Blakey from “On The Buses” and Tony Martin – just not in that order.
Alright you lot – this post was due out 10 minutes ago!
As part of 3RRR’s Radiothon fundraising drive, in which listeners contribute funds to subscribe to one of the largest community radio stations in Australia, there is not a lack of names that appear on the station.
With a deep, rich history of talent passing through the doors since 1976, the D-Generation members are regulars in the hallways – whether broadcasting their own shift, or being a guest.
On Tuesday 21st August, Tony Martin joined his good friend Dave Graney on his show Banana Lounge Broadcasting, and was enticed to help raise subscriptions by singing the Bryan Adams classic, Summer Of 69.
While the song itself is a running joke to the legions of Martin fans, the bonus was that Martin would sing the song as Blakey from the UK classic TV series On The Buses.
To listen to the entire episode, visit the 3RRR On Demand link here. While you’re there, SUBSCRIBE and keep the dream alive (and possibly more impressions).
We dig into the archives of the group that is The D-Generation to see one of many early steps of birth.
ABC TV producer Frank Ward was on the hunt for some fresh new talent to fill the time slot void that Australia: You’re Standing In It created. He knew that university revues were a magnificent source of talent.
From the humble stage of The Melbourne University Revue in 1983, Marg Downey, Santo Cilauro, John Harrison, Rob Sitch, Michael Veitch and Magda Szubanski deferred their own degrees to be part of the comedy group The D-Generation.
1986-01-20 Sydney Morning Herald
They weren’t alone though. Tom Gleisner, Trevor Johnson, BrendanLuno,Nick Bufalo and John Allsop were put behind the scenes as dedicated scriveners. In 1985, a pilot was produced for the ABC, and on the 13th March 1986, the first episode of The D-Generation was broadcast.
In this article from the Sydney Morning Herald January 20 1986, Downey talks about the format of the new show and how the team gets along, while Ward describes his experience in Australian TV comedy and how optimistic he is with this new show and cast.
This is the first of many articles from the archives we have – so stay tuned for more!
Australia’s favourite outback traveler Russell Coight is hitting the road, again!
After a 14 year absence since his telemovie gave his ego a bit of a boost, the threat of the Coight has been haunting us for the last couple of years. But now, the team at Working Dog and Channel 10 have given ol’ Russ a date of return:
Mark in your smartphones 7:30pm Sunday August 5 to see Coight and his best mate impersonator Glenn Robbins hit the road for thrills, spills, and good o’ fashioned tips on how to survive in the Outback, to making your campsite your home.
While you’re awaiting his return, catch up on the first two seasons, now available on iTunes (unfortunately, no longer available on Google Play)
All Aussie Adventures Series 1: iTunes All Aussie Adventures Series 2: iTunes
It was Australian Television’s night of nights, and it was fantastic.
The 60th Annual TV Week Logie Awards were held for the first time on the Gold Coast (“LOOK! Warner Brothers Movie World!”), a far cry from their traditional Melbourne home, where all the glitz and glamour presented themselves at The Star Casino in Broadbeach.
On Sunday, host of Have You Been Paying Attention? Tom Gleisner was present to receive the Logie for Most Popular Comedy Program on behalf of the entire team.
Tom Gleisner accepting the 2018 Logie for Most Popular Comedy Program for HYBPA
But the highlight of the entire night was Tony Martin, who had the honour of being the main voiceover for the Logies.
Tony Martin doing the voiceover
From obscure TV references (Willing and Abel), rattling off a list of The Bachelor spin-offs (The Bachelor Goes To Monte Carlo is something we’d all love to see), using the phrase ‘Piss-farting around’, and to go and hang with Lachy Hulme and Shaun Micallef for ‘champagne and pingas’, he was the highlight of the night. If we get time, we might put up a Tony highlights package down the track…
UPDATE 2018-07-05: A few jokes were missed in the first video, here’s the ‘cutting room floor’ extras.
While he was a hit, some people just didn’t get the humour or know who he was:
A big congratulations is in order to Tommy G at the Newsdesk!
Tom Gleisner, part of the D-Generation, The Late Show, Frontline, All Aussie Adventures, Have You Been Paying Attention? etc creation, is now a recipient of the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Alongside many others this year (Even Anne f**king Wills*), Gleisner can now slap “Officer of the Order of Australia” or (AO) against his name on his Working Dog business cards, for his service to television as a writer, producer, actor and presenter, including his support of young people with autism spectrum disorders.
