Catching up with Steve Vizard

Published Jun 12, 2025, 4:05 PM
Phil catches up with Steve Vizard, a familiar face on Australian TV and best known for his role in the seminal comedy series Fast Forward. With a diverse career in television, radio, and business, Steve is also a prolific writer and a seasoned media personality across Australia. Check out Steve’s new book Nation, Memory, Myth, available at all good bookstores

We do a segment called Peeping Tom. You suggest somebody, somebody that we haven't heard from for a while, who's a bit of an Australian icon, or even somebody who's an extra in.

A decoree ad. It doesn't matter.

You did suggest we try and get the girl from Ants Pants, Sick and Wrecks. We found out a great backstory about this lady, but it looked like it was too hard to get hold of her, so we decided on Steve Wizard. Now Rob who was filling in for Dale and tonight that Camilla is filling in for Rob, filling in for Dale. He's given me a phone number to call and it just says Steve Wizard and a number. So that's who you wanted us to find in Peeping Tom. Let's see who we've got. Could be anybody. Hello, Steve Wizard, as I live and breathe, it's Phil here at two GB. What a pleasure to talk to you.

How have you been?

Phil?

Fit is a fiddle. I've I've just been down on my farm. We've had rain down here. My grapevines are looking very weird.

What's the wine called? I hadn't heard of this one?

Well, we just started growing up we have. In fact, that's a great thing. Phil If anyone's got any great.

Values, you've come to the right God.

Have I come to the right place?

Trust me, that's my reason to live. Or as the French say in the wine vernaculum, I raised on Detra. By the end of this organically like a fine grape, I will have a name for your wine. But let's go back, excellent to the nineteen seventies. How does a young man studying law and philosophy at the University of Melbourne then go on to become Australia's biggest TV style And I know the journey is a long one, but was that in the back of your mind at any stage that you would veer from law to television.

It was the most unlikely thing, because I came from a small country town or sort of semi rural town outside Melbourne and I went to Melbourne UNI.

And you know, I would have been.

Happy just to have done that, because it was I lived in a college and have you grown up in the country literally to be at Melbourne UNI?

And I beat it all boys' school.

So suddenly myself in the city at a place where I didn't have to get up until whatever time I wanted, which was generally approximating midday, and no one was over you. You didn't have to go to lectures if you didn't want to, and I didn't, and you know, and I met the opposite sex for the first time, and suddenly life made sense, because up to then it was looking pretty bleak. There were two comedy reviews at Melbourne Uni, a Law Review and an Archy Review, and there was an ad in a student paper Corps for Rago to audition, so we'd in it, wrote a few sketches with a made of mine, thinking we just write the sketches, and we went and read them out. The blake said, you have a leak. Good Now you'll be performing. I said, no, no, no, we're not performing. You said, no, no, we don't. We don't have any cast. So we went in it and there was a lot of fea to restaurants around Melbourn at the time, and some of the audience happened to own theater restaurants and they liked what they saw and gave us a Christmas gig doing sketches and we got paid.

For it was a pittance. It was like twenty dollars a night or something.

But to us it was like, you know, we felt like Midas, and they feed us as well, with these pathetic meals in these little theater restaurants, culminating each night with a dessert which was a chocolate ripplecake smothered in sort of rancid cream. And we thought we'd made it. And that was showbiz. And then a few years later I was working as a lawyer. I was working over seas and I got a phone call in Switzerland, in Zurich, basically from the program of Channel seven, saying do you want to do a sketch comedy show? And I went downstairs to the bloke who I was working.

With, a lawyer.

We're having dinner in this very expensive hotel, working on this big deal, and I told him I've got this phone call to do a comedy show, and thirsty he sort of a prank call because I had exhibited any I had exhibited no sense of humor whatsoever in the lord jobs, and he put he did.

This great thing.

I said, I don't want to leave you alone, and you know by yourself, having worked on this big deal for so long, and he did this great thing. He put his finger into the glass of water on the table and took it out, and he said, see the hole of that left. He said, that is the hole you will leave in our organizations. And I think he met it in a nice way. In fact, I'll give him the benefit of the data.

I'm sure he did.

