Come Back to the Five and Dime, Murray Tregonning, Murray Tregonning
I’ve said it before. And I’ll say it again. So stand back.
Daryl Somers is the Colonel Kurtz at the end of the river of Australian television.
This dude don’t go with no flow. The flow goes with him.
And the latest rumble in the jungle says that Daz has scraped the sugar from the fuel tank of his favourite vehicle and will be speeding into our hearts once more.
That’s right. Hey Hey It’s Saturday is coming back. The powers-that-be say the commitment only extends to a pair of one-off specials. But you know and I know they are just foxin’.
The path is being cleared for a full and triumphant return on a Saturday-nightly basis in 2010.
So you can keep your TV Farts and 7PM Rejects.
The clock on the wall says it is Somers Time again, and only a philistine who has had their funny bone surgically removed would not be tickled by the news.
Me, I have whiled away the long, dark years since Hey Hey went off-air by studying for what I call my Ph.D(aryl).
My research of the program and its touchstone influence on Australian entertainment has uncovered many remarkable, astonishing and just plain gobsmacking facts, ten of which I will share with you now.
1. Distinguished Australian author Patrick White worked as a gag writer on Hey Hey from its inception right up until his death in 1990. His nominal replacement, Colleen McCullough, lasted only a matter of weeks before vacating the position, citing ‘creative differences’.
2. A notoriously superstitious man, crack voice-over sniper John Blackman always entered the booth wearing the same pair of underpants. On the outside of his trousers.
3. After figures were tallied and notes were exchanged at the end of Hey Hey’s marathon run, it was discovered that cast and crew had slept with Police Academy man-of-a-thousand-voices Michael Winslow more than any other celebrity guest.
4. Following the untimely death of Maurie Fields in 1995, several attempts were made to have the late comic posthumously complete his contractual obligation to the ‘Great Aussie Joke’ segment via ouija board.
5. Daryl Somers owns the world’s largest collection of McMillan & Wife memorabilia, including the moustache grown by Rock Hudson for seasons three and four of the series. A glass-half-full kinda guy, Daryl even saw the funny side when an eBay snafu saw him lumbered with a signed photograph of former British PM Harold Macmillan’s wedding ceremony.
6. Nine Network despot Kerry Packer was a ferociously rabid Hey Hey fan. If he missed the ‘Red Faces’ portion of the show, all contestants and panellists were flown overnight to Sydney. The entire segment would be re-staged on the back lawn of Packer’s mansion while the tycoon ate his breakfast on the patio.
7. Until suffering an ingrown toenail, Daryl Somers would direct and vision-switch entire episodes of Hey Hey via a series of foot pedals located under his desk.
8. As a result of an on-set brawl, a restraining order was filed against Ruth Cracknell, preventing the beloved, yet volatile, acting doyenne from setting foot within one kilometre of any Hey Hey broadcast location.
9. A famous Hey Hey clip of singers John Farnham and Tom Jones performing a cappella acrobatics was briefly credited with extracting several people from lengthy comas, until a copyright dispute outlawed the practice.
10. Rights to the Hey Hey format were sold to several overseas markets in the late 1980s. The last territory still renewing its deal is North Korea, where the program is known as Fearless Leader’s Happy Weekend Feast. This incarnation of the show is particularly unusual, in that the host performs alongside a different live ostrich each week. During the final commercial break, the bird is humanely slaughtered, and can often be seen being consumed by cast, crew and studio audience underneath the closing credits. It’s on YouTube. Go ahead. Take a look.
Leigh Paatsch works two jobs to make ends meet. One is writing about movies for newspapers. The other is as Donnie Sutherland’s dresser/understudy on ‘Sounds Unlimited: The Musical’.
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