The Years Before My Death

by David McPhail

  We investigated one technique that was supposedly used by Monty Python’s Eric Idle in a comic documentary called The Ruttles. This show purported to follow the career of a four-man band that looked remarkably like The Beatles. It contained music that sounded uncannily like Lennon and McCartney but clearly wasn’t. We were told Idle took songs by The Beatles but, instead of performing them from the beginning, his musical director turned the tunes around and played them backwards. They were real Beatles’ songs but they were sung back to front with new lyrics. We had a brief experiment with this musical oddity but it never seemed to work for us. I suspect this was because the story we’d been told was nonsense. We had to find an alternative. So, we would take an existing tune, write new words that followed the metre and structure of the original music and then change the tune. Our musical director, Murray Wood, became remarkably skilled at writing new melodies based on old songs. He created all the music himself and it gave three writers enormous confidence knowing that ‘Murray will fix it’.

  When we began, the songs were introduced by Lin Waldegrave performing a sly impersonation of the rock icon Karyn Hay, the host of Radio with Pictures.

  Lin would sit with cassettes dangling from her ears or audio tape wreathed through her hair and, in a nasal drone that matched Hay’s flat voice precisely, announce the next band. One performance celebrated the fact that eight women were in Parliament, an institution that for decades had been the preserve of old, rogue, male elephants. The band was Marilyn and Her Members in honour of Marilyn Waring, a feisty member of Parliament for the Waipa electorate.

  We were using the female actors who were vital stalwarts of the show. This song was graced by confident performances from the wonderful Sara Jones, who’d taken over from Annie Whittle and who combined an accurate comedy punch with operatic training; Nancy Ross, a highly inventive actress, with a shock of curly hair and a voice that could make your libido do somersaults; Dallas Beckett, who gave precise performances and then punctuated and capped them with the flirty lift of an eyebrow; Debbie Davids, a tall, slightly reserved actress who, if you asked her to stand on her head, wouldn’t flinch but simply ask for a second to tuck in her skirt; Janice Gray, whose rich, rumbling voice and perfect confidence meant Jon and I had to work much harder when the three of us were on-screen. And Liz Braggins, whose sultry voice and ease at the keyboard we greatly underused. So, there were six brave and able women, accompanied by Jon, who was dressed, rather incongruously, as a Maori maiden — or more precisely an MP called, equally incongruously, Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan. They were ready to perform. Then, I walked out, dressed as Marilyn Waring. The song was not difficult. I’d recorded it some days before and now had only to mime to my own voice.

  There is a house in Wellington,

  The Beehive it is called,

  It used to be a male preserve

  And women were appalled.

  We’d had the vote for several years.

  But never had the means,

  A Beehive doesn’t function

  Till you get a bunch of queens.

  I could not get it right. We spent an hour-and-a-half trying to record that song. This was much longer than we would normally allow.

  My female backing group was becoming slightly tense, but as one take followed another, they simply smiled hopefully and did it again. Finally, I got it. They started laughing. I wiped the sweat from my face and John Lye said, ‘Let’s get moving. We’re an hour behind schedule.’

  These women would arrive for script meetings unaware of what was going to be demanded of them. There could be sketches that humiliated their femininity. Or laughed at meek housewives dominated by their husbands. The women Jon and I worked with for over eight years were strong and resolute with robust opinions and finely tuned abilities. I recall one sketch where Nancy Ross and I were trying to demonstrate how it could be possible to have sexual intercourse while sky-diving. We were lying on the floor of a studio clad in sky-diving gear and waving our arms and legs in the air to simulate falling. During a break Nancy rolled towards me. ‘It’s impossible,’ she said. ‘At this altitude a man’s cock would shrivel up inside his body.’

  On one occasion, Lin Waldegrave arrived at a script reading. Earlier, she’d raised a genuine concern that her barmaid character had very little to say in the pub sketch. We agreed and decided to increase her lines.

  Then, as a joke, we wrote a fake sketch for her. In it Ron was complaining about his non-existent sex life. Barbs offered to help and said, ‘Well, flop it on the bar and I’ll deal to it.’ Lin read this appalling line without a tremor and only a slight blanch. Then she looked up at me: ‘Do you really think we can get away with that?’ We all burst out laughing.

