Final episode for Talking Heads

ABC’s weekly interview program Talking Heads with Peter Thompson (pictured) signs off next week for the last time.

The half-hour program, based in South Australia, started in March 2005 and since then has featured almost 250 guests from all walks of life. The program has delivered a startling insight into its guests’ backgrounds and personal and professional histories as well as highlighting some of the significant moments and people in their lives.

Some of the TV names to have featured in the program over the last six years have included Paul Mercurio (the show’s first interviewee), Max Gillies, Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell, Lorraine Bayly, Paul Cronin, Simon Townsend, Clive Robertson, Toni Lamond, Jeff McMullen, Jeanne Little, Stuart Wagstaff, Noeline Brown, Graeme Blundell, Shane Bourne, Bill Collins, Denise Drysdale, Patricia Lovell, Barry Crocker, John Blackman, Hazel Phillips, Wendy Hughes, Todd McKenney, Googie Withers, John McCallum, John Clarke, Lorrae Desmond, Rex Hunt, Posie Graeme-Evans, Tina Arena, John Wood, Anne Deveson, Garry McDonald, Richard Roxburgh, Mark Holden, Ray Martin and Kerry Armstrong.

The final Talking Heads features environmentalist David Suzuki.

Talking Heads – final episode. Monday 29 November, 6.30pm. ABC1

1990: November 24-30

Summer Bay shocks!
While pregnant Bobby (Nicolle Dickson) collapses in the Summer Bay diner, the closing episodes of the 1990 season of Home And Away will also deliver news of some new romances.  Pippa Fletcher (Debra Lawrence), who lost husband Tom (Roger Oakley) in dramatic circumstances earlier this year, falls for Summer Bay newcomer Michael Ross (Dennis Coard), while teenager Sophie (Rebekah Elmaloglou, pictured) sparks up a relationship with his son Hayden (Andrew Hill).

Sky-hooked!
Hey Hey It’s Saturday’s Red Symons has recently been married – twice!  Symons and his bride, Elly Agrotis, had a private Greek wedding for close friends and family at an East Melbourne Greek Orthodox church before exchanging vows again at a civil ceremony in a trendy South Yarra restaurant.  Guests at the second “showbiz” wedding included Hey Hey It’s Saturday’s Daryl Somers (with wife Julie), Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum and Wilbur Wilde, Skyhooks mates Graeme ‘Shirley’ Strachan, Greg Macainsh and ‘Bongo’ Starkie, actor Kim Gyngell and comedian Glenn Robbins.  The day also marked a second local showbusiness wedding, with Acropolis Now’s Simon Palomares and Tracey Callander also tying the knot in Melbourne.

If it’s New Year this must be… Ethiopia
Tonight Live host Steve Vizard (pictured) will be seeing in the year 1991 on location in Ethiopia as he will be on location producing a one-hour special for World Vision to go to air on the Seven Network around Easter.  “I’ve never been to Ethiopia.  It will be an eye-opener.  But I think it’s a worthwhile thing to do.  It’s one of those things you can do as a personality because personalities are in a position to get people to watch something they might not otherwise watch,” he told TV Week.  Actress Rowena Wallace, who has made several trips before for World Vision, will also be involved in this latest documentary.

Briefly…
The Doug Anthony Allstars, one of the popular acts from ABC’s The Big Gig, are to start work soon on their own series, DAAS Kapital.  “There will be slam-bam action, high adventure, lots of violence, raw energy, sexual prowess – all that and more!” says group member Tim Ferguson (pictured).  The new series will appear on ABC and Ferguson says there has already been interest in the series from Thames Television in the United Kingdom.

Home And Away star Adam Willits has only just completed his final scenes with the popular drama and is already walking straight into his next role – appearing alongside Julie McGregor in Hampton House, the spin-off from the popular sitcom Hey Dad! A pilot for the new series has been taped and if Seven gives the go-ahead then the series will go into production in April.

Video Smash Hits co-host Michael Horrocks is heading on an around-the-world trip to record interviews for the Seven Network Saturday morning show.  Horrocks’ list of interviewees is set to include Belinda Carlisle, Alice Cooper, Young MC, Nelson, Bobby McFerrin and – hopefully – Prince.  “He’s notoriously hard to interview,” Horrocks told TV Week.

Lawrie Masterson’s Sound Off
”If anything good can be said about Backchat, it’s that it at least prevents credible ABC television productions from starting at odd times such as 9.22 or 8.13.  It in fact serves to fill in time.  Some at the ABC hanker after “sponsorship” (“commercials” is still a beep word) to do that job, but while others recoil at the suggestion in big enough numbers, it’s not going to happen.  So I guess we’re stuck with Backchat… and Media Watch (which at least manages to rise above the inconsequential on most occasions, and so it should with all that staff!) and news updates, whether there’s anything to update or not.”

