Bring Your Own Boos

Ex-PM John Howard had a fright this Halloween week, dodging the shoes of angry protestor Peter Gray who hurled his footwear during a live broadcast of the ABC’s ‘Q&A’ TV show, shouting “this is for the Iraqi dead”. It was interesting to see the former Liberal-National Coalition leader face such a physical and literal dressing down while he sat high on his book-promoting pedestal, even if the studio unease only lasted a minute or two. Mind you, Gray hardly put much venom into it, unlike the George Bush attack of 2008. Bush had to physically duck to dodge those missiles: Gray’s first is high and wide, the second awfully limp. Here’s the original clip, where Howard still remains remarkably self-assured; it's the sort of poise which suggests he has become accustomed to people throwing things at him. And if you didn't know, John Howard’s political memoir, Lazarus Rising, detailing his 11-year stint as Aussie Prime Minister, is out now.

I managed to get some temp work as a copywriter for a government office in Brisbane, compiling newsletters on subjects that I didn’t fully understand. Copywriter is such a derogatory term, and succinctly diminishes any hint of creativity that may be involved in the role. I’ve done public sector work before and, if it’s taught me anything, it’s to avoid using one word when you can use at least four or five. For example: why write ‘university’ when you can call it a ‘registered state funded tertiary education provider’? Jobs like this remind me of that scene in ‘The Day Today’ where an angry Steve Coogan takes a swipe at the Americanised business speak of a workplace training rep: “When you go to the toilet, do have an ‘Armitage Shanks interface defecation scenario’ or do you just have a shit?”

Anyway, look at the view: 19 floors up and surveying the entire south side of the city, including the 49 acre Botanic Gardens, the Southeast Freeway which crosses the Brisbane River and into the district of Woolloongabba. I would spend about 20 minutes of every day just staring out at this, at the rooftop hot tubs, the ferries cruising up the river and the miniature bodies rushing to and from work. On Thursday there was a thunder storm, not untypical for Brisbane: ten minutes of oppressive tropical whirlwind and rain. I saw the darkness descend from one corner of the window while the sun shone blue and radiant on the other. It certainly beats the view from my last public sector job: a dilapidated industrial estate overlooking the A629.

Bizarrely, I did manage to find something interesting in Council Leader magazine (“a bi-monthly magazine featuring up-to-date information on local government news and relevant issues affecting councils throughout Queensland”), for which I had been asked to write an article. The following are genuine exam answers from 16 year olds in the UK and can be found in the 'Time Out' section of the magazine. It’s enough to make you positively homesick…

Q: Name the four seasons?
A: Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar

Q: What are steroids?
A: Things for keeping the carpets still on the stairs

Q: What happens to your body as you age?
A: When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental

Q: What is the most common form of birth control?
A: Most people prevent contraception by wearing a condominium

Q: Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink?
A: Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep and canoeists.

Q: Give the meaning of the term 'Caesarean section'?
A: The caesarean section is a district in Rome



AU Tube - Understanding Australian TV
‘Top Gear Australia’ (Channel Nine)

There are over 900,000km of road in Australia, including some real humdingers: the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Great Ocean Road, the Nullarbor desert highway and the alluring expanse of the outback. We travel everywhere in my girlfriend’s automatic Holden Commodore, a reliable, hulking fridge of a car which is notoriously difficult to find in a supermarket car park for being the exact shape and size of just about every other car in Australia. That’s an exaggeration, obviously, because even a pom can tell you that the most identifiable Australian automobile is the coupe utility, or ‘utes’ to you and me, mate. The ute was supposedly invented in Australia by Ford as a response to a farmer in Victoria who wanted “a vehicle to go to church in on a Sunday and which can carry our pigs to market on Mondays”. They’re a bit redundant in the cities so the new pimped out Holden utes are more of a status thing, seeing about as much dirt as an agoraphobic farmer. But they’re everywhere in rural Queensland, used functionally by hard-working tradies (possibly my favourite Strine word of them all): you’ll find fishing rods and dogs clawing onto the open back tray of a truck doing 70ks for fear of being turned into instant road kill. For the practical, hands-on, four-wheeling bush tucker Aussie, the ute is your best friend.

And then we have the RVs and those ‘Old Farts in Caravan Parks’, as John Williamson would sing: silver surfing nomads who pack their lives into collapsible motor homes and jolly around the country. It’s a retirement rights of passage, of sorts, as the masses of Aussies who hit their 60s realise that they should probably see Uluru before they clock out. There are dedicated web sites comparing campervan journeys: Sydney to Sydney in 42 days; wine tours of South Australia, Cairns to Cairns with a two year old. There seems to be an intrinsic link between this vast, open country and the motor vehicle. And for those of you who doubt me, just try walking somewhere.

So, for a rev-head country like this one, their own copycat version of the BBC’s ‘Top Gear’ should be a triumph. Britain’s original, flagship, popular-beyond-all-proportion car show hosted by Dopey, Sleepy and Grumpy is already very popular here - it's on after the Australian version on Channel Nine. This flat-packed self-assembled rendition comes complete with the same studio set up, the same seating arrangement, the same Stig character, the same ‘Jessica’ remix, the same reticent male midlife cry for help. And, crickey, if you think the UK version is blokey, can you imagine what it’s like here in Australia? It makes the UK show look like ‘Loose Women’. Burly main host Shane Jacobson is all mates and handshakes like a pub landlord. Aside from a few neat cultural tweaks - the ‘reasonably priced car’ is a ute, of course - it’s mostly a shaky start.

But none of that matters really when you look at the crux of the problem, that a show like ‘Top Gear’ wouldn't work on a commercial network station. Take the US version, which has finally been given the green light despite numerous false starts, like main Jeremy Clarkson saying that “they just don’t get it” in response to a flopped re-edited version of the UK show supposedly tailored to American tastes. At one point, car nut Jay Leno was rumoured to be the host, before slamming the whole concept. “My great fear in America is that, for instance, if Kia was our sponsor this week, we’d have to say the car was fantastic,” Leno said in a 2008 interview with the Times. “In my mind I can just see Jeremy lambasting Americans for what they did to his show.”

But, evidently, it is not the integrity of the BBC that the corporation are holding in such high regard when selling their TV concepts to the highest bidder. The Nine Network is known for shows like ‘Australia’s Funniest Home Videos’, ‘Two and a Half Men’ and the ‘CSI’ franchise - all commercially durable products - and ‘Top Gear’ is no exception, with this week’s episode featuring marketing slots for Audi, Shannons car insurance and the Volkswagen Golf. This safeguarding seeps into the program, so you don’t really get an opinion on anything. On Tuesday’s episode, I discovered that some cars can go very fast, that the V8 Supercars aren’t really designed to be driven around the main streets of Sydney, and that they work much better on a race track where they can also be very loud and go very fast.

And on that bombshell…