Aust, satirist has a large cult following

Press, 15 November 1984, Page 22

Aust, satirist has a large cult following

By

Reg Gratton

of Reuter

Sydney It’s irreverent, sometimes tasteless, nearly always funny and has a cult following that includes the Australian Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, and the Opposition Leader, Mr Peacock. A weekly radio and television satire show written and presented by a broadcasting personality, *■ Mike Carlton, and a team of puppets attracts nearly as much interest as the politicians and journalists it caricatures. “Andrew Gucci” — Peacock — trailing dismally in opinion polls, is having a torrid time on Carlton’s hustings in the run-up to the December 1 General Elections.

Why Gucci? Peacock, with youthful looks and once dubbed the "Sunlamp Kid”, was described by the actress, Shirley Maclaine, as the only man she had ever met who had a Gucci toothbrush, Carlton explained. "Peacock later denied it, but the name seemed to fit,” said Carlton, a natural mimic and man of many voices.

A Gucci sample: “He’s about as popular as Yasser Arafat double-parked in a one-way street outside a synagogue at Yom Kippur.” Gucci finds a voter. “He’s 85 years old, deaf, dumb and blind and he lives in a tree just outside Meekatharra (in Western Australia). All we’ve got to do is get another voter and we’ve got a 100 per cent improvement.”

Bob Hawke or “Bob Hope, Prime Minister and Folk Legend,” does not escape

Carlton’s sometimes withering humour. “Nowhere in. any Western democracy do the voters have the glorious opportunity to vote for me,” Hope says. ■ . ;

Britain’s Royal Family, the British Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher and President Reagan, all are heard or are seen on television, in somewhat grotesque puppet form, on Carlton’s “Friday News Review.”

“President Hopalong Cassidy” denies a charge that he is too old. “I wanna assure you all that I’m a little bit older than my hair transplant and a lot older than my teeth, but well, heh heh, I’m still in possession of all my faculties.” A piece on Thatcher — “Mrs Gladys Hacksaw” after the Brighton bombing sparked angry protests on ' Carlton’s morning news show in Sydney and highlighted the dangers of writing and recording the review single-handed. Carlton, whose Thatcher impression would probably fool her Cabinet, quoted Mrs Hacksaw as saying: “One simply thanks God they were Irish. They messed it up again. It’s the only thing that saved one.” He said Mrs Hacksaw called on Britons to stay calm and return to their usual occupations of “destroying the economy, gay sex, shock spy scandals and speculating about the next pregnancy for Princess Daisy”. Carlton.is unrepentant and the former foreign correspondent, aged 38, emphasises that he has not had any . legal writs over the show, though some senior

politicians think it’s childish.

It is carried on a dozen radio stations and at least five television channels round the country and he reckons that his audience is close to a million, high in a country of only 15 million people. It is also bootlegged on video among the journalists and politicians in Canberra, according to Carlton. He has a gallery of about 25 puppets, each costing about $lOOO ($1750) to make. “You have to be sure they are going to be around for some time. Yasser Arafat for example is gathering dust — he hasn’t done anything for months.” Carlton, voted radio personality of the year in 1983, is arguably the most popu-

lar radio voice in Sydney and runs a witty 3% hour daily, breakfast show which has a following of 100,000 listeners.

A correspondent in Asia in the . late. 60s ‘ with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (A.B.CJ, he later joined the A.B.C news department in Sydney before leaving under a cloud in 1975 after a furore over a report on a politician’s funeral.

He has had offers to go back to television as a talkshow personality but he prefers what he calls the anonymity of radio. “You don’t get people coming up to you at parties and saying ‘Go on give us your Andrew Gucci, do your Bob Hope.’” *