John Singleton, “My own ‘brilliant’ career (so far),”
Australian Playboy, April 1981, pp. 61-65.

For a start I want you to know that this is a true story. No names have been changed to protect the innocent; and that goes especially for my name as I am especially innocent; no matter what you may have read.

First, I want you to realise that I am not another usual, run-of-the-mill multi-media superstar. Oh no.

I didn’t win amateur talent quests as a child. I don’t dance, not the fox trot or even the barn dance. I don’t sing, not even full of ink after rugby games. I don’t tell jokes. I hate other people telling jokes.

I am even forced to admit there are better looking blokes around in the sex appeal department.

In fact, I think that it is pretty important I take you back about four years to when I was just a normal suburban home-loving fella just like everyone else who has sold off their advertising agency to the yanks for a couple of million bucks.

I am driving a nice shiny black Rolls Royce, which is owned by the company. My wife, Maggi, is driving a nice sleek white Mercedes Sports.

Company.

I have every international credit card that’s ever been printed.

Company.

I have an open first class air ticket anywhere in the world anytime I want to go.

Company.

And I am making do on a salary and share of profits which even four years ago was in the $250,000 a year plus bracket; which is better than a wack in the eye, which we will get to.

Then, one day, I am sitting in my acre of absolute Rose Bay water-frontage home and I think: this is the great Australian dream come true.

I have it made. I am 35 and the world is at my feet. Naturally I have no alternative but to toss it all in.

Do not, for Christ’s sake, ask me why. Don’t you think I have asked myself that very question ever since? Well, don’t you?

Why? I fell out of my tree; that is the best way I can put it. So, suddenly I am retired. Now what?

For a while I am called “non-executive” chairman of the advertising agency which means that you pretend to be still working when you really aren’t. And in return the company pretends to be paying you, which they really aren’t.

I really get to spend a lot of time at Giles’ gym at Coogee in Sydney trying to compensate for 20 years of ripping and tearing. And I do get some very interesting job offers.

Richard Gray from Radio 3AW in Melbourne wants to know whether I would like to do a women’s morning talk-back radio show? I don’t think so.

Many businessmen think that I can help them; but I do not think that they can help me.

I decide I will take a five-year paid holiday. Even an unpaid one if that’s the way it has to be.

Just stop work. And start again at 40. Maybe. Wouldn’t you do the same if you could? Won’t you if you can? Shouldn’t you if you didn’t?

For a start, I begin fulfilling my fantasies. I am breeding racehorses with the Norman Ross boss. We are breeding many winners of many races.

I am fulfilling frustrated football ambitions by investing in the bottom-of-the-table Sydney Newtown League team which is now doing better every year. (Just missed the semis in 1980.)

I feel I am getting younger, instead of older. Or at least not getting any older so quickly.

I am even getting paid not to go back into advertising until January of this year.

And then one night the whole world changes; it always does, which is now known as Laws’ Law.

I am sitting at home with Mr and Mrs J. Laws and Maggi is serving one of her piss elegant dinners and we are having a riotous time. At least Laws and I think it is riotous.

Every time he speaks I am falling around laughing, and every time I speak he is falling around laughing, and we are generally spending a lot of time falling around.

On reflection this has nothing to do with humour and much to do with J. Daniels and J. Walker who join us at the same time Maggi and Caroline leave us.

And then, about half past drunk, J. Laws says: “Hey, why don’t we do this on the radio every day?”

And I say: “Hey, why don’t we?” And then we fall around some more. I mean, you can see yourself how funny it all is.

Naturally next day I go directly to the beach and J. Laws goes directly to his radio show and I put the whole thing down to the usual o.d. of lunatic soup. But no. Dammit. No.

At midday Lawsie phones Maggi and says: “Hey, where’s me mate?” and Maggi says, “he’s at the beach,” and so our first show doesn’t go all that well.

But the next day I actually front Australia’s Master of Media (he really is) and we do this show together which Lawsie called THE OGRE AND THE OCKER. (I assume I am the ogre.)

It is an under-estimation to say that this show is the greatest self-indulgence in the history of radio.

Maybe a record, maybe a couple of ads and an hour of seeing who can ace whom. I never heard the show myself, or at least not on the wireless, but amazingly it works, and during the last rating period (it is now 1978) the show has the biggest jump of the year. None of which makes any sense to me. But I do know it is also the most stimulating time I ever have in my life. No one has ever worked with John Laws before. Maybe no one will again. You don’t know what you’re missing. It is just a pity I forget to ask to be paid.