I think what he was trying to say is fully your dreams, because honestly, companies and organizations and businesses keep going on, but your own personal aspirations you only get one chance at it.

You didn't think to yourself, Okay, this is a really dangerous step.

It was a bizarre thing to do, because when you think about it, I was I met a partner in the law firm, I had a career mapped out, I was under thirty. I just literally just got married. We just bought a house with my wife, Sarah and I. We'd just taken out a mortgage. We're thinking about having a kid. And I was about to tell her that the very person she'd married and the whole world that she did d into was about to be shattered, and I was going to leave it all to do, you know, an eight week that's all they offered, eight weeks on TV, and I rang her up from Switzerland when I finished my chocolate cake first and ate the meal. But afterwards we had a chat and I came back to Australia and I spoke with Sarah and she said she was great.

She said, if you don't do it, you're mad.

So you've ended up in an ensemble similar to Second City, which of course was the crew it was.

It was. It was a great group, you know, Glenn Robbins and it had Michael Veach, that had Jane Turner, Gena Riley, Magda Zabanski, Alan Penbler, just a really really Glenn you know, just such a great lineup of comedians that we put together, Ernie Dingo, We had Rubbery figures, very very great group of people and one of the key things we all got on well. And they're all writers as well as performers. They could all they knew what carry would work for them and it was a terrific group of people.

It's interesting because there's a trajectory very similar to what David Letterman had at his point of his career where he suddenly went off. And we'll get to the David Letterman side of it. But I don't know if you've ever looked into David Letterman's career, a very similar thing happened to him, where he took a leap of faith with a young family and it turned out to be the best thing he'd done.

Well, I guess we wouldn't be having his phone call you had, and you know, you'd probably be having one with my wife, who should be bitching one of those things. And my kids, you know, always ask me, and they're all got their own careers in their own lives, and people often ask me, how do I become a writer? How did he become this or that? And my best advice is is do it.

Just do it.

I don't mean imprudently or stupidly or without a sense of judgment or taking in the horizon. But if you want to be a writer, don't talk about being a writer. Start writing. I mean you don't need to contract the right. You can literally sit down at a table and write a manuscript, or write jokes, or write whatever.

It is you want to do.

And my own experience is that people who want to do those sorts of things inevitably are the people who do it anyway. They're going to do it under any circumstances. And I think that's an important thing to do, and you have.

To be resilient.

You've also got to be extremely thick skinned as well, because there will be a lot of rejections.

But ultimately, if you believe in your dream, you'll go.

That's the other thing.

I mean, life's long, and so what seems to be something that's a setback or whatever, you know, it's transitory in the scheme of life. And we were doing fast Forward, and it was really hard work. I mean, I remember I was only thirty and we had eight episodes, and I'd come from being a lawyer working pretty.

Hard doing that.

But because I was a production company the head writer on the show, and we were making it up as we're going along, because none of us had ever made a TV show before, and we were put in the prime time and we did a slightly different sort of sketch show. Our sketch show was basically going to be very fast sketches, a lot of them, and then when we got to a bit where we didn't have a punchline or something, we'd literally do a channel change.

We changed the channels or we had all these.

Devices so that the effect of the show was very fast moving, but that meant that we had to write a lot of sketches, and so you know, I was working. I was working twenty four to seven. We were shooting every day. We'd have a big live record night in front of a studio audience where we'd do big parody sketches and we always in our show we'd do because it was mainly about the media and the impact of media on people's lives, and therefore we were doing parodies of old shows like Get Smart or anything.

A lot of movies.

Mentioned Impossible or The Monsters or the Adams Family. There was a ton of there's a ton of preparation getting them to happen. So the weekly cycle of getting a show.

Made was was huge.

And then I'd go in on the Sunday as well and I'd edit the show. Wow, then you're into the next week.

We'll get you to hang on there sextualve incredible stories here. If we want to get to some of the big guests you've had as well, it's our.

Peeping Tom guests. We've got him.

It's Steve Wizard back with more in a moment. Twenty nine to two. How are you? I'm Phelow now good to have you with us at twenty six minutes to two. Our guest this morning is the person that you asked us to track down for the segment Peeping Tom, and it is Steve Weisad. So we've got to the fast Forward stage of your career. Now what happened next?

