DENISE DRYSDALE:
She has survived more than 60 years in show business. She’s won two Gold Logies, and become a grandmother. Michael Sheather talks brussel sprouts, best friends and blokes with Studio 10 co-host Denise Drysdale at her eco-friendly Gold Coast home.
the TV legend takes us inside her Queensland home
The impact of a humble brussel sprout is not something that people generally consider. Certainly, Denise Drysdale didn’t consider it when she used one to target the reserved and usually imperturbable Ita Buttrose late last year in a Christmas lunch gag that backfired in the biggest way possible.
“We were supposed to tape the Christmas song for Studio 10,” recalls Denise, the 69-year-old two-time Gold Logie winner and co-host of the morning chat show for the Ten Network. “I had to get up at four in the morning to get there because I had to fly down from where I live in Queensland.
“We’d been out at a skating rink to film a segment and then we went to this beautiful pub where they put on a lunch, the full roast turkey and the whole catastrophe. There we were, singing along with the song – and I had a couple of champagnes. I didn’t have to drive. I was in a jovial sort of mood, and
I threw a brussel sprout at Ita. I lobbed it up and over the table at her and it hit her on the chest.
“The upshot is that she thought I disrespected her but I didn’t, and I don’t. I’m sorry I did it. I am so sorry I did it. If I’d known it was going to cause so much trouble I wouldn’t have done it. I just didn’t think. But that’s me all over. It’s nothing that I haven’t done before. Playful is the word for me. I like to have a lot of fun. That’s what it is all about. That’s why people like me. They look at me and think, ‘She’s a bit of whacker’. And I am. I’m a bit of a ratbag.”
In so many ways “the great brussel sprout feud,” as it became known in the tabloid press, tells you all you need to know about Denise Drysdale. She’s always up for a laugh and rarely takes anything seriously, least of all herself. If she can leverage a line or a gag then she’s up for it, sometimes to her own detriment. But, no matter what the consequences, Denise has lived through enough success and failure to know that sometimes you have to go with your gut instinct.
“Life’s too good to worry about all the little things,” she says. “Those little speed bumps, you soon get over them. I’ve been fired from almost every major Australian television station in my time and I am still working in an industry that I love. I think that’s amazing, that at my age people still want to see me flopping about on stage, but they keep coming along so I guess that says something about me. I think people like me because what you see is what you get. There’s no pretence here, no airs and graces. Just me, the way I always have been.”
And that is probably the neatest way to sum up this suburban girl made good. Denise is exactly who she seems to be – funny, engaging, light on her feet and nimble in mind. She’s an old-time hoofer from way back, a singer, a comedian with lightning-fast timing, and remains one of the most enduring and popular personalities in Australian show business. She even appears on her own postage stamp, along with the likes of Ray Martin, Daryl Somers, Bert Newton and Kerri-Anne Kennerley for the Legends series of stamps.
But perhaps even more so, Denise is one of a vanishing breed of entertainers who grew up performing at a time when the skills of the variety star were still highly valued. She was able to parlay those skills into a TV and stage career that delighted middle Australia and appealed across almost every demographic.
“I’m a lucky girl, really lucky,” she says. “I’ve never planned anything, much less a career. I’ve always just stumbled along from one job to another, but somehow it’s all hung together. And in between I could always go back to the stage. I used to do 120 shows a year at RSL clubs all over Australia. I could still do 90 shows but I don’t want to. I’m happy doing Studio 10.”
It’s on the Studio 10 set that Denise met the woman who is now one of her closest friends – journalist and former newsreader Jessica Rowe.
“My dear Jess, lovely Jess,” says Denise. “I didn’t know Jess when I started at Studio 10. I didn’t know any of her background or what she’d done. I only knew that there had been some kind of kerfuffle at Channel Nine. They got me to sit next to her at the desk and within a couple of days we were chatting away, and then within a couple of weeks we were getting into trouble because we were talking during the breaks, looking at cat photos.
“And now we have become these really lovely friends and for me, at my age, that is a real gift. I don’t expect to get new friends at my age. When you get older it’s hard to make new friends because you are kind of set in your ways.
“But Jess makes me laugh, and she’s the most beautiful person. She hasn’t got a bad bone in her body.”
Denise says she is disappointed at news that Jess is leaving the show after six years. “Well, I will miss sitting beside her, I can tell you that, but we plan to work on podcasts together,” says Denise. “It’s one thin lady and one fat lady. We have already done one session and it all flowed so smoothly. We’ve worked it out. I could have been her mother if I had her at 21.”
Of course, Denise has been around entertainment even longer than that.
She was born in Moorabbin in 1948 and moved with her parents, Keith and Nancy, to Albert Park in 1952 when they took over the Fountain Inn Hotel. “It was the time of the six o’clock swill when all the blokes would come in before early closing to get a gut full of grog,” recalls Denise. “Mum didn’t want me seeing that so she sent me off to dancing class with the hotel cook’s three daughters.”
