Anson Cameron & John Harms: 'I'd hoped it wouldn't have it's father's nose, but oh dear', Book Launch for 'The Last Pulse' - 2014

27 November, 2014, Fox Hotel, South Melbourne, Australia

[at 6.02] John Harms

[not all scripted - here is the opening]

I watched the 2011 Grand Final with Anson Cameron which makes us brothers.

That means I can say what I like: So let me say this:

Anson Cameron is a bastard.

The Last Pulse is a brilliant book, but in it Anson Cameron has offended-   actually, that’s not right-  he has had his narrator offend the following:

• Most Queensland women –  whom he describes as dugongs
• Queenslanders generally
• Queensland – which he describes as some sort of plantation remnant of a frontier colony
• He offends Hell by likening it to Queensland
• Queensland culture
• Queensland developers and entrepreneurs
• Queensland’s notion of progress
• Country music – paranoid yodel against city folk and fast women
• Politicians of all jurisdictions and sensibilities – some of whom he absolutely nails
• Political parties
• The political process
• National myth-makers
• parochialists
• Federalists
• Romantics
• Farmers, fucked farmers, and pre-fucked farmers
• Indigenous sensibilities
• The Church
• Mysticism generally
• Those who give children names which included unnecessary use of the letter ‘x’ – like Jaxon, and Sophoenix
• And the media – the description of the scrum at the court house is brief but spot on
• Police officers -
• Lawyers
• Judges

And that’s just from memory

But, by crikey he does it well. Because this is a study of the human stupidity and greed which drives the economic system. And he does it in a way that will make you laugh right the way through what is a classic tale. And in a way which shines a light on the reality that when most people have power they will use it for their own advance. And that we therefore wind up with a crazy, mixed up, unjust world which could and should be a whole lot better.

“The world belongs to the most gifted thieves,” Anson’s narrator says.

And the worst of them, in this yarn, are Queenslanders. It is Queensland and Queenslanders who have ruined the rivers of the south – by damning the northern tributaries for their own  purposes.

This allows Anson to pour as much scorn on Queenslanders as he can possibly muster.

My mother, a Queenslander, from Tent Hill from the upper Lockyer Valley where the men (my forebears) make Cliffy Young look like David Marr, was unable to make it tonight.

But as for me, a boy born in Chinchilla, near which the Condamine River flows, who grew up in Oakey, on the Darling Downs   -    I am delighted to have been invited to launch this book even though I know that my sole purpose is to make the bastard feel less guilty.

Yes, I am a Queenslander. I lived there for more than 30 years. I like XXXX beer, and Bundy rum. In fact I know some of the old Bundy songs:

From the hills of far-off Townsville

To the shores of Maroochydore

We have come from every corner

To sit and drink some more

Admiration of all drinking folk

We’re the finest ever heard

And we glory in the title

Of the famous Bundaberg.

Our challenge rings out on the breeze

To each and everyone

We have sat in every pub we’ve found

Where they serve bundy rum

When those southern pricks come to steal our booze

And stand on Queensland green

They’ll fine the border guarded by four chaps, pissed and mean.

I eat prawn sandwiches and Weis’s fruit bars.

I genuinely hope the Maroons win the state of origin series each year. I know that Wally Lewis is the finest human being to ever draw breath.

I love the Gabba, especially when it has a dog track, and the brekky Creek.

I love the beach and the Currumbin surf club.

And I subscribe to the idea that Australia is not a single nation at all, but six nations. Queensland and the idea of Queensland-ness is the most elusive. Full of paradoxes and contradictions. Full of exploitative self-serving develop-at-all cost proselytisers who peddle an unsophisticated belief in progress - as they define it up there.

But is it more than that?

In 2005 I went looking. Christian Ryan editor at The Monthly sent me on a three-week lap of Queensland where I asked everyone from archbishops to academics, to journalists and writers and teachers, to graziers and farmers, to newsagents to railway gangers, to drinkers, to military personnel, to lawyers and other ratbags the same question: “What is Queensland?”

I got some classic responses and from them I concluded that most Queenslanders haven’t thought about it too much. We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We don’t stress too much. We don’t work too hard because it’s too bloody hot and what’s the point a big cyclone is going to come along one day and blow everything away, anyway. We’re suspicious of anything from anywhere south. So Townsvilleans are suspicious of Brissos who are suspicious of New South Welshmen and as for Canberra or Melbourne – forget it.

But the idea of Queensland-ness was best defined by a lawn-mowing contractor at Longreach.

STORY

“A Queenslander is a Queenslander.”

I also have form at the other end of the river. When I was at Uni in Qld my parents moved to South Australia.

Eudunda

The Murray is an important part of SA life, of how South Australians imagine themselves.

Through many visits to SA and especially the Barossa I have become good friends with Robert O’Callaghan who established Rockford Wines – Basket Press and all that. Robert’s forebears were soldier settlers in the Riverland – at Monash. Robert has the river in him. So earlier this year while writing a story for him we spent three days on the river at North Bend near the old wool port of Morgan – which is in the middle of the desert.

So I could relate very strongly to the characters in this yarn at both ends of the rivers.

The story starts with a terrible sadness in the South Australian river town of Bartel. Merv Rossiter’s wife Jana broken by the rural despair created by the drought and the dying of the river, commits suicide.

Merv has had enough. He can see that the damming of the major rivers in Queensland in the interests of the huge agribusinesses is killing the river in the south. The Darling and the Murray are crook, and the life of those on it is disappearing. Jana is one of many to have taken their own lives.

Merv is going to act.

He steals a 9m aluminium party punt called The Party Animal, puts it on a truck, and with his 8 year old daughter Emma, drives to the town of Dillandbundy and then Karoo Station which boasts the biggest dam in southern Queensland.

Bridget Wray, very much a product of new Queensland, is a minister in the Queensland govt. She’s visiting to announce further water grants to her constituents.

She is the personification of self-interest. P50-51

When the dam is blown up the water is released and the great flood starts to consume everything in its path.

Bridget winds up on the punt. And so the journey begins. They are taken south by the huge flood.

And so we meet some wonderful characters along the way.

...

They are wonderful characters.

Merv is a classic. A modern day Ned Kelly. Interestingly he made me think of Bob Katter but only in the sense that he was not going to stand back and let the swell of global capitalism create torment in his life. He was not a passive acceptor of a lot over which he had zero control. Nor was he going to sell out, take the cash of a secure job in the machine.

He wanted to do things on his terms.

Was Merv an activist or water terrorist?

Merv: hero or villain?

Merv: father, doing something wonderful for his daughter or an unhinged firebrand?

This book comments on life:

On ambition?

On self-interest and community? How can one people grow wealthy at the expense of others? How can they show such an absence of compassion?

On the arbitrariness of state borders on the Australian continent?

On the very notion of Australia. The conclusion regarding the notion of the Australian nation has my sympathy.

Don’t be distracted by the fact this book is so enjoyable to read. It is, at the same time, a work of considerable literary merit. It’s Noah meets the Odyssey meets Ned Kelly meets Jesus Christ meets Bob Katter meets A.D. Hope.

It’s written in a style that I love: at once, horribly sad, hilariously funny, and head-noddingly insightful.

It is my pleasure, as a card-carrying Queenslander, to launch The Last Pulse written by our man, Anson Cameron - the bastard

[at 18.36] Anson Cameron

[this is not a trascript - based on Anson's notes]

Thank you, John. I can’t say this about many men, but John and I have been whipped by the same sadists. John and I used to go to the same primary school, Gowrie Street in Shepparton and we were both frequently whipped and beaten by a couple of German teachers named Engstromm and Spinks. I remember going home and watching Hogan’s Heroes where Schultz and Klink ran a POW camp and they were such smiling jovial dolts. Next day I’d go back to school and try out a few of Colonel Hogan’s witticisms on mister Engstromm and Mister Spinks and have the skin flayed off me again. It was a confusing time, wasn’t it, John. Our Germans were so much nastier than the Nazis.

Subsequently, and not long ago, John ran a pinko think-tank in Canberra called The Manning Clarke Institute at Manning Clarke’s old home. He flew me up there to talk at a function one night.

Imagine my horror as, slowly but surely the marquee filled with octogenarian socialists, many of whom were wearing Karl Marx badges and IT’S TIME buttons. And most of whom had known Manning Clarke personally. There was a hum in the air before I began to speak… it wasn’t the hum of expectation, it was the hum of public-health hearing aids.

So I knew I was buggered from the getgo, but about half way through my talk one of Manning Clarke’s sons, who was rotten as a chop on the sort of head-frying Cab Sauv commos are prone to scoff, got up to take a leak in the garden, and he staggered out of the marquee and immediately became entangled in rose bushes.

In his alcoholic delirium he seemed to think he was being attacked by Packers and Murdochs and his language became foul in the extreme. Either that or he’d twigged that I’d been smuggled into Manning Clarke House under false pretenses… because the things he was shouting about Geelong Grammar boys rather put me off my game, and my talk was a complete fizzer. That night I swore I’d get my revenge on John Harms, hence his presence here tonight.

So thank you John for your kind words. You made a lot better fist of this talk than I did of the talk to the prehistoric comrades in Canberra.

A few months ago I said to Tracey, the publican here, “Tracey, I was wondering what you’d think of the idea of me having a book launch in this establishment?’

She said, “What… invite a whole heap of bookish types along here to praise literature and talk books?’

I said, “Yeah, that sort of thing.”

She said, “Anson, I don’t like the idea at all. In my experience as a publican the literate and the educated are a waste of space. They drink slowly, and thoughtfully, they’re argumentative, and they steal the beer coasters to write haiku on. Of all the literary people who’ve drunk at my pubs the only one who’s spent more than half his take-home pay on grog is Jason Steger.”

She said, “Anson I’ve made my fortune serving grog to ill-educated dimwits, common or garden-variety pisspots. They’re my clientele and I have a soft spot for them.”

