Radio review
Great Scott!
by Lindsay Rabbitt
“That's just lovely, Barry,” snivelled Scotty (Lloyd Scott) to Barry Crump after Crumpy told him a campfire yarn on one of their Toyota telly ads. Scott, an accomplished actor and a master of self-deprecating corn, was Crumpy’s fall-guy: he quivered and screamed with fear as the Good Keen Man put the super ute through its improbable paces.
It was, of course, designed to speak to our pop male caricatures: the hard-case, devil-may-care country bloke, coupled with a jumpy, sensitive city fella. They portrayed lovable characters as they Goodbye Pork Pied through our mainly rugged land and, to the glee of the ad agency people, helped sell container-loads of vehicles for Toyota. We were all happy.
Time debunks most things. Crump, who croaked in 1996, has been outed as having a tortured dark side (my Mum listens to his son Martin’s show on Radio Pacific) and Scott, as an announcer on National Radio’s All Night Programme, articulates a keener intellect than he did in his commercial dialogues with the faulted folk hero. But, when I hear Scott ham it up on the radio, I can’t help thinking of the adventures of Scotty and Crumpy.
Midnight to 6.00am on National Radio is a world away from primetime television and, for that matter, the cut-and-thrust egos on primetime radio. The graveyard shift requires a gentle soul to soothe the sleepless to sleep or keep them company until tagging with the Morning Report team. The host’s brief is to edify, rather than challenge: instead, trip the nether hours with drama, documentaries, interviews and music.
“It’s time, it’s time, time, time, time …” croaks Tom Waits.
“Don’t you just love Tom Waits’s laidback stuff,’’ comments Scott. “It’s 11 minutes to two o’clock. Speaking of time: looking back through history, here’s a notable quote: ‘Power over words leads easily to a longing for power over men,’ said British historian A J P Taylor, on the Russian communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky. On this day, August the 20th, in 1940, Trotsky was fatally wounded by a Spanish communist with an ice axe in Mexico City. He died the next day. The Soviet Government denied responsibility.
“Some music from Shona Laing, ‘Thief to Silver’.” I love the way radio moves like that. In a matter of minutes, two songs and piece of history. Scott trips the transitions with ease. He’s wry, or sometimes just plain silly, but credible silly is hard to pull off. He reminds me of a favourite uncle. I have trouble sleeping and a combination of reading and listening to the radio helps me sleep. This particular morning I nodded off during Cadenza and woke to Linda Clark interviewing Australian novelist Nikki Gemmell, who is based in London, on her book The Bride Stripped Bare.
It’s evidently a steamy tome, about a woman’s sexual fantasies. Gemmell, a mother of two young ones, wrote the book anonymously, but was outed by the press. Clark initially put Gemmell on the defensive by suggesting that the book was autobiographical, but back-pedalled when Gemmell threatened to close down: “It’s a novel.” But that’s Clark’s style – to prod and poke with her preset agendas.
“She really talks about her own sex life,” Clark continues to chirp with book reviewer Michelle A’Court, who’s on the show to later review (favourably) Albert Wendt’s The Mango’s Kiss. “And she gives birth in the book … there’s a part where she has sex with three taxi drivers … it’s a good rollicking read, but not if you’re in a happy monogamous relationship.”
I think I’ll buy both books to read while listening to All Night and set my clock radio to switch off at 9.00am.
