A minor difficulty occurred early on. It was customary for Marcus to share the stage with the visiting act. I knew him, but my instincts told me a mixture of drag and politics might be hard to digest. So, Jon Gadsby, Peter Rowley and I were to appear on stage by ourselves. This could have escalated into something major because it meant for the run of our show Marcus would be unemployed. However, it was indicated that he would enjoy some time off and the contract was signed.
A contract with Phil Warren was a curious document. We were to receive a percentage of the ticket price, a lowly amount as we later discovered, and accommodation. But, the most important clause, and the one Phil was at pains to point out, involved liquor. We should not expect and the club would not provide free drinks. Ever. Had we been smarter we would have demanded free alcohol or only signed when our percentage was increased to cover the cost of our drinking habits. But, I’d never worked in a nightclub before. In fact, I’d hardly ever been to one.
My most forgettable recollection was of a shady strip club some ambitious fool had opened in Christchurch. It was a hopeless venture in a city that insisted the sins of the flesh should be confined to the bedroom or at least the bedroom of your best friend’s wife. I went to the club one night with Ken Ellis. A band played and a woman with blonde hair appeared wearing a sparkling white dress. She started to oscillate and Ken and I nodded to each other approvingly. The woman moved towards me. I didn’t know what to expect but the only thing that rose was panic. She turned, proffered her back and began pointing at the zip. Clearly, I was to open her dress. The band crashed on with the slippery, slurred notes of strip music. I reached up, grabbed the zip and it stuck. I tugged and nothing happened. She kept swivelling and I tried again. The zip wouldn’t move. She turned her head and hissed, ‘Pull it down, you silly prick.’
I said, ‘I can’t. It’s stuck.’
She gave me a look that would have petrified a Rottweiler and ripping herself away swayed to the other side of the room. It was about this time the owner asked Ken and me to leave. I thought, if this is nightclubs, I should leave them alone.
So, I was apprehensive the afternoon I first walked into the Ace of Clubs. It felt seedy and dilapidated and certainly not the place someone with aspirations of being an actor should frequent. I had not yet learned the first rule of nightclubs. Keep the lighting low. The meal was being prepared and Phil proudly pointed out the wide selection of pasta salads. His favourite dish was the dessert. It was a long cylindrical cake filled with mock cream. Phil described it as a chocolate log. It was a useful dish, he went on, because you could cut the log into various lengths depending on how large or small you wanted the dessert to be. This introduction to the meal made me even more uncomfortable.
We were to perform with a minimum of props or scenery but one sketch needed a sofa. Phil provided it. The sofa, covered in a hideous green fabric, looked like a discarded relic. It was perfect for the sketch and we all congratulated Phil on getting such a tacky and tasteless piece of furniture. Then, someone asked where it came from. Phil replied that he’d brought it from his home. It didn’t seem an auspicious start to our relationship, but Phil was more interested in running a business than the niceties of polite conversation.
We made a lot of money for the Ace of Clubs, very little of which we saw but I never regretted working there. This was a place stitched to the seamier side of life — a world of painted girls, tinsel, blaring ballads, backing bands, lip-stick and late-night empty streets. It had a tawdry charm, a cheap enchantment and although disreputable it wasn’t actually illegal. The patrons would fill their plates with pasta salads, infrequent bits of meat and various lengths of chocolate log, pay more than they expected for their drinks and laugh at familiar jokes.
There were five things about the Ace of Clubs that remain with me. There was Marcus Craig himself. Marcus had recognised early the distinction between female impersonator and drag queen. The effeteness of Danny La Rue and the intellectual slyness of Dame Edna Everage wouldn’t work at the Ace of Clubs. You had to shove your tits in their faces. So he did. He was raucous and rude. They rolled in the aisles. His eyelashes were the size of fly-swats. He used enough eye-liner to paint a house.
