Slay Dicksy For Me
Okay. It’s fair to say that, as far as employment goes, things have been a little... sparse lately. ‘Dry as a nun’s nasty’ is a term my dad liked to use and it pretty much sums up the whole whacky, fun-filled looking-for-a-paid gig thing. Since my sacking from Mix FM last year, I really have been missing radio and so, I confess, it was while feeling a bit of a thrill that I agreed to do some free radio for a Melbourne talk station. I won’t name it but, suffice to say, the pictures on the wall feature men, men and more men. (That doesn’t really narrow it down much, does it?) And, in that gallery of thorns, there is not one rose to pretty up the drab workplace, as women traditionally have done. Much like a pot plant, but better to root. Kapow.
I was waiting to go on air and have a wee chat about ethics and schools, and, on the drive to the studio, I was making the ‘Ha Ha in my head’ as I crawled along Punt Road. I was in a car, not on my hands and knees. I was asking myself if I could discuss the following topics on air: piles of flaked skin under a mattress, as recently shown in an ad for mattress cleaning; or my son drinking from a toilet, using a toilet brush as a spoon/swizzle stick; as well as wondering if painting a verbal picture of a turd floating in a public swimming pool would be a no-go, especially at lunchtime.
I arrived prepared and had, on the advice of my cleaning lady1, changed out of my tracksuit pants and runners and into boots, and a frock that smelled, only slightly, of campfire smoke. She said that, as luck would have it, the one day I went there in trackies would be the day I would run into someone famous and important. Ladies and gentlemen, Maria the cleaner was dead right.
For who should I bump into as soon as I walked through the door but Dicksy2 and his handsome minder, Matt. Or Mark. Or Mal ... something. Handsome guys all kind of blur for me. Which is perhaps why I recognised Dicksy immediately. You know Dicksy. He hosts a travel show. He has been on radio. He played at the Roxy. I mean, the Ricksy. Yeah, that’s him. The big, tall guy with a husky voice. And boy, oh boy, did he treat us to pah-lenty of that husky voice. He loves to tell a yarn, old Dicksy. That’s probably what makes him such a cracking travel reporter. When he talks, you can just see him leaning against a bar in a foreign land, a beer in his hand, sweat running off his chin, and his big booming laugh frightening the attendant locals, and delighting a circle of homesick cameramen and pissed Contiki travellers. But that’s just him. China, Ballarat, Thailand or Noosa; mate, it’s all the same to Dicksy. He is just a people person. What can you do?
In his wisdom, Dicksy had decided it was best if he did the talking. When The Minder offered a travel story, or when I did, Dicksy listened, unmoved, and then launched into his next story with the words ‘But the best one was when...’. Dicksy had a lot to say and he knew tonnes of show biz people. ‘Do you know Billy Bloggs? Great bloke. Have you ever worked with John Citizen? Great bloke. How good is Jane Smith? Mate, she’s a top bird.’ It was as if he had walked into my brain, gone straight past the bulging Good Sticks folder to the Dickheads-in-Show-Biz section. Not one person he liked was liked by me. The Minder and I sat and listened.
Dicksy had spoken for twenty-eight minutes and the big guy was running out of puff. He looked longingly at the studio, where men were talking to much better people than he was talking to. A beautiful young lady3 producer emerged and apologised for the delay, explaining that Dicksy would be on air in about ten minutes’ time. There was nothing else for it and, reluctantly, Dicksy looked at the floor and muttered, ‘So...what do you do?’
I said, ‘I’m a comedian.’
Dicksy was delighted. He sparked right up, turned pink, and laughed as he nudged The Minder and said, ‘Yeah, well, we’ve been just pissing ourselves over here.’
In other words, Dicksy didn’t think I was funny. I was shattered. I mean, all those brilliantly timed ‘Oh really’s and ‘Hmm’s and ‘Good heavens’ retorts hadn’t amused him one jot. Taking pity on me, and having nowhere to run, he claimed to have recognised me from the Comedy Gala. I knew he was thinking of Fiona O’Loughlin. It happens a bit because Fiona and I both have too many kids. I said I was never in the Gala. I suggested that he might know me from Spicks and Specks. He answered with ‘I’ve been on that show.’
I felt something shift within me. Maybe I was angry because he had explained how TV was so good to him that he had been able to send his kids to a private school. Maybe I resented the way he told me that his son was a brilliant drummer and then added in astonishment, ‘You won’t believe this. His teacher is a female.’ (God, how I hate it when certain men say female, like they are describing another species: ‘You won’t believe this. His teacher is an octopus.’) Or maybe I just hated how he had scoffed at the notion of me being a comedian. Either way, I went a bit nuts. I committed, perhaps, a bit of career hari-kari, just to make him uncomfortable.
I started to run through the shows I had been on and what had happened to them once I had become involved. There was The Nation (cancelled after my last appearance); The Catch-Up (I was the second-last guest to appear); Get This on Triple M (I was involved in the last show); Mix FM (I was sacked but the show limped on); TV Burp (I was sacked but the show carried on for a few weeks before it was put to rest); Rove (my gags went to air the week before it finished); ADbc (the show was cancelled, then put back, then cancelled again); and then, lastly, The White Room, which was dumped after two weeks.4
By this stage, Dicksy really wanted to get away from me. He was pushing back his chair and had gone a little pale. I couldn’t help myself. I just had to ask him one last question: ‘So ... do you reckon you could get me a gig?’
***
1Don’t judge me. I stopped wanting to clean my house the exact same day I stopped wanting to eat cat poo. Freaky.
2Not his real name.
3Female producers do not get their photos on the wall. However, there are tonnes of smart, curious, highly skilled young women around the place, giving the grumpy old blokes a little Robert Palmer tingle.
4Having said that, I am incredibly hilarious and talented and should be hired by someone immediately.
George McEncroe is a Melbourne-based writer, comedian and broadcaster, who occasionally pops up on ‘Spicks and Specks’ and ‘ADbc’. She will be performing her new show, ‘The Care Factor’, at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, September 29 to October 2.
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