The Years Before My Death

by David McPhail

  There is a feeling of deep embarrassment and increasing unease when you cannot deliver a speech properly. The harder you try, the more the words become an incomprehensible jumble. I recall appearing as the front man in a television commercial for an insurance company. The advertisement was 60 seconds long and required me to walk around a huge studio through a large ensemble of dancers and singers as I expounded the virtues of home and contents insurance.

  The director had earlier told me that I didn’t need to learn the whole script. He intended to film the commercial in a series of short takes. So, I didn’t learn the script.

  I had my first inkling that plans may have changed when I entered the studio. I noticed a camera on a large crane. In film and television a crane is a long weighted arm mounted on a pedestal. A camera and operator sit on one end of the crane. There are weights at the other end and the camera and the operator can be raised and lowered or swung from side to side. Casually I said to the director, ‘I see you’re using a crane.’

  He beamed at me. ‘Yes, I had the idea last night. We’re going to do it all in one shot.’

  I felt a sudden chill. ‘I see.’ I rushed to the dressing room and grabbed the script. It was littered with insurance terms and immediately they blurred into mumbo-jumbo. I panicked.

  In that frame of mind it is virtually impossible to appear reasonable, coherent or anything like a front man. We began recording with the camera swooping around above my head and the dancers high-kicking behind me. It was an afternoon of torment. On the few occasions I got the script right, the dancers were out of step and when they performed with clock-work precision, I stumbled. For hours we never seemed to match. The crew was becoming grim and moody and the director looked as if he’d had a stroke.

  At last, near the end of the day, the dancers, although very tired, clicked and I managed to get to the end of the script with all the words in the right order. I felt slightly better but I knew from experience they’d want at least one more take. But, the director was so hysterical with relief he screamed, ‘We’ve got it. We’ve got it. That’s the one.’ He didn’t have the stamina or courage to do it again and neither did anyone else in the studio.

  A Week of It contained only a few regular sketches but two became hallmarks of the first series. One was a Rugby discussion hosted by Jon. It was called ‘Life with the Loins’. During script meetings there was frequent pressure to rename it ‘Between the Loins’. After a while this was forgotten mainly because Alan and Chris had managed to slip into a sketch a reference to a motorcycle enthusiast who’d written a book called ‘Triumph Between My Thighs’.

  On the Rugby panel were two hopeless former players, Chris and I, who commented on the game in slow, Neanderthal tones. The characters, named Andy Loosely and Bryan Wilful, wore blazers and Rugby headgear. Both of them alarmed and frustrated Jon, who was playing an agitated, high-pitched interviewer called Lance.

  Two odd phrases became recognised by the audience. Chris would go off on a rambling, largely unintelligible discourse about moving it up the middle or taking it up the back. When he’d finished and Tony Holden had taken a quick shot of Jon’s squirming despair, I would announce, ‘I’d like to agree whole-heartedly with that.’

  This illustrates one of the odd things about humour. There is nothing intrinsically funny about the line. In another sketch it would pass unnoticed. But members of the audience began to anticipate its appearance. They were, if you like, ‘in on’ the joke. So when Tony switched camera from Jon to me, and if I paused slightly, they started to giggle. Then, I delivered the line and they laughed.

  The other expression was simply, ‘That’s a tough one.’ Jon would ask a straightforward question such as, ‘Can the All Blacks beat the Springboks?’ At that time the answer was probably ‘Yes’ but Andy and Bryan would sit in a bewildered silence for several seconds before replying, ‘Jeez, that’s a tough one, Lance.’ And never answer the question.

  Humour can often be assessed, not by the quality of the joke, but by the moment it’s told. I’m wary of analysing. Like dissecting a frog, you can poke into humour and by the time you discover how it works, it’s dead. A sketch that might have been funny 30 years ago will not stand up today. Although there are exceptions.

