Tripping Over Myself: a Memoir of a Life in Comedy by Shaun Micallef

Author:Shaun Micallef [Shaun Micallef]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hardie Grant Books
Published: 2022-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

With two films under starter’s orders and the sitcom assembled and scheduled for midyear on the public broadcaster, I moved back to the ramshackle fibro buildings at the converted soup factory in Bendigo Street to begin work on Micallef Tonight. Channel 9 had wanted to call the show Micallef Tonight! but I felt the exclamation mark was too gaudy and wanted something more subtle; we back and forthed over this for minutes but they finally caved, the worms. This was an even more make-or-break opportunity than the Logies had been. Jerry Lewis’s late-night show had been a bomb and only lasted thirteen episodes. I certainly didn’t want that happening to me.

That they made us do four pilots should have tipped me off that something was wrong. Clearly, they hadn’t been won over by what we were doing, but there’d never be any notes (and I certainly wasn’t going to ask for any). They would just request another pilot. We would oblige by shooting virtually the same show over again – and again – and again. It was like auditioning for the MTC.

Eventually they realised that it wasn’t going to get either any better or any different, bit the bullet and scheduled the show. I was up on billboards, featured in magazines and even did a network promo dressed in a kilt and playing the bagpipes (I guess they thought ‘Micallef’ was Scottish). Expectations were high. As part of a publicity blitz on a scale unseen since Goebbels launched Hitler, it was arranged that I would have a special tête-à-tête luncheon with the Hedda Hopper of Australian television, Robert Fidgeon. Robert used to work for Channel 9 when he was young and was now still doing much the same thing through his regular TV column in the Herald Sun. If Robert Fidgeon liked you, then you could be assured of glowing reviews week after week during your run. I was forever getting him mixed up with another writer who worked for rival newspaper The Age (let’s call him Louella Parsons), so before our confab I made a mental note that whatever I did, I must not mistake one for the other.

The day for our lunch arrived, so did I and then eventually our food. Robert was friendly, holding forth on the rich glory days of Channel 9 while shovelling forkfuls of expense-account scampi into his craw. He asked me what I thought of Graham Kennedy. I liked him. Don Lane? Watched his show all the time. Bert Newton? Brilliant. He liked that I’d sent a personal note to Bert asking him to present the Gold Logie when I hosted. I was doing well. What did I think about Mick Molloy’s new show? This was a test. He’d dropped it in, hoping to catch me off guard.

Daryl had just left the network after a century of doing Hey Hey It’s Saturday and Mick had filled the gap with a show that was as different from Daryl’s as David Lynch’s Elephant Man had been from Zoltan Korda’s Elephant Boy.

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