Well, what happened was, you know, we did the first eight episodes and the show went from zero to being within a very short time, you know, highly popular, and by episode eight it was it was the highest rating show on Telly at that time. I think Fast Forward sold to about one hundred and forty countries on the BBC and even sold the concept of the show, the format of the show to Germany, which seemed like it seemed like a good idea at the time. If we had any idea what we were biting off because we thought we're just selling them the concept. I wasn't really paying attention because it would when you're selling the concept of Germany. But the deal included us having to go over This was a fine bread that we probably should have read. Us having to go over to Germany and try and explain to them why, for example, you know Kat from Kath and Kim or we had a sort of a preliminary version of that was in Fast Forward, Or why Jane Turner's Russian characters, or why they were vaguely funny, because in fact, I don't even know why they bought it. I reckon if they wouldn't find anything funny. But we went through every script that we'd ever written, and they'd say, have you got any other ones?

Anything? It's vaguely funny.

Going back to the sketch shows and how consuming they were for content. Saturday Night Live meandered you were putting out three or four times the amount of content that they were doing, which one of the characters really resonated with people the most that you found people were calling you in supermarkets.

If I was to go through the list of characters, every one of them, you would say, and rightly so is today politically in correct? Michael Leach and I did to gate quantus, that's right?

It yes.

When I've been a.

Lawyer, I was always on the plane flying to Europe from Australia and there was one bloke who I always saw, and he was one of the older flight attendants. He'd been doing it, I think since the Wright brothers invented aviation and he was always trying to flog me these fake watches. He had arms full of fake watches. You sit down next to him a chure. I was up the front of the plane because of the firm pay for it, and he said, oh god, how is your trips day? Did you have a good one this time? And he'd sit down next to me. It roly sleep, But you had about fifteen fake watches. You're like the Royles. It's fantastic is and look, I could probably do that for you. And it harassed me the whole flight till I bought one of his watches. And we got on like a house on. In fact, we got on so well that when we did those characters. Whenever Michael and I had fly together going somewhere to do a record or something, so flight to tenants would.

Want photos with us. They'd take us up in front of the plane.

In those days, you're allowed to sit in the cockpit, so we were in the cockpit getting photos with the captain, the chorus. We were on the front of the Quantas Flight magazine in our gay characters. That tad different the times were. I mean, so those characters we like doing and because everyone enjoyed, well, people enjoyed the fun of it, but they were of their time. And someone said to me, you couldn't do them, And of course you wouldn't do them now for a hundred reasons, but for that moment, it's something kind of fun.

Let's go nineteen ninety so they've called you in the Channel seven. Then they've said to you, we're going to put on a nightly Australian Tonight's show, which wasn't heard of in Australia. And they said to you, I'm sure, Look, this is going to be fairly easy. You know, five nights a week of live television, and you may, with the experience you had, you may have thought, hang on, this sounds like a lot of work. Nonetheless, and I imagine it was you went ahead and you did this. Did they sit you down and say, okay, this is David Letterman. See how he holds his cup, See that pencil. That guy over there that is Paul Shaffer will be known as Paul Grabowski.

They very much did that, though, and they basically said, listen, is this his four shows that we kind of what as an influence. One was Letterman, yep, one was Carson. One was Sir Don Lane Show, which was an old Australian variety show of course, yes, and one was Graham Kennedy IMT which is lesser known in Sydney, but you know, a huge kind of live show. But you know, then we looked at other shows beyond that. We were making fast forward at the time, and so I wanted to have much more of a sketch kind of sort of a calf kind of relationship in the show, and so we did a lot of effective sketches in the show. So we'd often, for example, do pranks or things that you know, you wouldn't see in a typical Tonight show. For example, I remember one show we were up against Channel nine doing Wimbledon and Channel nine was getting rained out. Wimbledon was getting rained out, and it occurred to us, why wouldn't we have a rained out Tonight show. So I remember we basically pretended our show was in the open and all the cameramen were We managed to get this effect that made the studio look like it was raining inside the studio, So we had all the cameraman sort of wearing raincoats and and we did the whole show. Since it was a kind of a sports show waiting to go on. We're just waiting for the rain to break. And in fact, I think we did a week of that and then the network got really pissed off.

