I just did what I do.

That was Ricky Gervais’ response to the confected outrage over his hosting of the 2011 Golden Globe awards.

For those of you who want to bone up CLICK HERE for Gervais’ brilliant monologue and HERE  for the best bits from last year and this year. Because you’re worth it.

And for those of you who can’t be fagged watching here’s a few of my favorite lines  to give you the feel….

“Welcome to the 68ths Golden Globe Awards  It’ll be a night of partying and heavy drinking, or as Charlie Sheen calls it, breakfast.”

“It’s been a big year for 3D. Toy Story, Despicable Me, Tron. It seems like everything this year was three dimentional. Apart from the characters in The Tourist.”

“A few shocks. I Love You Philip Morris wasn’t nominated. Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor – two heterosexual actors pretending to be gay, so the complete opposite of some famous Scientologists then.  Probably.  My lawyers helped me with the wording of that joke.”

“I was sure the award for best special effects should have gone to whoever did the airbrushing on the Sex In The City 2 Poster.  Girls, we know how oid you are.  I saw one of you in an episode of Bonanza.”

“I like a drink as much as the next man, as long as the next man is not our next presenter, Mel Gibson..”

“Looking at the faces in this room reminds us of how much great work has been done in Hollywood this year. By cosmetic surgeons.”

I also particularly loved and suspected that what was really got the audience off side was how Gervais went the spray about actors being the most important people in the world. “Actors.  They’re just better than ordinary people, we all know that.”

Tom Hanks and Tim Allen said ‘We remember a time when Ricky Gervais was a chubby and kinder comedian. Neither of which is he now’. They’re now dead to me. 

Gervais’ last line was ‘Thank God for making me an atheist.’

 CLICK FOR GREAT ARTICLE GERVAIS ON WHY HE AN ATHEIST

I saw a punk band in Sydney Rd pub on Saturday arvo that finished set simply with ‘thanks cunts’. Gervais could have done same.

I was depressed and liberated in more or less equal proportions by Gervais’ hosting.  Everything he said was true.  Which every single uptight, hypocritical, backstabbing, navel gazing, narcissitic, meglomanical psychopathic insecure attention seeker in that room knew.

Apparently people were offended. O

ffence is in the sphincter of the uptight white honky who’s convenient answers have been questioned. Offence is an unavoidable and healthy byproduct of free speech. Offence is subjective.

I love this ‘offence’ story about Geoffrey Robertson, Australian QC who now lives in Britain and most well known for being Kathy Lette’s shag…

>When I first got to England, of course, and first made it to the Old Bailey – my very first case – I still had those irritable Australian vowels that… (with accent) ‘France’ and ‘branch’. And I had to defend an Australian. He’d been convicted, I was doing the appeal. And I said, “My Lord, this is a case about a t-shirt, whether it’s indecent.” The logo was “Fuck Art, Let’s Dance.” And there was a terrifying silence. And the judge said, “Fuck Art, Let’s what, Mr Robertson?” And I said, “Dance. ‘Dance’, my Lord.” There was another silence. He said, “Oh, you’re an Australian. What you have to learn in these courts, Mr Robertson, is to say, ‘Fuck Art, Let’s DAHNCE’.” There was lots of sycophantic laughter and I think the judge was so pleased at embarrassing a young barrister that he acquitted my client. But I learnt very quickly to say “dahnce”.

It was George Carlin who said “It’s a comedian’s job to find the line. And cross it.”

In 1973, a father complained to the FCC that his son had heard the George Carlin routine “Filthy Words” broadcast one afternoon over WBAI, a Pacifica Foundation FM radio station.  In the ensuing court case   FCC v. Pacifica Foundation Justice Willian Brennan findings included this…

It is quite evident that I find the Court’s attempt to unstitch the warp and woof of First Amendment law in an effort to reshape its fabric to cover the patently wrong result the Court reaches in this case dangerous as well as lamentable. Yet there runs throughout the opinions of my Brothers POWELL and STEVENS another vein I find equally disturbing: a depressing inability to appreciate that in our land of cultural pluralism, there are many who think, act, and talk differently from the Members of this Court, and who do not share their fragile sensibilities. It is only an acute ethnocentric myopia that enables the Court to approve the censorship of communications solely because of the words they contain.

