For Bert Newton: 'He cut his 21st cake on television and stayed there for his entire life', by Eddie McGuire - 2021

12 November 2021, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne, Australia

Thank you to Patti, to Matthew, to Lauren for the opportunity to speak of Bert. And if I can be so bold I’d like speak on behalf of those who worked with him,. who loved watching Bert over a lifetime in showbusinesss as the consummate entertainer,

I have the impossible job of condensing our feelings for Bert and his legacy into 4.5 minutes according to the office of protocol, but as Bert would say, we’re live and I have the microphone so I might go a bit longer.

Albert Watson Newton AM MBE, to Graham Kennedy he was ‘Herby’, to Don Lane he was 'Moonface' and to all of us he was Our Bert.

Today we honour his life with a state funeral and Premier Andrews, Patti has asked and the family have asked for me to pass on their deepest gratitude to you and the state of Victoria for bestowing this honour.

Since Bert's passing there has been recognition of his incomparable compering and performances but what has been underlined from story after story is Bert's amazing generosity of spirit.
On camera, on stage, behind the microphone, Bert Newton gave of himself to make a show work, a segment pop, make his colleagues look as good as they could be, to give everything for his beloved audience.

Friend and colleague Peter Ford was one of the many with stories of Bert's generosity, of his noblesse oblige, ‘to whom much is given much is expected’, and Bert never forgot. Peter told the story sworn to secrecy until Bert said he'd carked it, of Bert hearing of a man dying of HIV/AIDS at a time when sufferers were stigmatised and isolated. Not only did Bert visit and spend hours with every person in the ward but gave the man one of his beloved gold Logies, An amazing gesture, one that lifted the morale of all in the depths of their despair with the only reward being that Bert gave those on their worst day something to remember as their best.

Patti had never heard the story until last week when Peter broke it. It did, however, go some way to solve a family mystery. Bert had won some 36 Logies over his career but the family could only find 17. Suddenly it all made sense.

It was just one of a myriad of stories shared by friends and colleagues and strangers and fans. Sam Newman reminded me of the famous Mr Anonymous speech written by Paul Keys, and delivered by Richard Burton in 1983 in paying tribute to Frank Sinatra, another giant of show business. I feel it articulates perfectly the essence of Bert Newton so to paraphrase: 'Bert was a giant, among the givers of the world he stands tallest. He has more than paid rent for the space he occupied on this planet, forged as he is from loyalty and compassion, carefully hidden, hidden because he ordered it. I appear as the heralder off grateful multitudes who have opened those unexpected envelopes, special delivering answers to prayers, those awakened by late-night phone calls which remedied their problems. Those performers, business people politicians and the sick, down on their luck, who suddenly landed the role they never expected and still don’t know who to thank. And for untold beneficiaries of the caring and kindness of this splendid man, who truly was, his brother’s keeper. And they are legion, those whose lives took a turn for the better, because of this man.’

Bert was such a legend that to be even acknowledged by him was to feel like you'd made it.

When he named his toupee ‘Eddie’, he said at the time I was on everything else I may as well be on his head, I was honoured and gratified, first that he knew who I was, second because I'd become part of his act. But thirdly because it was pure Bert - a punch line, a laugh and a nod of support to his colleagues. We've heard of people getting a segment on his shows, the note of congratulations, a phone call, a text, on your best day but more importantly on your worst, because Bert knew both.

Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar that “it is common proof that lowliness is young ambition's ladder, where to the climber upward turns his face, but when he attains the utmost round he then turns his back, looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend.” The first part is pure Bert. The second is the antithesis. For Bert never turned his back on his people. He joked, he sent them up, he understood them, but was always there for them and he never left them.

But lowliness was his young ambition's ladder. When Bert was a boy, having lost his father age 11, the Fitzroy of the 1940s and 50s was a far cry from the hipster headquarters that it is today. It was one of the toughest parts of the country, it was a notorious slum. So fired by his imagination of what could be, inspired by the Marist Brothers who saw something in this Year 7 boy who had a knack for radio plays, that he walked from his family home to the city, down the very streets outside as a 14-year-old to 3XY.

One year later he was on air, self-taught, self-driven, what he missed in the classroom he learned in the arena of life. Elocution, diction, general knowledge, music, panelling, timing, vaudeville, how to adapt in a fast-changing world, how to interview, how to perform.

He cut his 21st cake on television and stayed there for his entire life. At 84, he was still making headlines with posts on Instagram from his hospital bed. Bert never stopped evolving, never stopped learning, never lost his insatiable appetite for what's new. He was the least jaded old-fashioned performer you would ever meet.

Probably the first performer poached by Channel 9 from Seven, his partnerships have been the most successful and enduring in Australian television history. With Graham Kennedy, they lit up the small screen and would then do an encore performance the very next day on the radio. Bert, the perfect foil for the genius of Kennedy, never there to upstage, always to deliver. Later it would be Don Lane, live crosses to the world, Bert's Wheel, always there was this sense of adventure. As Shaun Micallef said, waiting for the Bert moment that would be the talk of the schoolyard and the workplace the next day, that sense of danger, excitement in a suburban Australia.