Before you go any further, click PLAY on this video, then continue reading.
20-odd years ago, Melbourne based Cartoonist Dillon Naylor was scribbling away his wares, while listening to a drive-time radio show broadcast on the 2DAY FM Network, part of the Austereo Radio Network.
The radio show consisted of a tall, lanky bespectacled New Zealander-cum-Australian copywriter who wasn’t afraid of his deep meta nerdiness with films, 80s music, and anal-retentive sketch comedy be broadcast across this big, wide brown, flat mysterious land. Alongside him, a scruffy-looking, beanie wearing, Winnie Blue smoking, sports loving local pub hero who wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, call out bullshit, and trying to ‘stick it to the man’ – as long as he can bung a durrie out the back later on.
The show? Martin/Molloy.
Tony Martin and Mick Molloy were a duo, alongside CopperArt spokesperson Pete Smith, Panel Operator and ‘Ladies Man’ Peter “Gracie” Grace, Producer Sancia Robinson, and a handful of audio whiz-bang audio producers playing musical chairs (Scott Muller, Daryl Missen, Nigel Haines, Steve Woods, Vicki Marr) and a bunch of Program Directors and Upper Class Management – broadcasting ‘loose talk and foolish behaviour’ from 1995. Constantly winning radio ratings and ARIA Awards for their trilogy of comedy albums, Martin/Molloy developed a major cult fan base who taped shows on cassette and bootlegged in school yards, until they pulled up stumps in 1998 due to exhaustion.
Naylor was such a hardcore fan of Martin, Molloy, and previous works (such asABC TV’s The Late Show, The D-Generation and the EON FM D-Generation breakfast show), tapped into his illustrative skills as an already established Melbourne comic artist and approached the guys with concept art of their own caricatures. The birth of Martin/Molloy comics was born.
Comics based on Comics. // Dillon Naylor
Popping up in newsagents across Australia, Naylor converted the comedic stylings of the radio program and turned it into cartoon goodness. Over three issues, references to radio characters like Blimpy The Lactose Intolerant Cat, New Zealand radio announcers Tum & Phul, the rooftop shed, satirical commercials, Stupidman, Bargearse and much more were transformed into the Wonderful World of Naylor, printed to paper, and distributed far and wide so school kids would lap them up (myself included). Due to financial issues, Naylor didn’t get past the the third issue, and wrapped up production, turning the comics into collectors items for Australian comedy appreciators.
Original Martin/Molloy art by Dillon Naylor.
Fast forward to 2018, 20 years to the anniversary of Martin/Molloy finished on air, and Naylor decided to dust off his prints and re-purpose them as a 42 page (84 back to back) omnibus.
Martin/Molloy comics Omnibus // Dillon Naylor
And it’s all there. Re-formatted, typo-fixed, re-inked, re-traced, re-cycled, and some extra jokes to cover up the dated ones, easter eggs, and some history behind how it all came about are now included in a glossy, high quality book. (Even our chat with Naylor for this site made it into print form!)
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If you originally owned the comics, but now have deteriorated beyond reading, or you want to introduce the comedic style of toilet humour to your teenage kid, or just to read along side your upteenth re-listening to your Brown / Poop / Peas albums, then this is for you. Buy it, add it to your book collection or graphic novels you bought at the Supanova convention you visited last month. De-value your home but increase the smiles with the Martin/Molloy comics omnibus. Plus it virtually buys Naylor a coffee. It’s a must-purchase.
It’s that time of year again, where the announcements for the TV Week Logie award nominations are revealed.
Drum roll…
Congratulations to the team at Working Dog for their Logie nomination nod for Have You Been Attention? – up for ‘Most Popular Comedy Program’.
Pang, Gleisner, Logie, Kavalee at the 2017 Logie Awards // Tom Gleisner
Veterans of the Australian Television industry’s ‘night of nights’, the weekly quiz show – now in its sixth season – rates comfortably with Tom Gleisner as quiz master, regulars Ed Kavalee and Sam Pang as button pushers, and a rotating lot of guest seats that have seen Jane Kennedy, Mick Molloy, Tony Martin, Santo Cilauro, Glenn Robbins and many more pop-up and test their knowledge at current events.
The 60th Annual TV Week Logie Awards will be held at The Star Casino, Gold Coast on Sunday July 1, and broadcast on Channel 9.
