Conversations with CornesyAustralian TV and radio presenter Steve Vizard joins Graham Cornes. His new book is 'Nation, Memory, Myth'.
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Hi everyone, Welcome once again to conversations. We missed Steve Wisad. We miss those Australian television programs, you know, Fast Forward Tonight Live with Steve Wisad. It was a great time in Australian entertainment. We're missing that. And Steve Wisada is a man of significant intellect, humor, social consciousness, and he's an author. He has a new book out called Nation, Memory, Myth, Gallipoli and the Australian Imaginary. Steve Wisad, Welcome to the program.
How are you good? Intro corns. I very much like that as pretty much as I braided, Very very generous and great to talk to your mate.
Well, we do miss those days. I mean, television is not the same, is it.
There was something about live TV. And look, we still do have live TV, but there was something about live TV when there was no internet, there was no streaming, so the only thing you had in your house, the only thing we all had was kind of four or five TV stations, and every one, because they were forced to it, there was nothing else, watched the same four or five shows. And so the power of kind of the nation all being bound together watching those shows and then talking about the same things the next day. It was kind of a unifying thing. And I'd grown up watching that. I'd grown up in Melbourne watching Graham Kennedy and then the Don Lane Show, and I remembered watching those as a kid live TV, seeing Bert Newton and don you know Burt dressed up as Demis Rusos and the real Demis Rusos came out. And then one time when Sammy Davis Junior was in Australia and he had a police escort live on TV from his show which he was doing into the Channel nine studios and then he sang for another hour with Don Lane with the studio band, tap dancing and stuff, and they extended the show and I thought to myself, I love live TV, you know, because it's the same as sport, and it's kind of the same as news. They've got something in common and that is you don't know what's going to happen. It could go anywhere, and to me, that's what I loved about live TV.
You went into production after your stint on TV could still be done. Is there room in the market for shows like that these days?
Well, Sam Payne's got to show at the moment that they're trying on Channel ten. I mean, you know, and I think I'm a huge Sam paying fan and I love Sam, so I'm all for anyone trying it. Of course, it's funny you should say that, Corsey, because uniquely in Australia, if you look at America, they've got tonight shows galore. If you look at the UK, they've got, you know, the Graham Norton Show, a whole lot of live shows pretty much. Most other places in the world have a lot of live tonight shows and the other thing that they've still got going in those places. If you look at America, they've got Saturday Night Live, which is a sketch comedy show basically takes the piece out of what's happening that week. And I think we don't have any big sketch comedy shows. And I think you know what we did on you know, on fast forward and in full frontal or beat with stupendous casts. I mean, it was great fun and it's great to have a laugh, but it sort of served a purpose and that is it. Sort of it sort of popped the kind of hubris and the sort of you know, the pomposity of people in power. There's nothing better to level things than people having a laugh at them, and I think they kind of serve a purpose as well, is making people laugh. So I really miss those shows, and yeah, they could be done. They're being done in America at the moment.
Look, there's so much to talk about. Obviously, I'm talking about your book. I've never had a book with so many footnotes in it? Did you read all of those books and papers that?
No, I didn't read any of them. Courts yet them in the back to make it look like I was smart. I sadly I did read them all, and I only I didn't set out to write this book. So the book's about, you know, about how national myths work. In Australia. Our national myth is is Gallipoli. So I just wanted to understand what is it? What is it about this story Gallipoli that is about a failed military campaign on a peninsula on the other side of the world, where nothing happened that changed the outcome of that war, where it was a failure in every sense, and it was done at the behest of the British Empires. It wasn't even an Australian sort of scheme. Total failure in a military sense. So what is it about this failed military campaign that makes it stick in the Australian psyche Of all the things you know, of all the history in this country, why that thing? And I was fascinated by the whole that a national myth has over a nation, that makes you know, one hundred thousand people at the MCG on Anzac Day who are there ready to go, and they've got cans of beer in their hand, and you've got pies and pasties and hot dogs in the other hand, and they're there with their mates and in a minute's time you won't shut them up. But for that purpose, thinking about Anzac and the Anzac spirit in Gallipoli, they all stand in reverend silence like it's in a church and you can hear a pin drop. And that happens around the country at tiny little places. People get up at the cracker door and at four am and they front up to a memorial in Port Douglas, or a statue in Carnarvon, or the big ones in Adelaide and Melbourne and Sydney where they get forty fifty thousand people turning up. What is the power of that particular myth and the hold over a nation that causes us to do that, and the books about explaining incredible power of national myths over a nation and Anzac and the Anzac spirit in Australia is ours and why it's got such a force over the Australian nation.