I said, “So you’d prefer if I filled the joint exclusively with subhuman rednecks?”

She said, “Can you do it?”

I said, “Twice over. I’ll have em spilling out into the street.”

She said, “Well you can launch your book here then, but let me warn you, if any cultural discussion breaks out, any high-minded discourse among the clientele, I’m closing early.”

I said, “Have no fear of that with the gang I’ve got in mind. I’ll have people here who’ll take longer to read the restroom signs than you or I would to read War and Peace.”

So Tracey and I came to a kind of agreement about a kind of launch. And if any of you have been looking around and wondering at the strangely primitive nature of the crowd here tonight, I want each and every one of you to know you are the sole exception to her rule that an alcoholic dullard is the ideal guest at a book launch.

This is a wonderful moment in the life of a book… because the only people who have read it are on the team. My beautiful Sarah, who took a vow to love me and love whatever books I write unconditionally and forever, read it first, and then kissed me and told me what a lovely book it was.

My gorgeous agent Fiona Inglis, who has flown down from Sydney to be with us tonight, and who, admittedly, gets a commission, read it and liked it, and she sent it to... My stunning publisher Nikki Christer, who is also here down from Sydney. Nikki’s a publisher who’s prepared to do what ever it takes for her authors. So, thank you, Nikki.

And Harmsy has also read the book. But Harmsy, as well as feeling indebted to me for ambushing me with senile Marxists, has a rare happy capacity for liking more things than he dislikes, which, to be quite frank, is why I asked him to launch the book.

So I think I can stand before you here tonight and say this book, The Last Pulse, is uniformly, universally admired. A flawless work of literature. Among the four or five people with vested interests who’ve read it… It has no detractors. Like a new and perfect baby that has come into a family.

Sadly tonight is the high-water mark of the love for this new baby.  From tonight visitors will be allowed into the hospital to meet it. Later this evening, or early tomorrow, people like yourselves will begin to read it. People who aren’t related. People with axes to grind and grudges to bear…. Nitpickers and self-abusers and god-botherers and humorless crass types beset by insomnia and prolapsed disks and toothache, cotton-farmers with erectile dysfunction, if that’s not a tautology. Malcontents who imagine they will one day write a novel of their own will read it. Schadenfreudists will paw over its every page guffawing at its shortcomings. People haunted by crimes and immoral deeds in their own pasts, mentally deficient people, beset by psychological ailments wanting vengeance on the world. These are my readership.

All these people will, from tomorrow, be allowed in to see the new baby.

“Good God,” they will say, “Did you see the ears on the littlebeast? Was it’s father an elephant?”

“Oh, Jesus, I was praying it wouldn’t have its father’s nose. But what a hooter.”

“It’s limbs are bent.”

‘”It’s impossibly fat. It reads like it was sired by Clive Palmer.”

‘The child gives off an odor like a Snowtown bank vault.’

‘It’s the ugliest baby I ever saw. I could barely look at it.”

The sort of crass defamations people usually make about other people’s babies behind their backs will be made of this one.

So I find myself here tonight in the rare comforting moment knowing my baby is universally loved, but tensed for an avalanche of crass defamations from the world at large.

With this in mind the publishers, Random House, and I have plagiarized a contract to be signed by any prospective purchaser of the book. It is the exact same contract that Brad and Angelina sign when they hustle off to darkest Africa to adopt another brown angel from an international shithole. It is a pledge to care for the adoptive baby in a humane manner and give it all the love possible to let it grow up to become a classic of Australian Literature, and not let the thing become a washed up literary crack-whore propping up a wonky table.

So, as you buy your nine or ten copies of The Last Pulse tonight don’t forget to sign the Brangelina Adoption Pledge.

Having said all that, I’d just like to thank you all for coming. I’m buggered if I know why I have to write a book to get you people to come out for a drink on a Thursday night, but I’m deeply appreciative that you have. Thank you.

Anson's father-daughter breakfast speech is another Speakola favourite. He does this speaking thing for a living, when he's not writing. Book him here.

To purchase click on cover

Will Ferrell: 'When I do too much coke I cry', GQ Comedian of the Year Award, 2015

 8 September, 2015, Royal Opera House, London

Thank you, I, ah, I’m ah, I feel, ah, [hits lectern], I feel a little emotional actually, um, partly because of this award,  and, ah, I was afraid my speech would be too slow, ah, because of Samuel’s warning, that I did a little bit of cocaine in the bathroom, and ah, and ah, [inhales] so, [its lectern] and so when I do too much coke I cry, and um, [breaking down] and so I want to thank Dylan, thank you [sobbing]. You’ve been like a father to me [sobs] We’ve had so many good times together, the time we buried that dead body and we said we’d never talk about it [sobs] David Gandy I want to examine you for testicular cancer. You are a dreamboat. You my friend, wow! Wow! I am not going to stop looking at you. Ron Wood, my new best friend Ron Wood [over amped fist pump]. Jose Mourinho ... [Spanish accent] Jose Mourinho .. keep playing defence, man, keep playing seven guys in the box. I love it. I love it. [Deep breaths] My heart’s racing! I don’t want to die tonight, I don’t wanna die! Anyway thank you GQ ... GQ ... [waking off] ... thank you.

Dustin Hoffman: 'We are laughed at when we are up here, sometimes, for thanking', Oscar acceptance, 1980

14 April 1980, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles, USA

Thank you. [Inspects the Oscar.] He has no genitalia and he's holding a sword. I'd like to thank my parents for not practicing birth control.

I'm up here with mixed feelings. I've been critical of the Academy, and for reason. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to be able to work. I am greatly honored for being chosen by the producer, Stanley Jaffe, and the director, Bob Benton, and to have worked in a family with them, and with Meryl and with Justin, who if he loses again we'll have to give him a lifetime achievement award. And to Jane Alexander and to Jerry Greenberg and to Néstor and to the crew on the film who was part of that family.

And to the crew and to the directors like Bob Fosse and Mike Nichols and John Schlesinger that I've worked with before.

We are laughed at when we are up here, sometimes, for thanking. But when you work on a film you discover that there are people who are giving that artistic part of themself that goes beyond a paycheck, and they are never up here. And many of them are not members of the Academy, and we never hear of them. But this Oscar is a symbol, I think, and it is given for appreciation from those people whom we never see. They are part of our life.

I refuse to believe that I beat Jack Lemmon, that I beat Al Pacino, that I beat Peter Sellers. I refuse to believe that Robert Duvall lost.

We are a part of an artistic family. There are sixty thousand actors in this Academy – pardon me – in the Screen Actors Guild, and probably a hundred thousand in Equity. And most actors don't work, and a few of us are so lucky to have a chance to work with writing and to work with directing. Because when you're a broke actor you can't write; you can't paint; you have to practice accents while you're driving a taxi cab.

And to that artistic family that strives for excellence, none of you have ever lost and I am proud to share this with you. And I thank you.

Sally Field: 'You like me! Right now you like me!', Oscar acceptance - 1985

March 25, 1985, Dorothy Chandler Pavillion, CA, USA

Oh Benton, what you did for me. You changed my life, truly. This means so much more to me this time. I don’t know why I think the first time I hardly felt it because it was all so new. I owe a lot to the cast, to my players, to Lindsay and John and Danny, and Ed and Amy and my little friends Gennie and Yankton

I owe a lot to my family, for holding me together and loving me and having patience with this obsession and me. But I want to say thank you to you. I haven’t had an orthodox career, and I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can’t deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me!”

Charlie Kaufman: 'Thanks to the Academy ... 29 seconds ... 27 seconds ... that‘s really intimidating' - Oscar acceptance, 2005

27 February 2005, Kodak Theatre, Hollywood, CA, USA

Thanks to the Academy ... 29 seconds ... 27 seconds ... that‘s really intimidating ... um ... ah ... I’ll try to look somewhere else ...there’s so many people who worked so creatively on this movie, and so I feel like this award is for all of them ... and I most especially want to thank Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey and director Michel Gondry and producers ... and I’m suppose to wrap up now, yeah no I don’t want to take my time ... I want to get off the stage ... so ... thank you.

HI to my daughter Anna.

Woody Allen: 'Love Letter to New York In the Movies', post 9-11 Oscar speech, 2002

24 March, 2002, Kodak Theatre, Hollywood, CA, USA

Thank you very much ... that makes up for the strip search.

Let me tell you why I’m here exactlyAbout four weeks ago I was sitting home in my apartment in New York, and the phone rang, and a voice on the other end said, ‘this is the Motion Picture Academy Arts and Sciences’, and I panicked immediately, because I thought that they wanted their Oscars back. ‘Cause I’ve won a few Oscars over the years, and I thought that, you know, they were calling to get them back, and panicked because, you know, the pawn shop has been out of business for ages, and I have no way of retrieving anything, and they said, ‘no this was not it’ and I, I, couldn’t figure it out because my movie ‘The Curse of the Jade Scorpion’ was not nominated for anything this year, nothing, no category. And then it suddenly hit me, maybe they’re calling to apologise?

And I remembered during the course of the year, I had been walking on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, and a homeless man came up to me, and asked me if I could buy him lunch. And I didn’t buy him lunch, but I gave him fifty cents, and I thought maybe certain members of the Academy had witnessed this, and they were going to give me a Gene Herschell Humanitarian Award [laughter] because that’s what goes through your mind. I thought maybe that or a Thalberg or something, because you know you start calculating, I’m sixty six years old, a third of my life is over now ...[laughter] and you know, you start to think, maybe they want to honour me?