I am reminded yet again that Lenny Bruce, considered one of the world’s greatest comedians and social commentators was jailed several times for ‘word crimes’. His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial was followed by a posthumous pardon, the first in New York state history.

To celebrate Ricky Gervais’ popping of pomposity and exposing what a bunch of uptight white honkies most people are I have posted all the columns I’ve published on the Logies.  I can’t say written.  Because the column I wrote for the 2010 Logies, despite being commissioned, and advertised on the Monday would run on the Wednesday never made it to print.  Because I was sacked on the Tuesday because of “offensive remarks and bad language”.

I just do what I do.

God Bless Ricky Gervais.  Let him be an inspiration to us all. I like comedy to make me squirm.

God Is Bullshit, my one woman show is back for  the 2011 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.  Offended or your money back!

Worth a watch

Philip Pullmen, “No one hasthe right not to be offended”

Julian Morrow’s Andrew Olle Lecture on Independence, satire and press freedom

IF YOU ENJOY WATCHING celebrities eat their own vomit, tune in on Sunday night to watch the Logies. Television’s night of nights is four hours of nauseating, self-congratulatory toss that is so hilarious you can’t help being reminded of the Commonwealth Games.

You’re going to do it. I know you are going to switch over to see the vacuous scrags from Neighbours and Home and Away grin like idiots and laugh like drains as they love themselves stupid down the red carpet.

My personal favourites  are the overpaid, overstayed, overlaid executives trapped in 1985. If only I could take you to the after-party. There you could witness young hopefuls, both female and male, eagerly hair-flick, ego-stroke and dry-hump these filthy,  morally derelict embarrassments for the chance of a hosting job on Totally Wild.

Sunday night’s awards promise to be no less cringy, provincial or tragic than the previous 46 despite the new Graham Kennedy Award for Most Outstanding New Talent. Half of the awards are now peer voted; they are the awards with the word “outstanding” in the titles. The ones voted by 14-year-old girls are those with the word “popular” in the title. For example, “Most Popular Airhead in A Pile of Shit.”

It would be easy to  bag the Logies. Goodness knows, I think I just did but it’s the spirit of the night that I enjoy. The delicious hypocrisy that is the nature of domestic awards is the whole “I think awards are crap” unless, of course,  they win then, they are crying and thanking God faster than you can say  “she has so had work done”.

It’s fitting to see stunning SBS documentaries and ABC public-affairs shows recognised apart from the fact  that it’s alongside programs such as Big Brother 5 and Deal or No Deal.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy some of these shows, I just don’t think that we should celebrate them.

I always look forward to the “overseas star” from the big, wide world patting us on the head and telling us that we  exist just before being asked what they think of Australia. I’d love to hear one say, “Well, from what I have seen, this industry is a depressing  ghetto of nubile, brainless morons who’s only talents are reading an  autocue and growing hair. Where is my bag of cocaine, my massive cheque and that 16-year-old girl who wants acting lessons?”

It is worth mentioning that Play School is the 2006 Logies Hall Of Fame inductee.  Let’s honour Play School by all means but what does it say about our industry when only one woman has been inducted into the Hall of Fame yet the whole of Ramsay Street has? What next? Big Ted nominated for the Gold Logie? But, let’s face it, he’d have a better chance of winning than John Wood.

What I would like to see? Catriona Rowntree dragged behind a ute by her pubic hair, but I think that’s just me.  But they won’t print that.

Do we need the  Logies? No. But God, they are fun and I wouldn’t miss them for the world.

P.S. They didn’t print the Catriona Rowntree linr, they went with the 60 Minutes greasy pig.  Maybe run the column as I wrote it and add the Wish List at the bottom.

Here was the list of alternatives that I sent them to the Rowntree

A mud wrestle between Liz Hayes and Kerri Anne Kennally refereed by a nude Maria Venuti.

The nominees for Best New Talent to settle it in a cage fight.

Daryl Somers to spontaniously combust.