But also for us, that sense of pride as we watched "our Bert" match it with the best.

To watch Bert with the likes of Sammy Davis Jr and Debbie Reynolds was to watch kindred spirits riffing out live on TV, unrehearsed, unrestricted and hilarious. In a business known for its enenity and jealousies it was no fluke Graham was best man at Bert and Patti’s wedding, that Don on winning his Gold Logie said, ‘six months at your house, six months at mine pal.’ To watch Bert in his natural habitat at the Logies was a television highlight of the year. How he'd glide onto the stage moving like a dancer, his newly cut suit as he would describe, his patent leather pumps with that air of "I know you've seen all the stars and acts tonight but get ready for this." That mildly amused grin on his face as he readied himself to bring the house down again.

Alongside Bob Hope, John Wayne or an inebriated foreign star it made no difference, Bert either made a performance great or saved the day. As we saw a moment ago, his celebrated sparring with Mohammed Ali was made even more memorable in hindsight by not the so-called faux pas, but by the way Ali realised there was nothing sinister, that Bert was a good man. The Greatest knew greatness when he saw it.

But it wasn’t just the superstars that inspired Bert’s work. He never missed an opportunity. Ali was one thing, Belvedere and Moira, they became household names. Max Morrison, Peter Win, his great friends Pete Smith and Phil Brady, when you were part of Bert's crew, you were there forever.

Bert encouraged so many.

Hugh Jackman said, "By watching Bert I learned how to handle the spotlight with grace, dignity, honour and class."

Rove McManus said, "I lost a mentor and a friend. Our country lost an icon. But most importantly, a family lost their hero and soul mate."

Rhonda Burchmore spoke of Bert being there always with encouragement.

Paul Hogan said he was Mr Television, never took himself seriously but took his job seriously.

Phillip Adams wrote: "Bert is the electronic friend, he is there when you want or need him. Bert is company."

Russell Crowe: "Bert is not about fashion or trends, he's watched them all come and go. He is about intellect, he’s about wisdom born of experience. My life is richer having him as a mate."
Channel 9's Michael Healy said, "Bert was a star."
And Jane Kennedy: "Bert would always support new talent, was up for the gag, he wanted you to succeed."

New Faces' may have been his show, but behind the scenes, Bert lived its ethos.

So Vale, Our Bert, who turned a piano factory in Richmond into television city. The first Melburnian to become the king of Moomba. When the marquees dimmed it was Bert who helped relaunch theatre in this town. He was a star on the wireless and ran the first sports-based radio station. He loved his footy and his beloved Fitzroy and his horses, fittingly passing on Derby Day, the day of the champions.

He sang "It's Time", he looked forward not back. In passing, he has been recognised by the Prime Minister, afforded a state funeral by his beloved Victoria with a flag of his country draped on his coffin, which Patti said he would have loved.

The other constant in his life is the Catholic faith, his funeral here at St Patrick's Cathedral. Last night, the theatres of Melbourne dimmed their lights in Bert Newton's honour.

Seventy years ago, could that young boy have dreamt of what was in front of him? And while there was Bert and Graham, and Bert and Don there was nothing like Bert and Patti.
What a combination. Patti, you shared your husband with us all. Your highs and your lows, your family, Matthew and Lauren, your grandchildren who filled Bert's last few years with love and joy.
There would always have been a Bert, but he was enhanced so much by his Patti. Whether the Gold Logie becomes the Bert Newton award or a theatre, or similar be named in his honour, show business and this city will never be the same.

The young boy from Fitzroy who became a star, then a legend, then an institution and now our greatest memory of the golden years of television. Forever, our Bert.

for Prince: 'I gotta go. Prince just challenged me to a game of ping pong', by Jimmy Fallon - 2016

25 April 2016, California, Los Angeles, USA

He's booked to come on the show, and his people say, ‘Prince really wants to play ping pong against Jimmy’,

So I go, ‘beer pong?’

And they go, ‘no, ping pong.’

And we don’t play ping on the show. So I say, ‘okay, sure’

And they call back and say, ‘no Prince does not want to play ping pong’

We go, ‘okay’

They call back and say, ‘we’ve rethought it, Prince really wants to play ping pong’.

Sure, as long as Prince wants to play music. I mean that’s where it’s at. That’s what we want him to do.  Whatever’s going to make him happy.

They call back, ‘he doesn’t want to play ping pong’

‘Okay, fine, we’ll have it set up, just in case he feels like playing ping pong. ‘

This is a real story.

So they call back and say, ‘he wants to play ping pong, but not on camera’

So I go, ‘why ?’

And they go, “Prince thinks Jimmy will be fun to play ping pong with.’

I go, right, let’s bring it on man,  he comes to the show, doesn’t even look at the ping pong table, performs that night, destroys it, has the greatest show ever, Kirk lent him his guitar and he broke it ... he paid for it, right?

So then Prince leaves and I’m thinking, what was this ping pong thing all about.

So ... [throws to Questlove]

Questlove: He calls me and says, I’ll be there, at 12.30, and I tell him you just had a baby, and he says, ‘yeah, that’s nice, tell him I’ll be there at 12.30. And I’m saying, what part of baby does he not get?