See in that discussion there and reading the book, to me, the word myth had to be redefined. So to me, a myth was a fable, something that was imagined, something that wasn't wasn't true, Like you know, we've had myths like Romulus and Remus and Icarus flying close to the Sunday. That was a myth to me. But there's elements of elements, there's truth in your myth, your definition of myth? Can you define that for us?
Yeah, So myth in ancient times an explanation of something. It was, you know, it was like originally before people knew anything about science, it was an explanation of how things worked. And then when science, you know, came to be more powerful, myth kind of got a pejority of sense. Oh it's something that's untrue. But you know, the main meaning of myth is a story that has almost got a sacred explanatory power. That is the traditional meaning of a myth. And for a nation, I found myth is the myth, the story, kind of the sacred story that explains the nation. And that's kind of in every nation's got at Korancia when you think about it. You know, the Americans have got sort of their Civil War and Abraham Lincoln and all that sort of stuff, and the Brits have got Camelot and all that sort of stuff. But for Australia, Gallipoli and the Anzac spirit is the sacred story. It doesn't even need to be true, although it's based on a true event. That's kind of a kind of a sacred story, like a religious story that explains who we are, what makes us tick. And if you want to know anything in a kind of compressed way about the Australian people, just look at our founding myth Anzac and it's all in there. It's an explanation of our values kind of you know that we'll have a go that we kind of got that ability to laugh even in the face of hardship, madship, that's all in there. All the values that we say are a Australian are compressed into our national myth, and that's kind of what it's there for, to tell us who we are.
Can I quote you? The function of the foundation myth of nation is not to convey factual truths, rational explanation, or an accurate historical chronological record of the antecedents of nation. Rather than national foundation myth acts as a compelling, sacred, and emotional touchstone of beginning, continuity, and belonging to inspire and bind the community. Is it true or not? I mean, I'm trying to debate.
So here's the thing. When we talk about an event, we can talk about it in several ways. We can talk about Delipli's history and historians go historians who look at just clinically as an event that happened in the past, talk about it. Oh, you know, it's factually you know, we didn't land at the wrong beach, we weren't better fighters, this, that and the other. So therefore, historically, factually, why do we celebrate it? A myth talks about the same thing, but talks about it in a different way. It takes that event, that actual event, and then changes it. It sort of embellishes it, like you know, it fictionalizes the story the truth is important, but not as important as the purpose that the story is about to serve, and that is to bind to people together. It's to hold people together because one of the things about a nation, it's not just a rational machine. It's not a you know, when we think of Australian nation, what holds us together isn't legislation. I mean, you know, there's been some political debates on God Almighty. We're not held together by the political debates. You know, we're not held together by regulations and stuff. A nation, like a footy club or like a family, isn't held together by all our rational thoughts. It's held together by feelings. It's held together and the way we marshal feelings is through ritual and through myths and through stories. You think about families, you know, all the family stories that relate to your family that no one else knows, and the celebrations and birthdays and anniversaries and christenings and whatever, they're unique to your family. That's what actually holds your family together. And so it is with a footy club. You know, you don't read the constitution of the footy club to understand the footy club. You hear their song, you look at their colors, you think about the memories of the great players, the time you were at the game and you saw this happen, or if you're on the field, the time that that happened, that premiership cup that was raised. That's what makes a footy club and a nation is exactly the same. And so our national myth, amongst all of the other rituals that we have that hold a nation together, our national myth of Gallipoli is at the pinnacle of that. Anzac is the peak emotional story that holds the nation together. And people say, oh, don't we dispense with these sort of things. You know what, if you say that, you might as well dispense with a footy club song with their footy club jumpers, with people turning up to the game and just say well, let's just play a game of footy, they'd be missing the point entirely.