Marcus let me down only once. Homosexuality was still a subject that required a great deal of caution in New Zealand. One evening he invited Jon and me for a drink after the show, a lovely little drinking spot he knew. Someone asked if it was a gay club, but Marcus dismissed this with an airy wave and the arch aside that not every man in Auckland kept his mind in his trousers. Of course, it was a gay club and Marcus disappeared the moment we crossed the threshold. So I ask you to imagine this scene: David McPhail and Jon Gadsby stand side by side in the middle of a gay nightclub where the sparkles of a mirror ball twinkle across their faces and powdered men dance to George Michael. Our presence was noted. The younger gay men approached from the darkness and then retreated. It was the older gays who said, ‘Oh, I didn’t know about you two. Shall we dance?’ The even older gays said, ‘If you could get me a taxi, I’ll be very good to you.’
We were trapped. If we acknowledged the lubricious offers of friendship we’d get into deep trouble. But, if we became aloof and distant we’d be set upon as being voyeurs.
Kevin Baddiley rescued us. Kevin is of moderate height, has vivacious eyes, expressive hands and a wildly animated voice. One moment he would be imitating a high-pitched, hysterical queen and the next he’d sound like a serious, but still camp, High Court judge. Kevin has an imposing collection of anecdotes that covers all aspects of gay life. He could make me laugh simply by saying, ‘Hello.’ When Kevin swept Jon and me away from the nightclub he was a head waiter at the Ace of Clubs. Previously, he’d been a theatre manager and before that a dancer with the Royal New Zealand Ballet Company. He is a memorable companion and I am still charmed to be his friend.
My next memory of the Ace of Clubs is one I would prefer to forget. It was a Sunday, normally a long, dreary day that would only end at 11 pm when our show finished.
One of the disappointments of performing at night is you can never fully enjoy yourself during the day. My friends, Lyndon and Helen Taylor, decided to change that. Lyn was and still is an inventive and sometimes over-enthusiastic cook. He announced he would be cooking a Chinese lunch and Jon, Peter and I were invited. Lyn provided another tantalising carrot. Because the food would be served around noon it was perfectly reasonable to have a drink with the meal. This made flawless sense. We’d finish lunch around 3 pm allowing over six hours to digest both the food and the alcohol. Everyone agreed it was an easily achievable goal.
We arrived at the Taylors’ house early to find Lyn’s spatula already flying over the wok. The beers were opened, the sun beat down and aromatic Chinese cooking odours wafted over the patio. And so it went on for most of the afternoon. Lyn’s dishes were proving a little more complex than he’d imagined and around 4.30 pm I was dimly aware that, aside from some delicious wontons, the only things I’d consumed were six cans of lager and two, perhaps three, probably four glasses of wine. Be serious, five glasses of wine.
Lyn had put away roughly the same amount and whether this was speeding up or slowing down the cooking process was difficult to judge. Actually, lots of things were becoming difficult to judge. One was my inability to calculate exactly how long we’d need to get back to the Ace of Clubs and overcome the effects of the afternoon.
Then, there was the difficult balancing act between driving back to the club without eating which would clearly violate most traffic laws or waiting for the Chinese and hoping that the nourishment might improve my road skills. We decided finally to eat the meal. After all, Lyn had spent two days preparing the food and it would be discourteous to leave. We would have eaten more but my timing was becoming increasingly erratic, although I was pretty sure that seven came after six. This would give us two full hours to prepare for the show.
It’s deplorable to imagine three men loaded down with lager and lychees rec
klessly driving across Auckland with the intention of performing to an excited and expectant audience. There’s no defence except that it was a long time ago and no one got hurt.
We feigned Presbyterian sobriety on entering the club, then gathered in the dressing room to plan a strategy. The most important thing was to perform a show the audience expected. Therefore, it was vital we didn’t slur our words, knock over furniture or speak too quickly.
We drank litres of water and crossed our fingers. I’m happy to say that after such a disreputable afternoon the audience liked the show. It was identical to our previous performances with one exception, we compensated by speaking very slowly and precisely. The show usually ran for an hour and ten minutes. On the evening of Lyn’s Chinese lunch it lasted for an hour and a half. We must have given the impression we thought the audience was partially deaf.