No no no, he doesn’t get it. He's Prince.

...

I'm at dinner and I'm like, 'I gotta go. Prince just challenged me to a game of ping pong.' So I show up and I go to this ping pong place and I go down the stairs and I go, 'uh hey,' I don't even know how to ask ... and she goes, 'You're here to see Prince? Right this way, he's behind that curtain.' So I open the curtain and Prince is standing there with a double breasted crushed blue velvet suit holding a ping pong paddle and he goes, 'You ready to do this?'

for John Pinder: 'The Last Laugh was a whole alternate world of wonder and whacked-out whimsy', by Brian Nankervis - 2015

12 June 2015, John Pinder celebration, Circus Oz Spiegeltent, Melbourne, Australia

I’m sure I heard about John Pinder before I met him. I think that was probably par for the course for someone like John. I was a little young for the TF Much Ballroom, but I loved Daddy Cool and knew they’d played there and besides … how cool was that name? T F Much … too fucking much!

In 1980 I was teaching at Wesley in Glen Waverly and my friend Deborah Hoare was managing the Last Laugh … front of house, in the booth, assigning duties. She rang at 5.15 pm on a Friday afternoon and asked if I wanted to work as a waiter. Sure, that would be great, when? Tonight! Be here at 6 pm, wear something weird and be prepared to be yelled at by Andre in the kitchen. I could carry a tray couldn’t I? Write down orders? Could I spell Osso Bucco? If I was any good I could DJ from the record booth after the show and we’d probably go to L’Alba café in Carlton when we finished and I’d be home by daybreak.

I was playing a staff v student cricket match and I was just about to bat. I was torn -- play a heroic innings (against 11 year olds) or throw my wicket away and enter a mysterious, seductive world in Smith Street, Collingwood; a world I’d witnessed from the outside but wanted to know more about. I was caught on the boundary and in the Wolseley by twenty past and looking for a park in Langridge street by 6 (ish) -- always late!

I wore runners, blue and red tights, a medieval cape, make up applied by Rinski Ginsberg, a fish mask that Dave Swann had made for a Swinburne film and an ice cream container with a revolving propeller in honour of Ross Hannaford. The show was Mommas Little Horror Show, directed by the great Nigel Triffet and it blew my tiny, primary school teaching mind. I met Roger Evans who was charming, well dressed, friendly and welcoming and at some point I met John who was not necessarily any of those. John was slightly scary … a big unit … an unmissable flamboyant figure, all untucked shirts and bad trousers, standing up the back of the main room in front of those heavy, swinging double doors, smoking and clapping, laughing uproariously and encouraging, urging, willing the whole room to embrace the craziness …

And so began a decade of being a waiter and a performer and seeing shows like Fairground Snaps, The Brass Band, the Whittle Family, The Bouncing Cheques and Los Trios Ringbarkus downstairs and Shane Bourne, Rachel Berger, Wendy Harmer, Found Objects, Tony Rickards, Blind Billy Polkinghorn and a tiny, crazy, elderly woman who played piano and sang show tunes from the 40s called Elsa Davis. Roger asked me to drive her home one night and a week later she sent me a handkerchief in the mail as a thank you.

John and Roger and Tory McBride produced Let The Blood Run Free upstairs at Le Joke and they gave us complete freedom and total support and not very much money but we loved it and ended up downstairs on that hallowed stage, then in Adelaide at the Fringe Festival where John arrived out of the blue and helped with the bump in … putting up Phil Pinder’s beautifully painted sets (with Lynda Gibson’s Matron Dorothy Conniving Bitch running up the hallway into infinity) … John on his hands and knees. Smoking, telling stories, pontificating, laughing, telling more stories, urging us on. Make it big! Make it loud … and then, make it bigger and louder!”

The Last Laugh was a whole alternate world of wonder and whacked-out whimsy … created, nurtured and set free by John and Roger. A starting place for so many ideas, acts and possibilities. I loved working there. I made so many friends, so many life long friendships and I learned so much about doing shows … and I met the love of my life, Sue Thomson, at the Last Laugh and I’ll thank John (and Roger) until I too go to that great green room in the sky.

After the Last Laugh I saw John occasionally and it was always a pleasure, always exciting to hear his grand plans and check out the colour of his glasses. Sitting on milk crates at a café in Bondi … or one slightly bleary night in Adelaide where we talked for ten minutes and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that in fact I wasn’t Warren Coleman from The Castanet Club.

The last time I saw John was a few years ago at Roger Evan’s funeral and he, like all of us, was a little shell shocked. There was a vulnerability … a sense of loss about how they had drifted apart, but finally a sense of fierce pride in what they’d achieved. John cried and laughed and showed a heart as big and as significant as the personality we saw when he was on fire at The Laugh … doing deals, schmoozing the press, throwing an osso bucco over his shoulder when someone had the cheek to suggest that it was completely and utterly inedible, standing up the back in front of those doors, laughing outrageously and encouraging, urging and willing all of us on. We will go on!

Thank you John Pinder … you changed our lives!