  The ‘three jokers standing around a leaner in a pub’ sketch that had first made an appearance in the Merely Players’ show, ended the first programme. It was Alan and Chris’s creation and during the three years of A Week of It they wrote every sketch. We called the hotel the Glue Pot Tavern though our depiction bore no resemblance to the fabled pub at the top of Auckland’s College Hill.

  Three men, George, Gary and Wayne, stood around a leaner in a cartoon set with a painted dart board at the back and a drawing of a door marked ‘Gents’. In the background were members of the setting crew. As they worked from a building on Madras Street they were listed in the programme’s credits as ‘the Madras Street Players’. They didn’t take much convincing to appear as extras. We drank real beer on the set. Today, using members of the crew as the cast or drinking beer would be sternly forbidden. But, then so would people smoking real cigarettes all around the set.

  My character was George. He wore a brightly coloured, sleeveless pullover with a ghastly Fair Isle pattern. Chris had a tartan shirt and a knitted hat while Jon wore a nondescript jacket with a large scarf. The other member of the sketch was Annie Whittle. She played a blowsy barmaid named Charlene with a sharp tongue and a distinct ability to put the three jokers down.

  ‘What’s up, Char?’

  ‘Not you that’s for sure.’

  The ‘Three Jokers’ sketch was coarse, loud and direct. Apart from Bruce’s eleventh-hour updates for Ken, it was our last opportunity to get topical material into the show. But, it was also a chance to unleash on an unprepared public Alan and Chris’s command of truly awful puns. At the time of a women’s convention, Gary announced he’d seen a delegate outside the conference venue smoking a cigar. George asked, ‘Cheroot?’

  Gary replied, ‘No, I didn’t ask her.’

  There were many suggestions raised about the four characters but with Alan and Chris’s writing they seemed to form themselves. George was an opinionated bigot; Gary, a cheerfully vulgar optimist; and Wayne was, well, dumb. But, well-meaning. And Charlene could give as good as she got and always got what she wanted.

  The three jokers usually began the sketch by downing their beers and observing, ‘That didn’t touch the sides.’ Gary would often continue, ‘No, the sides were untouched by that little number.’ Then, they launched into a tightly written, offensive discussion about events of the week.

  Charlene: Did you enjoy watching the All Blacks on telly with me, Wayne? Like the action?

  Gary: I bet there was some pretty good action on the telly too, Char.

  Charlene: Shut up. Just imagine, four tries in ninety minutes.

  Gary: Hang on, Char, the All Blacks only scored three tries.

  Charlene: I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about Wayne.

  It might not have had the honed precision of British satire, but it was about events that happened in our country during the previous two days. It was a New Zealand show about us. One television commercial featured Colin Meads. This was the start of the great All Black’s television career that has ranged from herbal products to finance companies. It showed Colin Meads stumping up a hill carrying two fence posts on his shoulders. He told us they were ‘tough and tantalised.’ It was very silly.

  A week later Chris walked up a similar hill, holding two fence posts, and announced: ‘They’re tough, terrorised and almost as thick as I am.’

  One of the most pathetic commercials praised the ability of New Zealand sheep farmers. The opening line was, ‘Why are Kiwis so good with sheep?’

  We answered with a shot of me holding a ewe and saying, ‘Why are Kiwis so good with sheep? Because they’re no good with women.’

  After one parody I was contacted by the manager of the company
we’d lampooned. I braced myself for a tirade. Instead, he simply asked how much it had cost to mimic his advertisement. I did a quick calculation in my head and replied, ‘About three hundred dollars.’ I heard a slight intake of breath.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘The bloody ad agency charged me twenty thousand.’

  A Week of It was never subtle nor was it meant to be. That’s why Chris always referred to the prime minister, Robert Muldoon, as Quasirobbo. And why some years later he became Muldolini. We had 48 hours to get the show on-air. There were only three questions: ‘Is it funny? Does it push the edge? Will we get sued?’ If we could agree about the first two and hold our collective breath on the third then we had a show.