But I don’t forget to promote the rodeos and circuses and boxing and other things I’m involved in at the time, so it all works out pretty okay.

Especially for the World Rodeo Titles that absolutely fills Sydney Showground for the first time since 1903, to the country’s amazement, especially my own, which is another story. And anyhow … that is how I get discovered.

One of The Ogre And The Ocker show’s greatest fans is a mate of mine called Ian Kennon who is also a director of Sydney’s Channel 10. He is such a fan that, if he happens to miss the show one day, his secretary has to tape it for him to play later.

Naturally Ian thinks everyone likes the show this much, which isn’t so, unfortunately, but when you run a TV station you are allowed to think whatever you like.

Now Channel 10 also happens, by great coincidence, to be planning a variety show in 1979 and as I am a radio star Ian phones and asks me if I would like to be a TV star next.

I say I would prefer to be Prime Minister, or captain of Newtown, and one way or another let Kennon know that I assume he is joking — or if he is not joking then he certainly should me.

But naturally I do not knock back a free lunch with an old mate at Primos and there I find out that he is dead serious about it all.

Well why not, I think, there must be worse ways to get paid for a paid holiday? So I ask for $1 a year more than Graham Kennedy got that year for Celebrity Dirty Talk.

Kennon agrees. (Why shouldn’t he? How do I know what Kennedy gets anyway?) I ask for Alan Catt as producer/director. (I figure that any man who can build his reputation through producing and directing fashion events and Rugby League games at the same time is the sort of man I am looking for. Imagine: an aesthetic League fan. Perfect.)

And then I can’t think of anything else to ask for and the channel makes the great announcement and it is already too late to pull out; but they promise they will if it really hurts.

Well I can’t start to tell you how much preparation doesn’t go into this first show. I am flat out trying to pretend that the show is not really happening at all. And Alan Catt is flat out convincing me that it really is.

One day we compromise. I agree to actually talk about the show as long as the talk is on my speed boat on Sydney Harbour; so it still won’t really seem like it’s really happening at all.

THE MEETING: Name of show: John Singleton. With A Little Help From His Friends. (We change that to A Lot of Help.)

FORMAT: I like the dogs. So we have the daily double live. I love Rugby League so we have a League segment. Politics fascinate me. So we have Pub Politics. Two super intelligent, super disrespectful political experts (Max Newton and Mungo McCallum) and me asking the rich suspecting pollies the sort of questions you’d ask if they were standing next to you in a pub:

Did Gorton really lose all his bond money at The Lodge?

Did Gough and Margaret really?

That sort of thing. Plus a serious interview every show. Plus a couple of lunatics. Plus lots of local variety.

As Alan Catt put it: like a Leagues club in your lounge room. Even down to the audience sitting at tables and being plied with piss.

STARTING TIME: 8.30 pm on Saturday nights.

FINISH TIME: When it finishes.

And that is my first and my last conference (fair dinkum) until THE night. Then suddenly (just imagine it is you) the orchestra starts up, the showgirls brush past you, hope you break a leg (that’s showbiz talk), and start dancing, and the announcer says: Ladies and gentlemen your host, Mr John Singleton.

Remember this is live. Straight from the studio to your TV set. And no scripts. No nothing. You are standing there and the curtain is there and somehow you have to walk out through the curtain and say some bloody thing. Anything.

Well, once the big game starts you might as well play: just like your first naughty I suppose. You really want to do it; but you also really don’t.

And suddenly I’m in. No getting off at Redfern now, old mate.

I walk through the curtains. There are people and cameras everywhere. And then, just to make it really hard, Jack Grimsley’s orchestra strike up If My Friends Could See Me Now. And I just hope like crazy that my friends are seeing just about anything else.

And then, you know, a funny thing happens: I have a fantastic time. The guests are great.

Billy McMahon drops an exclusive in my lap (as one PM to another, he would have told Gough to take no notice of Kerr. In fact he could have told him how to ride out the thing.)

The acts are great. Alan Catt does a fantastic job of hiding my myriad of deficiencies and next thing the show is a smash, which is showbiz for better than a whole load of shit.