At the end.

We actually had the show, you know, we just did stunts the whole time.

Fantastic. Hang on.

There a second Steve Izart, our guest with Peeping Tom this week. I want to talk about three of the guests. I picked up three names and I want to get you to talk about them next seventeen to two. Our Peeping Tom guest this week, somebody you wanted us to track down, and we have Steve Weizard. Okay, let's get to tonight Live, the show that you did for quite a long time with some incredible guests. I want to talk about three of them. Firstly, your thoughts on Robin Williams.

Robert Williams was fantastic.

I mean just funny, likable, smart, quick, and a gentleman too, a very caring sort of bloke. And immediately in n You're in safe hands. Someone who could talk underwater, someone who was interested in what you were saying.

A delight.

Here's the second name I'm going to give you, Myrlon Brando A.

Well, you know what I just said about Robin Williams, the complete opposite.

The opposite.

Were you worried when he was coming on?

Did you have any kind of trepidation as to what was going to come through the door?

Did you realize?

No, because look over the journey, you do so many interviews, you sort of you know, the good ones and the bad ones sort of merge and you everything sort of evens out. But of course, when you prepare, I mean when I know that you've got someone like that, or Greg Repeck for example, or Bob Hope, eight of you, Bob Hope. I still can't believe I interview Bob Hope. I would go and read twelve books before just because I was interested, and so I do the work, and in a way, it didn't matter to me that the show was broadcast. I was kind of just interested to talk to them just for myself.

Yes, you just want to talk to.

Them for you that you're not going to forget, and you were. As soon as I say the name, You'll know exactly where I'm going with it.

Rex Mossip.

That was one of my worst starts on TV because it was terrible. It was really terrible, and I'll tell you what happened, Phil. It was really was really disappointing because he was promoting a new book and we're in Melbourne, and the Melbourne audiences didn't understand how big he was. In New South Wales and Queensland, but I knew how big he was. But he'd come down and by pure chance that night, because you don't set these things up, you take people when you can get them. Of course, we had Julian Clary on was that night and Julian Clary was the first guest. And he came on and he was wearing the most exotic costume and he was fantastic, but he was being Julian Clary and he was camp and big and you know, the whole thing, and the audience loved it. And he sat there and he was sort of you know, in your windows, but the whole thing, of course. So then I introduced Rex and Rex came out and then he did this scene. Julian put his hand out to shake Rex's hand and Rex wouldn't shake his hand, And for some reason that really got on my goat, because you know, you owe people, you might like what they do or their sense of hum or whatever, but that's not on People are people. There's a common humanity that we have. And it really got on my goat. And I said to him, you're not going to shake Julian's hand and he said, well why would I? And I really saw read about it, and so I'd never done it before. I said, well, why won't you shake his hands? And he said, we'll have a look at him. And then I saw really read and then then then we had this on air Barney where he said I'm going to punch you and it was this is on live TV, Jesus Christ. I mean, people can look this up. You know, is still a valuable It's on gtube. It's horrible, but it's kind of riveting TV. It's like watching a mongoose and I don't know who's the mongoose and who's the cobra.

But it was just horrible. And then I kept baiting him after that.

I said, so what you wouldn't go in the game Marti gras and he said he said, of course I wouldn't. And as we were doing this thing and I was trying to get back to his book, it occurred to me, I've seen some photos from his book that we are going to show later on. I said, so, you'd never dress up like Julian's dressing up? And he said, is if I ever would? And I said, we'll have a look at this. I remember it. And there was a photop in dressed at one of those you know nights of Sportsman's Night in much worse rag than what Julian was wearing. And the audience erupted and thought this was some And there was no planning in it. It was just it literally was this horrible scenario that played out as a result of you know, a kind of any humanity toward another human being that I thought was really unfair. It was probably great TV, but I never felt comfortable about it. No.

But the thing is television's role is to hold up a mirror to society, to reflect things, and what happened as a result of that made a lot of people question their ideals. So did play that particular episode a really really important role in Australia's cultural history?

I thought, what do I think about that? You know, what is right? What's wrong?

You know?