  The three jokers who stood pontificating with such insolence and ease became the backbone of A Week of It. The sketch was at the end of the show, so we always knew where we were heading. A typical programme would open with the wobbly titles and then a shot of Ken. He would acknowledge the applause with a smile, a small adjustment of his glasses and then say, ‘Good evening, I’m Ken Ellis.’ More applause.

  The first sketch was the danger zone — our major assault on an event of the week. If this back-fired we knew we had a long climb back. So, it might have been Peter with his ruthless impersonation of the leader of the opposition, Bill Rowling. Peter appeared as a frightened man with a high-pitched voice and absolutely no understanding of what he was talking about. Some years later members of Bill Rowling’s family accused Peter of contributing to Bill Rowling’s political demise. They missed the point. He gained more publicity from Peter’s impersonations than he ever did from his own appearances.

  So, we’re half-way into a show. There are major problems. Two sketches we’ve recorded can’t be played to the audience in the theatre. We must fill in the time. There are two options. Send Peter out to do helicopter impressions or get Mary Ruston to play some music. Mary was in charge of the music. I’d first met her during my association with the Merely Players. She had long blonde hair and a casual approach to a piano’s keyboard because she knew it so well. Mary could play anything.

  Peter was changing costumes so Mary played. The problem was solved but we had lost 10 minutes. This meant the rest of the show would need to be recorded without a break. The pressure was mounting.

  One of the successes of A Week of It was Ken’s imperturbable presence as the show’s front man. He never gave any indication of the panic going on just to his left and often lifted the end of a flagging sketch with a faint smile and slightly bemused look that seemed to say, ‘Like you, I’m a little puzzled by that as well.’

  As the penultimate sketch was finishing, our revolving stage would spin revealing the Glue Pot set and the three jokers would walk onto it. There would be a small buzz of anticipation from the audience. Tony would cut to Ken. ‘Now it’s time to catch up with events of the week. Well, the events as they were reported down at the Glue Pot.’

  The customary exchange about the beer not touching the sides would take place and George would begin a rant. Wayne would make a clumsy pass at Charlene eliciting the observation, ‘You really missed your chance there, boy,’ from Gary. The difficulty with the Glue Pot sketch, or any sketch for that matter, was ending it satisfactorily. Alan and Chris devised a clever method by having Wayne always misinterpret something George or Gary had said.

  Gary: Have you heard about the gale warning?

  Wayne: Gail Warning? Wasn’t she that sheila who …

  Chris and I always replied, ‘Jeez, Wayne.’ It was meant to be a full stop at the end of the sketch. Instead the phrase took on a life of its own. The popularity of ‘Jeez, Wayne’ caught us by surprise. Slowly we started to hear people using it as an expression of exasperation. By the second series of A Week of It the phrase was being widely applied in conversations. One newspaper writer cheerfully chastised us for introducing it into the national vocabulary. Quite recently, over 30 years after A Week of It finished, I heard a man yell out, ‘Jeez, Wayne’ at a careless driver.

  As the programmes progressed Alan and Chris began to write variations on the phrase mainly for their own amusement.

  Wayne: If I was going to propose to a girl, how would I do it?

  George: Get down on the floor.

  Wayne: On what?

  Gary: Knees, Wayne.

  I’ve grown to realise that most comedy arises from an audience anticipating where you’re going and then being caught off guard when you suddenly switch in another direction. We always ended a programme by presenting an award for the silliest statement or action of the week. The award took the form of a gold-painted camel whose name was Humphrey. He got his role because of a story we’d heard about a real female camel being mistaken for a male. There were some weeks when we had up to six possible recipients. If A Week if It was playing today the number would be closer to 20.

  After seven weeks A Week of It ended and my superiors quickly made plans for my future. I had been given my opportunity and now it was time to return to my true vocation — making rock and roll programmes. I opposed this. In spite of the time slot, A Week of It had attracted an audience and we had refined the production so it ran on a settled timetable, not panic-fuelled adrenalin.

