Best Australian Comedy Writing

by Luke Ryan

  ‘Alright, ya got me,’ hissed Batman, slamming down his fellatio-themed beverage and firing a bat hook into the ceiling. ‘See you at rehearsals.’ And with that, he shot upwards and was gone, leaving his agent to sort out the details.

  In order to comply with Equity regulations, Batman needed to at least go through the motions of an audition. He chose to recite the classic Two Ronnies ‘Fork Handles’ sketch, playing both parts in a hissed and threatening manner that evinced little humour and led the seen-it-all stagehands in the flies to pinch their noses and recall the Atom’s disastrous Lear (the performance itself was fine, but it was only visible to one audience member at a time, hunched over a microscope for a ‘bum-numbing five hours’ – the Bugle.)

  The six-week rehearsal period was constantly disrupted by the lead actor’s sudden bat hook-assisted departures, supposedly to tackle some crime-related emergency, which the supporting cast increasingly chose to read as stage fright. At first, Batman seemed miscast in the role of the cockney cabbie with ‘two wives, two lives and a very precise schedule for juggling them both’, his massive cape repeatedly getting caught in the doors of the adjoining hotel rooms. His harshly growled ad-libs (‘Bigamy is a sickness … and I’m the cure!’) and relentless beating of the gay neighbour seemed at odds with the light, frothy tone of Ray Cooney’s ‘naughty but nice’ classic. But the scene where he cavorted in nothing but cowl and boxers was a winner, and helped to offset some mystifying references to ‘Aunt Harriet’ in the Act II tour de force with the ice bucket.

  Throughout these rehearsals (which were plagued by the sneak attacks of various supervillains, each causing the mise en scene to deteriorate into a lengthy fistfight), Pfogg encouraged the dark knight to take part in ‘trust exercises’ with the rest of the company. Batman’s standard response was to fling two capsules of knockout gas into the orchestra pit, summon a huge tank-like vehicle to the stage door, shatter the French doors as he hurled himself through them and repair to the prow of the Chrysler Building, where he would stand broodingly, his cape whipping against the cold Gotham night as he recited, over and over, the speech about the mix-up with the scanty panties.

  The pressure of the role, not to mention the ongoing raids on the Gotham Mint by the Clock King (incongruously teamed with Olga) resulted in Batman’s frequent, frustrating absences. No one was convinced the day a ‘Batman’ who was clearly an elderly man with a dapper moustache, much like that worn by millionaire Bruce Wayne’s manservant, turned up to rehearsals sporting an even less convincing cockney accent than usual.

  But somehow, come opening night, spirits were high. For the post-dress-rehearsal cast party the previous night, Batman had gassed the entire company and transported them, in the Batcopter, to his vast subterranean lair for a catered piss-up. The evening had ended with the host regaling his co-stars with several violent theatrical anecdotes, while the two actresses who played the roles of his nymphomaniac wives shot up and down on the Batpoles sans underpants.

  ‘Break a leg, everyone,’ toasted Pfogg, raising high a freshly shaken Buttfucking Bellboy, but by the time the curtain fell, two hours later, the only fractures sustained were those of three people in the front row and an unconscious Two-Face, whose surprise appearance in Act III had resulted in the show’s biggest laughs as he extemporised a new scene playing two separate husbands simultaneously. Applause for the actual cast members was muted, and even the spray of flowers presented to a noticeably embarrassed Batman during the curtain call left a bitter aftertaste. Batman realised they were from Louie the Lilac just seconds before they exploded, bringing down what little remained of the scenery after the fight.

  Afterwards, in the bar, Gordon and O’Hara were putting brave faces on, but the caped crusader, clutching a highball and taking small, hesitant drags on a cigarette, could read it on their faces.

  ‘This came for you,’ said the Commissioner, handing Batman a folded note. ‘It’s from Egghead.’

  ‘Another threat to flood the city with albumen?’ snarled the dark knight.