Steve wisad as my guest. Folks will take a break and we'll delve a bit further into this new book of his nation memory myth back shortly, Welcome back, everybody. Steve Wizard is my guest. We're doing this by a zoo. Where are we speaking to you from Steve.
I'm sitting. I'm sitting in my front in my front lund room, surrounded by books as similar to the books you've got. I see you've got books on military things and footy, and I've got the same collection behind me Melbourne in my sitting room. I'm in town because I've got to do a few things today. Normally, Quorncy'd be speaking to me from my farm which is up on the morning to Peninsula. Beautiful up there, it's got beautiful vineyards and just stunning that area of Australia, most there is of Australia. I love it well.
Like your book is called nation Memory a myth. Can you remember when Anzac first touched you? I mean, did your father serve? For instance? Incidentally, your father's name.
My dad's name is Free Lancelot Pitt viisad That was my dad's name. Isn't it a great name?
Well?
Fund that you should say that Godfrey and Lancelot were both of his uncles who both served in the Great War, since you asked, and that branch of the family, the Vaizards Irish, so they all came out. There was there was eleven brothers and sisters. They all came out from ross Common in the middle of Ireland and they arrived in Australia at the end of the you know, the nineteenth century. So they said the biggest Irish accents. They talked like that. I mean, I remember it was still they are talked like that, and then you know they were. They were greatest bullshit artists you ever met in your life. But they were hard working people. So when the First World War came, some of them are quite old, and the youngest was only seventeen or eighteen. Well, four or five of them volunteered immediately, and so my uncle Terry, who was who just turned eighteen, Great uncle Terry, he volunteered, went straight to the front, was served there for four or five months, got shot. He got shot in the buttocks. Actually not funny really, but it is funny. You're going a good shot anywhere, but you get a good shot the buttocks isn't a bad place. He then got treated and he was supposed to be repatriated to Australia, but he revolunteered as an ambulance stretcher and he served the rest of the war carrying the wounded from the front line. And people think, oh, you're an ambulance stretcher carrier. That's safe. They don't stop shooting and they don't stop firing the cannons just because you're an ambult stretcher carrier. So he got through the rest of the war and he came back to Australia having seen virtually the full war and became an Anglican minister because he was so affected by what he saw and spent the rest of his life as an Anglican minister. And another brother, another relative who volunteered, was a widower. He went over there, got wounded too, went to England to recover, and the nurse who was treating him kind of they had a bit of a bond and he ended up marrying her and staying over there. So you know, they've all got stories. But the thing that you can't we know it, but every family, a lot of families would have this is that these are just people. They're people like you or me, or our kids, or our brothers and sisters kids did just young men who were going over there, each with their own story that you know, they're not great warriors, they don't even know where they're going, and suddenly they land in this war. Zone out of nothing, and you know, there they find themselves. So yeah, the answer is, yeah, I did have I did have relatives, but that's not you know, that was sort of hovering around the back of our family gor And see what actually got me interested was and it wasn't sort of like a click on point. It was just in the back of my head. I went to an old boys' school and when I was thirteen, we had a this is how old I am. We had a mass teacher called Frank Potts and he was this really old Wisden mass teacher. But when he came in he was a filling teacher by then.
Now no interrupt. He was South Australian, wasn't he?
It was South Australian. Mister Potts was South Australian. He'd gone to had grown up at Adelaide, gone to Adelaide Uni and then and then what had happened was when he was just eighteen, the First World War had erupted and he'd gone over there and it served in the First World War and he'd seen action, he'd seen the trenches, he had lost may you surf the full duration? It was a sapper actually, So they were the young you know, they were the blokes who went in right into the front line, built the trenches, built the tunnels, built the bridges. You know, it's kind of I reckon the worst of all possible jobs, because not only you were on the front line, you're underground tunneling and doing that stuff. I could not think of a worse job. Frank Potts, this bloody mass teacher we had, would stand in front of us, literally two meters away and would tell us kids, twelve year olds, were our jaws open about going on the troop ship over there and that was an adventure for him, and then going to England and they trained on the Salisbury planes, and he remembered the time that the King came and then he would tell us about that, and then he tell us about the front line, and he tell us about you know, the bloody rats, and he tell us there wasn't a tree in sight and the non stop booming of the cannons and losing his mates and stuff. And he gave us this, and he gave us this piece of advice. He said, boys, he said, if you're ever confronted by mustard gas, and like, yeah, it was the nineteen sixties in Melbourne, he said, But if you're ever confronted by mustard gas, boys, he said, urin eate in your hanky and put the hanky over your mouth, and he said, that will put it'll neutralize the mustard gas. And I literally for year's corns, you wandered around with a hanky in my pocket and a half full bladder, just on the off chance.
