I even scraped together enough money to buy a little white Volkswagen, just like the one Saskia Post drove in Dogs in Space, and Adrian and I cruised around Melbourne’s greasy streets in it like the artsy young lovers we were.
I knew I was back on form, and ready for my turn to come around again. And with that, my answering machine blinked, and delivered news that changed my life in ways I’d always dreamt and in ways I’d never imagined.
I’d missed a call from a skinny, swearing Kiwi wunderkind, who was launching the Nova radio network around Australia. I’d heard a little bit about it because Merrick and Rosso worked for him in Sydney, and Hughesy had just spearheaded the Melbourne launch.
Naively, I thought he might be about to offer me a job like theirs in Sydney or Melbourne, but because nothing ever comes easily to me, he had a few other options in mind—and none of them sounded like any fun to me.
IT’S PERTH
‘Do you know who Dean Buchanan is?’ asked Toby excitedly. We were hanging out upstairs at the Prince Pat Hotel, Dave Taranto’s old haunt, when I told him about this weird phone message I’d received.
‘He’s the guy who gives people radio jobs,’ Toby pronounced flamboyantly.
Kevin Whyte from Token had given Dean my number because Dean was ‘looking for girls’ for his radio stations. He, like many entertainment execs before and since, had convinced himself that there were ‘no good girls around’. Of course I have always known that there are plenty of entertaining women around the place, of all ages, persuasions and ethnicities, but in this instance I was happy to play along with the idea that I was, in fact, the last living specimen in captivity.
He asked me to meet him in his hotel room in Melbourne’s CBD, which sounded very inappropriate to me, but more alarmingly, sounded expensive to park near. I was rolling on so little cash that our telephone service was positively intermittent, which in those days took you offline as well, and prepaid mobiles hadn’t been invented yet. My VW was so badly in need of a service that it was backfiring constantly and loudly. One night I went flying around a roundabout on Fitzroy Street, past a queue of people waiting to get into a nightclub. The car backfired, and everyone in the line threw their arms over their heads and hit the deck (Melbourne gang war hysteria again).
Another night, just before Christmas, I was on my way home from a gig, with a much-needed $200 tucked safely in my bag, when I was pulled over by the fuzz because I only had one headlight and one brakelight in operation. (It didn’t have a rear-vision mirror either, but they didn’t notice that.)
They did discover, however, that the car was unregistered— and then demanded I lock it up and leave it there by the side of the road until I’d paid the rego. It was about 1 a.m. by this stage, in the back blocks of East St Kilda, about 5 minutes’ drive from my flat. I asked if I could just drive it home, but no dice. I asked if they could give me a lift, but no way. So we ended up in a very strange scenario in which they ordered me up to the corner phone booth to call a taxi, and told me they would wait, in their car, watching me until a taxi arrived. Don’t you think that’s strange? A good 45 minutes later, no taxi, the two cops sitting in their car chatting, about three metres away from me leaning on my car, waiting for a taxi that clearly isn’t coming, almost 2 a.m.
I was exhausted, just wanting to go home and climb into bed with Adrian, aware that all the fines I’d accumulated that night would wipe out the $200 I had made, and plenty more. I was behind on every bill imaginable, facing a miserable Christmas, and copping superior glances from the peanut gallery in the squad car. My rebellious streak kicked in, and I started walking.
Off down the road I went, thinking it’d probably take me about 20 minutes, and how, if I’d just walked immediately, I’d have been in home in bed already. I made my way out of the dark back streets to the lights and traffic of Carlisle Street, followed it down and crossed over St Kilda Road, moving ever closer to home and looking forward to escaping the catastrophes of my life in slumber.
I’d been walking the streets of St Kilda alone at night for almost a decade by then, without the slightest hint of trouble. Once I’d heard a window open in a block of flats I was passing and an occupant shouted down to the street, ‘Oi! Stop breaking into my car!’ The offender duly backed away from the vehicle, wandered off into the night, and the window above was shut again. That was the closest I’d ever come to anything untoward on St Kilda’s streets. I’d like to think I kept my wits about me, but you never know how you’ll react in a dangerous situation until one is thrust upon you, do you?