  ‘I’m afraid he was reviewing tonight’s show for the Times,’ said Gordon. ‘This is what he’ll be filing.’

  Batman raised it to his cowl, and by the time he’d finished reading the notice, which made full use of the author’s penchant for egg puns, his face was taut with fury.

  ‘“No Bernard Cribbins”, am I?’ he thundered. ‘I’ll show him whose performance is “a badly timed yolk”!’

  But it was too late. By the time the Times hit the newsstands, the city’s criminals would all be laughing at him. Run for Your Wife had been a mistake, Batman could see that now. He needed to put it behind him, reassert his authority, show the scum on the streets who was boss. First thing in the morning, he’d call Pfogg and say yes to Nunsense.

  Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in The Road by Cormac McCarthy

  When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of night he’d reach out and touch the figure sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more grey each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. The world that was now barren, silent, godless. Without hope. Whaddaya mean without Hope? Who do you think has been pushing the damn shopping cart for the last fifteen miles? Shecky Greene?

  Yes of course. I’m sorry.

  He thought the month was October but he wasn’t sure. Time no longer had any meaning. It could have been months since the Jack Benny cameo. Or mere days.

  So, are we going to die?

  Yes we’re going to die. Sometime. Not now.

  Worse than we did at the Copa?

  Worse than that.

  When it was light enough to use the binoculars he glassed the valley below. Were they being watched? Surely in this blasted lifeless glen here among the mummied dead no one would be looking for two out-of-work musicians on the run from the mob hoping to stow away on a ship to Rio.

  There is no ship is there?

  Go to sleep.

  Head out west you said.

  Be quiet.

  We’ll meet a coupla fabulous lookin’ dames.

  I’m sorry.

  We’re gonna be rich you said. Now I’m eating dog food out of a can.

  Hush. They’ll find us.

  I tell you who I’d like to find. The chump who sold us this map!

  They were moving south. There’d be no surviving another winter here. Hope had eaten the last of the food along with the microfilm he’d found in the Chinese fortune cookie. Although why he’d done that was no longer important. They set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other’s world entire.

  You got any water?

  That broad threw the last of it in my face.

  There had been others along the road. The lost, the undead, the diseased and doomed, Peter Sellers as an unhelpful Indian doctor. There were those who would do them harm. Who would come for them while they slept. And there were only so many times they could get away with the old pat-a-cake distraction routine.

  Do you remember what you used to call me?

  A slope-nosed schnook?

  Something like that.

  The clocks had stopped at 1.17. A long shear of light and a series of low concussions. Robert Morley’s Girl Bombs had wreaked their terrible vengeance.

  There’s nothing. There’s nothing left.

  Whaddaya mean? I still have these French postcards.

  We need water. We need food.

  I need a weekend in Las Vegas!

  In his dream she was sick and he cared for her. But he did not take care of her and she died alone somewhere in the dark and there is no other tale to tell. At one time he would have cried for her. Now he only wished he had kept some of the fruit piled high atop her head.

  They came to trees across the road where they were forced to unload the cart and carry everything over the trunks and repack it all on the far side.

  This is bad.

  What, the script?


  But even self-referential one-liners had ceased to have any meaning for them. Too tired even to do the ‘walk this way’ gag they trudged deeper into a dark gorge and came across a bridge collapsed in a dank slow-moving river.

  Oh god no. What next?

  A rickshaw chase?

  This is it. This is where it ends.

  But I haven’t been slapped by a single chorus girl.

  Just go. Leave me.

  What?

  It’s alright. You’ll see.

  I can’t.

  Please.

  Not without a song.

  Alright then.

  Heaving his exhausted partner into the cart Hope felt the flare gun snug in the pocket of his filthy coat. Sketched upon a pall of soot downstream the outline of a burnt city like a black paper scrim. Bodies melted and black amid corridors of drifting ash. Slumped within the rusting cart Crosby counted them in.

