Graham Kennedy, the King on Frankston Hill

There are no limits, love, there are no limits. -Graham Kennedy

I am as they say, a patriot and thus an enthusiastic lover of Australiana, much as I am of Americana. I love the evocative details, the ghosts that arise from such arcane interests and the happiness and thrills that come from conjuring up er, lost worlds and times. No, really. And when an idea and a script is done so well, with the right people with a depth of meaning, and the feeling of reaching out for something more that “I can’t explain”, ah, I get a little Barry Humphries thrill. I do. In fact, I often have to sit down with a “nice cup of tea” and one of Aunt Doris’s “Iced Vo Vo biscuits”.

Aunty Doris: “Och, Colonel, have a wee bickie. They’re Vo Vo’s! The shiny biscuit!”

Colonel Neville: “I certainly will Aunty, as soon as I put away this rusted green and red Meccano set and 1962 Billy Bunter Annual”.

I am a fan of that most truly Australian of people, Graham Kennedy. For my brash young American readers, he was the man who understood the medium and the audience and thus made TV in Australia, for what it’s worth. Graham was instinctive and spontaneous, and especially with er, some preparation. He’s still called the King of Oz TV. He was highly intelligent, an individualist, naughty, crude, vaudevillian, an ahead of his time sophisticated modernist, uncompromising, rebellious, , singular, unknowable, mysterious, perceptive, sometimes appeared profoundly melancholy, a great actor, impressionist, improviser, dancer and he could sing, and he was er, gay.

He was the first classic Australian piss-taker for a mass audience via a contemporary medium.

Graham’s oddly ordinary boyhood and as a young man home, is just near where I live. His old address is rather unkempt and largely uncelebrated, except for an old PMG-like concrete post marker in the scraggly garden. He lived here with his thoughtful Aunty whom he adored, after being largely neglected and ignored by his rather wretched parent’s.

Now I just finished watching a wonderful, even perfect distillation of Kennedy, as much as one can, on DVD. It’s about a year old and called simply ‘The King: The Story of Graham Kennedy’. I think it’s a beautiful production. And it has a cathartic, elegiac and ambiguous feel about it, which I prefer and not something so common here, or what folks are comfortable with. The lighting, the casting, the pacing and the script are all excellent. Man, I loved it. And I dig Kennedy.

Continue reading on Colonel Robert Neville Always Dresses for Dinner >>