Ian Kennon even sends a memo to everyone in the whole of Channel 10 saying: “Who says only Channel Nine can produce great variety shows?” The Channel 10 board then invite me to lunch to say well done and all that stuff that boards say.

And the only really serious talk about the show is whether the second edition is going to be on a Tuesday or Thursday night.

Me? How am I travelling? I am finding it all vastly amusing if you want to know. I even have a big colour photo of me and my dog right where the 96 cast used to be.

In fact, I can’t remember when I have had such a good time. For week after week the euphoria grows. For six whole weeks. Something has got to go wrong and it does. It really truly does. World War Three coming up.

Eager newspaper readers might remember something about a little bit of fun and games up at Kings Cross. The real story is too boring even to bother you with.

But the way the papers play it, it’s El Alamein all over again and the war rages through the Cross for days and 200 police finish up in hospital (this is fair dinkum the sort of Disneyland stuff they write in the paper). My exaggeration does not equal theirs.

And they go on that a mate and myself are likely to be sentenced to death or life, whichever comes first.

Well, the next morning I do not know that this is in all the papers because I think everyone has shaken hands and that is the end. This is the way I am taught. So next morning I am having a very grown up meeting with two directors of Amatil and Ian Kennon, at my home, about some rodeo telecast.

And when the meeting is finished I take Ian Kennon aside, saying: “Look, there this bit of a five-minute wonder up at the Cross last night, so if you hear about it, this is really what happened there, etc.”

And he listens — and says it is already in the papers along the lines I have written above.

But he says: “Look, forget it, it will probably help the ratings anyway.” Which is always one way of looking at it, I suppose.

Now if you think that’s the end of it … one week later I am in Adelaide to promote the Australian Rodeo Titles. Now, anyone who watches telly will tell you if you put a couple of hundred cowboys in one place at one time there’s likely to be some drinking going on. And some noise. And maybe even a little tiny bit of high spirits. Don’t you agree?

Now you put eight (yes, eight) carloads of Adelaide police outside this motel where a couple of hundred cowboys are staying and imagine they’ve heard some noise. Well they can read, can’t they? Then know who is promoting this bloody rodeo, don’t they? That bloody John Singleton, that’s who.

He’s that bastard who puts 400 cops in hospital last week in bloody Sydney. Well, isn’t he? It said so, right there in the papers.

And to cut a long and bad story short, for the second time in a week I find myself in a police car. This time I am taking part in a conversation along the lines as above. I could understand their sentiments if the Sydney reports had been true. But I say to them:

“Look, at least ring the cops in Sydney first and you’ll find that all that shit in the papers was just that.”

Well, they’re not real bad blokes and they phone Sydney and find out I am telling the truth so they say sorry mate. No hard feelings. Let’s all forget it. And good luck for the rodeo and like that. They even offer me a lift back. Not bad blokes at all, I think.

But hold on, what’s wrong now. One of them is coming over. He takes the others aside. They talk and talk some more and talk some more. Dead, dead serious. What is going on?

Then one comes over. He’s lost the toss. “Sorry mate, it’s already on the radio. We’ll have to go on with it.”

“Sorry mate.”

GO AHEAD WITH WHAT??????? Suddenly there is a double shuffle of uniformed and un-uniformed police and finally someone tells me I have to be charged and go in a cell. In that order. Charged with what?

And everyone looks pretty sorry about it all, especially me. (Jumping ahead for a moment: just so that you can better understand the thrills of stardom, it is important that we jump ahead for a moment: that case in Sydney was dismissed. Later in the Adelaide court the charges were dismissed on appeal.)

Now back to the past. The papers of course are having a ball.

Ian Kennon phones me and says: “Well, it doesn’t look too good.”

After all, there are the Tribunal hearings in a week or so. And I tell him what happened in real life.

I ask to meet with the channel chairman, Sir Kenneth Humphreys. We have breakfast the next morning in Melbourne.

He says he believes me implicitly, etc, but he is the chairman of a public company, etc, and his first loyalties must, etc, and there is the Tribunal hearing the next week, etc, and it doesn’t look too good, etc.

Well, it certainly looks a lot worse than “not-too-good” when I get on the plane and there it is: three quarters of the front page shows Ian Kennon and Graham Kennedy happily toasting in champagne the fact that Kennedy is taking over my show.

Well, just when you know things can only get better they go and get worse. I walk into Channel 10 in Sydney to get the arse formally my pride of place photo is gone! Graham Kennedy happily toasting in place. Oh, have they NO feelings.