  It would have been impossible to make McPhail and Gadsby without women like Lin Waldegrave, Sara Jones and Nancy Ross. They were courageously offensive and Jon, Alan and I knew they would play the most outrageous sketches with an elegant indifference to public outrage.

  The birth of a new heir to the British throne produced one of Jon’s many memorable characters. Her name was Nanny McWhirter and she’d been hired by the Royal family to care for the infant prince. She was a garrulous old Scottish woman with an enormous confidence in two things — the brilliance of her opinions and the restorative power of single malt whisky. The makeup department had an orthodontist build an oversize pair of dentures for Jon and when Nanny McWhirter appeared she looked eerily like a horse wearing a wig. She was always caught in the act of swigging a bottle of whisky that she then quickly tried to hide.

  Och hello. Just testing the wee bairn’s bath lotion. Well, what could be more important in the upbringing of a royal princeling than a sound general education? Was it not the immortal Rabbie Burns who said, ‘Crum lacket quished lamore gang bottom’? — and I for one am the first to agree with him. I was arguing forcefully for the benefits of the sword dancing and razor slashing classes at my own Alma Mater, the Gorbals Secondary Modern, but the Duke overruled me and announced that he was going to Cheam. ‘But, aren’t you a bit old for school?’ I chaffed him coquettishly, whereupon the Duke called me a sherry-sodden old bag and cuffed me affectionately in the kidneys.

  ‘What’s wrong with Eton?’ piped up Captain Mark.

  ‘Nothing wrong with Eton,’ replied the Duke, ‘but I’m a drinkin’ man myself.’ The Queen froze him with a reproving stare and announced the royal child should be educated in the colonies. At this Charles got off his bike, saying that no son of his was going to spend his formative years chasing kangaroos, breakfasting on witchetty bugs and putting out bush fires.

  ‘Can Auckland Grammar be that bad?’ asked Lady Di tremulously. (Her grasp of geography is about what you’d expect of a former kindergarten teacher.) So there the matter rests, but frankly wherever the wretched tyke is sent, I hope the syllabus will include plenty of robust outdoor recreations, for as the immortal Burns also put it, ‘All work and no play make poor wee Jock a closet gay.’ Still, he could always join the Household Cavalry. Well, bye for noo and remember there’s many a good tune played by a young pipe on an old bag.’

  I have no idea how many sketches Jon, Alan and I wrote during the life of McPhail and Gadsby. But I know there were many hundreds. Some were wildly funny and I am constantly surprised by people who remember word-for-word sketches Jon and I have long forgotten. Others were insulting and shocking as good satire should be. A lot gently entertained and a few should have been drowned at birth.

  Where are they now? Most of them are on the ether probably passing the planet Pluto. A few remain, but not many. I have sometimes brooded on the fact that a large proportion of my creative life has disappeared. The three of us wrote for the moment. We were swift and furious. Many sketches I’d forgotten days after they’d been performed. We were not writing for posterity but for the sudden moment. The sketches were finely crafted cartoons with a life of less than 48 hours. However, there were three things that did last. My respect for the people who made those programme
s with us, the enduring friendship I have with Jon and the profound memories we share of our great friend Alan.

  Alan imprinted himself on my life with such an indelible stamp that I now find myself repeating things he said and quoting them as my own. ‘Most modern dance consists of people with painted faces, dressed in overalls dancing to the music of concrete mixers.’ In a book the three of us wrote, Alan defined an orchestra like this: ‘A collection of musicians not talented enough to carve out a solo career.’ But, his observations were rarely acidic. It was his wide knowledge and daunting vocabulary that produced the rollicking writing style.

  There are few pieces of New Zealand comic writing to match Alan’s triumphant report of the soprano Dame AK Grant’s fund-raising concert in the Christchurch Town Hall. This is only a brief extract of what was a stunning review, and I quote it with deep admiration:

  Dame AK then turned his attention to Canteloube’s arrangements of Songs of the Auvergne. From the programme it is clear he intended to sing three of these. However he received a standing ovation for the first one, ‘Bailero’, or ‘Shepherd Across the Water’, a response which so delighted him that, skin and teeth glowing, he sang it a second time, and then a third. After the third rendition the Dame received a seated ovation.