  Oh, the earth is scorched,

  It’s all been torched,

  Ain’t nothin’ gonna be the same.

  But like this verse,

  It could be worse…

  Two guys, one dame!

  But there’s broads no more,

  No Dottie Lamour,

  To help us share the load.

  Round every bend a killer,

  (Quick hide, it’s Phyllis Diller!)

  A post-apocalyptic thriller,

  (It’s the whole magilla!)

  This picture’s got no filler,

  (I wrestled a gorilla!)

  As we shuffle on down The Roooooaaaad!

  Hey fellas. Am I too late?

  Yes Dean, you are.

  Okay.

  Okay then.

  ROBERT SKINNER

  The Art of Tour Guiding

  ❛If there is screaming and hopping and running about, smile ruefully and say, ‘Welcome to the outback.’ This is the most important phrase in your arsenal.❜

  Tour guiding in Australia is easy on some levels: you feed your charges well, take them to the right places and try to keep their feet warm. But extreme weather, mechanical problems, flies in the daytime, mosquitoes at night, the Germans, the lack of sleep, the feelings of deep existential loneliness … all these things will conspire against you.

  You should never, or almost never, give your tourists the choice between two options. This is a mistake inexperienced guides often make. Are you not the leader of this expedition? Have you not been here a hundred times before and know what it’s about? Don’t go inflicting the misery of democracy on them. It may seem generous and noble, but in the middle of an Australian summer I have seen some people reduced to tears.

  An outback tour is not a luxury cruise. A cruise liner gives the impression that everything is taken care of and available. This is impossible when you’re the sole driver/guide, and it doesn’t make for a good experience anyway. I prefer to give the illusion of barely contained chaos. It contributes to people’s sense of adventure and togetherness. When it goes well, it will feel like you’re the captain of a pirate ship.

  If a family of native mice sneak on board your bus, and are only discovered when you’re barrelling down the highway, don’t stop. If there is screaming and hopping and running about, smile ruefully and say, ‘Welcome to the outback.’ This is the most important phrase in your arsenal. Keep driving if you can. Maybe shout some words of encouragement as the tourists round up the mice into saucepans.

  I ran bus tours through central Australia for three years (2009 to 2012). On the first day of those tours, someone would always ask what time we were going to arrive at camp. Camp was six hundred kilometres away, and it was a good opportunity to set a few things straight.

  ‘Look,’ I’d say, ‘this isn’t the Deutsche Bahn. There are rogue cows, flat tyres, and headwinds like you wouldn’t believe.’ I’d stare wistfully out the window for a moment. ‘In some ways, we’ll be lucky to get there at all.’

  One morning I tried to leave it at that, but the girl who asked the question just kept looking at me expectantly.

  I sighed. ‘What time? I dunno. About 6.30, 7?’

  ‘Okay! Thank you!’ She turned to her friend. ‘He says we’re arriving at 6.37.’

  A tour guide should try not to say too much on the first day. A week is a long time, and you don’t want to devalue your own currency. By the end of a tour, no one remembers the first day anyway. Put some music on and start driving.

  An older guide once said to me, ‘It’s like cards. Don’t throw all your aces down on the table at once. You gotta play them one at a time.’ (This is a profound nugget of tour-guiding wisdom, but spectacularly bad advice for actual card games.)

  A critical job for any tour guide is to bond the group. You want them to feel as though, for the next six days, they’re all part of the same story. The best way to do this on an outback tour is to go bush camping. With the sun low and the cockatiels bursting from the trees, we’d go plunketing down some dirt track. Occasionally I’d play songs from The Lion King because, for some reason, hearing an African-themed soundtrack while bouncing through the Australian bush made people feel more at home.

  When we stopped in a clearing and turned off the engine, sometimes there’d be confusion.

  ‘But there is nothing.’

  ‘I know! Isn’t it wonderful?’