They said no, they said, here’s what the story is, in view of the terrible events that have occurred in New York over the last year, the Academy wanted to show support and make a nice gesture and put together a little film, paying tribute to movies that had been shot in New York over the years. And they wanted somebody to introduce it, and I said, ‘god you can do much better than me, you know, why not get Martin Scorsese or Mike Nichols or Spike Lee or Sidney Lumet,’ I kept naming names, you know, and said ‘look I’ve given you fifteen names of guys who are more talented than I am, and smarter and classier. They said, ‘yes, but they were not available’ so, for New York City,  you knowI’ll do anything, I got my tux, I came out here, it’s a great great movie town. Ever since I was a little kid,,movies that I grew up on in New York, movies that were shot there, it’s been a great romantic and exciting backdrop for movies, New York, and it’s a great place to come and work and make your movies because it’s still a thrilling and very very exciting city.

In a couple of weeks I’m gonna be starting another movie, on the streets of New York, I’m going to be filming a romantic movie about a foot fetishist [laughter] interesting movie the guy is a foot fetishist and he falls in love with a beautiful Harvard professor. She’s absolutely beautiful and she’s absolutely brilliant, and, um, she writes this paper on existential philosophy, and he become sexually aroused by her footnotes .. [laughter] You know, I begin this in a few weeks in Manhattan, so I plead with you to please come, make the films there, it is, it remains a great great city. The film that you are about to see now, the clips, were loving put together by a terrific New York filmmaker, Nora Ephron, and you can roll this anytime you want now.

Kanye West: 'I will die for the art!' VMA Vanguard speech

30 August 2015, MTV Video Music Awards, Microsoft Theatre, Los Angeles, USA

Full speech video here

Bro. Bro! Listen to the kids. First of all, thank you, Taylor, for being so gracious and giving me this award this evening.

And I often think back to the first day I met you also. You know I think about when I’m in the grocery store with my daughter and I have a really great conversation about fresh juice… and at the end they say, ’Oh, you’re not that bad after all!’ And like I think about it sometimes. … It crosses my mind a little bit like when I go to a baseball game and 60,000 people boo me. Crosses my mind a little bit.

And I think if I had to do it all over again what would I have done? Would I have worn a leather shirt? Would I have drank half a bottle of Hennessy and gave the rest of it to the audience? Ya’ll know ya’ll drank that bottle too! If I had a daughter at that time would I have went on stage and grabbed the mic from someone else’s? You know, this arena tomorrow it’s gonna be a completely different setup. Some concert, something like that. The stage will be gone. After that night, the stage was gone, but the effect that it had on people remained.

The … The problem was the contradiction. The contradiction is I do fight for artists, but in that fight I somehow was disrespectful to artists. I didn’t know how to say the right thing, the perfect thing. I just … I sat at the Grammys and saw Justin Timberlake and Cee-Lo lose. Gnarls Barkley and the FutureLove … SexyBack album … and Justin, I ain’t trying to put you on blast, but I saw that man in tears, bro. You know, and I was thinking, like, ’He deserved to win Album of the Year!'”

And this small box that we are as the entertainers of the evening … How could you explain that? Sometimes I feel like all this s–t they run about beef and all that? Sometimes I feel like I died for the artist’s opinion. For artists to be able to have an opinion after they were successful. I’m not no politician, bro!

Look at that. You know how many times MTV ran that footage again? ’Cause it got them more ratings? You know how many times they announced Taylor was going to give me the award ’cause it got them more ratings? Listen to the kids, bro! I still don’t understand awards shows. I don’t understand how they get five people who worked their entire life … sold records, sold concert tickets to come stand on the carpet and for the first time in they life be judged on the chopping block and have the opportunity to be considered a loser! I don’t understand it, bruh!

I don’t understand when the biggest album, or the biggest video … I’ve been conflicted, bro. I just wanted people to like me more. “But f–k that, bro! 2015! I will die for the art! For what I believe in. And the art ain’t always gonna be polite! Ya’ll might be thinking right now, ’Did he smoke something before he came out here?’ The answer is yes, I rolled up a little something. I knocked the edge off!

I don’t know what’s gonna happen tonight, I don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow, bro. But all I can say to my artists, to my fellow artists: Just worry how you feel at the time, man. Just worry about how you feel and don’t NEVER … you know what I’m saying? I’m confident. I believe in myself. We the millennials, bro. This is a new mentality. We’re not gonna control our kids with brands. We not gonna teach low self-esteem and hate to our kids. We gonna teach our kids that they can be something. We gonna teach our kids that they can stand up for theyself! We gonna teach our kids to believe in themselves!”

If my grandfather was here right now he would not let me back down! I don’t know I’m fittin’ to lose after this. It don’t matter though, cuz it ain’t about me. It’s about ideas, bro. New ideas. People with ideas. People who believe in truth. And yes, as you probably could have guessed by this moment, I have decided in 2020 to run for president.

Speech has also been modified as Seinfeld edition. Funny.

Kanye West's VMA Speech Recut As Stand-Up Comedy Set - watch more funny videos

Barry Humphries: 'Through the thin end of an asparagus roll', National Press Club - 1978

27 April, 1978, National Press Club, Canberra, Australia

I think it surprises members of the public to learn that stage performers, stage artistes and vaudeville personages like myself do suffer from stage-fright. But I always do. Quite often in fact I'm physically ill before any public appearance. There's usually a plastic bucket in the wings when I do my stage shows. But I thought a few years ago that my trade is not really that of a one-man performer, because the expectant countenances of my audience are very often illuminated into the dress circle. And so really I perform with a very large cast. And it crossed my mind some time ago to invite members of the audience to participate in the show. This sometimes leads to problems as it did in New York not long ago, when a woman sitting in the second row said that she was unable to hear Dame Edna because of the laughter of two 'pansies', as she described them, sitting next to her. So I rashly asked her if she thought she could hear better if she came up on stage. To my alarm she did. (Laughter.) This is five minutes into the show and she was there till the end. She also brought her knitting. I need hardly tell you that this altered the entire course of the occasion. I asked her her name and she said it was Lucy so we called it the Lucy Show after that.

At the moment I'm engaged in writing a new starring vehicle for myself and friends and I open in Sydney next month. And it's usually my practice, being a professional procrastinator amongst other things, to commence writing the show as soon as the first ticket has been bought. It entertains me to think that there's some poor character actually paying for something that doesn't exist. In Melbourne I used to like sitting in a little Greek restaurant called the Cafe Florentino. At about ten past eight in the evening. And seeing old Melbourne Grammar boys, contemporaries perhaps of our Prime Minister, hurrying with their wives down the stairs in order to attend one of my performances which I had absolutely no intention of starting for another three-quarters of an hour.

The advantage of course of being a solo entertainer is that they can never start without you. And I think that that is probably one of the few advantages. Except of course that it keeps me off the streets and fills my evenings entertainingly. As I hope it will yours. Difficult, looking at those scrawled envelopes, those comparatively blank sheets of foolscap paper and wondering if the thought that crossed one's mind on a tram is likely to divert an assembly of people. But I've always found that people generally come to the theatre as they do to an occasion like this with an immense store of goodwill, which it's very hard to exhaust. And after all it cost them a lot more to come to the show than just the ticket. They have to get babysitters. They have to take out extra fire insurance on their houses.

I always find too that an audience laughs much louder if they're extremely anxious. And therefore I think at the beginning of my new show I'll remind them of all the terrible things that could be happening at home. Was the kitchen window really firmly locked? What kind of cigarettes was the babysitter smoking? How many friends is she at present entertaining? All of these things, I think, should put them in a very good mood. . . a very receptive mood. I'm going to have a lot of bleepers concealed under the seats so that doctors will be leaving regularly throughout the evening. Hurrying off to save imaginary lives.

I have had people die during my shows, unfortunately. I was informed that a man had fallen gravely ill during my last performance some four years ago in Sydney. And as I left the theatre I noticed some screens had been erected in the foyer. Until the ambulance arrived. But the usherettes were shaking their heads and alas—the customer had caught the ferry as they say. But it pleased me to see a seraphic smile upon his ashen lips, and in his pale grasp was still clenched a wilting gladioli.

A lot of Australians attempt, when abroad, to evoke agreeable memories of their homeland. Some burn gumleaves. I thought I'd perhaps call the first volume of my autobiography, Some Burn Gumleaves. My first thoughts were to call it . . . well I like titles like Silverfish in the Bath or Snails in the Letterbox. If you come from Melbourne you know about snails in the letterbox. And I'm essentially, you see, a Melbourne artiste. It was kind of you to say, not in so many words of course, Mr President, that I belong to the universe, was it, or the galaxy? I can't remember your exact words. But I would insist that I'm basically a regional monologist. Just as I suppose Dorset belongs to Thomas Hardy, Dublin to James Joyce, Hull to Philip Larkin, Canberra to Manning Clark.. . I suppose the Mornington Peninsula belongs to me. Moonee Ponds wherever she may wander still belongs, I think, to Dame Edna Everidge. And so I still look at the world rather through those dusty venetians, through those crossover terylene drapes. Still peer at those things which peculiarly amuse me through the thin end of an asparagus roll. A uniquely Australian invention I would point out. The asparagus roll is not to be found anywhere else in the world. It's not a problem to open a tin of asparagus, it's not a problem to cut brown bread thin enough or butter one side of it thinly. The problem is to stick it up. The punk asparagus roll will soon be with us, no doubt, secured with a suitably sterilised safety pin.

The other great Australian inventions of course are the terylene golfing hat, the lamington and the Hill's hoist. I can't think of any more. Perhaps the vanilla slice. I remember once asking the
Australian painter, Sir Sidney Nolan, what he missed most about Australia when he was away—and he said it was the way the icing on a vanilla slice stuck to his thumb. I suppose the second volume then of my autobiography will be called The Way It Sticks to Your Thumb though that may well evoke memories of Ms Shere Hite. Or I might call it something rather
grandiose, like The Restless Years.

