conscious and it was now clear he had pneumonia. We listened to his beloved Beatles and watched old home videos and reminisced about the good times. Saturday he was worse, and he died at 7pm.
Life is so precious.
A lot of people have experienced the death of someone close this year. And many wouldn’t have had the luxury of being there in person. I’m glad both Annika and I were with our loved ones. In a perfect world, I would have been in Stockholm with her and she would have been with me in Adelaide as well. Although, in a perfect world neither her father nor my brother would have been sick in the first place. But if it’s a choice between being there or missing it, and you have a choice, I say you’ve just got to be there.
We’ve known this was going to happen for a long time. In 2005, Luke started to have trouble walking. By 2009, we learned what it was and that it was going to just keep getting worse. We knew theoretically he probably wouldn’t make it to age 30. But when my sister Alice died aged 27, it was such a shock. It brought our whole family closer together as we made a real effort to see Luke and each other as often as possible. I started coming back to Adelaide more frequently (until this year).
The reality of what was to come had been hanging over us for four and a half years. Every time Mum’s name popped up on my phone, my first thought was: “Is this the call? Am I going to the airport now?”
Because Alice was only 27, I think we all assumed Luke wouldn’t make it past 27 either but he made it to 29. Each of the last three Christmases I thought would be my last with him.
I don’t think knowing it was going to happen made it any easier. But it did make us squeeze the most out of the last four years as we possible could. Luke’s life really was the best it could have been. Two trips to Melbourne (one to see Mad as Hell and the other to come to my wedding). Lots of great birthday parties, trips to the movies, his regular ‘Sunday Night Dinners’ with the extended family, lots of presents, lots of laughs. Lots of love.
Luke received outstanding care from his carers at Community Living Options (CLO). They just got him and over the last few years, really maintained his quality of life and dignity. They made sure he had fun every day, even when some of those days were pretty tough. It was also great visiting Luke because it was a surprise to find out which carers were on and always good to have a chat. Many of them I now consider part of our family too. And I want to give a special mention to Ruth and Sharon, who came with Luke on both of his Melbourne trips and spent many Christmases with us.
I also want to thank my Aunty Lorry and Uncle Graham for the years of love, and especially for their help with Luke’s palliative care towards the end. It meant my Mum (who like them, is also a GP) could just be a Mum.
Most people don’t want to talk about death or think about end-of-life care but we all have to face the reality eventually and with our ageing population, it’s only going to become more commonplace. I don’t know about you but lying in my own bed, watching my favourite shows, surrounded by people I love sounds pretty good to me.
I miss Luke so much. I have so many great memories with him. We spent so much time together growing up, riding our bikes around the backyard, going to Marion, playing video games and watching funny TV shows and joking around. He was my favourite person in the world to make laugh; usually with a line from The Simpsons.
Because of his Asperger’s Syndrome (or autism spectrum disorder, as they call it now), it was hard to get Luke to smile for photos, so I used to get him to laugh by whispering a quote in his ear just before the photo. Here’s us at our cousin Alex’s wedding in 2018. From memory the quote was “Can you pass me a handful of peanuts? No not those peanuts… the ones at the bottom”.
In fact, I’ve got tons of these.
Luke’s funeral was at the Port Noarlunga Surf Live Saving Club on December 16. It was a wonderful service with Simpsons jokes, a James Bond cardboard cutout guard of honour, Beatles music & decorations and a beautiful eulogy by Ruth McIntyre and my sister Hannah.
He would have loved it.
We were actually in the lounge room at Luke’s house 3 days after he died, discussing whether to have that Bart Simpson “Hey cool. I’m dead” image in the booklet. Aunty Lorry first suggested it and I thought it was hilarious and knew Luke would have loved it too. Mum wasn’t convinced, so there was some debate. But just at that moment, a light fitting fell out of the ceiling about a metre away from us and crashed onto the tiled floor, making a loud noise and scaring the hell out of all of us.
We all agreed that was Luke giving it his approval.
So it’s been a pretty bad year. And it’s been especially sad to see how nations one would think would know better – like the USA, UK, Sweden and others – have so badly mishandled the pandemic and caused so many people to die needlessly and left so many others to now deal with chronic illness. We are pretty lucky here in Australia.
But you know, I still feel like 2016 was worse. At least this time Trump lost. But also, I think this year has really made me appreciate the good things. A lot of them very simple things that are so easy to take for granted, like sitting in a cafe and drinking a coffee, riding a tram, hearing a crowd of strangers laugh in a darkened room, seeing family and friends.
My experiences this year have lead me once again to the same conclusions. Live life to the fullest. Do all the things you want to do. If you want to do something, and you can, don’t wait. And do what makes you happy. But you know all this already.
Well, hope you had a good 2018. Here are the things what I did:
I started the year again at the Australian Open working nights at the Rod Laver Arena audio panel. Highlights include playing “Men in Black” on the PA when the camera cut to Will Smith in the crowd and riding the levels for special guest on-court interviewer Will Ferrell. Was also great to get to crank “Sweet Caroline” during Caroline Wozniacki’s victory lap after she won her maiden Grand Slam title.
There was a bit of overlap with the start of Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell series 8, the first to be shot at the newly expanded ABC Southbank studios. And in fact there were 3 days there when I did a full day of comedy writing, then walked across Swan Street Bridge to Melbourne Park, scoffed down some dinner and panelled the audio until 1am! Not in a hurry to do that double again…
But that’s the life of a freelancer. From intense periods like that to a pretty quiet couple of months of underemployment in the middle of the year, I must say.