Program Highlights (November 24-30):
Saturday:  The Seven Network presents Ausmusic ‘90, a five-hour live broadcast for the first ever National Australian Music Day, covering concerts taking place around Australia.  Heading the line-up of performers are John Farnham, The Black Sorrows, Paul Kelly And The Messengers, Wendy Matthews, Ian Moss, Kate Ceberano, Boom Crash Opera, Crowded House, Tim Finn, Mental As Anything and Icehouse.  Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum (pictured), from Nine’s Hey Hey It’s Saturday, is given special permission by Nine to present the telecast, linking together the concerts taking place in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.

Sunday:  Sunday night movies are The Alamo: Thirteen Days To Glory (HSV7), Table For Five (GTV9) and The Long Riders (ATV10).  ABC’s Esso Night At The Opera presents the Australian Opera production of The Gypsy Princess.

Monday: Major cost-cutting measures at the Ten Network, including the sacking of around 300 staff, sees Ten Evening News in Melbourne trimmed from one-hour to a 30-minute bulletin.  The remaining half-hour is now occupied by re-runs of a US sitcom, the somewhat aptly-titled Too Close For Comfort.

Wednesday:  ABC presents the final edition of science program Quantum for 1990, before screening a repeat of the 1988 mini-series The Four Minute Mile, starring Nique Needles, Tracy Mann, Lewis Fitz-Gerald, John O’May and Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell.

Thursday:  HSV7 crosses to Sydney for the first day of the Australian Open from the Australian Golf Club.  Commentators are Sandy Roberts, Jack Newton and Bruce McAvaney.  Coverage will continue every afternoon through to Sunday.  GTV9 presents live coverage of the Benson And Hedges World Series Cup: Australia versus New Zealand.  Coverage starts at 2.20pm, taking a break for National Nine News and A Current Affair, then continuing through to 10.30pm.  HSV7 presents the last episode of Home And Away for 1990.

Friday:  ABC presents the final Gardening Australia for 1990. 

Source: TV Week (Victoria edition), incorporating TV Times and TV Guide. 24 November 1990. Southdown Press.

Turning the lights out at Television City

It started life at the turn of the 20th century as a piano factory, and then a soup factory.

Then, in 1956, the building at Bendigo Street, Richmond, became part of the dawn of the new industry of television and went from producing 57 varieties of soup to a variety of a completely different kind.

For over fifty years it has been ‘Hollywood-on-the-Yarra’ as it has produced television programs – variety, drama, comedy, children’s programs, sports, news and current affairs – that are among the most loved and most popular in the country.

It was where the Victorian governor Sir Dallas Brooks (pictured, above) made his grand entrance on GTV9’s opening night – 19 January 1957 – by entering the studio in a chauffeur-driven limousine. The two-hour variety program that followed, featuring names like Bob and Dolly Dyer, Toni Lamond, Frank Sheldon, Ron Blaskett, Terry Dear and Lou Toppano’s orchestra, certainly set the tone that this new channel was going to have a clear focus on light entertainment and variety – and it certainly delivered that in the decades that followed.

A few months after GTV9’s lavish opening night, a shy radio star named Graham Kennedy made his first TV appearance and shortly after made his TV hosting debut on a variety show, In Melbourne Tonight. The show would continue for over a decade and earned Kennedy the nickname of the King of Australian TV. It is a title that nobody has dared to challenge ever since.

In 1959, Kennedy was joined by Bert Newton (pictured, right, with Kennedy in 1964) – a personality from rival channel HSV7 who had resigned from his employer on-camera before making the move to GTV9. For his debut at GTV9 he was placed next to Kennedy to present a commercial during IMT. It was the beginning of a long-running professional partnership and a personal friendship that would last decades.

In 1964, with a new rival TV channel – ATV0 – about to debut, GTV9 expanded its premises to a new state-of-the-art studio, Studio 9. It was a studio built specifically for IMT but would go on to host a list of productions in the years that followed – including New Faces, The Graham Kennedy Show, The Don Lane Show (pictured), The Ernie Sigley Show, Hey Hey It’s Saturday, The Paul Hogan Show, Family Feud, Sale Of The Century, The Daryl Somers Show, Tonight With Bert Newton, Blankety Blanks, All Together Now, The Price Is Right, The Footy Show, Burgo’s Catch Phrase, Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush, Starstuck, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Temptation, Bert’s Family Feud and Millionaire Hot Seat.

