GQ Article - Paul Mc Dermott interviewed by Andrew Denton (post DAAS)Andrew Denton: at 38, his best table tennis days are behind him, but he's still capable of upsetting opponents with intimidating lobs and back-handed compliments. Dreams of playing Christopher Skase. In Australia.
Paul McDermott: The good news is this guy can play. The bad news is he doesn't have the time. Ping-pong's loss is Australian comedy's gain. Plenty of media exposure hasn't ruined the 36-year-old's playing style or warmed his ice-cruel demeanour. Dreams of being left alone.
Did the Doug Anthony All Stars (DAAS) make a lot of money out of busking?
In Canberra we'd start around midday and we'd go for an hour at least. And so it was when people finished their shopping on Saturdays they'd see us play, people came to expect it...
So you were like the bourgeoisie of buskers, you only played one day a week?
Totally.
That would have to be the worst worst busking ethic I've heard. You're meant to be struggling, with the arse completely out of your pants, desperate for the next dollar coin and yet, the three of you would swan up in a stretch busker's limo.
We didn't need the money, of course. We were on TEAS (student support), Richard (Fidler) was at home.
You were bludging off the government, whose government would that have been? Malcolm Fraser's?
No, it was after that. We bludged off Hawkie.
Hawkie's government, that'd be right.
He was good for buskers, Hawkie.
Have you ever eaten fire? Did you ever do any of that stuff?
No, I never did that, never did any juggling.
Not even peckish?
Not even peckish for a fire.
What about mime? Walking against the wind?
No, no.
Do you hate mime?
I do, I loathe mime. I loathe juggling and I loathe other necessary circus skills.
When did you guys start writing songs?
When I sort of came along and joined.
Do you remember the first song you wrote?
Yep. The first song we wrote was Cadillac of Jesus. Because I'd just joined. I felt a bit rude saying "This group would be really good if you just wrote original things and didn't do parodies." So I suggested to Tim (Ferguson) that we write a song called Cadillac of Jesus.
I always figured you guys and TISM had the best song titles in Australia.
I think TISM still do, they have very good ones.
'I s---Me' [I shit me?] was a good title... Did you just start with a title and just go from there?
Oh no, there was always an idea, a concept that sort of backed it. Sometimes you'd just start with a thought and build it from there. I can't even remember now, there are so many. Come On Kids, Commit Suicide was one of my favourite songs.
What was the gist of that one?
The chorus went "come on kids commit suicide, come on kids commit suicide, take a journey on a one-way ride, come on kids commit suicide" - which I think says it all basically.
You were quite hostile to your audience. Did anyone ever have a go at you?
I remember one guy who had his arm in a cast. He was pinching women in the audience and then looking at them, as if to say, "How could I do that when my arm's in a cast?" I went through the crowd and, this is one of the only times when I'm been vindictive with this sort of stuff, hitting people as I went though. I really slugged this guy. I hit him in the head, really hard, open handed. Later, he swung his cast at me and apparently it just missed.
I remember talking to Sean from Corky and the Juicepigs about the time they went to Ottowa and I think the first thing he said was, "Welcome to Ottowa - land of the legless women." As soon as he said, he looked down to see a row of amputees and quadriplegics sitting in the front row. Did you ever have an occasion like that where you just got into it and realised that wherever you were and whatever you were doing were never going to meet?
An occasion? An occasion? There are those moments when you faux pas your way into the great abyss. We were doing a parody of a Lionel Richie song 'Hello, is it me you're looking for', the video of which featured a blind girl moulding clay into the shape of his head. At one point she was actually reading braille with the bedside light on. We did it once at this community hall and, of course, there's a girl right in front of me who was completely blind. I think everyone would've noticed, it's impossible to miss something like that. Richard didn't notice at all. Tim knew, I knew, the whole fucking audience knew, but Richard started strumming away with the song and we were committed. She was the only one who laughed.
I was watching Mouthing Off the other night and, this is relevant to you, the subject was polygamy. Sue-Ann Post said to Richard, "When you were on tour, was it tour rules? You slept around, surely?" Richard just fell apart and said, "Let's move on..." Which leads to my next question: Tour Rules?
Tour Rules? Yes, what about them? They're unspoken outside the van.
Well, you're not in the van anymore. You're long past the van, you're now in the vanguarde. So what were the tour rules?
Tour rules are whatever happens on tour stays on tour, like, you know, Tour of Duty. It's like we're all in Vietnam, or the War of the Roses or whatever... the Crusades.