One evening I entered the Ace of Clubs and immediately became aware of a shift in the atmosphere. There was the usual confusion around the smorgasbord table and the waiting staff was still pouring endless bottles of fizzy wine, but there was something going on and I asked if there was anything I should know about. Someone admitted, ‘The prime minister is coming tonight.’
This information took a moment to sink in. ‘Do you mean the prime minister of New Zealand?’ I asked rather stupidly. I was assured it was Robert David Muldoon and suddenly I was in a cold sweat. For some years I’d been inflicting a rather imperfect impersonation of the prime minister on the television audience. He was a dominating figure in New Zealand politics — a man admired, feared, respected and loathed — and no satirical programme could function without him. I bore a resemblance to Robert Muldoon and therefore was the obvious actor to impersonate him. When Jon and I began writing the cabaret show it was inevitable we’d include a sketch about Muldoon. The freedom of a nightclub compared to the relative caution of a television studio gave us the opportunity to write something truly offensive. And that is why I panicked. I began thinking of ways to modify the monologue. To remove lines like: ‘My wife, Thea, and I love to go for a walk after dinner. She doesn’t enjoy chasing the stick and questions the leash, but she loves rolling over and having her tummy rubbed.’
I realised later how enraged Robert Muldoon would have been by that line.
Jon said I’d be an idiot to change the monologue. There was no time to write anything new and, even if it was possible, I’d be incapable of remembering the words. I knew he was right.
‘It’s very funny,’ he said. ‘Just go out and do it.’ So, I put on the suit and tie, smoothed down my hair and walked uncertainly into the spotlight. I decided I needed to know where he was. If I could identify my target I’d know where to throw the darts. It was an illogical proposition but when the only alternative was blind panic it seemed remarkably sensible. I spotted his general location quite quickly. One of the spotlights was on a low stand and just in front of the police officer was a shining dome. It was the prime minister’s head. Aha, I thought. There you are. I launched into the monologue. Unconsciously I skirted around the after-dinner walk with his wife.
It seemed to work. I left the stage drenched in sweat. We finished the show, took some quick bows and scuttled back to the dressing room. I was still shaken and this spiralled into hysteria when the door of the dressing room burst open and Robert Muldoon walked in. He was followed by his wife, Thea, a colleague, Aussie Malcolm, and a photographer from The New Zealand Herald.
Muldoon took command immediately. He didn’t want my scalp. He wanted photographs, especially one with me pulling the Muldoon face. I declined, but pictures were taken of the jovial company. Two minutes later he strode to the door, turned and said, ‘We’re going. Thea, are you coming or do you want a taxi?’ Dame Thea didn’t order a taxi and they left.
It had happened so quickly that I was still breathless in the morning. This continued when I opened a copy of The New Zealand Herald. There was a large photograph of the prime minister and me in an embrace that could only be described as cordial. Yes! This was the type of exposure a public relations company would pawn an entire Te Mata vintage to obtain.
Then, I thought, No! Here was a picture of the prime minister and his arch-impersonator with their arms around each other. They must be friends. I still don’t know if this was Muldoon’s intention. I suspect it was.
Later, when I was flying to Wellington, a fellow passenger turned to me and asked where I’d be staying in the capital.
I said, ‘The James Cook Hotel.’
He was surprised. ‘I thought you’d be staying at Vogel House. Isn’t the prime minister your mate?’
Parodying or lampooning public figures carries risks. Not the least being slander or libel. In the early days of A Week of It, I was fortunate to have, as the first line of defence, lawyer Christopher McVeigh and writer AK Grant. While not specialists in the erratic field of defamation, they could spot the risk of hefty damages at 50 metres. The programme was occasionally threatened, but I was constantly surprised by the lack of direct complaints. I was also faintly disturbed by this. Did this absence of outrage mean we weren’t doing our job properly? Satire is supposed to provoke a response. The target should squirm with embarrassed rage and then fire off a thundering letter demanding apologies, retractions and a lucrative reimbursement for hurt feelings.