Well, my friends, that is the end of that. And like everything you don’t realise how much you want it until you haven’t got it. Oh isn’t that the truth.

And isn’t this also the truth: when one door closes another door closes. And another and another.

Imagine that same week, that same weekend. Imagine the ads in Adelaide. They actually said: “Bring your kids to John Singleton’s family rodeo.”

The crowds stay away in their millions, and the few thousand who do appear only get really enthusiastic once: watching me being dumped in the qualifying rounds by more than a ton of brahman bull and stomped on.

The crowd is only disappointed when the bull decides it won’t go on with the job and gore me to death. Mind you, I think at the time that I am as disappointed as the crowd.

The very next weekend exactly the same disaster occurs at the World Rodeo Titles in Brisbane. Oh well, it’s only money and reputation.

But just because everyone is picking on me I don’t get paranoid I just decide to go away and hide like a mangy dog. Wait for about a hundred years until it is forgotten, or at least some of it, at least by someone.

But not everyone is weak as piss when you are down and sorry for yourself like a mangy dog. There’s always family. And a couple of really good friends.

One of them is a bloke called Kerry Packer who, between overs, runs a couple of TV stations and magazines.

He says: “What are you doing?” So I say I am going away to hide like a mangy dog and write some poems and short stories about the Outback where men are men and women are women and you don’t need a hormone test to tell the difference.

And he then says: “You’re not just running away like a mangy dog are you?” And I say that’s bloody right, that is what I said.

And he says: “It is 1979 (at least it was then) so if you must waste a year at least take a film crew and make some documentaries.”

Anyway, that’s how Alan Catt and I get to make five films on the real Australia that if you haven’t seen you should, because they are so good I will watch them myself, even though I am in them; which is their only weakness. They really are good.

And do you know something even better? At last 1979 is finished and I could be more pleased only if it had never happened at all.

And then one day Maggi and I and a few friends are having a few beers at the Newtown Leagues’ Club when the phone rings and it is Pal Cleary from Channel 10. What does he want?

He wants to know: “Would you be interested in putting your show back together next year?” That’s really what he wants to know.

Now you probably think it is funny that Channel 10 have such a quick change of heart, but you have to remember that there are also a couple of changes at Channel 10 while I am away. Rupert Murdoch has taken over the place.

Oh how the TV selecter knob turns. Anyway, there is Pal Cleary wanting to know whether I want to have the chance to finish something I only just got started. Naturally I say yes; in principle. Which means yes; but how much? Next night I meet with Rupert and the first hitch occurs. He starts talking about Johnny Carson and late nights and how people in Sydney have to start staying up later, like in the United States.

“Hold on,” I say, “I am talking about a Saturday night show like last year, not every night of the week.”

And then we have dinner with Pal Cleary and Brian Morris, who is not only a top bloke but also the new headmaster at Channel 10. And Pal and Brian agree with me that four or five nights a week at 10.30 pm is much, much, much too late.

Saturday night is now the go. Or Friday. Or Friday and Saturday. If Rupert must. And at a proper time, like 8.30. At the latest 9.30. It is unanimous. Except for one single dissenting voice which happens to belong to Rupert Murdoch who happens to own the station. I only make one mistake; and it is fatal. I go along with him, and I don’t have to.

Because then, right then, I could have stuck with my own terms. I can’t do it while Kerry Packer is stuck with the Outback docos so Rupert agrees to buy them sight unseen.

If I had held out I would have won for sure. Now I am sure. (Bloody hindsight is worse than blind if you want my opinion.)

But then, in the truth department, I am that anxious to prove I can do it, I will even agree to 20 nights a week at 1.15 am if that’s the way it is.

Which is all so bloody stupid that now, when I think about it, I try very hard not to.

So we start off Rupert’s first new show idea on 10 which is the wrong idea at the wrong time. But a bloody good show anyway.

And even though everyone else at the station is against it, everyone still tries a bit here and there.

Even when we get half and three quarters of the audience (which we often do) it still isn’t enough to make it all worthwhile.

Mind you, we have a fantastic time. And we do one and a half ours, four nights a week that we are all very proud of; most of the time.

But it’s not the right idea. Not like The Mike Walsh Show. Walsh was spot on with his midday slot because people were up; they were available. Just like the opportunity there is now in the mornings, in the afternoons and at the weekends.

