McPhail paved the way for TV comedy in NZ
THE tributes to comedian and actor David McPhail have been moving and heartwarming. It’s only a pity we hear so much of the good that a man does when he is no longer with us. Anyone who dabbles in satire or poking the borax at the great, good, and pretentious owes a huge debt to David McPhail.
Having flirted with newspaper journalism he joined the NZBC in Christchurch and I recall him enlivening the newsroom with ready wit and a colourful scarf.
I next worked with him in Dunedin in the early 1970s and he fretted that comedy skills were not in great demand. He has written of his frustrations in dealing with the NZBC hierarchy who knew nothing of comedy and seemed hellbent on producing local equivalents of On the Buses and other such
BBC imports.
In those days of local television channels, DNTV2 at the Garrison Hall produced a swag of programmes. There was something of an assembly line approach to churning out hundreds of episodes of Play School, Beauty and the Beast, Spot On and dozens of others. Some were shortlived, like a light entertainment effort I was asked to front. It was called You Must Be Joking! and I treasure a brief review published in a northern newspaper. “The NZBC provided us last night with a new programme from Dunedin called You Must Be Joking! They must be!”
Shows like Town and Around and The South Tonight gave scope for humour and it may well have been in McPhail’s time in Dunedin that the famous sketch of Derek Payne walking an imaginary dog hit the screen.
I was a newsreader in those days, a breed dismissed by real journalists as of little importance. Indeed, more than once Payne forgot my name and had to cross “to our newsreader”.
Of course, reading the news was seen as a pretty straightupanddown exercise 50 years ago. There was none of this “our people today” or “your news” rubbish. You read the script without the aid of an autocue machine and kept to the rules about being impartial, authoritative and unemotional. A signoff story about a housewife in Belleknowes who had grown a 10foot cucumber might just about be an excuse for a hint of a smile but only just. McPhail had come to Dunedin as a newly minted producer to work on myriad programmes. There is film of him crisply directing coverage of a soccer match at the Caledonian Ground, his perennial stammer submerged in the need for speed and precision in calling the shots. One New Year’s Eve he suggested the continuity could be lightened up a bit and as I was rostered for news and continuity that night I was called in to a meeting where David suggested that the pofaced approach be done away with. And quite rightly, I thought.
The coupdegrace was to be the signoff at midnight. There would be a brief news bulletin ending with a “goodnight from DNTV2” tag as usual. What McPhail suggested was a “surprise ending”. Just as the newsreader was at the end of the last item, an arrow bearing a message would zip past him and land with a “thwack” in the wooden backdrop (probably a picture of the Octagon).
We all agreed that this would be a lighter touch, but I pointed out that a misaimed arrow could well give us a “newsreader killed by arrow on air” headline. The journalists felt this was a risk well worth taking but David suggested we record that segment to avoid the onair unexpected demise of a newsreader. One journalist protested, claiming that such an accident, though unfortunate, would provide his newsroom with a genuine scoop.
But the producer’s plan prevailed and the sequence was recorded with several attempts at getting it right and on the night I introduced the final film item in the bulletin and this was immediately followed by playing the videotape of the arrow’s arrival.
It showed me raising the eyebrows, turning to pull the arrow out and then reading the attached message. “And news just to hand,” it read, “the staff at DNTV2 would like to wish you a Happy New Year!”
Well, hardly rollonthe floor comedy, but in it’s time a daring move in the stuffed shirt world of television news.
All the while,
David McPhail was networking with Dunedin’s theatrical world and at a student party met
Jon Gadsby, a law student who was soon hired by Radio Otago (too talented and outrageous to get a job at the NZBC’s 4ZB).
So began a comedy team which is being hailed as the pioneer of New Zealand television comedy.
Both Jon Gadsby and David McPhail have departed but if only part of their legacy has been to pave the way for the satirists who followed, then their lives were assuredly not in vain.