For John Pinder: 'His was a lifelong struggle against the boring, the complacent, the mundane, the ordinary' by Jane Clifton - 2015

12 June 2015, Circus Oz Spielgeltent, Melbourne, Australia

Jane was the MC of the Melbourne memorial event for friend and theatrical colleague John Pinder. She introduced other speakers, in between her own thoughts and memories.

We’ve come to say goodbye to John. To tip our collective hat to his many qualities and give thanks for how fortunate we all were to have known him.

John has already been given a spectacular send-off in Sydney.

Shot out of a canon. Well, of course, he was.

We wouldn’t have expected anything less.

It was a great farewell and there are many of us here tonight who wish we could have been there too, to wave goodbye.

Because we feel a great sense of ownership of John, here in Melbourne - even if he was originally a Kiwi. He’s inextricably woven into the cultural fabric of this city, into our comic and theatrical DNA.

Many of us owe him a huge debt of thanks, not only career-wise, but also for the bloody ol’ good time we had of knowing him.

So, tonight, Melbourne, in, where else, but a great big tent, we extend the wake, in a way, we enlarge the tribute, we rack up the testimonials and share our stories of John Pinder.

So, to start with, let me say…

It is good to die without enemies. A glance around this room is testament to the fact that John Pinder had only one -- and that was boredom.

To hear the word ‘Boring!’ issue from his mouth was to send a chill down the spine of any performer. His was a lifelong struggle against the boring, the complacent, the mundane, the ordinary.

In the late 60s Melbourne – musically speaking - was a boring town.

Boring with a capital B, and that stands for Blues.

Yes, brothers and sisters, the heavy hand of the Blues was upon us. We had it bad and that was not good.

The Blues – in the key of either E or C - in 2 distinct forms, fast or slow – was one, long endless hompa-bompa, 12’y, featuring guitar solos so long that some of them are still being played today, posthumously.

The Blues - delivered to us by squadrons of grim-faced men in, flared jeans, pony tails and grimy t-shirts, and blasted through Marshall stacks so high and wide they were visible from the moon, and at an ear-shattering volume that could be heard on Jupiter.

If there was more than one band on the bill the changeover time between acts was longer than Michael Gudinski’s face on pay day.

The Blues - was a chick-free area because, ‘my baby done left me this morning, man, and I forgot to look in the mirror and ask myself why’.

So, when young Pinder rocked into town he started a band agency.

Well, of course he did.

Let It Be was an agency for bands who did not have the Blues. Bands who were as far from Boring as Tony Abbott’s speech patterns are from conventional English.

A newly graduated from the Pink Finks, Ross Wilson, was currently at the helm of the Sons of the Vegetal Mothers but he was about to strap a foxtail to his arse and plonk a set of furry ears above his curly locks. His buddy, Ross Hannaford had an Archie ‘n Jughead-style helicopter cap at the ready. Daddy Cool was about to bring back the bop, the doo-wop and the sweet harmonies of the 50s to our town.

Mike Rudd and Bill Putt had an ethereal, hard driving unit called Spectrum which featured not only the first Hammond Organ I’d ever heard played live but also - the recorder!

MacKenzie Theory had a chick in the line-up, and she wasn’t wearing satin hot-pants or singing oo-wah-oo with one finger stuck in her ear.

Cleis Pearce was a musician! And her instrument was a very small guitar called a violin – an electricified violin, with a wah-wah pedal.

These were bands who’d heard of The incredible String Band and Country Joe and the Fish, Captain Beefheart and King Crimson. Musicians who yearned for whimsy and eccentricity – bands who were anything but boring.

Where was Pinder gonna get gigs for them?

Before the Chinese, most of Melbourne was owned by the Roman Catholics. Part of their vast real estate portfolio was a rambling old joint up the footy end of Brunswick St, opposite the Sisters of Mercy, called Cathedral Hall (they called it Central Hall for a while but I drove past the other day and it’s back to Cathedral – you should take the tour…)

In 1970 this part of town was in no way hip. You could get stabbed just for walking past the Champion or the Builders Arms. And the only other reason you went to Gertrude St in those halcyon, pre-AIDS days was to visit the clap clinic (where Charcoal Lane now stands)

Well, Pinder threw a party at Cathedral Hall and it was a Too Fucking Much Ball. The hippie freaks and love children of this town flocked to Brunswick St in their droves.

You would walk through the foyer of Cathedral Hall in your rainbow crochet and face-paint, past Benny Zabel and his dancers – incredible what that one man could do with a simple set of bed sheets - and watch Pinder’s party unfold before your half-closed eyes.

Up on the balcony Hugh McSpedden and Ellis D Fogg were hard at it projecting the kind of light shows they do with computers these days. Back then it involved a complex array of colour wheels and glass dishes and paint and slides.

They needn’t have bothered.

By the time most TF Much patrons had walked through the door and paid their $2 admission they could have stared at the floor and seen Disneyland on Ice.

Pinder and Bani McSpeddon –- of the famous Leaping McSpeddons -- created something extraordinary with these events.