As well as variety and light entertainment shows, 22 Bendigo Street – or ‘Television City’ as it became known – was home to several drama series including Emergency, one of the earliest TV drama series ever made in Australia, Division 4, The Sullivans, Starting Out, The Flying Doctors, All The Way, Chances, Halifax fp and Stingers.

Eric Pearce (pictured) and American Jack Little formed Melbourne’s (if not Australia’s) first newsreading duo, later making way for others including Brian Naylor, who read the news from Bendigo Street for twenty years, Peter Hitchener and Jo Hall. Mike Walsh hosted a 1960s version of Today, and Tanya Halesworth (and later Mickie de Stoop) hosted a daytime current affairs program, No Man’s Land, in the 1970s.

This Saturday night, the Nine Network pays tribute to the stars and the shows that have come from the famous studios as it prepares to move out from the building.

After Daryl Somers and his team sign off from the final episode of Hey Hey It’s Saturday for 2010 from Studio 9, Nine will cross to Bert Newton and Eddie McGuire in Studio 1, back where it all began with Sir Dallas Brookes and the early days of IMT, to present Lights, Camera, Party! – Television City Celebrates.

The two-hour special will feature some of the people, programs and magic moments that have featured from the legendary television studios over the past 53 years. The studio audience for the program will be made up entirely of past and present Nine Network personalities.

The building at 22 Bendigo Street was purchased by Vivas Lend Lease earlier this year with a plan to redevelop the historic site as a residential and retail precinct. The building’s original red brick exterior is heritage protected but the remainder of the site, including extensions such as Studio 9, will be redeveloped and will include some design aspects that will acknowledge the site’s significant heritage.

GTV9 has entered into a long-term agreement with the inner city Docklands Studios for future large scale productions – while other functions of the channel will be relocated to new premises in the Docklands precinct nearby.

Somers, whose TV career began as host of Cartoon Corner and Hey Hey It’s Saturday in the early 1970s, had previously suggested that part of the redevelopment be reserved for a TV museum and he has now been reported to be considering producing a documentary on the history of the famous studios.

Lights, Camera, Party! – Television City Celebrates. Saturday 27 November, 9.40pm. Nine (Melbourne – other areas check local guides)

Source: Herald Sun

1990: November 17-23

Livvy’s Christmas surprise!
After a seven-year break from acting, former Aussie star Olivia Newton-John (pictured) is making her dramatic TV debut in a telemovie, A Mom For Christmas.  The movie, currently in production in Cincinatti, Ohio, is set to go to air in the US on Christmas Eve.  The Seven Network has decided to hold off screening the telemovie in Australia until next Christmas.

Meet ACP’s new matron
The contracts are still being finalised, but JNP Productions have announced that actress Maureen Edwards will be taking on the role of the new matron in A Country Practice – replacing Mary Regan, whose character Ann Brennan makes her departure from the series early in the new year.  Edwards’ other recent TV appearances have included roles in Skirts and, ironically, A Country Practice.  In her last ACP appearance, Edwards played Sydney neurosurgeon Katherine D’Angelo.

Counter attack
ABC’s 4 Corners host and radio 2BL morning presenter Andrew Olle (pictured) has spoken in defence of A Current Affair host Jana Wendt over her recent interview with Bob Hawke, where she questioned the honesty of his emotions over China, that is said to have enraged the prime minister.  “I think it is great that he’s been reminded that it is not just ABC interviewers who sometimes ask him tough questions,” Olle told TV Week.  “He and several ministers in his Government have almost made a point of being nasty to the ABC whenever they get a chance.  I interviewed Hawke about the coup in Fiji.  It became very tense.  He was in Adelaide, I was in Sydney.  Afterwards, he strolled off the set and in a foul-mouthed way let off steam to all the people in the studio, being very unpleasant to all and sundry.”  Olle also lists Wendt amongst the peers he most admires:  “She has a wonderful detachment.  I like the way she has been to resist the commercial machine, which gets hold of a woman and shapes her as a commercial property.  And she is very nice person… not an easy thing to be with al the adulation that comes her way.”  He also talked about an offer to join Nine’s 60 Minutes, but decided that professional satisfaction and his ABC salary is worth more than the bigger budgets on offer by commercial television.  “There is more money to be made outside,” he says.  “But you have to consider what it means to your life.  It has to be weighed up: satisfaction and greed.”

Briefly…
Legendary daytime soap opera Days Of Our Lives has recently celebrated 25 years on air in the US, having started in November 1965, although in Australia the series starting screening in 1968 and at this stage is two years behind the US.

Aussie rules footballer Warwick Capper (pictured), appearing as a contestant in Celebrity Family Feud this week, has told TV Week he has ambitions to be a film and TV star.  He made his acting debut in three episodes of Neighbours back in 1987, alongside Kylie Minogue, and is keen to try a “longer, ongoing role”. 