Dovetail: Congrats to friends of Working Dog / D-Generation Lachy Hulme, Celia Pacquola and Luke McGregor (Utopia, HYBPA?) for their nominations!
Martin/Molloy fans, this is for you to own some fantastic memorabilia.
Comics based on Comics. // Dillon Naylor
Melbourne comic artist Dillon Naylor, who created the 1996 Martin/Molloy comic book series based on Australia’s favourite radio nutbags, is releasing an omnibus of the comics. (Check out our 2015 chat with him here)
It’s on the verge of hitting the printers, but some extra funding is needed to finalise the ink and glue. So Naylor is putting up original artwork for sale on eBay to push the reality of the book over the line.
Original Martin/Molloy art by Dillon Naylor.
This is a narrow window of opportunity for comic art lovers to own some iconic comedy history, with the illustrations that were given permission by Tony and Mick themselves. Once the funds for the book have been raised, the remainder of the original art will go back into the vault for safe keeping.
If you end up purchasing some of this fantastic artwork, be proud when you see the book at your local bookstore / comic supplier – it would be there because of you.
To check what is available for purchase, check these links:
A surprise new release podcast from the desk of Tony Martin and the shared left corner of the desk used by Matt ‘Pots N Pans’ Dower has been dropped on iTunes.
While Martin isn’t a stranger to the podcast world of late, such as TEAM Effort, Little Dum Dum Club, and regular pop-ups for Nova’s Chrissie, Sam and Browny, as well as his podcast sitcom Childproof, many fans have continuously hassled him to have his own podcast – since his highly popular radio show Get This was dropped by Triple M after a two year stunt in 2006-07. Since then, bootleg recordings of the show that he hosted alongside Ed Kavalee, Richard Marsland and audio produced by Dower exist on the interwebs to keep the dream alive.
Finally, after all these years of waiting, Martin has finally done something about it, and has laid down Sizzletown.
Welcome to SIZZLETOWN, the world’s first late-night call-in podcast, hosted by comedian and broadcaster Tony Martin, with Matt Dower on the Pots n Pans. The concept is flawed at best, the callers are highly suspect, and the whole thing is in constant danger of flying off the rails. Enjoy! (Sensitive listeners should note that Tony has done his best to ensure the podcast is free of problematic content.) WARNING: Problematic content.
With the first episode now launched, if you’re a hardcore fan of Martin’s theatre-of-the-mind and wacky audio grabs, this is for you. In a mock-style radio shift, Martin explains that it’s purely just him and Dower putting the show together, throwing in audio grabs, ‘long time listeners / first time callers’, what he’s found on YouTube (mainly watching the RSS feed of SomersCarroll uploading episodes of The Daryl Somers Show from 1982) and other topical pop culture references that he usually tweets about.
It’s a borderline love letter to his fans who have asked for this. So if you are waiting for Martin to get back onto radio full-time, this is the podcast for you.
Do not adjust your media player, as we have some podcast news.
The recent foray into the world of podcast sitcoms for Tony Martin has paid off. Childproof – the unproduced sitcom Martin had written for TV, but adapted to podcast format due to the TV execs claiming it was ‘too niche’, is up for a Best Comedy award for the Australian Podcast Awards. The six-episode podcast is written by Martin and Sarina Rowell, and stars Martin, Geraldine Quinn, Lachy Hulme, Roz Hammond, Damian Cowell, Andrew McClelland and many more, while produced by Matt Dower and Bad Producer Productions and recorded in front of a live audience at the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2017.
The winner announcement for the Australian Podcast Awards will happen May 5, 2018.
UPDATE: Childproof took the Best Comedy podcast award! Congratulations, Tony and co.!
And the next part of podcast news:
Our 8 & 1/2 cents a day from the ABC goes even further, with more episodes of Santo, Sam & Ed’s Total Football podcast – starring Santo Cilauro, Sam Pang and Ed Kavalee. While Total Football episodes have continued to churn out over the holiday period with fresh and best-of episodes, the ABC have announced that Santo, Sam & Ed will record all-new episodes covering the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, both in audio and video form.
So you will be able to get the audio version through the regular podcast channels, the video version will feature the trio in the studio recording the episode, along with any special guests, and will be available via ABC iView – a similar setup to their 3 episode experiment in May 2017.
Australia’s favourite outback traveler Russell Coight is hitting the road, again!
A surprise new release podcast from the desk of Tony Martin and the shared left corner of the desk used by Matt ‘Pots N Pans’ Dower has been dropped on iTunes.