The bands like Company Caine, were eclectic and wild. The band I sang with was a vast and sprawling ensemble of sometimes 12 or more members, called Lipp and the Double Dekker Brothers and the Fabulous Lippettes featuring the Fantastic Crystal Tap Dancer.

The interminable breaks between bands were papered over by the remarkable innovation of bringing the curtain in and, in true vaudeville style, putting acts on in front them. 

Sometimes there was a pit orchestra – no pit, just a band on floor level, but a pit orchestra nonetheless.

There was always an MC. Usually Ian Wallace -– aka Pudding. Talking in his Pudding voice, reading aloud from Nick Carter novels, ridiculing everyone.

Jenny Brown -– now Jen Jewel Brown -- in buckskin bikini and peasant skirt would recite her own poetry. Tribe would do sketches. Colin Talbot wrote and performed sketches.

It was the whole kit and kaboodle a la Pinder, and it set the bar very high.

How do I know all this? Because I was the only person in that room who was not stoned.

Yes, I am the exception that proves the rule: I can remember and I was there.

It was a miracle I remained straight in that den of hallucination. The smoke was so thick you could barely see the naked bodies through the haze. And, no way was I buying a lentil burger….No matter how delicious they smelled.

Cathedral Hall held about 2000 people, all paying $2, the rent was 50 bucks. You do the maths. A number of pretenders sprang up. Sunbury borrowed a lot of the structure and over in Toorak Rd, Sth Yarra, at the beautiful old Regent Theatre –- where we used to flock for supper shows in the 60s to see black and white foreign films like the Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Last Year at Marienbad –- an American guy named Joe Monterosa tried to mount his own version of Pinder’s TF Much.

The pay was better but the vision came from a very different place. It was not a success. They were forced to burn the joint down to pay the bills….allegedly.

Years later, Michael Roberts would continue the model Pinder created with the Reefer Cabarets down at Ormond Hall. But by then John had moved on.

Boring!

He and Gini and Katie had tripped around Europe in a Combi van and like Toad of Toad Hall he’d fallen in love with a whole new toy called cabaret…..In early 70s Melbourne if you mentioned the word cabaret, you’d be thinking some ritzy tits and feathers show in St Kilda.

If you mentioned theatre restaurants, you’d be thinking Dirty Dicks. Or the famous Swagman Restaurant –- with the smorgasboard that we’re famous for’. You might even think of the old darling Tikki and Johns.

You wouldn’t be thinking young people or pop culture or Berlin.

But John was. He moved a few blocks down Brunswick St to a tiny venue where the bar swung very low. It was called the Flying Trapeze and it changed, forever, the way Melbourne would think of cabaret and, indeed, comedy.

A few years after that he moved back up Brunswick St but took a left turn at Gertrude, heading for the corner of Smith where he opened a bigger and better cabaret venue.

The first time I walked into that building at 64 Smith St on the cnr of Langridge, it was still the Collingwood Dole Office.

Light streamed through the unpainted windows onto the dull public service green walls and open plan desks.

And as I stood there in one of Malcolm Frazer’s dole queues I had plenty of time to look around –- and up, to the gorgeous band shell, and wonder what the hell the history of this building was.

Next time I walked through its door John had let his cousin Phil Pinder loose with a paintbrush and the place would never be the same again. The whole joint was transformed into the most extraordinary, magical interior I’d ever seen.

He’d done it again, John Pinder, this time with Roger Evans at his side, they’d hocked themselves to the back teeth to set the bar really high. And this time it was high enough to swing a trapeze from –- as Circus Oz would go on to prove.

I’m proud to say I waitressed at both the Flying Trapeze and Last Laugh. In what we like to refer to as John Pinder’s Academy of Performing Arts and Sciences, I was proud to strap on an apron and wield a tray alongside the likes of all the Sallys -– Sliffo, Sbootler, Smill -- Amanda Smith, Richard Stubbs, Bryce and Stewart Menzies, Deborah Hoare, and Mark ‘Cutsie’ Cutler, the vacuum-cleaner-wielding terrorist David Swan and Glen Elston with his purple t-shirt that just said ‘Rosemary’.

We, the survivors of Andre Snr and Junior’s hell’s kitchen, we who know the difference between sprinkle and sprig! Amanda and I reminisced briefly the other day about how fit we were when we waitressed at the Laugh, not just because we were young and working hard but because we danced our arses off before and after the show!

And, ladies and gentlemen, the greatest dancer, the man who put Bobby Blue Bland on for us to set up the tables to and the Stones’ Respectable on 11 for us to dance on stage long after the last patron had left the building. The man who has carried the flame of the Last Laugh, long and high, is here tonight. Please welcome, Last Laugh waiter supremo, and co-host of RockWiz, Brian Nankervis!

Let me finish my part of the story by saying that the city of Melbourne owes John Pinder a huge debt of gratitude for the force of his vision and his great leaps of imagination. He taught us all to think big, think global, to recognize that entertainment is a universal thing, it knows now borders. It’s either exciting or it’s boring.

Furthermore, if Adrian Bloody Rawlins can have a statue in Brunswick then surely Pinder deserves some kind of permanent memorial, too. Maybe not a statue, maybe something more abstract, a giant pair of yellow glasses, maybe -– a new kind of Yellow Peril.