Fair enough. I'll throw some phrases at you and tap once for yes and twice for no. Bacchanalian romps?
Yes, yes. There were bacchanalian romps, yes.
No, you're just making that up.
No, well, I admit I don't know what you'd imagine to be bacchanalian, but yes, there were bacchanalian romps.
Sex with more than one person a year?
Yes, sex with more than one person a year and more than one person in a room. There were...[pauses] ... there were things [pauses] ...you'd sort of ... [pauses again] ...Hmm... what happens on tour stays on tour. I mean it was one of those things, it was quite good fun. There was an atmosphere of frivolity during festivals and so on.
Not frivolity, how debauched did it get?
It got pretty debauched.
Yeah? Because it seems to me, and this is why I've always envied you the touring life, much as I know it's also a dog's life, the great thing about being three handsome young lads who are the centre of attention is that basically you must pull the chicks.
Yeah, well, you pull a lot of people. I mean, you know, let's not be gender specific.
If that's what you want...
The trouble with it was, and this is being completely honest, we didn't take advantage of it - well, full advantage of it. I wish we were a bit less aware of ourselves, a bit more demonic or something. We were three middle-class, bourgeois boys from Canberra. At the time I found it very difficult to justify things, I found myself in situations where I'd be talking my way out of sex.
What was the justification for that?
Well, there is no justification for it! I didn't feel comfortable in a situation where someone had only just met me and we were engaging in sexual activity. I just felt uncomfortable.
So you just had a problem with the concept of a one-night stand?
Yes, yes.
Unusual. No, it's not all that unusual.
No, I don't think it's unusual. It just felt wrong.
I remember interviewing you just as DAAS were on the break-up tour and I got a really strong impression you couldn't wait for it to be over.
It was made tougher because of the emotional traumas that were accompanying the break-up.
There was kind of a Beatlemania aspect to it after a while, wasn't there?
It was really stupid. What tended to happen was a lot of people down the front would ruin it for everyone else because they weren't laughing at the jokes, they were just screaming.
But you treated them well, I remember they would hand you cameras backstage and...
We'd take photographs. We'd take off bits and pieces of our clothing and photograph each other, often Richard, Tim and myself pretending to engage in some sort of homosexual activity.
And then give them back their cameras?
Yes. You could imagine them getting home with the prints and in amongst happy little shots of their girlfriends slicing the cake for their 14th birthday party there'd be these very grotesque shots of what appeared to be three very sweaty sweaty men, all in their underwear, groping and kissing each other.
Is it true that you and Richard haven't spoken to Tim since the Doug's split up? I find that hard to believe.
No, we've spoken to Tim. I see Rich every week but I haven't seen Tim for a while. I think that there's a need, specially a journalistic need, to get to the "bottom of the story". We've had a lot of people trying to mine for dirt and it just isn't there.
Well, the story they want is for you to say, "Gee, isn't it terrible what happened to Tim. I'm glad I didn't do that." That's the story they want.
I know but it's just not there. We haven't spoken a lot, but I have spoken to him. We don't have a bad relationship, it's just that he's in Melbourne and Richard and I are in Sydney. I've got friends in Melbourne I haven't spoken to for a long time but they're still my friends. It doesn't change. I'm just not a very good pick-up-the-phone type of friend.
You've come out like no other public figure and asked what's the big deal, why is everyone so upset about ecstasy?
Oh yes, the drug dialogue. Such terrible things. Drugs can't be terrible things if they make our athletes faster!
Do you think ecstasy is a good thing?
I don't know if the long term effects of it are positive. I mean it used to be prescribed to get marriages back on the road. I don't know anything that can be used excessively. I've seen the damaging effects of "Ecky" on people but at the same time, if we're allowing things like the wholesale abuse of alcohol on every front, it doesn't make any sense to attack a drug that doesn't actually make anyone violent.
Good News Week, does it feel like a big success to you?
No, not really. I can never judge these things because I'm in the middle of it. But I don't have an attitude towards its success or failure.
Why were they going to axe it?
They were going to axe it primarily, I think, because they needed fresh blood in the papers to say to the government and the Australian people the ABC is doing something about the budget cuts. And I think they chose those programs because they knew that there'd be an outcry, and so they would motivate the public to some degree.
So when the axing was announced, was that the best thing that had happened to the unit? Did it galvanise everyone?