It's so funny. Look, it's really not funny, because.
Honey, but you know, it sticks and made What was important to me is a twelve or thirteen year old boy. You know, when you're at high school, the big boys are in year twelve and they were seventeen or eighteen already. That's the boys, the big guys on the oval, with the same age as mister Potts had been when he had gone off to fight that war. And that kind of that resonated with me. How could it be?
What?
Why would they have gone? Where did they go? What made them tick? And so this book I've written about, you know, Anzac and Myth and Memory is kind of about the stories that we tell that would bind people to want to do those sort of things, the sacred stories that would compel people to join together to do these sort of things.
Look, I don't want to give too much away, because you do want people to buy the book, don't you. But I'm intrigued how you describe the Unknown Soldier. You finished the book with the description of the term of the unknown Soldier in Canberra in War Memorial, And I don't know whether you admire this guy or whether you are critical of him. Can I just read it where the Unknown Soldier had been elevated as a transcendent mythic warrior, as the new Man, as an immortal embodiment of purity and chastity, Now he might be revivified as a mere survivor. You are you're dissing this guy.
I'm just what I'm saying.
I think you are.
You need to buy the book to sort this out. What I'm saying is this when those blokes died. I mean, in a way, the First World War was two things colliding. It was man's humans man's bride, and man's technological ability at the time exceeded his ability to control it. And all these new devices like long range artillery for the first time, mechanical warfare for the first time, replacing horses. So man's technical ability had overcome his pride and his ability, and they collided and the world was devastated. But one thing that had happened was all those people who had died would never know. And so that's they were unknown soldiers. My point is that today that unknown soldier, through the very same technology that kind of gave rise to the First World War, that technology through DNA, could now name him. So I asked a question. I don't actually pose an answer. I asked us to choose, and I ask it for a reason. But that technology could now reveal who he is. It could reveal him, since he was unknown, as either a great hero or as a coward. It could reveal him as.
A Why would you introduce that concept that he might have I mean, he.
May have been, because they're men. They're just men. And so I ask a question, what would you do? Do you think we should name these people now that we can It's a question. I don't have an answer. I'm asking the reader to consider this. Now that we can name these unknown men, should they be named or not? You leave him silent?
No, absolutely name because whether they were heroic or whether they you know, they coward in the face of the oncoming enemy. I don't think there's any shame that. I mean, people would say they would be shamed, but unless you've been confronted with that. But the fact that they are there, they're serving, I mean that there's an element of heroism about that anyway.
Turning up all that, I don't seek to answer it. I pose the question, and you've thought about it. It's made you think about what you do. Other people would say, leave them, leave it, leave that story alone, don't name them. But the reason I asked that question is because for the very reason that I wrote the book is even naming them and even saying they were just ordinary guys, isn't the story. That doesn't tell a story. It doesn't tell the story of why they went, what they saw, how they were bound together, what they thought they were doing for their nation, and the very fact that they died for their nation. I asked that question so people will reflect on their life and that body is more than just an individual. It's the story of a nation. So I asked that. I asked that question for a reason to get the people to reflect on you know, that person is more than just a piece of DNA. It's kind of a mythic story about our Nation.
Steve Wisa is my guest. The book is called Nation Memory, Myth, Gallipoli and Australia and Imaginary. It's going to make you think there's no doubt about that. We'll take a break, we'll come back. We'll talk a bit more about that glorious career you had, Steve, whether it be law, entertainment, production and serving on the Special Events committee in Melbourne. Who's stole our Grand Prix? I my add soak shortly. Welcome back everybody. If you just tuned in, we're chatting with Steve. We're arguing with Steve zad actually.