  The concert continued and the Dame still had a few surprises to pull out of his bodice.

  Then Dame AK paid a gracious tribute to the twin nationalities which contribute to his heritage by singing ‘Hine e Hine’ accompanied by the Caledonian Society Pipe Band. The extraordinary effect produced by this combination was, if anything, exceeded when he sang ‘Song of the Clyde’ accompanied by the guitars of the Volcanic Incredibles.

  The report concluded with: ‘The concert is expected to raise several hundred thousand dollars for the Dame AK Grant Centre for the Performing and Typewriting Arts … Dame AK has now departed, taking the money with him, as he explained, “for audit purposes”.’

  In a short column Alan had laughed at cultural snobbery, social correctness and corporate robbery.

  Jon and I often discussed Alan. He was a fearsome drinker and would respond with indignance and sometimes anger if the subject was raised. ‘How dare you interfere with my private life!’ Alan had decided on the course he would take and the ministrations of his friends were never enough to dissuade him. He was a powerful wit and clearly understood and dismissed the turmoil his life had become. During a tortured period Alan became engaged to a somewhat large woman with long, blonde hair and a slightly disconnected view of reality. One night, Alan and Jon were returning to their hotel and they looked into the bar. It was empty except for a barman and a large, flashing Wurlitzer juke-box standing in the corner. Excitedly, Alan exclaimed, ‘Look, Jane’s come to have a drink with us.’

  Jon replied, ‘There’s no one in the bar.’

  Alan thought Jon was mad. ‘She’s standing in the corner!’

  Jon looked again and said, ‘That’s a juke-box, Alan.’

  Most men would file this mistake in a distant part of their brain marked, ‘Do Not Enter’. But, the next time Alan saw Jane he announced with true ardour, ‘You won’t believe this, my darling, but I mistook a juke-box for you.’

  Jon and I had a different relationship. As well as writing the sketches, we also performed them. An understanding grew between us that could almost be called instinctive. Anne often said she was part of two marriages: ours and the one I had with Jon. There was a rather silly North & South magazine cover showing Jon and I sitting together in bed holding up cups of tea and celebrating a long marriage. Seeing it now I wonder what we were thinking. Certainly, Jon and I were inseparable when it came to comedy. We spoke the same language. We shared the same nods and raised eyebrows.

  And, we anticipated each other. If I went off the script, as I frequently did, he would always find some way to remind me what I was really supposed to be talking about. The live shows Jon and I performed away from television were probably more reckless, dangerous and funnier than a lot of McPhail and Gadsby. The bar of propriety was lifted. We could launch into Jon’s vulgar song about South American prostitution:

  Oh the ladies of Montevideo

  Are particularly easy to lay-oh.

  Except when they ask you to pay-o

  So, the ladies of Chile are best.

  Or swing into a sketch with Peter Hawes’s sublime opening line: ‘He’s so dense he thinks Mount Albert isn’t a suburb, it’s an instruction.’ We’d perform an unexpected version of Bizet’s celebrated duet In the Depths of the Temple. The audience didn’t know that Jon and I had quite powerful voices.

  We sang the piece in perfect harmony and in Italian. Then, we undercut the whole thing by announcing we would perform the English version, not by Bizet but Bidet. When sung in English, the two tenors were actually bleating on about their medical problems. In the thrilling final climax, their voices joined: ‘We’re annoyed by haemorrhoids. Why can’t we sit down?’

  We performed hundreds of live shows and sometimes the antics off-stage were as disarming as those that happened on-stage. Once, Jon and I checked into a motel in a small southern Taranaki town on the afternoon of an evening performance for the local racing club. We filled in the necessary forms and then the rather insipid young man behind the counter handed us a single key. Jon baulked immediately.

  ‘We don’t share rooms,’ he said.

