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Clip description
Narelle Parkinson (Kitty Flanagan) and Ian Gooding (John Walker) present the National Network Nightly News, with a live cross to reporter David McGann (Shaun Micallef). Phil Toynby (Francis Greenslade) presents the weather.
Curator’s notes
This sketch is a dig at the callous, intrusive side of news broadcasting and its cynical treatment of human emotions. Its absurd tone highlights a shift in the series’s writing during Micallef’s tenure on the show as writer, performer and co-producer.
The sketch also throws in a dig at high-profile businessman Alan Bond, a major entrepreneur in Australia in the ‘70s and ‘80s and owner of the Nine Network from 1988–90. At the time of this sketch Bond had famously been declared bankrupt and would later serve a prison sentence for fraud. At one time Bond owned the Van Gogh painting pictured in this sketch – that it has been sent in by an eight- year-old relative takes a dig at the practice of ‘giving’ assets to relatives in order to spare the assets from liquidators.