The cast of Home And Away forming a nude human pyramid helped along with 3 kilos of Nutella.

Watching the cast of 60 Minutes play Greasy Pig on an oiled up stage.

Ray Martin getting a back crack and sack wax live on stage.

Hi Five being boiled alive by the fat they have had sucked off the faces.

DESPITE WRITING LAST year, “If you enjoy watching celebrities eat their own vomit tune in on Sunday night to watch the Logies”, and then describing television’s night of nights as “four hours of nauseating self-congratulatory wank“, I was offered a job writing on this year’s Logies.

So my advice to writers is: do shit where you eat.

For people familiar with my writing, which relies heavily on crude generalisations, involuntary swearing and my motto “Go in swinging”, don’t get too excited. I can assure you that this year’s Logies will be the safest in living memory.

Television executives employ clever, creative people brimming with passion and say, “We love your work. Just make it safe and fun.” Then they dilute the creatives. Which in turn dilutes us all.

As a television viewer, television writer and television reviewer being asked to write for television’s best and fairest pie night is like being asked to eat your own vomit.

I have written for the Logies, the Arias and most hilariously, the 2005 AFI awards for Russell Crowe. I love award shows. It’s like watching a tightrope walker. Half of me hopes they get to the other side safely, and the other half is rooting for them to plummet to their death.

So back to the Logies. Or as the “international stars” here to plug their latest cry for help or resuscitate their flagging careers call them, the Lergies, Lodgies or Looggies. Their appearance is meant to make us feel that we have a vibrant and exciting industry that the rest of the world aspires to. It doesn’t and they don’t.

The show is sponsored by TV Week, a magazine read by people who think that Home and Away is a documentary. The awards fall into two categories. The Most Popular awards are voted by 14-year-old girls with mobile phones. The Most Outstanding awards are peer voted. There is not one single nomination that appears in both categories.

This is how planning for such a show goes. Six weeks out there are loads of great ideas that promise to make the show the most exciting and memorable ever. Sketches and stunts come up such as having the casts from Neighbours and Home and Away in a scrag fight. Other ideas are thrown around: video packages of the nominees taking the piss out of television; how to control the boys from The Chaser; and suggestions about how to convince Eddie to do something. Anything. Producers generally use words such as “new”, “fresh” and “edgy”. Everyone’s excited.

About three weeks in, the wheels fall off as celebrities pull out of anything considered funny, irreverent, edgy or all of the above. They think about it too much and get scared. Or their pimp, sorry, I mean manager, decides that it won’t help their career by appearing to have a sense of humour and a healthy disrespect for the industry. Which is hilarious when you realise that many of these rising stars have a use-by date of three months and will probably be seen at next year’s Logies serving the guests drinks. That’s if they are not in rehab or recovering from a vaginoplasty.

Suddenly footage is unavailable, network execs are scared of “burning people” and the last three weeks is spent cobbling up an awards show that can only be described as “not as bad as we thought”. The nominees and presenters who have agreed to scripts suddenly get bored or scared, want more alternatives then end up coming up with their own stuff and if it doesn’t work, blame the writers. The producers will then lament that they probably shouldn’t have given “the talent” the script, just told them on the day in order to “get wood”.

Knowing this means that you try not to give out all the lollies at the start of the trip. You see, if you give them all the best lines a month before showtime comes around they’ll be “over them” because they’ve heard the lines hundreds of times but they forget that the audience hasn’t. So you need to keep something up your sleeve. I suggest cocaine and a Maurie Fields joke book.

The Logies, and indeed all commercial television, is like dealing with a three year old in a cot.  They want every single toy in with them just so they can throw them all out then scream for something new. Which they then throw at your face. They tell you that even thought they liked that thing yesterday, they don’t like it now.  Because it’s not new.

Television is about quantity and not quality. When handing in scripts you’re always trying to go right to the edge but not over it. Because if they pick out one little something too racy, too expensive or too “out there” they’ll pull the pin on the whole thing instead of working the idea, no matter how brilliant the idea is. But you never know where that edge is, because it keeps shifting. I’ve seen writers floor a meeting with a genius idea and then a week later you ask about the idea and “Oh, we’ve had second thoughts and we don’t think it will work.”