I was maybe five or six minutes from home on that rego night when a man walked out of a side street ahead of me at full stride. He saw me out of the corner of his eye and spun around, changing direction completely to walk towards me. As he did, he made eye contact with another man across the street, who jumped up from the fence he was perched on and suddenly trotted across towards me. Without a word they were locked in, like predatory animals, their steps quickening, faces emotionless, stares unflinching. Everything about that walk changed in a breath, and I knew beyond question that I was about to be rolled.
My first thought wasn’t for my safety— it was for that $200 which I needed more than ever by then. I remember thinking to myself that if I lost that as well, I’d just about give up. I clutched my bag, tried to look as though I had no idea what was going on, and as they both stepped to within half a metre of me, and one of them began to raise his hand, I suddenly spun around and leapt sideways, onto the road and into the oncoming traffic.
I had no idea what I was leaping into. I’d decided not to check because I didn’t want to take my eyes off them. I was strategising so hard I’d lost track of the sounds around me, but I knew the road was my only hope so I spun, leapt and landed right out in the middle, with my arms outstretched and palms facing forward, hoping the driver of whatever car I was jumping in front of would see me in time to stop, and wouldn’t just drive around me, leaving me alone with those men.
You won’t believe it. The car I jumped in front of was a taxi. An empty taxi. ‘Where the fuck were you twenty minutes ago?’ I wanted to scream.
The driver’s eyes were like two giant full moons shining at me from his seat. ‘Please help me,’ I begged, worried he’d drive off as I rounded the car and tried to get inside.
He looked at me, looked at the two men standing on the edge of the footpath watching me, then nodded and motioned me in. He drove me the 100 metres or so to my flat without turning on the meter, without either of us saying a word, apart from my few directions, and I gave him $10. I slid into bed next to Adrian and Bobby our dog, who were both sound asleep, and considered my situation.
I guess you could say I was ready for a change.
So I went to meet Dean in his hotel room. I parked across the street without any money to put into the meter and prayed to the Gods of Parking Infringement not to give me a ticket. Then I went inside and tried very hard to tell him everything he wanted to hear. Eventually I heard something I didn’t want to, and spent the rest of the conversation trying not to look completely crushed.
The job he was looking to fill at that particular moment was in Perth.
‘It’s Perth,’ I told Toby flatly. ‘It’s Perth!’
Please try to understand, Perthlings, it really isn’t personal. I’d never even been to Perth, so I had no way of knowing if I liked it or not. It was just that my Dogs in Space life was finally back on track in Melbourne, my spiritual homeland. I’d fought my way into Melbourne comedy—twice—and the idea of walking away from it was completely incomprehensible to me. I was focused on moving up in showbiz, not west.
‘It’ll lead to something else,’ everyone told me. ‘It’s a fantastic stepping stone. Not everyone can be like Hughesy and land the dream job straight up.’
So I agreed to fly to Perth, just to look around and to meet the General Manager. It was crazy. I was flying to Perth.
Perth is beautiful, and the GM took me out for di
nner and showed me the sights. The station was unfinished but stunning, and I started to get into the vibe of the place.
Adrian was very positive about the idea. He saw it as an adventure and hoped, like I did, that the rumours of mountains of cash and free stuff were true. The more we talked about it, the more I thought about the checklist Adrian had laid down earlier in our relationship when I’d announced I was ready for a baby.
Having grown up sans cash in commission houses around rural Victoria, Adrian maintained he never wanted to live like that again, and that’s what would happen if we had a kid on the dole. Furthermore he declared that he could never consider starting a family until we had bought a house.
At the time he said it, it was ludicrous. I was a gigging comedian earning my living 200 bucks at a time, and he was an artist, earning nothing. Even when I worked in the sex industry we had enough extra money to buy clothes that no one else had owned before, but not houses.