But you're going to talk about the Grand Grand Prix then will be arguing, well.
I'm out of a depth. Actually, I've got no chance of countering you in a battle of words. We've spoken about Steve's book, Nation Memory Myth about Gallipoli and Australian imaginery, and you should buy it. It's a scholarly work. I think there's no doubt about that. I did reach for the dictionary a few times. I was intrigued. We talked about your dad, Godfrey Lancelot visor was he in between wars? Did he not serve?
He was just short of enlistment age for the Second World War, and so he was in the Air Cadets and he'd started training to fly and the war ended, and so he learned to fly, but he never served because the war ended. But he went to UNI. But he was kind of a person who was driven to do unusual things. So after the Second World War, Australia took control of New Guinea and it suddenly had to find out how you administered this new territory. So they set a school up called the School of Pacific Eiled Administration, and they got all these young men, some of whom had just served and some of whom, like my dad, were just about to serve, and they trained them up for a year to be what was called patrol officers. And they were partly sort of they had the power of a magistrate, a judge. They were kind of anthropologists. And what they would do, they'd whacked these three or four blokes in a territory the size of Tasmania or jungle or unexplored. Dad was based at Kerama in the Gulf Region. He was twenty four and he had the power of a policeman. He had one hundred native police force under him and they would administer justice in this territory and they would go on these expeditions. Dad went on expeditions up the Fly River and all these rivers that ran into Kerama through jungles that had never been explored. And the expeditions went for two hundred days, two hundred and twenty days. They're well documented. Every day they'd hacked through the bush, they'd set up a camp. Then the next day they do the same and they're mapping and charting. They're meeting natives or you know, indigenous people who've never seen why people before. There's the pygmies up there called the cooker cookers who were greatly fitted, who are cannibals. My dad was the only bloke I've ever met who had arrow wounds in his chest and his legs. I mean he was, but Dad, It's not like something out of the fifteen hundreds. He was my dad, and he had arrow wounds in him from being fired on by these bloody pigmies for the cooker cookers. So his life was absolutely an extraordinary life. So he was up in New Guinea as a patrol officer for a decade, and then he came back on leave and met my mum and you know, one thing happened and here I am.
But how did he settle down after that? What did he do when he came back he.
Went into Well, it's funny you should say that, because I don't think he ever did settle down. He was a smart guy. Ran a big clothing company in Flinders Lane in Melbourne called Hooper and Harrison that was an national clothing manufacturer, and then he had stores and he had stuff. Quit very early and we bought a property in the bush and that's what he wanted to do. And we were raised sort of on a farm, not far out of Melbourne. But he was probably a farmer at heart, and he was an explorer at heart. So you know, he raised us kids and he was a great dad and very focused on us, and a great husband too. But it's funny you should say that, because in my heart of hearts, I don't think he ever really did settle back down. You're that sort of person and you've led that sort of life. That's what you cut out to do.
How many kids in the family.
So I got a brother, I did law. I got a younger brother, Andy, who's a vet. He was a professor of Vetory Science at Melbourne UNI. But he's got very big hands, and he learned out very early on in his veterory career that he was shitouse with poodles and did a little right to work at a suburban practice and literally, you know, the owners would have let him near. His fingers are too big to be inserting things whatever you have to do. So he became a big animal vet and so he served on the board of the zoo for example here in Melbourne, is one of the directors, and you know, he's uniquely operated on elephants and giraffes and tigers and things like that, which is a kind of a rare thing. And then I've got a sister, Jenny, who's a librarian, and other sister who's been in nursing a whole life sheet tea teaches people how to be nurses, a very admirable career. But my brother's got five kids too, and I've got five kids. So between the two of us, we've got ten kids who all line up. They're best friends. They all line up. If you put him in a line corns my kids and my brother's kids, you literally wouldn't know who's who's They all look identical, so we have good Christmases.
Earlier about your significant intellect? Was it obvious as a kid? Was it obviously at school?
