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Clip description
John Clarke has agreed to appear on ABC TV’s Lateline, hosted by Maxine McKew. He is hoping to address the scheduling concerns of the swimmers, represented here by Linley Frame, but is ambushed by Maxine’s third guest, Simon Palomares. Palomares is far more concerned about environmental issues and wants Australia to indemnify all visiting athletes against the potentially cancerous effects of the hole in the ozone layer. Meanwhile Gina Riley and Brian Dawe are embroiled in a debate over the number, colour and metaphorical significance of the Olympic rings with Mrs Dundas (Linda Hagger) and her friend Joyce (Fahey Younger).
Curator’s notes
One of the many ways a mockumentary can persuade viewers that it is documenting real events is to add high-profile personalities, operating in a familiar milieu, to the mix as illustrated in this clip. The television news and current affairs program Lateline had been a fixture on the ABC since 1990 and, by the latter part of the decade, had acquired a rock solid reputation as a forum for the serious debate of political and topical issues. Respected journalist Maxine McKew really was its host in 1998 and in fact won a Walkley Award for her work on Lateline that same year. Linley Frame is a champion swimmer, a multiple medal winner and a poolside interviewer for the Seven Network during the 2000 Games; a most likely person to be representing the viewpoint of Australian swimmers. To their credit, both non-actors perform like – well – like naturals.
Moving from 'real’ people playing themselves to role-playing actors, the edge between reality and fiction continues to blur with actor-comedian Simon Palomares turning up as a spokesman for the visiting Spanish athletes. Recognisable at the time as the relatively sensible Spanish-Australian manager of the café in the television comedy-drama series Acropolis Now (1989-1992), his re-appearance as an Australian-Spanish liaison officer based in Barcelona was easy to accept. The passion and conviction he brought to the role, evident in the glimpse afforded here, simply confirmed that the Spanish authorities had picked the right man for the job. On the other hand, though played with equal passion and conviction, Mrs Dundas and her friend Joyce are clearly fictitious characters, two of only a few in the whole series. They are, nevertheless, recognisable as products of a long tradition of observational humour in Australian comedy, as familiar to us as our own backyard. Note that these completely fictional characters do not appear on screen with the 'real’ people but only with the show’s principals, who have a foot in both worlds.
Which brings us to the casting of the principals and the use of their own familiar names in the roles. It is interesting to consider what accidents of time and place contributed to making this potentially risky decision work so well. For example, Riley in particular was not nearly as high profile as she is today. Would she again be readily accepted as the intelligent, overworked and only slightly neurotic Gina of The Games now that she is so strongly identified with the highly dysfunctional Kim in Kath and Kim (2002-current)? Dawe actually had a successful stint in a managerial post with Astor Records in the 1970s but it is unlikely that this was generally well known in 1998. However, both Dawe and Clarke had, since 1989, been writing and presenting the mock current affairs interviews for which they are best known today. Not only were they a familiar partnership but their faces were linked in the public consciousness with comment on current issues (albeit satirical) as was Riley’s. Despite the fact that they were associated with comedy, the appointment of three such capable and savvy communicators to a body that was clearly designed to act as a buffer between the Minister and the media was certainly conceivable.
Stranger things indeed have happened. Back then, a scenario in which a first-time electoral candidate who also happened to be the host of Lateline wins a federal seat previously held by Australia’s second-longest serving Prime Minister would have been considered too bizarre to contemplate. Nevertheless, that is exactly what Maxine McKew did in 2007. It’s all in the timing.