  The man gave a sickly smile that slid into a leer. ‘I thought you did,’ he said.

  I knew Jon was getting angry so I quickly asked for another room.

  ‘There are no other rooms. There’s a race meeting on and everything’s booked. But I can put a cot bed in there. One of you can sleep on that and the other in the double bed.’

  Jon exploded. We were not sleeping in a cot or anything else. When we returned we wanted two separate rooms. The young man just shrugged his shoulders.

  Jon was still fuming when we arrived to perform the show and then we were confronted with another problem. When we completed the job we were ushered into the secretary’s office to receive our payment. The first thing he said was, ‘Great show. Right, discount for cash, eh boys?’ He then proceeded to stuff a paper bag with wads of notes.

  We protested that we didn’t do discounts and would only accept the fee we’d agreed upon. The secretary became very testy and called us poor sports. But we refused to budge and so, with undisguised bad grace, he pushed extra notes into the bag and shoved it at me. I decided this wasn’t the right moment to complain about our accommodation.

  As expected, nothing had changed at the motel. Jon refused to stay and I agreed with him. So, we set off for New Plymouth. It was a surreal moment driving through the moonlit Taranaki landscape at 1 am with a bag full of money between my knees. It felt as if we’d robbed a bank.

  As well as playing live shows we made videos for companies and I made television commercials for the Honda Motor Company.

  We were shooting a training video for the Alcoholic Liquor Advisory Council and after a long day decided to go to a restaurant. We ate too little and drank too much and the following morning both of us were feeling sickly. As luck would have it the first scene featured two men suffering from bad hangovers. When we finished the scene, the director took us aside. ‘I want to congratulate you,’ he said. ‘You were so convincing I almost believed you had real hangovers.’

  We smiled sheepishly and then Jon said something about being actors and having to practise to get it right. I rushed rudely from the set because I knew I wouldn’t be able to contain my laughter.

  Chapter 16

  NIGHTCLUBS AND A PRIME MINISTER

  The world in which Jon and I found ourselves was ruled by six things. Money, notoriety, appearances at prominent nightclubs, women who wore blonde wigs, bright lip-stick and very little else, a familiarity with squat men who wore sunglasses at night and the constant possibility of being mistaken for someone else. This was a time when the Women’s Weekly showed macaroni cheese recipes on its cover
or coyly revealed bottle feeding techniques for the busy mother.

  There can be odd moments in the world of the ‘personality’. As Jon and I began to make frequent live appearances I became less and less enchanted with the society world of the celebrity.

  So, when I walked into my first live appearance in Auckland, I was unprepared. The foundations of the Ace of Clubs are buried somewhere under Aotea Square. It was a nightclub owned by Phillip Warren, who was always known as Phil, and who at one time was deputy-mayor of Auckland. In the hard light of day the interior of the club looked like an unkempt warehouse scattered with tables and chairs. The air carried the faint odour of cooking fat. At night, with the tables crisply set and spotlights directing your attention away from the dust, you could be fooled into thinking this was a sophisticated palace of entertainment. That was until you caught the scent of fat again.

  Phil had developed and refined a simple way to pass an evening — dinner and a show — that was also wildly lucrative. In the seventies this was a welcome distraction from the highly priced shrimp cocktails and carpet-bag steaks of other restaurants. You booked a table, served yourself from a plain but large smorgasbord and then watched a cabaret show. It seemed an economical way to spend a night out. Until you bought liquor. Like today the profit was in the liquids not the solids. The main performer at the Ace of Clubs was Marcus Craig, otherwise known as Diamond ’Lil. His was a rowdy, raucous and noisily bawdy drag act. Decked out in sequins, tights, wigs and feathers with his face encrusted in wild makeup, Diamond ’Lil would prance around the stage fluttering ten-centimetre-long eyelashes and flinging his boa and a stream of brazen innuendos at the audience. But, Marcus could pull a crowd and, when he teamed up with other known acts, the Ace of Clubs was booked out. Many performers, including John Clarke and Howard Morrison, appeared at the club, so when A Week of It started its second year on television, and Phil offered us a season in Auckland, we felt we were in good company.