I was lazy as a kid because I wasn't interested in stuff. So I sort of, you know, did or I did it well at school, but I was lazy. And then I got into law and arts at Melbourne Uni, and again was lazy because I just found it a bit boring. So you know, I turned up to the exams and got through, but I wouldn't say it was a keen study. I put it that way.
Did you not win the scholarship though to go to university?
I did, but I mean, but it wasn't through. It wasn't through overworking. I was lucky.
So when you're lucky, to explain that, what do you mean lucky?
Look? I could read the books at the last minute, and I could remember things, you know, I've just got a good memory, and I could understand things. But what I was more interested in, I was more interested because I bet an old boys school the minute I hit UNI and found girls. And also living at home, I've been living in the country and sort of going to a school miles away. So when I got to UNI. I lived in it a college, and it was like the world had opened up. I didn't have to catch a tram or a bus to get anywhere. I was there, I could sleep in, I met the other sticks. I could not believe that life was like this, and so I never turned up to any studies. But what I did do was I found things I was interested in. So I played a lot of sport. I liked basketball and things like that. And I went in it for the first time ever when they had these things called an Archy Review and a law review that was you know, it's like comedy shows things, and generally they were the people who went in them were people who were went in that faculty. They put a sort of an ad in Farrago, which was the university magazine, saying we've got this review cup. So I wrote some sketches, went along and read them out, and the bloke in charge said, that's good. Now you can You'll be in the review. And I just thought, I'll write some sketches. So the first time I went on stage was in this review with a made of mine, Roger Wallace, who was a mathematician guy, and we loved it. You know, people were laughing and clapping. And then what happened was there was a bloke in the audience who had theater restaurants. And at that time, in the seventies, that was the big thing. There were all these little theater restaurants of where people would put on shows, you know, for money, and people would come in and get a meal and watch a show. And he said, I've got a theater restaurant. Do you want to come in and do a show at Christmas? For like, I think it was like six weeks, and he was going to pay me and it was of money. It was so pathetic but it but for me it wasn't It was money. So I couldn't believe that we go down there do a show. It had only taken hour. They give us a free feet and they'd pay us some cash at the end of it. We thought we were on cloud nine. Was this was? This was amazing.
We were a show off as a kid, Were you ANX? We were an extrovert?
I don't think I was. I think I was. Actually I had a sense of humor and I make people laugh. But you know, I was a really late developer like I was as a kid, a really late developer, so all the other kids, I was so late developer. It's actually embarrassing. I hadn't probably chosen not to remember this, but I remember in year eleven, so it's one year off finishing school, we did a production of it was Richard the third of Shakespearean play, and in it is a character called Lady Anne, who's like, you know, the love interest. Remember this now it's coming back to me. I'm actually having arama remembering that I had to dress up as the love interest, like I'm about to go in the final year, and my voice hadn't broken. I was still like, I think I look quite attractive, to be honest, and one of the teachers thought so anyway, and I remember, yeah, dressing up Lady Anne and doing the whole play. And I look back at it now, I think I really was a late developer. So you asked me, was I an extra? But I don't think so, because but I think I worked out that I could be funny and that helped me.
Steve Weisard is my guess. There's still so much to come. We'll try and race through the remaining fifty years of his life. Back shortly. Steve Wisada is my guest on Conversations. It's a great chatties in Melbourne. We're here in Adelaida as we're recording this. It's the weekend of gather around. Do you have a footy team?
I'm a big Hawthorn supporter. When my dad trained for Hawthorne in the for the you know, the under nineteenes. He was a good footballer. So from the very early age and my grandpa we talked about my family. We lived in a he'd done quite well as his irishman. My grandpa and he bought this bluestone mansion called the Hawthorns and it was right on the river overlooking the city and it was the original homestead after which the suburb of Hawthorne was named. So my dad had grown up going to Melbourne High School from Hawthorne and it had it was a beautiful old It was built in the eighteen forties, so it was an early place and so it was right in the middle of Hawthorne. So Hawthorne is always going to be our team. So I was lucky enough to see the first premiership in nineteen sixty one, the second premiership, and in fact every premiership has happened during my lifetime and I've seen everyone, so you know, I've lucked in and I thought, oh, well, we're going to go to a drought period now you know, after Clark has left and Sam Mitchell's taken over. Well, boy was I wrong. We we're back.