But some Australians burn gumleaves. Others like to remember the old advertisements on
commercial radio. The old wireless programmes like The Koolmint Theatre of the Air. The old days when one perhaps listened to the ABC for entertainment. (Laughter.) We evoke nostalgia in many different ways. Inducing such maladies as Persephone's Neck. I introduced that for the scholars in our midst, and I'm relieved to find there are none. Or the Lot's Wife syndrome. When glancing back at Australia you turn into a pillar of bauxite.

I always like of course to write the reviews first. In New York I provided typewriters in the foyer for this purpose. To save them rushing to their newspaper offices they could always type the notices then and there, and come back and enjoy the show in a relaxed frame of mind. I also had a very large map which a lot of people took quite seriously. Like most of us I was a little indignant when some apparently sophisticated person thought that Fiji was the capital of Australia. And I had a very large map in the foyer of Australia showing the entire Americas fitting into Gippsland. And there was a big caption which said something like, 'For Your Information, Actual Scale Map, America in Relation to the Australias'. Quite a few people were very impressed by that. Rightly so. It took a lot of painting.

But the object is rather a callow one I suppose, to preempt adverse criticism since who isn't a little susceptible to it. I've always liked to give my shows rather self-deprecating titles so that perhaps a journalist who would have been thinking of starting his review with 'It's rather pathetic at his age' would have to think again and say, 'Well if I said that I'd be agreeing with him really wouldn't I if my previous show was called At Least You Can Say You've Seen It. And most of these show titles were all invented by my aunt. Who is still with us I'm happy to say. Whenever she went to a Williamson show—and it wasn't David in those days, it was JC—she used to come home and say. . .You know, we only went to the theatre in those days on wedding anniversaries. Now we go on Mother's Day as well as wedding anniversaries. But she used to always say something like... 'What did you think of it?' I'd say and she'd say, 'Well, Barry, at least I can say I've seen it.' She'd say, 'Oh it was just a show.' But more often than not she used to say, 'Isn't it pathetic at his age?', 'You know, he used to be wonderful in The Desert Song' 'Why do they still do it?' I mean, that my aunt can say to me, 'Why do they still do it?' as I'm simultaneously borrowing five dollars from her, I don't know.

But when I came back to Australia, as I always do, again I saw those banners outside newsagents which I like to collect. I'm the person who goes around late at night stealing banners from outside newsagents. If you don't know what a banner is it's one of those things printed in very bold type which are put in little cages which look at us through little wire grilles outside milk bars and newsagents all over Australia. The first one I saw I was tempted to steal in broad daylight. It's the first time I've ever done it. I'm going to hold it up just to show you. It says, 'Killer Spiders, What To Do'. Well we all know what to do. Scream and die painfully.
Without any further ado therefore I feel I should throw the meeting open to questions. I, as I say, will not flinch from the most intimate. I am in the land of total disclosure. Nothing is a secret. It's a country where the venetian blinds lock in the open position. Did not a former Prime Minister, a former speaker at this very table, speak of his wife, his lofty spouse as being good for bed and board? To the astonishment of the more prudish and more decorous amongst us. More recently, I understand, when the Honourable Mr Whitlam was asked to what he and his wife attributed their sexual compatibility he replied, 'Not Masters and Johnson, sheer Hite.' I was saving that one for the show but this is a preview. It must go no further.

Tony Thomas, The Age: Now that you're back here, Barry, I can see why the Government has just reintroduced export incentives. I've long been an admirer of your work and the question I've got to ask is slightly personal. Are you heterosexual like us, homosexual, transsexual, bisexual, trisexual or multisexual, pro-sexual, anti-sexual or married?
Mr Humphries: I think I'm infra-sexual.
Bruce Juddery: Is it true, sir, that you were approached while you were in Melbourne by Mr
Bjelke-Petersen to work for him and several other Tory politicians, counterparts to Mr Whitlam?
And if you weren't, were you disappointed?

Mr Humphries: No, I'm glad that you said that because I think people were enjoying themselves a little too much. (Laughter.) It was either you or a fault in the sprinkler system. If I may obliquely reply to your question, there have alas been all too few official approaches made to me. I had hoped that I might get the Paris job. Dame Edna wanted to seize it but she couldn't get past the antique furniture in the doorway. I don't see any reason why artistes or sort of oddities shouldn't have diplomatic posts at any rate. There are many precedents. Lord Byron, Shirley Temple. . . I once said to Gough Whitlam that I'd rather like the Lisbon job since there wouldn't be a great deal to do except to see that the sardines got all put in the right way around. When I was last in. the Portuguese capital I'd forgotten my driver's licence . . . an interesting, heavily endorsed document that it is. (Laughter.) And the Portuguese Avis girl . . . sounds rather Portuguese, 'Avis', doesn't it? The Portuguese Avis girl refused to give me a car. I felt a tap on the shoulder and I turned round and there was 'our man' in Lisbon. He said, 'Anything we can do for you, Brian?' I was pleased to hear that he wasn't going to address me in Portuguese. I said I was having a bit of trouble and I was secretly very flattered indeed that news of my arrival had been telexed straight through to the embassy and there was indeed a man with a finely crafted white vinyl belt, ensign tie and platform shoes waiting for me. I said, 'Well. I have this slight problem. But first I must say that it's very, very nice of you,' and he said, 'Oh just a minute, Barry, just a minute. Oh morning, Mr Halfpenny, we thought you might have been on the next plane.' So it seemed it wasn't I that they were coming to meet after all, but some leather-jacketed troubleshooter from the trade union movement. I'd very much like to be our man in Lisbon. Whether I could handle Brisbane or not I'm not quite sure. Though I am a great admirer of the Brisbane leader. In a political scene so devoid of personalities it's rather nice to find one.

One of the things that interests me by the way is that you are soon to have a revolving restaurant. As you know I have an eye for these things. People say, 'Oh, you know, you're quick, you've only been here half an hour and you know we're going to have a revolving restaurant.' Well it has to be. It isn't a great town unless you have somewhere where you have to go up a long way to get a red Kleenex to wipe the garlic prawns off your tie. Meat served on a piece of wood with a flag in it saying, 'Medium rare'. And waiters staggering dizzily out of the central service core. . . laden with food to tables which didn't order it. . . where something goes wrong with the speed, where sometimes the motor goes berserk and hurls the diners miles into the surrounding landscape.

Australian cities are always doing ludicrous things to themselves in order to make themselves
internationally interesting. Melbourne as you know wrecked itself in the 1950s preparing itself for Olympic visitors. All the cast-iron verandahs were torn down because it was felt that Latvian shotputters might think it was a country town. How they kept copies of The Sun News-Pictorial from them goodness only knows. Of course when Nicholas Pevsner, the eminent architect, visited Melbourne and the architects were racing him off in their cars to see their little boxes that they had constructed in the suburbs, all Pevsner was interested in were the few remaining cast iron verandahs in Carlton and Fitzroy. It was thought vaguely that some of these places which had been given too cheaply to the Greeks might still have some architectural value. As we know now they're inhabited almost solely by architects, advertising people and raving poofters ... of impeccable taste. But still the despoliation continues. The entire Yarra Valley has been ruined. There's a sort of committee now for historical buildings. Once they've decided to pull something down, they've always rebuilt it and they're already collecting the rent on the new building but they have a little tribunal just to show
that they're quite prepared to listen to arguments for something or other. Melbourne Comedy
Theatre which I'm going to be performing in in a couple of months is up for auction. I hope that it's still there when I'm there and I won't have to do my performance from the top of a car. But, you know, it is to me a decadent community in which a theatre needs to be defended. That one should actually have to stand up and say, 'Well, you know, I would submit that a theatre is quite important.' There seems to be something a bit wrong there. In Sydney however a revolving restaurant is being built and people can revolve up there.

Melbourne alas hasn't any such thing. But we have a city square and I'm afraid I have led you into a small trap. I hope that you'll forgive me. On the pretext of course of addressing you in a learned fashion I really wish to make a press statement. Many of you know that I'm soon to retire from the theatre. Driven by public opinion. Most of you know of course that my ambition in life is to become a society photographer. In Australia I should have no work whatsoever. When my children asked me recently what was the definition of a contradiction in terms I said, 'A Sydney socialite.' But town planning is my major interest. I've been secretly going to Monash University doing a little course in town planning with all the housewives. And I've always felt, you know, that I'd rather be in a good building or.. . really I would rather be in a building designed by a bad architect and a good accountant. Too many buildings seem to be
designed by accountants.

I've been working on a scheme for the Melbourne city square. I've gone to a bit of trouble over this. Now you'll all appreciate it, it's nice to know that your speaker has gone to a bit of trouble. There was a block in Melbourne on the corner of Collins and Swanston Streets which had some quite nice old buildings on it. So nice indeed they had to come down because someone thought, 'Wouldn't it be nice if we had a civic square.' I think probably they were thinking, 'Wouldn't it be nice if I had a knighthood and you had a civic square.' (Laughter and applause.) Mind you, do you notice that I've got this Silver Jubilee tie for my services to the Queen? This is the Silver Jubilee polyester, woven at the Palace. No gong yet though I know there are plenty of people working hard for them. I'm not going to name names. I could be referring to any Tom or Dick or even Harry. The thing is. . . ladies and gentlemen, I have a scheme for this plot of ground, which is much ploughed up. No one knows quite what to do with it. They're thinking of putting a vast television screen there so the latest footie results can be shown there. Of great interest I'm sure to the people of Melbourne in the middle of summer. But it seems to me that the thing that is going to put Melbourne on the map is not a tower, not a revolving restaurant, no pinnacle—but a pit.