I’d managed to convince myself that he was sincerely traumatised by his upbringing, and not just plonking an insurmountable obstacle between me and my ovaries because he actually just didn’t want to have kids—but it certainly played on my mind. Although I didn’t share it with Adrian at the time, for fear of finding out something I didn’t want to know, any enthusiasm I had for Perth was based upon the hope that I might be able to buy a house and have my baby (before returning home to Melbourne to get a job like Hughesy’s).
So I pushed forward, meeting Dean and potential teammates at the Melbourne studios to record demo tapes for Perth’s newest breakfast show. I asked Dean if I could bring a friend with me to try out too, because I’d heard a lot of horror stories about ‘radio guys’ and didn’t want to be hooked up with any dicks. This kid, Damian Clarke, was a funny comic, a good mate of mine and originally from Perth, so I thought I’d pulled off a programming masterstroke and handed Dean his team.
The next thing I remember is literally sitting by the phone with Adrian and our dog Bobby, knowing it was the day the Perth jobs would be officially offered. Damian called me excitedly. He got the job! Brilliant! I wouldn’t have to work with those other dicks I’d auditioned with. I sat back in my chair, relieved, and smiled at Adrian, who was talking about what we should leave behind and buy new when we moved.
Minutes ticked by. We started chatting about all the things Dean might’ve been doing before he got around to calling me with my good news. I was the only girl at the auditions, and Dean and I were pretty matey, so he was probably dishing out some bad news before he rang me. More minutes ticked by, and Adrian and I stopped talking, and eventually stopped making eye contact.
‘I’ll ring him!’ I said chirpily. So I did, but the call went to message bank, and half an hour later we still hadn’t heard anything.
I started to panic a little bit. I’d never wanted to go to Perth, but somewhere along the line I’d given in to it. We were so broke the day we sat there waiting for that phone to ring, convinced we were about to be swept away from it all, transported to sunny Perth where we’d be paid every month and drown in free shit. We were about to be saved, and we desperately needed to be. I couldn’t bear to look around me, at the flat we thought we were leaving behind. We had to leave it. That flat was like a piece of ice melting under our feet.
Eventually I called Damian back. He sounded different this time. ‘Hi babe, I haven’t heard from Dean yet, do you know what’s happening?’ I asked, trying not to sound desperate.
‘Hasn’t he told you?’ he asked with the unmistakable tone of embarrassment mixed with pity and guilt. ‘Oh Jesus, I’m so sorry man, I’m so sorry. They’ve given it to some other chick.’
Oh. It’s actually not Perth, and I’m actually not being saved. I turned to face the flat—and worse, to face Adrian, who’d retreated to a dark corner and knew what I was going to say.
It was terrifying. Yet again, I’d counted my chickens before they’d hatched, and yet again there were no chickens, just egg all over my face. This time, however, I turned around, walked back to my desk and applied everything I’d learnt from that experience. I got straight back to work.
I called every promoter in town and asked for gigs. By the end of the day I had a dozen gigs around town booked for the coming weeks, and a couple of months’ work touring with ‘Puppetry of the Penis’ (as a support act, not as a puppeteer, thank you very much).
You know how people tell you that ‘everything happens for a reason’ when something happens to you that sucks? Well, I wouldn’t say I believe that rule to be absolute, but in this instance I must admit that two big breaks grew from innocuous little seeds planted during the run of gigs I booked that desperate afternoon.
The first little seed was planted when I found myself on a bill with Dave O’Neil, great comic and brilliant gossip. He was working at Nova Melbourne at the time with Hughesy and Kate Langbroek, and was dying to hear about the Perth debacle. I told him the whole sorry story and he was very sympathetic. It must’ve popped into his mind about two months later when Kate called in sick one morning, and advised she’d probably need a few days off. He and Hughesy decided they needed a fill-in and thought I might be someone that they and management could agree upon.
The second little seed was planted during a gig my old mate Ged Wood was running in a tiny pub in Yarraville, at which there may have been two dozen actual audience members. Some of them had come to the pub for dinner, and had been begged to stay on for free and see some comedy. Whichever way you slice it, it wasn’t ideal.