Yeah, they're really an exciting team at the moment. But you worked in commercial law. It seemed to me had a really high power job because you worked overseas, you were based overseas.
I did. I became a lawyer and a partner in a law firm quite young. I was sort of twenty five or twenty six, and I got a job working overseas. I was working on these big deals in Germany and Switzerland, and one or two big deals particularly it was to do with the development I mean, boy you but it was to do with the development it's new technology by cr the big mining companies. It was then to turn iron ore straight into steel. Normally it goes through a couple of processes, yeah, pig iron and then you take out more of the oxygen and finding it up a steel. But they were working on this really complex, you know smelting process that adjust all the gases in the furnace so that you can come out with basically usable sort of steel in one process, and it would therefore say billions and billions treations of around the world. So that's what we're working on, the technology and transfers, doing deals with the big German manufacturers and the Swiss manufacturers and the Japanese manufacturers and all of that. And anyhow, I was in Germany at the time, of Switzerland at the time, and I got a call. I'd written a few sketches and stuff while I was being on a plane. I'd always write sketches because I was I loved and sell them, you know. It's a sort of a separate business while I was flying around the world and just to keep my brain interested. And so I was in Zurich with the guy I was working with, a blow called John Carwell on these deals, and I got a call from a bloke who was a programmer at Channel seven in Melbourne, Gary Fenton. And it was the time when the Comedy Company had just taken off on Channel ten and they were all my mates who were doing that show and it became a huge hid success. And Gary Fenton, who ran Channel seven, ranged me all the way. He tracked me down in Zurich and said, listen, would you be interested in you I write and stuff? Would you be interested in doing a sketch comedy? I owned Channel seven to match the comedy company, and I thought, oh god, that sounds interesting. And I went down to dinner at the most expensive hotel we were staying. That's called the Barrow Luck Lake on the Zurich cost a fortune, but it was courtesy of cra or someone so I had was having dinner with John called him a working partner, and I felt like I owed him this huge obligation because of all the work we're doing. I said, mate, I've been offered this job to do a TV comedy show, but it's only eight weeks work and I don't want to let you down, but I'm kind of interested. And he did this thing and I'll never forget it. There was a glass of water on the table opposite it was a beautiful restaurant, you know, the choker block, and he did this thing. He put his he put his finger into the glass of water and took it out, and he said, see the hole that that left in the glass of water. He said, that is the hole that you will leave in the organization if you leave, and I thought, geez, that's a bit that's a bit rough. And then I worked out what he was saying is in the most generous way.
You know.
He said, organizations go on, they'll keep going, and they're kind of thankless places. And he said, don't worry about that sort of mechanical stuff. He said, there's always away with these businesses that keep going. Go and follow your heart. And then he was very generous. He said, and if it doesn't turn out after six months or whatever it is, come back and you can have your old job back. But I'll never forgetting putting his finger in the glass of water and saying see the hole at that left thought, oh jeez, that's a bit rich.
So within ten years you're very us staged. You're the most popular man on Australian television, you win logo awards, you've nominated for logos, you're compulsory watching. We don't have time to cover all of that, but I but I want your memor you know, your favorite memories of those times. And I mean, were you were aware that you made people laugh? You were you were aware of your popularity in those days? Well?
I was aware that you know when I went on air. First we did Fast Forward and literally we got contracted to do eight shows. And what I worked out was, I mean, the idea of fast Forward was really simple. It was a week in the life of TV. It was kind of going through everything that people had seen in a funny sort of way. So it was hinch, it was yan event, It was the movies that were on, it was the TV series that were on, and we parodied all of those shows. And I came up with one device. It was the only decent thought I had, which was for all the crappy bits, were just will either change channels or we'll fast forward, and that way you only have to watch the funny bits or the good bits, and that way it's got a pace to it. So that was the idea of the show. It was called fast Forward, so, you know, and working with those people you think about it. Jane Turner, Geena Riley, Magnizabanski, Peter Moon, you know, then later on Eric Banner, Sean mccarliff, they were all in those shows. So they're funny people. So like, it was really hard work. We were making an hour of comedy every week and we basically did it through Fast Forward and forefront of for ten years. But I've got to say for all of the work, it was really fun. Like we turn up. I mean, I remember the time. It's totally politically incorrect now, but I remember the time. Because I'd flown so much on planes. We were short, we were short of sketches. For that week. We couldn't think of anything. I was sitting getting made up with Michael Veach to go and shoot something, and we started talking about flight attendants.