There were two seasons of Mad as Hell this year, which was fantastic. They haven’t done two seasons in the same year since my first year with the show back in 2014.
Speaking of which, if you’ve ever wondered what I actually write on the show, I recently cut together some of my finest gags from series 3 to 8:
Made a few cameos this year too…
But the big highlight for me – aside from being shot and strangled – was having my brother Luke visit and attend a Mad as Hell taping. I’ve been in Melbourne almost nine years and this is the first time he’s come over from Adelaide.
It was quite the ordeal organising it (he’s been confined to a wheelchair for about 5 years now, so has some special requirements). When Luke expressed an interest in coming over, Mum looked into it and discovered while Luke could easily fly on a Qantas plane, his wheelchair was too tall for the 737 cargo hold. And while a Jetstar A320 could fit the wheelchair, they didn’t have the lifter required to get Luke into the seat on the plane. Those are the only two aircraft that fly from Adelaide to Melbourne. Virgin was no help. Seemed like an obvious solution for Qantas and Jetstar to share the equipment, but alas not.
Ultimately, it came down to my tireless Mother not taking ‘no’ for an answer. And thank you too to the people on Twitter and Facebook who shared my Mum’s post and the ABC journalist Alice Dempster who wrote a story on it, which eventually convinced Qantas and Jetstar to cooperate.
Luke had a great time. I gave him a tour of the studio and we watched the show from the green room. Afterwards, I introduced him to Shaun and the cast. He was absolutely thrilled and it was a really special moment that made it all worth it.
Mum, Luke and two carers Ruth and Sharon stayed overnight in a nearby apartment. They hired a special bed and a lifter to get him in and out of the chair. It was a lot to organise and we all lost some sleep worrying about everything going according to plan, but in the end it went brilliantly. I wish we did it years ago.
The next day, Annika and I met them for breakfast and we took a stroll across the Princes Bridge to Federation Square and I pointed out some of the sights to Luke.
Thank you so much to everyone at the ABC, Mad as Hell, and the airlines for their help in making this trip so enjoyable.
Qantas told us this would be a one off, but I’m hoping we can do it again. The easiest and obvious solution would be for Jetstar to get some lifers and train their staff. I really hope they do that as soon as possible. Makes me wonder how many other disabled people out there are discouraged from travelling because it’s all just a bit too difficult.
ABC News even did a story on it:
Was quite bizarre to see Luke on TV instead of me for a change!
I was back on the buttons at Crocmedia this year, mainly panelling the AFL. That place is growing like crazy. In April, Croc actually merged with Pacific Star Network, owners of sport station SEN 1116AM. Consequently, there was a bit of cross over with staff this year and I ended up doing some panel shifts at SEN back in their Swan Street studios.
The same studios where in 2011/12, I panelled The Steve Vizard Show on Melbourne Talk Radio. Bizarre how the Australian radio industry seems to go in circles sometimes. Just for comparison, spot the difference:
As part of the merger, SEN is moving into the Crocmedia building in South Melbourne. My last (probably) shift at Swan Street was panelling the cricket on Sunday December 16. I’ll miss those studios in the quiet corner of Richmond. Probably Melbourne’s last ground floor radio studio with a tram right outside the window.
A lot of history in that building, going back to the dying days of 3AK. Well before my time. I hear someone’s writing a book about it.
2018 also saw the TV debut of Good Afternoon Adelaide on Melbourne’s Channel 31, Adelaide’s Channel 44 and Perth’s West TV.
There’s more of the Adelaide-based early ’90s talk show parody in the pipeline. Not sure what exactly and when it’s going to come out of the pipe, but watch this space. I will say it involves a bus…
Also had a great time shooting 4 new episodes of VHS Revue. And thanks again to Stephen Hall for this cameo. A few fans have sent me some more tapes, which are currently sitting on my desk waiting to be revued in 2019.
Other creative things…
I finished a first draft of the screenplay I started last year. It’s called “Life Hack”. Want to read it? Email me.
I signed up with a new agency, Larkin Creative, as I’m interested in more on camera comedy performance. There’s a growing number of screen tests and acting appearances on my Vimeo channel.
Went to Stockholm again with Annika for my first proper Midsummer. A great time as always. So much daylight that time of year. It’s fantastic. In fact you might say I developed Stockholm Syndrome. But you would be incorrect.
Enjoyed a few saunas, some fishing and took a ferry to the island of Sandhamn out in the archipelago for a day.
Annika’s Dad even welcomed me by hoisting an Australian flag up the family pole. Sensational. Probably about time we lose that Union Jack though.
Closer to home, we spent a nice weekend in Ballarat for the Begonia Festival in March. Annika went for the flowers.
I went for the busts.
We’ve settled into our place in Malvern and signed on for another year. Two moves in 13 months was more than enough.
It’s been great. Lost count of the number of barbecues we’ve had this year. And not a bad picture to wake up to every morning:
In May, we had our engagement party in Adelaide and the wedding is set for 29 March, 2019 in Melbourne. That’s also the Brexit deadline for Britain to leave the EU (unless they postpone it). Regardless, should be a day full of happy memories for both us and the British people.