  The reviews had been favourable and everyone on the production team wanted to continue. But South Pacific Television’s controller of programmes, Kevan Moore, disagreed. I had become aware that Moore didn’t like the show and probably didn’t like me much either. So, that might have been the end of it had it not been for one person. The head of South Pacific Television, Allan Martin, did like the show and on his insistence a second series was commissioned. I always remained in his debt for this decision.

  But Moore was persistent. He announced the format of the programme would be changed. It would include ‘more comedy and include variety acts in a longer 45-minute show.’ If anyone wanted to deliberately torpedo a satirical show this was the way to do it. Satire does not go with song and dance and, as Jon and I were to discover three years later, a 45-minute sketch show is almost impossible to sustain. A half hour of good sketches is demanding enough. Add an extra 15 minutes and the seams begin to show. A more important consideration is the stamina of the audience. A show that length might contain more than 30 sketches and eventually it’s fatigue that drives an audience away. However, Moore, who had never made a comedy show in his life, wanted a 45-minute show. He went on: ‘Satirical shows become tremendously popular and then suffer a big drop in popularity.’ This was news to me. Rather incautiously I fought back. In a newspaper interview I said there was no intention to reduce the show’s satirical content. I expected a broadside from Moore but nothing happened and after a few months the idea of what he’d described as ‘a more durable “Two Ronnies” type of format’ faded away.

  Early in 1978, A Week of It won the Feltex television award for best light entertainment programme and Annie Whittle was named best actress. I got the award for best actor. Around the same time, it was announced A Week of It would leave its 10.10 pm time slot and be screened at 8.30 pm.

  The television awards had bizarre touches of humour that even A Week of It would have struggled to match. The ceremony was staged with great fanfare in the grounds of the Mon Desir Hotel on Takapuna Beach. The hosts were the beautiful Ilona Rogers and the effervescent Peter Sinclair. From the beginning the show had an unplanned feeling about it. Ilona and Peter arrived in a boat. All right, there’s a beach, so let’s use it. Then, I noticed they were getting out and the water was around their knees. Ilona was clutching her dress like a bouquet and Peter had rolled up one leg of his trousers. They had rehearsed the arrival earlier when the tide was in.

  When the pair finally made it to the gardens they were greeted by a burst of feedback that was probably heard in Hamilton. Valiantly Peter and Ilona tried to restore some order but the cards were stacked against them.

  I was standing next to a tree in which perched two dancers dressed as fauns. Unhappily it seemed there was to be an elfin d
ance. Then, two security guards spotted the fauns and approached them. One guard flashed his and torch and shouted, ‘Get out of that tree.’

  One of the fauns whispered, ‘We can’t.’

  The guard was having none of this. ‘I told you to get out of the tree.’

  The other faun piped up. ‘We’re dancers.’

  This didn’t impress the guard. ‘I don’t care what you bloody well are. Get out of that tree.’ Reluctantly the dancers climbed down. Suddenly pixie music started and more dancers swung from other trees and began hopping up and down. Whether the absence of their two colleagues upset the rhythm of the dance was hard to tell, because it was very hard to see.

  The absence of light (the producers had forgotten about daylight saving time) featured prominently in most television reviews of the event. One headline ran: ‘Murky triumph for McPhail’, while another said: ‘Jeez Wayne, what a flop!’ Unfortunately, the problems continued. Ilona and Peter were positioned well away from the audience. As winners were announced they had to negotiate a treacherous obstacle course. Their progress was further hindered by the lack of light. When Peter announced, ‘And the winner is A Week of It, I stumbled off into the darkness and then, realising the distance I had to travel, broke into a jog. The cameras couldn’t see me because it was so dark. This meant the director had no alternative but to stay on a shot of Ilona and Peter who looked increasingly uncomfortable. I finally arrived, thanked the prime minister and the leader of the opposition for their great contribution to the programme and then lurched off into the darkness. But, my heart was thumping. We’d got it and in the shadows were most of the writers and performers who’d made it possible.