For Mietta O'Donnell: 'All around her was orderly and beautiful perfection', by Wendy Harmer - 2001

January, 2001, St Mary Star of Sea, West Melbourne, Australia

Wendy’s friend Mietta O’Donnell died in a car accident in Burnie, Tasmania on January 4, 2001. Mietta’s partner Tony Knox was the driver of their car and was in hospital on the day a requiem Mass was held for her at St Mary Star of Sea, West Melbourne. Knox was later charged, and cleared, of negligence in the collision in which local man Glen Harman also lost his life.

I’m speaking on behalf of Mietta’s family today, and in accordance with their wishes I’m not going to speak about the professional milestones in her career, because I’m sure that we’ll be reading about those for years as people come to understand and unravel her remarkable legacy.

Instead I’d like to offer a personal memoir about the woman I knew and loved dearly and then I’d like to talk about the privilege I enjoyed in having Tony and Mietta as my friends for the past 15 years or so.

Over the last few days I’ve read various newspaper articles about Mietta and often I’ve found it difficult to reconcile the woman I’m reading about and the woman I knew.

A “Queen of Cuisine”, a “Grand Dame of Dining”, a “Cultural Figure”, an “Ambassador for Melbourne”… of course she was all these things…

But more than that, quite simply, she really was the most charming, warm, gentle and loving person you could ever wish to meet.

I have read that Mietta patrolled her domain in the upstairs dining room in expensive gowns, with a personal style variously described as “aloof”, “austere” or even “forbidding”, but for those of us who watched her night, after night, we came to understand that what we were seeing in Mietta was actually pure concentration in the pursuit of absolute perfection.

And night, after night, after night, year, after year that’s exactly what she achieved.

All around her was orderly and beautiful perfection.

Mietta had an eye for detail which was extraordinary.

It was almost like she had X-ray vision or extra sensory perception. She intuitively knew if the slightest thing was out of place.

Every evening she would walk through the room setting the stage … straightening a napkin here, removing a speck of dust from a glass there, adjusting a flower, until it was “just so” and then the performance would begin…

The lamps would be turned on, the lights dimmed, music would swirl through the room and as the first diner arrived, all the staff would strike up asymphony for the senses which was sustained until the last person departed.

No wonder Mietta understood the artistic temperament so well and surrounded herself withactors and musicians.

She, herself, was a maestro.

And in that way that all great artists have, she lived each evening through the eyes of every member of her audience. Her aim was that every person who walked through the door should have a sublime experience.

And if you think about it, why would Mietta want to dedicate her life to offering such an experience to people she had never met and may never meet again?

Certainly not for personal aggrandisement, but because, I think, Mietta understood that to experience beauty and perfection has the ability to uplift the human spirit. To feed the soul.

If we understand that the soul is nurtured by good food and music, wonderful conversation with genuine friends and memories which touch the heart, then Mietta was a truly soulful person.

And when Mietta’s was alive with opera upstairs, jazz and cabaret downstairs and poetry in the bar … And all around her was vibrant and humming with creative energy … Mietta’s soul sang.

As she says in her lovely book “Mietta’s Italian Family Recipes”, it was her Italian grandparents who were her inspiration .

She writes: ”They gave me a glimpse of the sort of pleasure that can be given and gotten through true hospitality - when you give of yourself, of what you enjoy and what you like to surround yourself with. If that is, as it was in my grandparents case, art and music, fine food and wine, gardens and animals and family, it’s not a bad life.”

In the past few days I’ve had many conversations with friends about Mietta and, invariably, they remember some great kindness she showed .

Perhaps it was a welcome home dinner or a birthday lunch, a farewell supper. Often I would get a phone call: “I think so and so needs cheering up so I’m having a dinner, can you come?”

And always you knew, if you were lucky enough to be given such a treat, you would walk in the room to find exactly the people you wanted to see … even if you had been away from town a long time. Just like today.

Except that today there is the profound sadness that Tony isn’t here because, always of course, always when you saw Mietta, there would be Tony.

What a remarkable double act, what an inspirational love story.

If Mietta was the maestro then Tony was the architect who built the stage on which she performed.

Tony and Mietta. Mietta and Tony. You always spoke about them as if they were the one person. It was hard to tell where one finished and the other began.

They moved as one. They were together 24 hours a day for 30 years and still fascinated by each other, still passionate about each other.

Of course they didn’t always agree!

At the table it would be an exasperated, “Oh come on Mietta, get real!” or a firm, “That’s enough Tony” and then in the next breath: “You know Mietta’s absolutely right about this” or “Yes, well ask Tony, he knows everything about that.”

In all the years I knew them I never saw them show any great physical affection … No extravagant kisses or cuddles.

But did you ever watch them eat?

It was such a truly sensuous experience that sometimes you felt the children should be sent from the room.

You felt you were intruding as they spoonfed each other, passed tidbits back and forth and nodded and murmured in their own private language.