The ‘stage’ was a platform about 20 cm off the ground, and the audience sat around a couple of tables in front of it. Close behind them was the kitchen, from which the sounds of washing up were clearly audible. The acts who weren’t onstage were perched on stools around the room sipping their free beers and stressing about how to play to such a small crowd. I wasn’t stressed at all. I’d approach it the same way I always approached small gigs—the way Dave Grant taught me to.
He and I were standing in a pub somewhere once, about to do a gig that just about no one had come to see, and I was cracking the sads about having to perform to an awkward handful of people. Dave told me, ‘What we’ve got to do here, mate, is convince them they didn’t make a mistake in coming here. We have to make them believe they are the clever ones and everyone else in town is an idiot for missing it.’
He showed me that night how to create a party vibe at a gig that only really works when numbers are low. If you do it right, it feels like a secret little event in which the audience is getting to hang out with comedians. It can’t be too self-indulgent, and it still has to exist within Dave’s strict code of gig conduct, but it can make for the kind of gig that people remember and talk about long after.
I was MC that night. Pommy Johnson and Darren Casey, two of the absolute best in the business, were on the bill and right up for a cheeky little party gig, so it ended up being a lot of fun and the crowd had a good time. Pommy had his guitar and refused to get off the stage, as he does when he’s enjoying himself, but eventually he handed it back to me at around midnight to close the show, at which time I collected my envelope from Ged and drove my VW off into the night.
One of the people in that crowd was a handsome young man by the name of Todd Abbott, who’d been working with Roy and HG on Club Buggery as series producer. I don’t remember him being there, which is weird because it felt like I knew everyone in the room by name by the end of that gig, but also lucky because we comedians would probably have acted really weirdly if we’d known who he was. He remembered me though. Many months later, he was in a position to give a comedian a massive opportunity, and sure enough that nutty gig in Yarraville stood out in his mind.
So there I was again, in what a footy coach might have called a ‘rebuilding phase’, wondering how on earth I’d managed to screw up another massive opportunity. At least this time I hadn’t sat around moping until someone died and shocked me back into action, but I was feeling pretty hopeless I must say. I was
starting to wonder what was to become of me. I was a really good comedian, but for some reason I wasn’t able to close the deal on a job that would take me to the next level.
I didn’t realise a couple of magical little seeds had fallen out of my pocket—or that they would sprout at exactly the same time. Because nothing comes easily, they wouldn’t grow overnight, and they certainly wouldn’t grow straight up, but they’d grow into beanstalks alright.
Just as sure as your arse points to the ground, as my Uncle Frank used to say.
IT’S GOSFORD
Kate Langbroek, it turned out, was pregnant when she called in sick that day in early 2003. She was suffering terribly from morning sickness, so I ended up filling in for a week. Actually, Kate had a very eventful year, in which the following events took place, in no particular order:
She suffered a few more crippling bouts of morning sickness.
She went on a girl’s trip to Las Vegas.
She came home from Vegas on the Qantas ‘SARS’ flight, after which she and every other passenger had to be quarantined.
She got the flu (but it wasn’t SARS).
She got married.
She went on a honeymoon.
She went on maternity leave.
Although I was competing with a few other girls around town, I was asked to cover for Kate during most of those absences, although Gretel Killeen was given the honour of covering during Kate’s maternity leave, which shat me, but there you are.
I was absolutely aware that I’d fallen into an extraordinary opportunity to learn about commercial breakfast radio while actually doing it. Hughesy and Dave and their producer Sascha French were brilliant teachers, and always encouraged me to have a go rather than just keep the seat warm. I leapt out of bed at 4.30 a.m. on my fill-in days, so exhilarated at another opportunity to perform on Melbourne radio. I was paid quite nicely too, so the financial mess of the Perth period slowly melted away. I even got my car serviced!
The Fence-Painting Fortnight of Destiny: A memoir Page 16