During this process the fine people who actually work on the show almost die from stress, exhaustion, lack of sleep and self-medication through alcohol. The writers, editors, producers and directors are dedicated, devoted and expert at what they do. Even people from overseas say that.

And I cannot stress how narrow-minded, gutless, sexist and bigoted your average studio executive is. These BWMs (Bogans With Money) are only one link in the food chain up from the creeps who run commercial radio.

The pre-taped video packages and sketches are written first and the obituary package is always done last. The writers sit in the writer’s room flicking through magazines waiting for a list of stuff to write. You are given a brief of what to write and start cracking on it either alone or with another writer. It will be a friendly wrestle to come up with something that fits the brief. A good writer knows their strengths and weaknesses and therefore knows when to concede and when to push their line. The most important thing is to find the right voice for the task and the person who will be saying it.

It is well known that no one wants to host the Logies. Last year three presenters opened the show and this year they have three key presenters. If the show goes down like a lead balloon no one wants to be known as the one flying it. The hosts, or key presenters generally write their own stuff, often with their own writer. Occasionally the writer’s room is asked to come up with some alternatives. These lines generally don’t get up unless they are killers.

This year, while discussing the list of potential presenters, I said, “It’s a bit light-on for women,” to which people snapped back, “Well, it’s the same as last year and no one complained.” Any woman I mentioned was kyboshed with “not up to it”, “divides the audience”, “loose cannon” or “not in Melbourne”. So look forward to about one female to every two males on stage. And none who looks over 35.

You know those, “I’m sorry I can’t be with you tonight but I’m thrilled to receive this award”, schticks for the nominees abroad? All nominees tape them if possible. I always thought they told the winner beforehand and got them to do it. Not true. No one knows the winners until the last moment, not even the people who work on the show. They want to maintain the magic.

There is an enormous and ridiculous amount of cloak-and-dagger secrecy involved in television. And a massive amount of fear. Much of the stuff I have written in this article is considered secret but common knowledge to people in and out of the industry. While writing for the Logies I was constantly told, “You can’t say that/ write that/ do that.” I’d reply, “Everyone knows so why not?” Silence. Then, “You just can’t.”

No matter what a joke every single person in the industry thinks the Logies are, due to the tiny size of our industry we are forced to buy into this mediocre festival of mediocrity because an appearance, nomination or win can pay your rent. And a call from Eddie can convince even the most well respected and highly regarded person in the industry to do almost anything.

So why am I writing on the show? I am a work slut. That’s the thing with our tiny industry. Hopefully, if you just keep getting work, one day you’ll end up getting your own project up or end up working on something brilliant.

The Logies are not a celebration of excellence; they are a bizarre reality show. The Popular awards diminish the recognition that the winners of the Outstanding awards deserve because they have worked hard, taken risks and listened to their hearts not demographics, focus groups and ratings.

Curtain up, light the lights – it’s the TV industry’s night of frights.

COME SUNDAY, THE 50th TV WeekLogie Awards will be on and I’ll be curled up on my couch in my pyjamas eating the leftover Easter eggs and watching the annual car crash again. I do it every year and I have no idea why. If anyone out there loves me, please kidnap me, strip me naked and tie me to a boom gate in Narre Warren. At least then I won’t wake up on Monday and feel as if I’ve spent the previous night making kiddie porn.

Invited? Sure I was. I’m just too gutless to go in case I bump into half the television industry. I’m not The Horse Whisperer; I’m The Show Monsterer. Actually I’m The Horse Show Monsterer. Those girls from McLeod’s Daughters have a bucket full of nipple cripples and Chinese burns with my name on them. They’ve even threatened to pull my hair. Calm down, boys. I know you want me.

Can you believe they’re really holding the Logies again this year? Hasn’t someone put that sick puppy out of it’s misery? Don’t give awards to the Australian television industry. Shave it, slap it and throw it in a pit full of Daryl Somers’ jocks.

What is there to celebrate? Wayne Carey has more to be proud of than Australian television. It’s in an appalling state. And if you don’t believe me, switch on the box and try watching for more than five minutes and see if you don’t want to kill yourself.