Think of it for a moment. A gigantic excavation is what I recommend for my home town. In short, an abyss. Then Melbourne can be truthfully called the abysmal city. Think for a moment of the famous holes which attract tourists. The Black Hole of Calcutta attracted a few. The Grand Canyon is nothing else but a hole. It brings in enormous revenue to those who, I presume, have the box office. However, my plans for the abyss are well and truly under way and I can now unveil them for the first time in Australia at this meeting. I have copies which will be handed around . . . the original artwork, for the paper courageous enough to run it on the front page tomorrow. I've got a few of them here. This is an architect's drawing made by my friend, Mr Charles Billitch, my partner in Humphries, Billitch and. . . Associates. The spire is St Paul's Cathedral. The distant Byzantine building is the surviving Flinders Street Railway Station. The small area on the corner of Collins and Swanston Streets marked Number Ten is the protestors' precinct. The wall of the salvaged Regent Theatre has been rusticated. That is, it has been covered with a fibre-glass surface so it resembles a cliff face over which coloured water pours. Fifteen . . . yes, that is the Regent Falls. Six, rock climbing is possible up that wall. Number One is the abyss. Now this is a hole of incalculable depth. It ought to be about three centimetres deeper than the World Trade Centre is tall—making it the deepest abyss in any city centre, undoubtedly. Now the road can be diverted into the abyss to accommodate the next Moomba procession. There is a cave at the foot of the falls in which, appropriately enough, is a caveteria. Rock groups can perform on the top of the rockery. And there is a lift taking people down to the revolving restaurant in the bottom of the abyss. Now from the windows of the revolving restaurant of course, cheerful diners will be able to discern little else but glow worms and slime. We have as yet to devise a method of bringing them up again. The garlic prawns should see to that. On the side of the Abyss is the Abyss Mall. Perhaps there is a radio station called the Abyssee. Now it's the Town Hole as seen from the Town Hall.

I only have a few copies—it's an exclusive, it's classified and if it isn't run in any of the papers I've wasted my time haven't I? But one of the most important aspects of this abyss is that it offers an opportunity for people to destroy themselves. As you know Melbourne has many incentives for suicide but few opportunities. It's difficult to get to the tops of a lot of the tall buildings. I know I'm speaking in a city where the suicide rate is the highest in Australia. How do you do it? Go out and stab yourself with a gum tree? Ecological suicide. However there is a special jump for suicides here which would be floodlit at night and televised by the ABC who have, as you know, very little else to do. So I leave this with you, ladies and gentlemen. It actually is rather funny, don't you think?
 

Fred Rogers: 'Ten Seconds of Silence', Lifetime Achievement Award - Emmys 1997

14 September, 1997, Emmy Awards, Pasadena Civic Auditorium, CA, USA

Thank you. Thank you. Oh it’s a beautiful night in this neighborhood. So many people have helped me to come to this night. Some of you are here, some are far away, some are even in Heaven.

All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are. Those who have cared about you and wanted what was best for you in life. Ten seconds of silence. I’ll watch the time.

[10 Sec Pause]

Whomever you’ve been thinking about, how pleased they must be to know the difference you feel they’ve made. You know they’re the kind of people television does well to offer our world. Special thanks to my family and friends, and to my co-workers in Public Broadcasting, Family Communications, and this Academy for encouraging me, allowing me, all these years to be your neighbor. May God be with you. Thank you very much.

Bob Dylan: 'Critics say I can't carry a tune and I talk my way through a song. Really?', MusiCares Person of the Year - 2015

6 February 2015, Los Angeles Convention Centre, USA

I'm glad for my songs to be honored like this. But you know, they didn't get here by themselves. It's been a long road and it's taken a lot of doing. These songs of mine, they're like mystery stories, the kind that Shakespeare saw when he was growing up. I think you could trace what I do back that far. They were on the fringes then, and I think they're on the fringes now. And they sound like they've been on the hard ground. 

I should mention a few people along the way who brought this about. I know I should mention John Hammond, great talent scout for Columbia Records. He signed me to that label when I was nobody. It took a lot of faith to do that, and he took a lot of ridicule, but he was his own man and he was courageous. And for that, I'm eternally grateful. The last person he discovered before me was Aretha Franklin, and before that Count Basie, Billie Holiday and a whole lot of other artists. All noncommercial artists. 

Trends did not interest John, and I was very noncommercial but he stayed with me. He believed in my talent and that's all that mattered. I can't thank him enough for that.

Lou Levy runs Leeds Music, and they published my earliest songs, but I didn't stay there too long. Levy himself, he went back a long ways. He signed me to that company and recorded my songs and I sang them into a tape recorder. He told me outright, there was no precedent for what I was doing, that I was either before my time or behind it. And if I brought him a song like "Stardust," he'd turn it down because it would be too late. 

He told me that if I was before my time -- and he didn't really know that for sure -- but if it was happening and if it was true, the public would usually take three to five years to catch up -- so be prepared. And that did happen. The trouble was, when the public did catch up I was already three to five years beyond that, so it kind of complicated it. But he was encouraging, and he didn't judge me, and I'll always remember him for that. 

Artie Mogull at Witmark Music signed me next to his company, and he told me to just keep writing songs no matter what, that I might be on to something. Well, he too stood behind me, and he could never wait to see what I'd give him next. I didn't even think of myself as a songwriter before then. I'll always be grateful for him also for that attitude. 

I also have to mention some of the early artists who recorded my songs very, very early, without having to be asked. Just something they felt about them that was right for them. I've got to say thank you to Peter, Paul and Mary, who I knew all separately before they ever became a group. I didn't even think of myself as writing songs for others to sing but it was starting to happen and it couldn't have happened to, or with, a better group. 

They took a song of mine that had been recorded before that was buried on one of my records and turned it into a hit song. Not the way I would have done it -- they straightened it out. But since then hundreds of people have recorded it and I don't think that would have happened if it wasn't for them. They definitely started something for me. 

The Byrds, the Turtles, Sonny & Cher -- they made some of my songs Top 10 hits but I wasn't a pop songwriter and I really didn't want to be that, but it was good that it happened. Their versions of songs were like commercials, but I didn't really mind that because 50 years later my songs were being used in the commercials. So that was good too. I was glad it happened, and I was glad they'd done it. 

Pervis Staples and the Staple Singers -- long before they were on Stax they were on Epic and they were one of my favorite groups of all time. I met them all in '62 or '63. They heard my songs live and Pervis wanted to record three or four of them and he did with the Staples Singers. They were the type of artists that I wanted recording my songs. 

Nina Simone. I used to cross paths with her in New York City in the Village Gate nightclub. These were the artists I looked up to. She recorded some of my songs that she [inaudible] to me. She was an overwhelming artist, piano player and singer. Very strong woman, very outspoken. That she was recording my songs validated everything that I was about.

Oh, and can't forget Jimi Hendrix. I actually saw Jimi Hendrix perform when he was in a band called Jimmy James and the Blue Flames -- something like that. And Jimi didn't even sing. He was just the guitar player. He took some small songs of mine that nobody paid any attention to and pumped them up into the outer limits of the stratosphere and turned them all into classics. I have to thank Jimi, too. I wish he was here. 

Johnny Cash recorded some of my songs early on, too, up in about '63, when he was all skin and bones. He traveled long, he traveled hard, but he was a hero of mine. I heard many of his songs growing up. I knew them better than I knew my own. "Big River," "I Walk the Line." 

"How high's the water, Mama?" I wrote "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" with that song reverberating inside my head. I still ask, "How high is the water, mama?" Johnny was an intense character. And he saw that people were putting me down playing electric music, and he posted letters to magazines scolding people, telling them to shut up and let him sing. 

In Johnny Cash's world -- hardcore Southern drama -- that kind of thing didn't exist. Nobody told anybody what to sing or what not to sing. They just didn't do that kind of thing. I'm always going to thank him for that. Johnny Cash was a giant of a man, the man in black. And I'll always cherish the friendship we had until the day there is no more days. 

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Joan Baez. She was the queen of folk music then and now. She took a liking to my songs and brought me with her to play concerts, where she had crowds of thousands of people enthralled with her beauty and voice. 

People would say, "What are you doing with that ragtag scrubby little waif?" And she'd tell everybody in no uncertain terms, "Now you better be quiet and listen to the songs." We even played a few of them together. Joan Baez is as tough-minded as they come. Love. And she's a free, independent spirit. Nobody can tell her what to do if she doesn't want to do it. I learned a lot of things from her. A woman with devastating honesty. And for her kind of love and devotion, I could never pay that back. 

These songs didn't come out of thin air. I didn't just make them up out of whole cloth. Contrary to what Lou Levy said, there was a precedent. It all came out of traditional music: traditional folk music, traditional rock 'n' roll and traditional big-band swing orchestra music. 

I learned lyrics and how to write them from listening to folk songs. And I played them, and I met other people that played them back when nobody was doing it. Sang nothing but these folk songs, and they gave me the code for everything that's fair game, that everything belongs to everyone.

For three or four years all I listened to were folk standards. I went to sleep singing folk songs. I sang them everywhere, clubs, parties, bars, coffeehouses, fields, festivals. And I met other singers along the way who did the same thing and we just learned songs from each other. I could learn one  song and sing it next in an hour if I'd heard it just once.

If you sang "John Henry" as many times as me -- "John Henry was a steel-driving man / Died with a hammer in his hand / John Henry said a man ain't nothin' but a man / Before I let that steam drill drive me down / I'll die with that hammer in my hand." 

If you had sung that song as many times as I did, you'd have written "How many roads must a man walk down?" too. 

Big Bill Broonzy had a song called "Key to the Highway." "I've got a key to the highway / I'm booked and I'm bound to go / Gonna leave here runnin' because walking is most too slow." I sang that a lot. If you sing that a lot, you just might write, 

Georgia Sam he had a bloody nose

Welfare Department they wouldn’t give him no clothes

He asked poor Howard where can I go

Howard said there’s only one place I know

Sam said tell me quick man I got to run

Howard just pointed with his gun

And said that way down on Highway 61

You'd have written that too if you'd sang "Key to the Highway" as much as me. 