In fact, after staying with them once, I wanted to buy them a gift and I went though all the options - music, books, wine - but ended up buying an antique silver set of salt and pepper shakers in the shape of two little wrens sitting on a branch with their heads together.

And I’m reminded here of a story …

It was the only time I ever got to cook for Mietta and Tony.

They visited my husband Brendan and me in Sydney and of course I was in a great state about what I could serve for lunch!

I decided on chicken ravioli and while I slaved over the sauce I sent Brendan into town to buy the handmade gourmet ravioli from a particular little shop.

I served up the dish and it wasn’t until we cut into the pasta that we realised that the chicken had gone off, it was totally rancid and vile and it was only then that Brendan realised that’s what must have been in that package he’d found under the front seat of the car after he’d come from a few hours surfing.

What a disaster! We were mortified!

However it so happened that also on the table was a pile of our tomatoes, still warm from the garden which Mietta and Tony ate for lunch with a bit of bread and salt and declared it “just what they felt like and one of the best meals they ever had”.

To this day I believe them because it makes me feel better, but also because they could have been telling the truth.

Tony and Mietta were two of the most unpretentious people you’d ever meet. Wherever there was fellowship and conversation, that’s where they were happy to be - whether it was in a five star French restaurant or fish and chips on the end of a pier.

And as friends, they were always thinking about how to bring joy into your life, how to honour the friendship.

They travelled to Sydney on Tony’s motorbike when our son was born and walked into the room when he was only hours old with a bottle of champagne. Tony brought his camera and took photographs of him breastfeeding because they thought it would be good to record his first experience of fine dining.

What an adventure they had … what amazing things they achieved … and what plans they had for the future!

Their partnership will always be remembered for it’s physical and intellectual energy; commitment to community and dedication to social change. There was certainly nothing “relaxed and comfortable” about Tony and Mietta.

A friend made a wonderful observation when he said that usually social change is affected by a movement, but in this case, in the cultural life of Melbourne, and indeed Australia, change was affected by just two people -Tony and Mietta.

That’s how dynamic and creative they were as a couple. That’s how powerful and transforming true love can be.

And while they were all those things to the outside world - dynamic, formidable, energetic and forceful - to all those who loved them and were loved by them they were just a blessing.

So today we close one chapter on a great love story. I know it will inspire people for years and, of course, will never be over while Tony is alive.

And it’s time to say farewell to Mietta.

I know that forever in my mind I will be walking through a door and see her there, her hands gently clasped, a perfect size eight in her little silk suit from Milan, her hair “just so” and her little golden Cretan bee earrings and pendant shining in the soft light of the lamps … and that enigmatic smile.

A bit like the Mona Lisa now I think about it.

And I’m also thinking that at last they have in heaven someone who truly understands seating arrangements. What an asset she will be.

Goodbye dear friend. I don’t expect to see your like ever pass this way again.

We will all miss you so much.

We do love you so.

For Jack Benny: 'He was stingy to the end. He only gave us eighty years', by Bob Hope - 1975

January 1975, Hillside Memorial Park, California, USA

When Benny Kubelsky was born, who in their wildest dreams would imagine that eighty years later, at the event of his passing, every television program, every radio show would stop, and that every magazine and newspaper would headline it on their front pages.

To millions of people who had never met him, who had only seen him or heard him would feel the pain of a very personal loss. For a man who is the undisputed master of comedy timing, you'd have to say this was only time when Jack Benny's timing was all wrong. He left us much too soon. He was stingy to the end. He only gave us eighty years and it wasn't enough.

Jack Benny long ago ceased to be merely a personality and became an institution. If there's a Mount Rushmore for humanitarians, the first stone face might easily resemble him, and if stone could talk it would say, 'Well.'

Perhaps what made Jack Benny such a great laugh maker was that he himself loved to laugh. He was the greatest audience a comedian could ever want. George Burns will attest to that. And of all of use would play jokes on him just to bring him up and hear him laugh. I know it might sound a little corny but there'll be times from now on when the lightening will crackle with a special type of sound or thunder will peal with a special roar, and I'll think to myself that # Fields or Fred Allen must have told Jack a joke.

In his beautiful full lifetime Jack succeeded gloriously. Jack found a great joy in the joy he brought to others. I cannot say it better than these words, his life was gentle and the elements so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to all the world 'this was a man.'

God keep him, and enjoy him. We did for eighty years.

for Jack Benny: 'Without Jack Benny, the show will go on, but there will be a big hole in it', by George Burns

16 January, 1975, Hollywood, California, USA

George Burns was too upset to complete this eulogy at the funeral. He said it again to a reporter the next day. There is no video or audio of the speech.

Good, honest jokes live forever. Look at Jack Benny. Nobody knew how great he was until he passed away. I knew him for 55 years but even I didn't know how great he was until he was gone.

There was something magic about Jack. Everything he created—the old Maxwell car, the 'stingy' jokes, 'Jell-o Again,'—all that lived for all of us as though it were real.

The pauses. The look. The nerve he had when he used to go next door to the Colmans to borrow a cup of sugar.

