Pip James and Suellen O’Grady, “On the Lane to Singleton,” The Weekend Australian Magazine, February 16-17, 1979, p. 6.
Two entirely different showbiz personalities — John Singleton in Sydney and Don Lane in Melbourne — have just started new nightly shows on TV. PIP JAMES talks to Singleton and SUELLEN O’GRADY to Lane.
John Singleton stretches out on the grass surrounding the Channel 10 pool. His dog, Thug (who looks like one but isn’t), reclines peacefully beside him, one canine leg draped protectively over the Singleton calf.
“Don’t forget to tell ’em what a hard life I have doing this show,” he says, squinting drowsily up at the golden afternoon sun.
Only John Singleton could be lying contentedly here, talking to the press, with less than three hours to countdown for the fourth edition of his latest exercise on national television.
Not only is it perfectly true he doesn’t work hard at his now show — spending only half an hour boning up on his guest list the afternoon before (“Oh well, I already know most of the people we have on. I know what they want to talk about and what they’re going to say; what do I need to research them for?”) — but he’s also proud of the fact.
Channel Ten, too, seems to be pretty proud of having discovered a property who thinks he doesn’t need to work at being a television personality, and who is without an ego when it comes to fronting up on the box.
“He doesn’t act like a star and demand the star treatment,” they say in hushed voices, as though they’ve never heard of such a thing.
You could be taken in by the lackadaisical attitude and think he has never done a tap of work in his life, until you realise something has put the harsh hollows and lines into his face that you don’t find in other mid-thirties faces. “I always said I’d retire at 35,” he says almost defensively, “and I did.”
The truth behind John Singleton’s insouciance is a kind of “here I am, take me or leave me alone” air, which travels freely into his television style. He doesn’t need to work for a splinter of the money he’s used to earning elsewhere. He’s mildly amused that anyone could even want him to do this kind of “Tonight-style” show; to want to make him play “grown-up games” in a grown-up’s suit, cut his hair and try to talk “toffy” so people can understand what he’s saying.
“It’s just the way I am, mate. You don’t talk so good yerself,” he says, flicking his eyebrows up and down, like an Anglo-Saxon Groucho Marx, and you can’t help laughing as you say, “But I’m not on television.”
He had already sold his house and decided to go bush when Kerry Packer talked him into taking a film crew along with him. He ended up making a surprisingly sensitive documentary with director Alan Catt, about the plight of the water buffalo in the Northern Territory. (The Federal Government has decided they should be eliminated because they are stomping up the creeks and billabongs and ruining the National Park.)
He prefers his “don’t care” attitude to the worries of being too involved in the television game. “I’ve seen people here sweating over the ratings. They age 15 years, honestly. They have to put make-up on before they can go home and face their kids. They think it’s important. This is very dangerous.”
He’s an iconoclast from way back. He’s against welfare (“families should look after their own”) and zoning laws that prevent him from pulling down some semi-historic building and putting up a block of units.
“There’s nothing historic in Australia and if people think there is they should all chip in and buy it, not expect the Government to do it for ’em.” And he’s a great believer in Australia: “People can’t understand me because I don’t speak American.”
As far as The John Singleton Show is concerned — as with the man — it’s very important it succeeds. “I personally want to think it’s a very fantastic show that’s contributing to the entertainment and education of people watching it. We’ll always cover the issues that affect our lives. Government, education, religion, law enforcing agencies, drugs, taxation … the lot.”
The Singleton show has been on the road now for 30-odd years.
*****
Consider Don Lane for a minute.
But not the easily-dismissed Don Lane of the magazines. Not the one whose love-life is said to resemble that of Errol Flynn in full flight, or the one who constantly feuds with Bert Newton, leaves Australia for the US, then returns to host yet another talk show.
This other Don Lane needs to be considered more seriously, for he is the one who is Australia’s show-business institution: the one whose face and television program will be seen four nights a week on 66 channels across Australia from Monday.
Because his idiosyncratic formula of chat interspersed with stars and songs will be spearheading the entire Nine Network’s evening line-up, this Don Lane must take a graver approach to the business of being entertaining than those titillating stories would have us believe.
His bid to rate four nights a week, at a time when the airwaves are crammed with talk shows (Peter Couchman in Melbourne and John Singleton in Sydney are constantly chatting) is no casual gamble. Already on his side he has immense past success and Lane, together with the Nine Network, has no intention of slipping from his position.
If it’s hard to pinpoint the exact reasons for his prolonged stay around the top of the ratings, it’s also hard to pinpoint the man himself, despite his extraordinary publicity.
He lives alone in comfortable luxury in Melbourne’s salubrious Brighton. “I’m quite content. I see a couple of ladies, contrary to what you might hear, but really, I’m the ultimate loner.”
He gives nothing away. He seems able to talk relaxedly for hours and never once say a revealing word about himself. He is an expansive man with a healthy ego, yet he can’t resist making fun of himself when the opportunity arises.
He has an enviable suntan. He likes to play tennis. He takes a lot of vitamin pills. He is proud of his house and garden and fond his Alsation dog. And that is about the sum knowledge of the man away from work. People around him say his is kind and charming and genuinely scared of hurting people: “Because television is such a funny familiar medium, people come up to me and start telling me about their families or their husbands’ haemorrhoids, which is weird, but touching, because they forget I’m a stranger and regard me as part of their family.”
He sees the line between his public and private life as an increasingly thin one. “I can be shopping by myself, but when someone comes up and says, ‘are you Don Lane?’ and I say yes, then I’m no longer a private person. I would feel very guilty if I were rude to people who come up to me to talk or ask for my autograph.”
“I’m not kidding when I say it’s a big responsibility.” But it is one he enjoys more than anything else. Despite what people say about the difficulty of keeping up ratings and standards every night, Lane has great confidence in his immediate future. He’s wanted to do his show four nights a week for some time, as has his former producer, Peter Faiman. He’s pleased the network executives have decided to back him, and even more elated that the show is likely to end up being programmed on major US television networks.
“When the show went to air two nights a week, every night was opening night. We really had to bang away at it, promote it really heavily. We could be sitting there talking to someone who’s really good, and just when it got interesting, you’d have to cut them off because the segment was finished.”
“Some nights we’d be so chock-a-bloc we’d have to knock good people back, and other nights we couldn’t get the people we wanted because they weren’t available on the nights we went to air. In the past five years, we’ve done enough hype. We’ve done enough promotion. So what we’re doing with this show is making it nice and easy, a laid-back variety program.”
“Another consideration was the US interest in the show. All the talk shows there are stripped (run every night through the week) and if we break through there, that’s what they want.”
Lane thinks the show will succeed because “people know by now we never lie. We have a certain amount of integrity. We always do honest promotions and I believe that counts.”
Apart from its new laid-back ambience, the basic format of his show remains the same — a preponderance of famous names, local personalities, a few song and dance numbers, and at the centre of it all, Lane. They’ve got a few surprises in store, but Lane shies off revealing them “because other networks will copy them before we even do them.”
“But we’re going to do funny things with cameras. Like we might put a camera in a London phone booth and ring the number to see who answers. Can you imagine? They wouldn’t believe Australia was on the telephone to them. They’d probably never heard of the place.”
He plans to bring in overseas names specifically to appear on the show, and American and European associates are already working from a giant list of possibles. “People in America are really interested in Australia these days.”