"Ain't no use sit 'n cry / You'll be an angel by and by / Sail away, ladies, sail away." "I'm sailing away my own true love." "Boots of Spanish Leather" -- Sheryl Crow just sung that.

"Roll the cotton down, aw, yeah, roll the cotton down / Ten dollars a day is a white man's pay / A dollar a day is the black man's pay / Roll the cotton down." If you sang that song as many times as me, you'd be writing "I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more," too.

I sang a lot of "come all you" songs. There's plenty of them. There's way too  many to be counted. "Come along boys and listen to my tale / Tell you of my trouble on the old Chisholm Trail." Or, "Come all ye good people, listen while I tell / the fate of Floyd Collins a lad we all know well / The fate of Floyd Collins, a lad we all know well." 

"Come all ye fair and tender ladies / Take warning how you court your men / They're like a star on a summer morning / They first appear and then they're gone again." "If you'll gather 'round, people / A story I will tell /  'Bout Pretty Boy Floyd, an outlaw / Oklahoma knew him well."

If you sung all these "come all ye" songs all the time, you'd be writing, "Come gather 'round people where ever you roam, admit that the waters around you have grown / Accept that soon you'll be drenched to the bone / If your time to you is worth saving / And you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone / The times they are a-changing."

You'd have written them too. There's nothing secret about it. You just do it subliminally and unconsciously, because that's all enough, and that's all I sang. That was all that was dear to me. They were the only kinds of songs that made sense. 

"When you go down to Deep Ellum keep your money in your socks / Women in Deep Ellum put you on the rocks." Sing that song for a while and you just might come up with, "When you're lost in the rain in Juarez and it's Easter time too / And your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through / Don’t put on any airs / When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue / They got some hungry women there / And they really make a mess outta you."

All these songs are connected. Don't be fooled. I just opened up a different door in a different kind of way. It's just different, saying the same thing. I didn't think it was anything out of the ordinary. 

Well you know, I just thought I was doing something natural, but right from the start, my songs were divisive for some reason. They divided people. I never knew why. Some got angered, others loved them. Didn't know why my songs had detractors and supporters. A strange environment to have to throw your songs into, but I did it anyway. 

Last thing I thought of was who cared about what song I was writing. I was just writing them. I didn't think I was doing anything different. I thought I was just extending the line. Maybe a little bit unruly, but I was just elaborating on situations. Maybe hard to pin down, but so what? A lot of people are hard to pin down. You've just got to bear it. I didn't really care what Lieber and Stoller thought of my songs. 

They didn't like 'em, but Doc Pomus did. That was all right that they didn't like 'em, because I never liked their songs either. "Yakety yak, don't talk back." "Charlie Brown is a clown," "Baby I'm a hog for you." Novelty songs. They weren't saying anything serious. Doc's songs, they were better. "This Magic Moment." "Lonely Avenue." Save the Last Dance for Me. 

Those songs broke my heart. I figured I'd rather have his blessings any day than theirs. 

Ahmet Ertegun didn't think much of my songs, but Sam Phillips did. Ahmet founded Atlantic Records. He produced some great records: Ray Charles, Ray Brown, just to name a few. 

There were some great records in there, no question about it. But Sam Phillips, he recorded Elvis and Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. Radical eyes that shook the very essence of humanity. Revolution in style and scope. Heavy shape and color. Radical to the bone. Songs that cut you to the bone. Renegades in all degrees, doing songs that would never decay, and still resound to this day. Oh, yeah, I'd rather have Sam Phillips' blessing any day. 

Merle Haggard didn't even think much of my songs. I know he didn't. He didn't say that to me, but I know [inaudible]. Buck Owens did, and he recorded some of my early songs. Merle Haggard -- "Mama Tried," "The Bottle Let Me Down," "I'm a Lonesome Fugitive." I can't imagine Waylon Jennings singing "The Bottle Let Me Down." 

"Together Again"? That's Buck Owens, and that trumps anything coming out of Bakersfield. Buck Owens and Merle Haggard? If you have to have somebody's blessing -- you figure it out. 

Oh, yeah. Critics have been giving me a hard time since Day One. Critics say I can't sing. I croak. Sound like a frog. Why don't critics say that same thing about Tom Waits? Critics say my voice is shot. That I have no voice. What don't they say those things about Leonard Cohen? Why do I get special treatment? Critics say I can't carry a tune and I talk my way through a song. Really? I've never heard that said about Lou Reed. Why does he get to go scot-free? 

What have I done to deserve this special attention? No vocal range? When's the last time you heard Dr. John? Why don't you say that about him? Slur my words, got no diction. Have you people ever listened to Charley Patton or Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters. Talk about slurred words and no diction. [Inaudible] doesn't even matter.

"Why me, Lord?" I would say that to myself.

Critics say I mangle my melodies, render my songs unrecognizable. Oh, really? Let me tell you something. I was at a boxing match a few years ago seeing Floyd Mayweather fight a Puerto Rican guy. And the Puerto Rican national anthem, somebody sang it and it was beautiful. It was heartfelt and it was moving. 

After that it was time for our national anthem. And a very popular soul-singing sister was chosen to sing. She sang every note -- that exists, and some that don't exist. Talk about mangling a melody. You take a one-syllable word and make it last for 15 minutes? She was doing vocal gymnastics like she was on a trapeze act. But to me it was not funny. 

Where were the critics? Mangling lyrics? Mangling a melody? Mangling a treasured song? No, I get the blame. But I don't really think I do that. I just think critics say I do. 

Sam Cooke said this when told he had a beautiful voice: He said, "Well that's very kind of you, but voices ought not to be measured by how pretty they are. Instead they matter only if they convince you that they are telling the truth." Think about that the next time you [inaudible].

Times always change. They really do. And you have to always be ready for something that's coming along and you never expected it. Way back when, I was in Nashville making some records and I read this article, a Tom T. Hall interview. Tom T. Hall, he was bitching about some kind of new song, and he couldn't understand what these new kinds of songs that were coming in were about. 

Now Tom, he was one of the most preeminent songwriters of the time in Nashville. A lot of people were recording his songs and he himself even did it. But he was all in a fuss about James Taylor, a song James had called "Country Road." Tom was going off in thisinterview -- "But James don't say nothing about a country road. He's just says how you can feel it on the country road. I don't understand that."

Now some might say Tom is a great songwriter. I'm not going to doubt that. At the time he was doing this interview I was actually listening to a song of his on the radio.

It was called "I Love." I was listening to it in a recording studio, and he was talking about all the things he loves, an everyman kind of song, trying to connect with people. Trying to make you think that he's just like you and you're just like him. We all love the same things, and we're all in this together. Tom loves little baby ducks, slow-moving trains and rain. He loves old pickup trucks and little country streams. Sleeping without dreams. Bourbon in a glass. Coffee in a cup. Tomatoes on the vine, and onions.

Now listen, I'm not ever going to disparage another songwriter. I'm not going to do that. I'm not saying it's a bad song. I'm just saying it might be a little overcooked. But, you know, it was in the top 10 anyway. Tom and a few other writers had the whole Nashville scene sewed up in a box. If you wanted to record a song and get it in the top 10 you had to go to them, and Tom was one of the top guys. They were all very comfortable, doing their thing.

This was about the time that Willie Nelson picked up and moved to Texas. About the same time. He's still in Texas. Everything was very copacetic. Everything was all right until -- until -- Kristofferson came to town. Oh, they ain't seen anybody like him. He came into town like a wildcat, flew his helicopter into Johnny Cash's backyard like a typical songwriter. And he went for the throat. "Sunday Morning Coming Down."  

Well, I woke up Sunday morning

With no way to hold my head that didn't hurt.

And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad

So I had one more for dessert

Then I fumbled through my closet 

Found my cleanest dirty shirt

Then I washed my face and combed my hair

And stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.

You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris, because he changed everything. That one song ruined Tom T. Hall's poker parties. It might have sent him to the crazy house. God forbid he ever heard any of my songs. 

You walk into the room

With your pencil in your hand

You see somebody naked

You say, “Who is that man?”

You try so hard

But you don’t understand

Just what you're gonna say

When you get home

You know something is happening here

But you don’t know what it is

Do you, Mister Jones?

If "Sunday Morning Coming Down" rattled Tom's cage, sent him into the looney bin, my song surely would have made him blow his brains out, right there in the minivan. Hopefully he didn't hear it. 

I just released an album of standards, all the songs usually done by Michael Buble, Harry Connick Jr., maybe Brian Wilson's done a couple, Linda Ronstadt done 'em. But the reviews of their records are different than the reviews of my record. 

In their reviews no one says anything. In my reviews, [inaudible] they've got to look under every stone when it comes to me. They've got to mention all the songwriters' names. Well that's OK with me. After all, they're great songwriters and these are standards. I've seen the reviews come in, and they'll mention all the songwriters in half the review, as if everybody knows them. Nobody's heard of them, not in this time, anyway. Buddy Kaye, Cy Coleman, Carolyn Leigh, to name a few. 

But, you know, I'm glad they mention their names, and you know what? I'm glad they got their names in the press. It might have taken some time to do it, but they're finally there. I can only wonder why it took so long. My only regret is that they're not here to see it. 

Traditional rock 'n' roll, we're talking about that. It's all about rhythm. Johnny Cash said it best: "Get rhythm. Get rhythm when you get the blues." Very few rock 'n' roll bands today play with rhythm. They don't know what it is. Rock 'n' roll is a combination of blues, and it's a strange thing made up of two parts. A lot of people don't know this, but the blues, which is an American music, is not what you think it is. It's a combination of Arabic violins and Strauss waltzes working it out. But it's true. 

The other half of rock 'n' roll has got to be hillbilly. And that's a derogatory term, but it ought not to be. That's a term that includes the Delmore Bros., Stanley Bros., Roscoe Holcomb, Clarence Ashley ... groups like that. Moonshiners gone berserk. Fast cars on dirt roads. That's the kind of combination that makes up rock 'n' roll, and it can't be cooked up in a science laboratory or a studio. 