Even if he told a bad joke, he made it work for him. I remember one show when he told a bad joke and he said it couldn't be a bad joke because a great writer, Norman Krasna, had written it. So he told it again. And the next week he repeated the whole thing and, within a few weeks, he had a whole thing going about that bad joke.

When Jack Benny got on the stage, he owned it—and he did. When I met him, he was already a great monologist. His opening joke was this. He'd come out holding his violin and he'd just stand there. A long pause. Already he was a master of the long pause. Then he'd say to the orchestra leader, 'How is the show up to now?' And the orchestra leader would say, 'Fine.' 'Well,' Jack would say, 'I'll stop that.'

He was a gentle man. And his humor was as gentle as he was.

He used to use his violin the way I use this cigar—as a prop, as a kind of comedian's security blanket. But he tried to get rid of it. He wanted to be able to stand up on the stage without it. I remember the first time he tried to go on without it. It was in Schenectady, New York. He told two jokes. Nobody laughed. So he quick borrowed a violin from the orchestra and he was all right after that.

He never said a mean thing. Jack's idea of being mean was this. Once we saw a certain comic work. I asked him what he thought of the comic. Jack said, 'Well, he's great but I just can't laugh at him.'

Without Jack Benny, the show will go on, but there will be a big hole in it. It just won't be as good. There's one good thing, though—Jack Benny will stay alive as long as any of us live.

 

For Graham Chapman: "Good riddance ... the freeloading bastard!" by John Cleese - 1989

3 December 1989, St Bartholomew's, London, UK

Graham Chapman, co-author of the ‘Parrot Sketch,’ is no more.

He has ceased to be, bereft of life, he rests in peace, he has kicked the bucket, hopped the twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed his last, and gone to meet the Great Head of Light Entertainment in the sky, and I guess that we’re all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, such capability and kindness, of such intelligence should now be so suddenly spirited away at the age of only forty-eight, before he’d achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he’d had enough fun.

Well, I feel that I should say, “Nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard! I hope he fries."

And the reason I think I should say this is, he would never forgive me if I didn’t, if I threw away this opportunity to shock you all on his behalf. Anything for him but mindless good taste. I could hear him whispering in my ear last night as I was writing this:

“Alright, Cleese, you’re very proud of being the first person to ever say ‘sh**’ on television. If this service is really for me, just for starters, I want you to be the first person ever at a British memorial service to say ‘f***’!”

You see, the trouble is, I can’t. If he were here with me now I would probably have the courage, because he always emboldened me. But the truth is, I lack his balls, his splendid defiance. And so I’ll have to content myself instead with saying ‘Betty Mardsen…’

But bolder and less inhibited spirits than me follow today. Jones and Idle, Gilliam and Palin. Heaven knows what the next hour will bring in Graham’s name. Trousers dropping, blasphemers on pogo sticks, spectacular displays of high-speed farting, synchronized incest. One of the four is planning to stuff a dead ocelot and a 1922 Remington typewriter up his own arse to the sound of the second movement of Elgar’s cello concerto. And that’s in the first half.

Because you see, Gray would have wanted it this way. Really. Anything for him but mindless good taste. And that’s what I’ll always remember about him—apart, of course, from his Olympian extravagance. He was the prince of bad taste. He loved to shock. In fact, Gray, more than anyone I knew, embodied and symbolised all that was most offensive and juvenile in Monty Python. And his delight in shocking people led him on to greater and greater feats. I like to think of him as the pioneering beacon that beat the path along which fainter spirits could follow.

Some memories. I remember writing the undertaker speech with him, and him suggesting the punch line, ‘All right, we’ll eat her, but if you feel bad about it afterwards, we’ll dig a grave and you can throw up into it.’ I remember discovering in 1969, when we wrote every day at the flat where Connie Booth and I lived, that he’d recently discovered the game of printing four-letter words on neat little squares of paper, and then quietly placing them at strategic points around our flat, forcing Connie and me into frantic last minute paper chases whenever we were expecting important guests.

I remember him at BBC parties crawling around on all fours, rubbing himself affectionately against the legs of gray-suited executives, and delicately nibbling the more appetizing female calves. Mrs. Eric Morecambe remembers that too.

I remember his being invited to speak at the Oxford union, and entering the chamber dressed as a carrot—a full length orange tapering costume with a large, bright green sprig as a hat—-and then, when his turn came to speak, refusing to do so. He just stood there, literally speechless, for twenty minutes, smiling beatifically. The only time in world history that a totally silent man has succeeded in inciting a riot.

I remember Graham receiving a Sun newspaper TV award from Reggie Maudling. Who else! And taking the trophy falling to the ground and crawling all the way back to his table, screaming loudly, as loudly as he could. And if you remember Gray, that was very loud indeed.

It is magnificent, isn’t it? You see, the thing about shock… is not that it upsets some people, I think; I think that it gives others a momentary joy of liberation, as we realised in that instant that the social rules that constrict our lives so terribly are not actually very important.

Well, Gray can’t do that for us anymore. He’s gone. He is an ex-Chapman. All we have of him now is our memories. But it will be some time before they fade.

Similar on Speakola

Eric Idle's eulogy for George Harrison

John Cleese on political correctness for Big Think