Not really, I didn't give a rat's, the only thing that embarrassed me was that my name was associated with it for the first time. It had always been Good News Week but then in the papers it became Paul McDermott's Good News Week. Suddenly it was my tumour that was going to be cut out of the ABC, when a lot of other people belonged to that tumour as well. It was ownership which I'd never had.
I get the impression the place you're happiest is when you're by yourself.
Yes, well, yes.
You've said you get angry with yourself. What are you so angry about?
I don't know. Other's see me as someone with a charmed existence. I should be an extraordinarily joyous person but I'm still going through life with a knitted eyebrow.
Why the knitted eyebrow?
I don't know.
Do you have a problem with your own existence?
I think so. I sometimes have a real dislike for life. I like being alive and at the same time I don't. I wouldn't change it, the options aren't better.
What is it that you hate about yourself?
I look around and find ugliness everywhere. I try to look for beautiful things but end up dwelling on the ugliness. The other day I was staring at this incredibly rich-looking woman. She was dripping with gold, which distracted me from the Dorian Gray image of her head: hideous folds of flesh, wealthy flesh. Now that day, the birds were singing, the sky was blue and the clouds were floating by. I found myself looking at the woman instead. I think that is an aspect of me - I want to look at beauty everywhere but I just seem to focus on the little grain of filth.
Is singing a beautiful thing for you?
Yes, I love singing.
Spike Milligan once beautifully described comedy as the bright glimmer on the dark water.
That makes sense to me.
You're on the dark water.
Yeah, and I've got no reason to be.
Does it annoy you that you're down but have no right to be?
Yes. I look at people and think their lives are far more miserable than mine. I've got everything I want, basically. People say, "You must be ecstatic having the show." It's like, no, I'm not. I never thought, "Ooh, this is something I want."
I understand on the grapevine that the commercial networks are interested in you.
I've just heard it as a rumour. What's the point of going to commercial stations if they're just going to fuck you over? Put you into a vehicle that you're not right for?
I don't want to get into your pronouncements on Tim's career, but I think that even he would be the first to admit that it hasn't worked out at Nine as he'd hoped.
He's still one of the best performers I've ever seen in a live situation. He's untouchable, a very handsome man and if anything, I think Nine has been so stupid with what they've done. I don't think Tim's been foolish but I just think they have been stupid to have such an extraordinary talent and not be able to do something with him.
You are only a few years younger than Peter Costello. It seems to me you don't have a game plan, how do you manage it from here? The commercials will come knocking.
I'm a bit wary of the commercials because I have seen how they have treated people who are similar to me and I'm not that keen on it. I would prefer to continue working on the ABC unless I was given free license, but even then you can still be incredibly compromised.
How fucked is the ABC right now?
Pretty fucked, and I think there are plans to strip away the last of its dignity in the next few years. I've got this horrible feeling they're going to try to make it like Channel 4 in Britain, where it's all out-sourced programs and the ABC will basically become a group of people in a room you come to with ideas, ask for $400,000 dollars to do a particular show, and they say okay or no. It would mean no local production. Sell it all off, make a lot of short-term money and then have nothing in the future. Australian television will be dead.
You weren't at the Logies this year. The Logies being acceptance of television credibility. Why weren't you there and what will you be doing next year?
I can't honestly see the point in the Logies. I really find it turgid television. [Hear hear! sorry.]
You saw Daryl Somers struggling with the opening song and dance number?
Jesus Christ, I'm sorry, but wasn't that the saddest, in the 400 year history of television, wasn't that the most tragic moment ever?
Wasn't this the 40th anniversary of television in Australia? I felt we should hand back the technology when I saw that. But Paul you have a duty, the torch is just this tiny sputter now, you can sing, you can dance, you can work a room, you do great jokes, ...maybe there is no place for you at the Logies.
Yes, I don't think the Logies is my sort of world. I do think it's sad when you look at how well they do it in the States, hosts like David Letterman and Billy Crystal, really good performers backed by a really good team of writers. It's unfair to watch us as the little colonial backwater which really respects every other nation's televisual feast of award-giving ceremonies and we try and do this pale, derivative evil thing with talentless lacklustre mongrels and it's just not going to work. I'm sorry. I really felt for Daryl, because I hate seeing people die in such a visually potent way.
Did you watch the whole thing?
Oh, I couldn't. I went to Xena the Warrior Princess. No, I don't know what else was on that night. No, we went back to the Playstation, to Lara Croft and Tomb Raider. The weird thing was, we found Daryl Somers at the end, in the last catacomb, there he was!