You have to have the right kind of rhythm to play this kind of music. If you can't hardly play the blues, how do you [inaudible] those other two kinds of music in there? You can fake it, but you can't really do it. 

Critics have made a career out of accusing me of having a career of confounding expectations. Really? Because that's all I do. That's how I think about it. Confounding expectations. 

"What do you do for a living, man?"

"Oh, I confound expectations."

You're going to get a job, the man says, "What do you do?" "Oh, confound expectations.: And the man says, "Well, we already have that spot filled. Call us back. Or don't call us, we'll call you." Confounding expectations. What does that mean? 'Why me, Lord? I'd confound them, but I don't know how to do it.' 

The Blackwood Bros. have been talking to me about making a record together. That might confound expectations, but it shouldn't. Of course it would be a gospel album. I don't think it would be anything out of the ordinary for me. Not a bit. One of the songs I'm thinking about singing is "Stand By Me" by the Blackwood Brothers. Not "Stand By Me" the pop song. No. The real "Stand By Me." 

 The real one goes like this:

When the storm of life is raging / Stand by me / When the storm of life is raging / Stand by me / When the world is tossing me / Like a ship upon the sea / Thou who rulest wind and water / Stand by me

 In the midst of tribulation / Stand by me / In the midst of tribulation / Stand by me / When the hosts of hell assail / And my strength begins to fail / Thou who never lost a battle / Stand by me

In the midst of faults and failures / Stand by me / In the midst of faults and failures / Stand by me / When I do the best I can / And my friends don't understand / Thou who knowest all aboutme / Stand by me

That's the song. I like it better than the pop song. If I record one by that name, that's going to be the one. I'm also thinking of recording a song, not on that album, though: "Oh Lord, Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood." 

Anyway, why me, Lord. What did I do? 

Anyway, I'm proud to be here tonight for MusiCares. I'm honored to have all these artists singing my songs. There's nothing like that. Great artists. [applause, inaudible]. They're all singing the truth, and you can hear it in their voices.

I'm proud to be here tonight for MusiCares. I think a lot of this organization. They've helped many people. Many musicians who have contributed a lot to our culture. I'd like to personally thank them for what they did for a friend of mine, Billy Lee Riley. A friend of mine who they helped for six years when he was down and couldn't work. Billy was a son of rock 'n' roll, obviously.

He was a true original. He did it all: He played, he sang, he wrote. He would have been a bigger star but Jerry Lee came along. And you know what happens when someone like that comes along. You just don't stand a chance.

So Billy became what is known in the industry -- a condescending term, by the way -- as a one-hit wonder. But sometimes, just sometimes, once in a while, a one-hit wonder can make a more powerful impact than a recording star who's got 20 or 30 hits behind him. And Billy's hit song was called "Red Hot," and it was red hot. It could blast you out of your skull and make you feel happy about it. Change your life. 

He did it with style and grace. You won't find him in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He's not there. Metallica is. Abba is. Mamas and the Papas -- I know they're in there. Jefferson Airplane, Alice Cooper, Steely Dan -- I've got nothing against them. Soft rock, hard rock, psychedelic pop. I got nothing against any of that stuff, but after all, it is called the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Billy Lee Riley is not there. Yet. 

I'd see him a couple times a year and we'd always spent time together and he was on a rockabilly festival nostalgia circuit, and we'd cross paths now and again. We'd always spend time together. He was a hero of mine. I'd heard "Red Hot." I must have been only 15 or 16 when I did and it's impressed me to this day.

I never grow tired of listening to it. Never got tired of watching Billy Lee perform, either. We spent time together just talking and playing into the night. He was a deep, truthful man. He wasn't bitter or nostalgic. He just accepted it. He knew where he had come from and he was content with who he was. 

And then one day he got sick. And like my friend John Mellencamp would sing -- because John sang some truth today -- one day you get sick and you don't get better. That's from a song of his called "Life is Short Even on Its Longest Days." It's one of the better songs of the last few years, actually. I ain't lying. 

And I ain't lying when I tell you that MusiCares paid for my friend's doctor bills, and helped him to get spending money. They were able to at least make his life comfortable, tolerable to the end. That is something that can't be repaid. Any organization that would do that would have to have my blessing. 

I'm going to get out of here now. I'm going to put an egg in my shoe and beat it. I probably left out a lot of people and said too much about some. But that's OK. Like the spiritual song, 'I'm still just crossing over Jordan too.' Let's hope we meet again. Sometime. And we will, if, like Hank Williams said, "the good Lord willing and the creek don't rise."

Claire Zorn: 'I am a glitch in the system', CBCA Accceptance - 2015

Speech from 2.50 on video

21 August, 2015, Melbourne Town Hall, Australia

Claire Zorn was accepting the Children's Book Council of Australia's Book of the Year award for Older Readers.

I often say that I write for my seventeen-year-old-self. Right now my seventeen-year-old-self is standing here saying, ‘What the frig? How did this happen?’

I’m the kid who had a panic attack in the middle of her first HSC English exam and left. I’m not here because of the wonders of our education system, I am a glitch in the system. I’ve had the opportunity to visit a number of high schools recently and I’m not sure all that much has changed. When it comes to education we are very concerned with rankings and bell curves.  It’s worth noting that I was discouraged from taking on what was then called three unit related English because my ranking wasn’t high enough. We want our kids to perform. We teach them to play Tchaikovsky by rote, but disable their ability to write their own music. I had teachers who fought against the obsession with marks and rankings and focused on nurturing my creativity, but I think that is like trying to light a candle in a cyclone, if you will allow me to get a bit Elton John.

I must thank my darling dad who told me over and over again that creativity was immeasurably valuable and must be held on to. I must thank my mum who gave the me stubbornness and determination required to pursue an artistic path.

Creative minds are vulnerable and mine has caused it’s fair share of problems, I would not have survived, much less written any books without the love and support of my husband, Nathan. Of course my thanks also go to my Publisher Kristina Schultz at UQP and my editor and co-conspirator, Kristy Bushnell.

I will finish by saying that this wonderful award does not qualify me to go into schools and give students the formula for a good piece of writing. I have no interest in improving their rankings. It does qualify me to visit high schools, look those kids in the eye — the off-beat ones, the weird ones, the ones who haven’t done that Biology assignment but have written 67,000 words, sometimes on their phones — and tell them that they will be okay.  

To the Children’s Book Council: thank you for this award, I can not tell you how much this means to me, especially seventeen-year-old me.

Ashton Kutcher: 'I believe that opportunity looks a lot like hard work', Teen Choice Awards - 2013

11 August, 2013, Gibson Amphitheater, Los Angeles, USA

What’s up? Oh wow. Okay okay, let’s be brutally honest — this is the old guy award, this is like the grandpa award and after this I gotta go to the geriatric home.

Um, First of all, um, I don’t have a career without you guys. I don’t get to do any of the things I get to do without you. Um you know, I thought that uh, it might be interesting.. You know In Hollywood and in the industry and the stuff we do, there’s a lot of like insider secrets to keeping your career going, and a lot of insider secrets to making things tick. And I feel like a fraud.

My name is actually not even Ashton. Ashton is my middle name. My first name’s Chris. It always has been. It got changed when I was like 19 and I became an actor, but there are some really amazing things that I learned when I was Chris, and I wanted to share those things with you guys because I think it’s helped me be here today. So, it’s really 3 things. The first thing is about opportunity. The second thing is about being sexy. And the third thing is about living life.

I believe that opportunity looks a lot like hard work. When I was 13 I had my first job with my Dad carrying shingles up to the roof, and then I got a job washing dishes at a restaurant, and then I got a job in a grocery store deli, and then I got a job in a factory sweeping Cheerio dust off the ground. And I’ve never had a job in my life that I was better than. I was always just lucky to have a job, and every job I had was a stepping stone to my next job and I never quit my job until I had my next job. And so opportunities look a lot like work.

The sexiest thing in the entire world, is being really smart. And being thoughtful. And being generous. Everything else is crap, I promise you. It’s just crap that people try to sell to you to make you feel like less, so don’t buy it. Be smart, be thoughtful, and be generous.

The third thing is something that I just re-learned when I was making this movie about Steve Jobs. And Steve Jobs said when you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way that it is, and that your life is to live your life inside the world and try not to get in too much trouble, and maybe get an education and get a job and make some money and have a family, but life can be a lot broader than that when you realize one simple thing, and that is that everything around us that we call life was made up by people who are no smarter than you, and you can build your own things, you can build your own life that other people can live in.

So build a life. Don’t live one, build one. Find your opportunities, and always be sexy. I love you guys.

Jon Stewart: 'He empties the tank every time', Kennedy Center Springsteen tribute - 2009

December, 2009, Kennedy Centre, Washington DC, USA

I am not a music critic. Nor historian, nor archivist. I cannot tell you where Bruce Springsteen falls in the pantheon of the American songbook. I can not illuminate the context of his work or his roots in the folk and oral history traditions of our great nation. But I am from New Jersey, and so I can tell you what I believe, and what I believe is this: I believe that Bob Dylan and James Brown had a baby. Yes! And they abandoned this child. As you can imagine at the time - interracial, same-sex relationships being what they were - they abandoned this child on the side of the road, between the exit interchanges of 8A and 9 on the New Jersey Turnpike. That child is Bruce Springsteen.

I didn't understand his music for a long time. Until I began to yearn. Until I began to question the things I was making and doing in my own life. Until I realised it wasn't just about the joyful parade on stage and the theatrics. It was about stories of lives that could be changed.

I was working in a bar in New Jersey as you would imagine; Central Jersey right off route 1. And every night, when I closed the bar, I would get in my car and I was driving at the time – a 1976 off-brown Gremlin. The Gremlin was a car that was invented for two reasons: 1) birth control for young males; and 2) it was invented so that the Pinto wouldn’t feel so bad about itself.