Our most regular legal correspondent was a member of Parliament, John Kirk. He was the son of a former prime minister and had embarked on an ill-advised attempt to fill his late father’s sizable shoes. Kirk seemed to think that merely mentioning his name constituted a vile slander on his reputation. So, to simply report that John Kirk stood up in Parliament risked an indignant letter.
The only other complaints the programme received were second-hand reports of public figures who were bitter because they weren’t mentioned on the show.
But, perhaps the greatest peril was the satire backfiring. I became increasingly aware our verbal assaults on Muldoon carried the risk of legitimising his actions by making them funny and therefore more palatable. For most of his public life Muldoon had an unhealthy contempt for newspapers and particularly television. Although, as I discovered at the Ace of Clubs, he was cunningly adept at manipulating both.
Early in the A Week of It years, Muldoon was conducting a series of running skirmishes with television channels. He complained about everything: the ineptitude of journalists, the quality of programmes and what he described as the frivolous wasting of money. As if on cue we produced a sketch with the prime minister storming around a studio insulting the crew and railing about the quality of the lighting. At one moment he shouted, ‘Let there be light.’ Immediately the lighting changed and Muldoon turned to a camera and grinning evilly announced, ‘And there was light.’
The sketch was funny. We wouldn’t have played it otherwise. But, I wondered, would we be writing and performing sketches if the prime minister announced he intended to arrest all Polynesian over-stayers and lock them in a camp outside Dannevirke? If satire merely makes public policy laughable it isn’t working. I’m not suggesting the team who made A Week of It or satirists in general have a moral responsibility to change the iniquities of a society. But, there is a danger unacceptable actions can be softened or even validated by joking about them.
Of course, there is another angle. During Muldoon’s leadership many people were genuinely frightened of him. He could be unpredictable and occasionally abusive. Speaking of a prominent woman he growled, ‘Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Or anywhere else for that matter.’ His outburst in Parliament about the former Labour cabinet minister, Colin Moyle, was unprecedented.
Alan often argued that our satire was a safety-valve allowing people, who could not confront Muldoon, to ridicule him in their own homes. After all these years I remain undecided. I met Muldoon only a few times. One learns quickly it’s inadvisable to get too close to one’s targets.
The first time I saw Muldoon in person was in a church in 1977. The vicar of Fendalton, the redoubtab
le Canon Bob Lowe, hosted a television programme called Open Pulpit. The show was simply an interview with a prominent New Zealander but it was recorded in Bob’s church of St Barnabas. I decided if I was to impersonate this man accurately I should take a closer look at him. I slid into a pew at the back of the church and watched the interview. At the end, I was about to exit discreetly when Bob spotted me. He had a booming voice. He was not known as the Loose Canon of Fendalton for nothing. ‘David, come and meet Rob!’ he shouted.
I replied it wasn’t necessary, but Bob was persistent. ‘He’s in the church hall having a cup of tea.’ I was swept into the church hall. There was a large number of people having supper with Muldoon although I noticed the sizeable empty circle surrounding the small, squat figure sipping tea with obvious distaste. Bob pushed me across the room. ‘Rob, Rob,’ he boomed, ‘here’s a young man I’d like you to meet.’ Muldoon swung his head in my direction. I was immediately reminded of the old nursery rhyme, ‘The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon’. Bob continued booming. ‘David’s trying to make a reputation impersonating you.’
Muldoon stared at me. ‘Well, you’ll never be as good as the bloody original,’ he said and turned back to the club sandwiches.
In the early days, my attempts to mimic the prime minister were hamstrung by the time the programme’s makeup specialists needed to construct one man’s face on another’s. This required latex, glue, a skull-cap and lengths of fake hair. It took roughly 40 minutes to make me look like Muldoon. But, when my appearance would account for only 20 seconds in a half-hour show, it was time the programme could not afford.
The Years Before My Death Page 19