Not only did she learn to dance but she met Patti Newton, who was a couple of years older than Denise. Even so, they became life-long friends. “My mum became Patti’s mum’s friend and then we’d spend all our time together,” recalls Denise. “I’d always be at her place or she at mine. We even went to Vietnam during the war to entertain the troops together, back in 1967. We were both only children and that brought us together.”
Denise attended Kilbride Ladies College in South Melbourne, a Catholic school run by nuns. “They hated the fact that I was a dancer,” says Denise. “All the work of the devil, they said. When I got into the ballet troupe at Channel Nine, they tried to make me stay after school so I couldn’t rehearse.”
But dancing was in her blood. She became Melbourne’s first go-go girl at the age of 18 with a skin tight black body suit and long fringe. She even danced in a cage. “But I never fell out or hurt myself,” she adds proudly.
Ultimately though, it was television where she’d make her mark. In the mid ’70s she became the barrel girl for Ernie Sigley on a new late night chat and variety show, The Ernie Sigley Show. It was an instant hit, and so was Denise.
She won Gold Logies as TV’s most popular personality two years running and she was on the cover of almost every magazine and newspaper in the country.
“We had so much fun doing those shows,” she says. “And more fun off screen. Ernie and I have been the best of mates right from the get-go and that hasn’t changed. We were always pulling gags on each other. I’d get dropped off at his hotel and ask for the keys to his room and then I’d go in and put ‘blu-loo’ in his showerhead or itching powder in his socks.”
But the time for gags is now long past. Ernie, often tagged as “the little Aussie battler from Footscray” and now 79, is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, the slow deterioration of memory that is almost in epidemic proportions among older Australians.
“He is really not in a good way,” says Denise. “I went to see him a couple of months ago and I was sitting on the bed and he said to me, ‘Jeez you remind me of someone ...’ I always try to keep it light and I said,
“I’ve been fired from almost every Australian TV station.”
‘Who, Delvene Delaney?’ He said, ‘Nah, someone else’. I said, ‘Denise Drysdale?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, that’s who it is.’
“Ernie had such a great memory and a great mind. He remembered all sorts of things from history, who politicians were and what they did, what caused what. He was really sharp. Glenys, his wife, says that when she leaves him he gets upset for 10 minutes or so. I think it’s very hard on her.”
Denise says she is confused about the “Me Too” movement. She was brought up in a different time, with different values. “I don’t see that sort of thing as a gender thing, it’s just bullying,” she says. “I rarely encountered it. But that was mainly because I was brought up in a pub and I always had a put down or a funny line to help me through – ‘oh, look at that: just like a penis only smaller’. Can you imagine that? Of course, I had big boobs and that meant people noticed me. I was doing Hello, Dolly! once with Warren Mitchell, the
English comedian who played Alf Garnett in Till Death Us Do Part.
I lost a diamond ring and it was missing for three weeks.
“He showed up in my dressing room one night in his underpants. I said, ‘What do you want?’ He asked if I was missing a ring and I said yes. He said, ‘It’s in my underpants, why don’t you reach in and get it?’ I said, ‘No thanks, it’s not worth that much.’ But did
I go to the boss about it?
No. It was a different time.”
For Denise, just being 69 is enough of an achievement. “I never thought I’d still be around at 69. I’m quite proud of that,” she says. “I have been living in Queensland for the past three years. I’m a grandmother but I live here on my own. I have decided that I’m much better on my own. I am very finicky about where things go and if they get moved I start to flip out so it’s probably better if I’m on my own. I quite like it really. My friend Jen from Adelaide comes over sometimes and Bohdi, my grandson, comes up to see me. That’s great. He’s a little terror. I didn’t like him much at first. He’d come running at me and headbutt my knees. But he’s great now. He’s six and he’s so full of life.”
Denise was married to actor and scriptwriter Chris Milne during the ’80s but the marriage ended after 10 years. They had two children, Peter, now in his 40s and Rob, now 35. Bohdi is the son of Rob and his partner, Jamie, who live in Sydney.
“Chris was a great dad and husband but we renovated a house out in the country outside Melbourne, and one day we woke up and realised that we didn’t have that much in common anymore,” Denise says. “He’s married again now.”
Though she’s had other relationships, Denise thinks the time for sharing her life with a partner has long gone.
“Would I go back to all that? Probably not,” she says. “Would I like to ask someone to take out the garbage again? Would I like to have someone put things in the wrong place again? Would I like someone to hog the TV again? Probably not. You know, I prefer my own company these days. That love stuff is fine when you’re young but really, it’s only 15 seconds of giggle and jiggle, isn’t it?”