  Bush camping worked for many reasons, chief among them that no one wants to die alone. The tourists would come out of the bus in small groups and look around. It was like a small-time survival camp. Strangers would go off to pee together and come back friends, or scatter in twos and threes to collect firewood, and get bitten by ants. I watched it all proudly from the top of the trailer.

  There’d be some incredulous German guy saying, ‘Don’t you have a chainsaw? For making the firewood? Or some axes?’

  We didn’t, of course, but they always worked it out. Sometimes I hid the matches, to make it even more fun for them.

  Those were always the best nights, with no one around and the Milky Way smeared across the black sky. We drank beer and cooked paella with chicken and chorizo next to the fire.

  People really started talking, and slept closer to one another than on any other nights.

  There are other ways of getting a group together, of course. I know a guide who, if he sensed malaise, would fake a flat battery and make everyone get out and push-start the bus. That’s good as gold, as far as bonding goes. So is getting bogged and digging the bus out with salad bowls. I once tried to fix a radiator leak with Blu-Tack, but didn’t have any Blu-Tack, so I passed around packets of chewing gum. If you can get twenty-one people all chewing gum for a common cause, what you have is a family.

  Most tourists book the tour to see Uluru, but it’s the experiences in between that really make the trip memorable. Your job is to provide the context in which a tourist can enjoy or appreciate them. Take Coober Pedy, for instance. Some guides treat it with disdain, or like an overrated lunch spot – and their tourists inevitably go away feeling the same way.

  The town itself is built on a hot and sandy moonscape. It looks like a dusty Hobbiton, an ‘after’ shot in a film about global warming. The first thing you see when you’re coming into Coober Pedy from the south is a lone wind turbine resolutely not turning.

  It looks a bit like a dump, frankly, but I’m inordinately fond of it, and that’s contagious. Most of the front yards have assorted junk piles that take on a majestic rusted glow at sunset. People have built themselves terraced front yards from old car tyres. There is half a spaceship on the main street, and a tree that appears to be made from scrap metal. The early miners built the tree for their kids, apparently, who complained constantly about not having any decent trees to climb. Even when it was built, though, they could only climb it during a few months of every year without getting second-degree burns on their hands and feet.

  I always liked to take my tours to the Coober Pedy Opal Fields Golf Course. Sometimes it’s hard to find the golf balls among all the similarly si
zed rocks. The rest is baked clay and sand, and the players have to carry around their own patch of turf to play the balls off. But it’s the only golf course in the world to have a reciprocal membership arrangement with the world-famous St Andrews Links in Scotland. There’s a sign by the sixth hole that says ‘Keep Off Grass’, which sums up the whole town nicely, I think.

  From Coober Pedy to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park it’s about seven hundred kilometres – not a lot by Australian standards, but enough of a drive to demoralise you and the tourists. Try to surround yourself with good people up the front of the bus. If it doesn’t happen by chance on the first day, suggest that swapping seats every morning is a great thing to do. Drink coffee and eat apples like a fiend to stay awake, tell stories over the microphone and play games.

  There are signs up and down that highway with sage, big-lettered messages like ‘POWERNAP NOW’ or ‘FEELING SLEEPY?’ Those signs will make you indescribably angry. You have to try not to think about sleep at all, but those thoughts can sneak up on you: you check in your mirror to make sure the swags are still tied down, you start thinking about your own swag and how comfortable it is, and suddenly you feel your eyelids drooping. Try to think only of very active things, like being chased by wolves or robbing a supermarket.

  On the way to Uluru, there’s a flat-top mesa mountain called Mount Conner. This kind of mountain is a much more common formation, geologically speaking, than Uluru, which is why Uluru has its own airport and Mt Conner has two toilets and a barbecue. But Mount Conner stands majestically by itself on the desert plain, so it’s often mistaken for Ayers Rock. (Locals call it ‘Fool-a-roo’.)