But I would get in my car every night and would put in the music of Bruce Springsteen, and everything changed. And I never again felt like a loser. When you listen to Bruce’s music, you aren’t a loser. You are a character in an epic poem about losers.

But that is not the power of Bruce Springsteen. It is that whenever I see Bruce Springsteen do anything, he empties the tank – everytime. And the beautiful thing about this man is that he empties that tank for his family, he empties that tank for his art, he empties that tank for his audience, and he empties it for his country. And we, on the receiving end of that beautiful gift are ourselves rejuvenated, if not redeemed, and I thank you.

On screen video

'The song writers who inspired me were searcher,' he said. 'Who spoke to our lives and our dreams, I searched for stories about the people I knew. In a small Jersey town life was factory jobs, making ends meet.'

[Bruce Springsteen – Thunder Road]

The screen door slams
Mary’ dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch
As the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that’s me and I want you only
Don’t turn me home again
I just can’t face myself alone again

[Jon Stewart:]
But he had a lot of heart and big dreams. And the one thing he was sure of was Rock N’ Roll.

Up and down the Jersey shore, little clubs went crazy for him. Word had gotten out. Something was happening.

[Bruce Springsteen: Tenth Avenue Freeze Out]

1, 2, 3, 4! Get down.

[Jon Stewart:] Source: LYBIO.net
A Springsteen concert is like a carnival ride that leaves you breathless and alive.

[Bruce Springsteen – Born in the U.S.A.]

Born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A.

[Bruce Springsteen – No Surrender]

We made a promise we swore we’d always remember
No retreat, baby, no surrender

[Jon Stewart:]
He found himself at the centre of the Rock And Roll Universe. The Boss.

[Bruce Springsteen – Born To Run]

Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run
Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run
Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run

[Jon Stewart:]
But the bigger his success, the more he questioned. For the favorite son of Rock N Roll; growing as an artist, meant taking on the bigger questions.

[Bruce Springsteen – The River]

I come from down in the valley
Where mister when you’re young
They bring you up to do like your daddy done

[Jon Stewart:]
He wanted his songs to bare witness to the hardships and heroism of everyday life.

[Bruce Springsteen – The Promised Land]

Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted

The dogs on Main Street howl cause they understand
If I could take this moment into my hands
Mister I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man
And I believe in a promised land

[Jon Stewart:]
“I try to melt my voice in the story I am telling. And when a moment comes in our common history I wanna be there”, he said.

[Bruce Springsteen – The Rising]

May I feel your blood mix with mine
A dream of life comes to me
Like a catfish dancin’ on the end of my line

Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine

[Jon Stewart:]
Bruce doesn’t just sing, he testifies!

[Bruce Springsteen – Working On A Dream]

I’m working on a dream
Though sometimes it feels so far away
I’m working on a dream
Our love will make it real someday

[Jon Stewart:]
“I’m in the middle of a long conversation with my audience”, he said. It will be a life long journey for both of us by the time we’re done.

[Standing Ovation]

William Faulkner: "The agony and sweat of the human spirit" Nobel acceptance -1950

10 December 1950, Stockholm, Sweden

Ladies and gentlemen, I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before.

So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.

Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands. Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man.

I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969

Tony Martin: 'City of Bongs, and Football, and Scratchy Tickets', State Library of Victoria debate - 2009

17 October, 2009, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne

Tony Martin and Catherine Deveney argued for bogans in this ‘comedy debate’. Jane Clifton and Tony Wilson represented the ‘books’.

If you’re anything like me, you’re running a temperature of about 112 and are on so much prescription medication, you’re not really sure where you are. This could be the State Library, or it could be the opening scene of David Cronenberg’s Scanners.

Obviously, if it is the latter, the front three rows might like to move back a tad. Because you will get splattered with cranial matter. On the upside, the debate will be forfeited and you can all piss off early to the pub. Or to Borders, to see if they’ve got the new Jonathan Franzen. Because you’re book nerds, aren’t you? I can feel you, looking up at me, thinking, ‘There is no new Jonathan Franzen, what the hell are you talking about?’

Oh yeah, I know what you people are like. Because, if you are anything like me, you know what it’s like to feel your heart racing as you approach the specials table at Readings and pick up what looks to be a US import hardcover edition of Alice Munro’s Runaway – feel the deckled edges – it’s a Knopf original! – fumble for the imprint page, is it? Yes, it is! It’s a first edition, for $12.95 – that’s half the price of the local paperback!

If you’re like me, you’re buying all three local papers on a Saturday and going straight for the ‘Books’ sections. Noting the new, smaller-format ‘Review’ section in The Weekend Australian, turning to your partner and saying, ‘Is it just me, or are there just twelve pages of book reviews where there used to be sixteen?’

If you’re like me, you’re losing sleep over the imminent arrival of these newfangled Kindle machines. I mean, are they any good? Are they really going to replace books? Are people really going to want to read Nicholas Nickleby off a calculator? I mean, didn’t anybody read that essay by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker?

If you’re like me, you’re tossing and turning about the selection of extracts in that new Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature – I mean, have they included enough indigenous writers? What does Clive James think? Has Peter Craven weighed in? Is it really worth getting up and going to work today? Is it too early to call [NAME CENSORED] and was that book really about him and [NAME CENSORED] doing it every which way? I need to know, I have to know, because I live in a City of Literature!

Except I don’t.

Because that person I’ve just described is me, it may be you…and about 2400 other people. Nobody else could give a shit!

Face it, we’re living in Boganville.

Now, I’m not having a latté-fuelled sneer. I myself hail from one of the bogan capitals of New Zealand. In my suburb, we had one of those Video Ezys where all the parking spaces are named after movie stars, but ours – and I swear this is true – had not one, but two spaces labelled ‘Patrick Swayze’. None for Daniel Day-Lewis, two for Patrick Swayze. That’s when you know you’re living in a centre of bogan activity and endeavour.

And that’s where we’re living, here in Melbourne.

Because you could offer the average person in Melbourne all the books in Readings and Borders and Hill of Content – you could say, ‘Right, you can have a look at all of them – or – you can have a look at the new “Stars Without Make-up” issue of New Weekly.’ Which one do you think they’d go for?

Margaret Atwood, fuck off! I want to see Posh Spice getting out of a car, with no pants on.

I remember that when this ‘City of Literature’ nonsense was announced, there was a picture in the paper of a handsome young man with a mane of hair like Michael Chabon’s, and a wayward scarf, sitting atop a knoll in Federation Square, paging thoughtfully through a copy of Patrick White’s Voss.

Now, my guess is, moments after that photo was taken, he had the shit kicked out of him by five bogans, fresh off the Frankston line en route to Hungry Jack’s. That man would have been picking Voss out of his teeth for weeks, and the mobile phone footage would’ve racked up a million hits by the time the ambulance arrived.

Because this is not a City of Books – it’s a City of Bongs, and Football, and Scratchy Tickets, and Internet Porn, and Buying an Illegal Copy of Underbelly Out of Somebody’s Boot in the Car Park of the Dingley Powerhouse.

Oh, sure, it’s a city of some books, but what was the biggest selling book of last year? Was it by Tim Winton? Geraldine Brooks? Peter Carey? No, it was a book about how to remove stains from fabric. How to remove the remnants of a Bacardi Breezer from your best pair of trackypants.

If we were to stage a genuine Melbourne Writers Festival, the big ticket event would be Geoffrey Rush reading mellifluous extracts from the stain-removal book – or the second most popular book of the year – How to Make a Meal Using Only Three Ingredients: VB, hate and Sam Newman’s ballsack.

People in Melbourne don’t want to read books. They want to read about who’s banging Lara Bingle. The only literature they’re really interested in is the literature on the counter at JB Hi-Fi that tells them how much they’ll pay for an even bigger telly, so they can watch Kyle Sandilands making an even bigger cock of himself, just before they slump into unconsciousness, awaking only to buzz in the bloke from Pizza Hut.

If this weren’t the case, that TV show where everyone pretends to have read the new one by Roberto Bolano wouldn’t be hidden away late on Tuesday night on the ABC. It’d be on Channel Nine in prime time, hosted by Daryl Somers and five medical students in blackface.

If this weren’t the case, the ‘literary’ section at your local shopping centre Dymocks wouldn’t be almost entirely filled with books about Mr Darcy, none of which were written by Jane Austen, like Mr Darcy Takes a Wife, The Secret Diaries of Mr Darcy and How To Remove Stains From Mr Darcy’s Incredibly Fulsome Pants.

If this weren’t the case, then A S Byatt would’ve outsold The AFL Diet.

True story: A couple of years ago, I’m in Readings in St Kilda – when it used to be Cosmos – browsing foppishly on a quiet Saturday afternoon – because it’s always quiet in a bookshop – and there’s this couple, swathed in football-related clothing, each with a baby in a pouch on their front, and the woman has suddenly shouted – loudly, shockingly – across the shop to the bloke:

‘Damian, come over here! I have found a book that is better than The Da Vinci Code!’

He’s come shuffling over, going, ‘Bullshit! There is no book – no book – that is better than The Da Vinci Code!’

And she’s said, ‘Well, look at this – The Illustrated Da Vinci Code!’

And he’s looked at it, for five minutes, just turning it over in his hands, going, ‘Fuck me, this is better…cos they’ve done pictures of everything.’

Those are the people who should’ve been in that picture in the paper for ‘Melbourne: City of Literature’.

Melbourne: City of Bogans. Who occasionally read a book – about stains, about diets, about conspiracy theories, about people who were in Underbelly.

They don’t want to read about the dashed hopes of a godless society at the end of an era of greed and excess and moral ambiguity. They want to read about Brendan Fevola, throwing up in an ashtray at Crown Casino.

And you know what? So do I.

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