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As it comes into its eighth season, Have You Been Paying Attention? has been forced to get a little creative. Host Tom Gleisner tells Danielle McGrane how the show will go on despite the pandemic.
T om Gleisner is a happy man.
Despite the pandemic and the restrictions in place, he’s managed to get his popular show Have You Been Paying Attention? (HYBPA) up and running as it comes into its eighth season.
The Logie Award-winning show has a knack for poking fun at the news, and perhaps that’s exactly what the world needs right now.
“HYBPA is based on the week’s news and, let’s face it, 95 per cent of the week’s news is virus-related, but within that there’s still the lighter ideas. There are also news stories that aren’t all bleak,” Gleisner said.
He remains positive, and that has a lot to do with how the show has managed to adapt to survive social distancing rules.
The five weekly contestants will now be answering questions from their homes, and there will be no studio audience for the foreseeable future.
“We actually did a little test run a few weeks ago to see if we could make the show work,” Gleisner said.
“I went into the studio as I normally would but we had the five contestants at home giving their answers. We thought, ‘We’ll see how this comes together’ but it was great. It worked really well.
“And if we can just get Marty Sheargold off dial-up internet and on to something resembling broadband I think we might have a show.”
Sheargold is one of the show’s regulars, making a return alongside comedians and personalities such as Urzila Carlson and Kitty Flanagan, and the show’s weekly stalwarts Ed Kavalee and Sam Pang. All will be broadcasting from their own homes.
“We’ll definitely be seeing all of our regulars over the course of the coming weeks and we love to introduce the occasional new face as well. That’s important for a show like ours so that it doesn’t become the same people every week, so we’ll have a good mix over the run of the season,” Gleisner said.
Even though they can’t come into the studio, Gleisner hasn’t given up on finding new talent. He’s even got a cheat sheet for discovering contestants.
“One of the definite starting points is if they do a daily radio show. That’s not everyone, but I have to say if I looked at a list of all our contestants so many of them do radio, or they’re from New Zealand,” he said.
“Urzila (Carlson) is obviously a Kiwi, and Melanie Bracewell, or Hayley Sproull who in fact hosts the New Zealand version of HYBPA, they’re such phenomenally talented people and, provided the NBN can stretch across the Tasman, we’ve got opportunities to use them.”
While broadcasting from home brings its own potential moments for humour (what will their living rooms look like?) Gleisner and the production
Gleisner: I reckon Australia is one of the least celebrity-obsessed countries in the world.
team did consider other ways to make the show work during the pandemic.
“We looked at all the options and at one point we thought we could have them separated by perspex screens. They looked like five cab drivers,” he said.
“But in the end we figured for safety, and just making sense of the whole thing, it was easier to have each contestant at their desk or wherever they want to do it at home, and me in the studio and we’d go from there.”
In their practice run, Gleisner said everything that makes the show funny and unique was still there.
“I was really pleased that our contestants were able to turn on each other, which is something they often do, and turn on me of course, which is sometimes the most fun part of the show, so none of that really changed,” he said.
It’s essentially the same show that’s managed to outlast so many others.
“I think one of the keys to our longevity is that we do a season instead of going all year, where I think we’d probably out-stay our welcome. It gives people a decent enough break to do something else with their Monday nights,” he said.
That’s nearly a decade now that Gleisner has been HYBPA’s quizmaster, which means most of the country must know who he is. But he claims he rarely gets recognised.
“I reckon Australia is one of
least celebrity-obsessed countries in the world. I tend to get more recognised for my voice than my face,” he said.
“Often if I walk into a shop there’ll be no reaction and then I’ll speak and they’ll say, ‘Where do I know you from?’ and we’ve got to go through this dance where I’ve got to get my Wikipedia page out to convince them I am who I am.”
It’s getting to the point now where Gleisner and the rest of the team are about to bunker down and work on the first show of this new season.
“We start work on the show the week before it airs because there’s just no point serving up stale news stories,” he said.
“So a week or so out we’ll start the process of running an eye over the news and sourcing interesting video clips and putting them together.”
They never worry about finding content as there are some tried and tested areas to turn to, week in and week out.
“These days Donald
Trump in the Rose Garden is guaranteed to deliver something newsworthy and question worthy, so that’s often a good starting point,” he said.
“Also any of the reality shows, we love a good bit of drama on The Block or The Bachelor; they’re often very fertile source material.
“We’re determined to make it work, we’ll just have to muddle our way through so we can be on air each Monday night.”