Oh, we ended up.
He started he'd flown a lot, I'd flowed a lot, and we started being flight attendants. And we thought, Christ, we're short of material, let's just go do some flight attendants. So they found some costumes and wax up and put little badges on them, and we've got this tiny little seat and we just shot us literally improvising being flight attendants. Well, the audience kind of related to it, and everyone related, and so we ended up doing that for about four years. Those flight attendant sketches, they're totally like we would probably wouldn't do those today. But funnily enough, someone said to me he couldn't get away with that now because they were basically gay flight minutes. Funnily enough. All of the flight attendants whenever we blew used to love us. We can get photos with people, we get taken. We were on the front of the Quatis magazine, the House Quants magazine. People were taking offense on behalf of them. But you know, the quotas people loved it. But someone asked us, oh, you couldn't do that today, and I said, well, you wouldn't want to do that today because it's not a thing. But if we were going to do that today, those two flight attendants, if you would do it again, one of them would now be in charge of the chairman's loud and the other would be running Quadas itself, and you'd still you'd still have them. They just would have They just would have got new jobs. That's all.
Out of time, the television career. But then you do all this stuff. You know, we're talking about your social conscience. I mean, you were on so many boards or so many different organizations after that. I mean you started running your own production company. But what do you think that was the most satisfying of those roles that you played after after television?
One of the things I really meant two things, could I say two things? Scorn one of them was we had a thing in Victoria call Victoria and major events.
We know that, we know that they took the Adelaide.
From pre That's one way of looking at it. Yeah, you've got to gather around so it's all equal out. But one thing I will say is one of the challenges they had is we had to get major events to Victoria. And the reason is you want to bring income into the states that we all do. So all of the whole tells were quite in winter. So the idea was a really simple one. What could we do to get people to come to Victoria in winter? So I had an idea and I called it Melbourne Winter Masterpieces. And it was literally to bring to go and get because we've got galleries here. So I went and did. We went and did deals with all of the great museums and galleries around the world to bring all of their masterpieces one each year to Melbourne and put them on so you could get the best, you know, you could get the best from the museums in London and the best from whatever. Won after treasures of this and whatever and that packed out and it's still going in Melbourne. Win to masterpieces. So I was very proud of that. And when people come in and see their masterpieces, then they look at all of the domestic stuff too, and the permanent displays, and suddenly they were just died in art or whatever. So that was one thing. And the other great thing that's been satisfying. We set up a foundation when you know, in nineteen eighty nine called the Vice Foundation, and we set up a house called Viizart House and it's for people who are coming to Melbourne some you know, it could be at some with an operation or whatever, and they can stay there for free. And we've now put up nearly a million people over the years there and it's really good. There's a full time manager's there and people can just come and stay there for free. It's right in the heart of town and it's close to all the hospitals and some of the stories you hear, you know, it's often a breadwinner who's just suddenly had a heart attack and they can't afford to stay anywhere, and they've come from al Jura or from you know, up in the River area or somewhere. They don't know Melbourne at all, but they've got to come. So it's kind of the community there that supports them. So I'm very really proud of the work. We've done a lot of other stuff, but that's I'm really proud of that particularly.
So much left unsaid, Steve. It's been great chatting. Obviously there was more, maybe there will be at some stage. People need to buy your book Nation Memory myth Gallipoli in the Australian Imaginary by Steve Wizard make you think, there's no doubt about that. It will make you reach for the dictionary a few times.
Also made me reach. I've done a lot of interviews over the years and this has been one of the most pleasurable and most informed interviews I've ever done. So thank you.
March cut it out.
That's what you told me to say.
So thanks so good luck And I'm not sure we wish Hawthorn all that much like because they don't need it, but the crows certainly do well.
I wish you luck.
Thank you, Steve, I I guess thanks so much for joining us.