I mean in some cynics it's are you know, the whole thing set up? Of course that's set up but one it wasn't. But two is you literally can't set up that those moments. I mean, if Rex had shaken his hand and it had been affable, it would have been just a nice segment and everyone would have gone home and it would have just been normal TV. So the turns that live TV takes are exactly why live TV is fantastic. But I reckon there's three categories where live TV and particular broadcast TV where there's still a niche for them, and they've done two of.

Them really well still.

One of them is news and current affairs, because that's got to do with what's happening live.

You know, you can't go past that.

The other is sport because you know that's happening live. People watch it to see the live spectacle and the jeopardy of what's happening now. But the third component that Australia used to be good at and the rest of the world still does, but Australia's diminishing in what it does was live entertainment TV because it's got exactly that same element that risk, that uncertainty an audience, a nation sitting there thinking to themselves, where.

Is this going to go?

Happened next, the danger and all my favorite moments of watching live TV in Australia literally and throughout the world. You know, from Carson or watching Extra you know, Graham Norton or any great shows or Michael Parkins that always arose from those unexpected moments that were way off script. That's what live TV does. Well, you know, streaming does where you can watch anything that's been made with high production values, great dramas and everything else. That's fantastic for shows that can be watched any time. But that element of Jeopardy can never be replicated in other ways.

That's right.

Well, I do shows where I have producers and some small thing will go wrong, and I say, look, don't panic, you know, live on something going wrong because for me, and that's the element of live broadcasting is the danger, the risk and the possibility that it could go anywhere.

And so I think that's the point audiences know that, that's why it's not just what you know. That's the reason audiences listen too, to have that unfold, to listen to that unfolding and real time and with radio there's this fantastic shared community that it's not just that it's happening to you now and law is it just happening to one listener and the relationship between you and one it's this shared community that you're all sharing and at it moment at exactly the same time, you're all laughing at the same thing at the same time. In millions of houses around the country, you know, in this place or that place, everyone is laughing or everyone shareding a tear, or everyone's sighing in disbelief. And that sort of shared community is something that we're increasingly losing. That's incredible important in terms of holding societies together.

Well, that's exactly right.

Anybody that's got a long history in show business would know exactly that that you have a responsibility to your audience to take them on the journey with you. I could talk to you forever, but I'm going to let you go, but not without talking about nation memory myth, which is your latest book, Gallipoli and the Australian Imaginary.

Well, I want took for mortal one second on it. It's just a book that I've written that talks about how important exactly what we were talking about just then, Phil, how important shared stories are in holding communities together, and the most important stories that all nations have that hold all nations together. Every nation's got them are there foundings And for us, our founding myth is Gallipoli. And when you think about it, the power of ritual, the power of those myths exists not because governments force them top down. They kind of grow grass up and that's there's no regulation that forces people to get up at four am and turn up at the cenotaph, or forces people to turn up at the shrine in Melbourne, and yet hundreds of thousands of people do, and hundreds of thousands of people in a stadium stand in silence on Anzac Day in silence because these rituals and myths and symbols mean things in binding people together.

So that's what this book's about.

It's a good read, it's a bit of work I've done, and it's in every shop, so hopefully a few people might be interested enough to go and buy one.

Nation Memory myth is the name of the book.

Now, when you go into people's houses, you're very much considered to be part of their family, and that is, you know, you're very much a guest in their house. But you have been Australia's guest, and we're very very grateful for the contribution that you've given us and for your contribution and your stories tonight as well.

Oh thanks Phil. It always good to talk and keep up doing what you're doing. You're doing a great job, mate.

I have something that I don't know if you're going to love it or hate it, but here's my idea and it's quite a simple one, and sometimes the simple ones work, right.

Vizards vineyards. Yeah, you hate.

It going on all these nice things I've just been saying about you, And that's it. That's what I get.

I love it. I love you, don't love it.

I love Look, I've got your numbers.

Whatever it is, and I'm not saying it won't be. I'm not saying it will be. But whatever it is, mate, you'll get the first bottle.

Don't worry.

I've got your number, and I work unusual hours, so when I ring at three o'clock, I'm going hang on Steve.

No, no, no, I've got another one to block me while you've got a chance. Thank you so much, my friend.