Going to the Logies is great fun if you enjoy talking to people off their faces who spend the entire time looking over your shoulder for someone else to talk to. It’s like being in a house with a hallway but no rooms. And no roof.

The women are hilarious. After marinating in fake tan for two months and not eating since Boxing Day, they teeter around in their high heels with their bad breath calling everyone darling and then slagging off every darling’s frock before darling’s even out of earshot. It’s dead eyes and strap-on smiles all round.

The blokes get a few drinks into them and go from job-hunting to pussy patrol, and it’s ugly. Boy, is it ugly. Leering sleazy attention-seekers totally defined by what they wake up with on the end of their Logie.

What would I like to see this year at the Logies?

Well, first Marieke Hardy and I should be hosting. We’d just laugh and hurl abuse before vomiting into each other’s hair pretty much like everyone else but without the fake tan.

The food?

Entree would be Sam Newman a la mode.

Main course you’d have the choice of free-range, grain-fed Richard Wilkins or a boned-and-stuffed fillet of Jessica Rowe.

Dessert?

Turkey slaps all round.

If you’ve ever thought you’d like to go to the Logies, trust me, you don’t. Any person involved in television worth their salt wishes they were on the couch in their pyjamas or tied to a boom gate in Narre Warren.

Published in The Age June 17 2007

The Footy Show is fooling no one: a misogynist in a suit is still a degrading spectacle.

I HAVE JUST WATCHED three episodes of The Footy Showand I feel like Sammy Davis jnr at a Ku Klux Klan rally, like Dannii Minogue at a Mensa convention, like George Pell in 2007.

I’m not into plants but I like Gardening Australia, I’m not into quiz shows but I like The Einstein Factor, I’m not into cars but I likeTop Gear, so not being into footy isn’t the reason that I’m repelled by this destructive, small-minded, morally bankrupt orgy of chauvinism. The Footy Show is a celebration of the very worst that television, sport, Australia and human beings can cook up. It’s offensive, toxic, corrosive, encouraging viewers to be stupid, shallow and sexist. Sit down, shut up and hang on. And ladies, bring a plate.

The Footy Show is nothing more than media-sanctioned misogyny. And so much less. Tune in and you’ll feel you’ve woken up in 1952. A man in a full body condom, men dressed as women, girls in bikinis, guys stuffing toilet paper down their jocks, dickheads, wankers and yobs. The few women that I did see were leered at, one called “a bitch” and another told to “get f—ed” (both by Sam Newman). I heard the word “sheilas” and could sense that the words “poofters”, “wogs”, “slopes” and “spastics” were just below the surface.

Is it the program, the network, the culture of Australian television, or just Newman that is so offensive? It’s all of them. But Newman really needs to be singled out for his extraordinary contribution to this tragic, puerile, adolescent show that degrades the culture of football, alienates women and teaches boys that females are slaves, trophies or bitches.

No wonder young footballers are taking drugs. How else can they reconcile this bizarre world with real life? And what’s with the suits? Some pathetic attempt to bring respectability to this sad little show? Fat chance.

Newman is vain, ugly, a megalomaniac, a bully. I can’t help feeling that deep inside he would be happy for women to have their brains removed and replaced with a bar fridge. He’s a dangerous bloke who’s paid a lot of money to defile our culture and undermine our intelligence in the most putrid of fashions. For any of you who have sat surrounded by people laughing at this maggot and found yourself thinking there is something wrong with you, there isn’t. There’s something wrong with him. And them.

The Footy Show catapults sexism into an extreme sport. Football shows don’t have to be a cross between a buck’s night and a lynching. And if you don’t believe me, watch Before the Game. It’s not as blokey, and that’s not just because there is a woman on the panel but because the blokes are not as blokey. The jokes are not as blokey. And the content is intelligent. Think Roy and HG, Live and Sweaty, Talking Footy and The Fat. Australia has an impressive history and culture of intelligent, entertaining sports shows that put The Footy Show to shame.

Pigs In Suits. More on the Footy Show and it’s culture. Sing along if you know the words…