But at 10.30 at night people just have to go to bed because they have to get up. No show is going to change that. So when the year is up I don’t know who is more pleased. Me, or Channel 10.

Or maybe we’re both a bit pleased and also a bit disappointed that we didn’t stick to our guns and put all the effort and budget into a show at the proper time in the first place.

But that is all history. And for the record I have listed for you the 10 most interesting interviews. The 10 most boring. The 10 top entertainers. The 10 people I would most have liked to interview except they refused to come on or weren’t allowed to.

But what about the news behind the news? Did I ever get off with all/some/any of the big-names?

Did singers promise me anything just to get on the show? Was I mobbed by young girls who just wanted to use my body to say they slept with a star? No, none of this ever happened for me.

I didn’t even get to do one of those series in the paper where you tell lies about just what you are really like. Nothing. Really it is just a pretty normal years except every afternoon when the sun is sinking, instead of going to the pub to talk to a few people I go to the TV station to talk to a few people.

So now if you ever wondered how to get into TV. Or off TV. Or both, well now you know.

And if you still want answers to the two great unanswered questions:

Will I go back into advertising? Will I go back on TV?

In the fair dinkum department they are two questions I am happy not to know the answers to. Not just yet anyway.

In the meantime there are still plenty of things I haven’t done yet that I want to do. As for Playboy’s original question: Has superstardom spoiled me? How could anything? Now for the real lowdown:

Ten most interesting political interviews of 1980:
Sir Robert Askin, Lord George-Brown, Malcolm Fraser, Vince Gair, Sir John Gorton, Barry Unsworth, Mr and Mrs Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Sir William McMahon, Jack Ferguson and Bill Hayden.

Ten most boring political interviews of 1980:
Jim Killen, Ed Casey, Senator Neville Bonner, Sir Billy Snedden, John Howard, John Mason, Ralph Willis, Barry Jones, Nelson Meers and Senator Colin Mason.

Ten most interesting showbiz interviews of 1980:
John Meilion, Spike Milligan, Mr and Mrs Bobby Limb, June Salter, Cul Cullen, Roger Woodward, Belinda Green, Joe Martin, Michael Parkinson and Andrea.

Ten most boring showbiz interviews of 1980:
Jasper Carrott, Googie Withers, Frankie Howerd, Ralph Nader, Bill Collins, Richard Sterling, Sumner Locke Elliott, Allan Carr, Edward Woodward and John Inman.

Ten most interesting sporting interviews of 1980:
G. K. Wilson, Rex Mossop, Des Renford, Gelignite Jack Murray, T. J. Smith, Wally Carr, Greg Hartley, Ian Chappell, Mark Spitz, Dawn Fraser. (Johnny Raper, Tommy Raudonikis and the entire Newtown football team were ruled ineligible.)

Ten best Australian acts of 1980:
Ricky May, Digger Revell and Judy Stone (tieing 1st), Slim Dusty, Col Joye, Alison Durbin, Daly-Wilson Big Band, Kamahl, Billy Kearns and Debbie Byrne.

Ten best overseas acts of 1980:
Rod McKuen, Tiny Tim, Craig Russell, Bobby Rydell, Eartha Kitt (especially with Robert Morley — especially not with Jilly Cooper), Leslie Uggams, Blood, Sweat & Tears, The Ritchie Family, 5th Dimension and Jimmy Witherspoon.

Ten predictions for 1981 (watch them all go):
Johnathan Coleman, Robyn Archer, Sandy Thorne, Keith Garvey, Lenore Zann, Jack Caroleon, Roadapple, Cowboy Bob Purtell, Johnny Fogwell and Queenie Paul.

My favourite memories of 1980:
John Laws, Ron Saw, Larry Pickering, Ted Noffs, Mike Willesee, Dymphna Cusack, Alex Buzo, Sir Phillip Baxter, Lang Hancock, John Farragher. And a special rise to former Nixon-aide and now God-aide Charles Colson.

Ten I would like to have interviewed but couldn’t because they wouldn’t:
Kerry Packer, Rupert Murdoch, Ita Buttrose, Sir John Kerr, Bob Hawke, Dame Patti Menzies, Mr and/or Mrs Neville Wran, Maggi Eckardt, Mr and/or Mrs Gough Whitlam and Graham Kennedy.