It’s a dramatic season finale coming up for Home And Away when pregnant Bobby Simpson (Nicolle Dickson) experiences stomach cramps and collapses in the Summer Bay diner.  She is rushed to hospital and admitted to intensive care, but Seven’s publicists are saying nothing about the outcome which is set to be revealed when the series returns in the new year.

John Laws says…
”The ABC screened an entertaining documentary about life in Australia in the Fifties and Sixties.  It was called The Baby Boomers Picture Show and for those of us for whom it had relevance it was a nostalgic look at life as we often remember it to have been.  The Baby Boomers, though, gave us an Australia through rose-tinted glasses.  It saw the past as having possessed a dream-like quality of contentment, happiness, innocence and mateship.  Which is true, but only to a certain extent.  There was misery, war, uncertainty, murder and poverty in the Fifties and early Sixties, but despite this, street kids were exactly that, kids who played in the street.  Crack was something you found in the pavement and “heroin” was the female lead in a movie.”

Program Highlights (November 17-23):
Saturday:  The final day of the 1990 ratings year brings the final Hey Hey It’s Saturday for the year, with a special three-hour show featuring Noiseworks, Daryl Braithwaite, Icehouse, The Chimes and Ita Buttrose.  HSV7 presents the one-hour special Agro’s 10th Birthday, featuring Cartoon Connection’s Agro visiting the sets of fellow Seven programs Hinch, Fast Forward, Tonight Live With Steve Vizard and Hey Dad!

Sunday:  ABC presents the series final of its popular dance competition That’s Dancin’.  Sunday night movies are Red Dawn (HSV7) and Priest Of Love (ATV10).  GTV9 presents the first part of mini-series Crossings, and ABC presents Esso Night At The Opera, featuring the Australian Opera’s production of War And Peace.

Monday:  Australian actress Sigrid Thornton stars in the US series Paradise, returning tonight on HSV7.  Andrew Denton’s The Money Or The Gun (ABC) presents its final episode for 1990.  With Tonight Live With Steve Vizard now on its summer break, HSV7 replaces it with a late-night edition of Seven Nightly News with newsreader Naomi Robson.

Wednesday:  Country singer James Blundell guest stars in the 1990 series final of The Flying Doctors (GTV9).

Thursday:  ABC drama series Embassy finishes up for 1990.

Friday:  Test Cricket begins for the season as GTV9 crosses to the Gabba, Brisbane, for the first day’s play of the first test between Australia and England. 

Source: TV Week (Victoria edition), incorporating TV Times and TV Guide. 17 November 1990. Southdown Press.

Eric Fullilove

Film and television producer and director Eric Fullilove, one of the names behind legendary series Skippy The Bush Kangaroo and a pioneer producer for SBS, has died at the age of 85.

An established film producer with many years’ experience, English-born Fullilove first came to Australia with the Royal Navy in 1952 to film the detonation of the first British atomic bomb, in the Montebello Islands off the West Australian coast. 

By the mid-1960s, Fullilove emigrated to Australia as a “Ten Pound Pom” and became involved in Australia’s fledgling film and television industry – working on programs including Boney, Barrier Reef, Catch Kandy and Song For Melbourne.

He was a director for TV series Skippy The Bush Kangaroo – and met his future wife, Paddy Barker, on the set.

Fullilove (pictured, above, in 1980) was a producer and director of various programs for multicultural Channel 0/28 (now SBS) in its early days – including telemovie The Three Sea Wolves (pictured), which aired on the channel’s opening night in 1980, current affairs programs SCOOP and Forum and dramas City West and The Liberation of Skopje.

Eric Fullilove is survived by Paddy, his children Julie, Michael and Christian and their partners, and seven grandchildren.

Source: TV Week, 18 October 1980; Sydney Morning Herald

US stars head to Telethon

US actors John Travolta (pictured) and Carrie Fisher head the list of guest stars to appear at this year’s Telethon, taking place this weekend in Perth.

Travolta, in Australia for Qantas’ recent 90th anniversary, and Fisher, who’s been performing her play Wishful Drinking across Australia, will be joined by stars from various Seven Network programs, including Packed To The Rafters, Sunrise, The Morning Show, Home And Away, City Homicide, Dancing With The Stars and My Kitchen Rules, for the 43rd annual telethon which raises funds for children’s charities in Western Australia.

Also appearing will be Justice Crew, the winners of this year’s series of Australia’s Got Talent, Marcia Hines, Jessica Mauboy, Potbelleez, Kate Ceberano, Damian Leith, Stan Walker, Wes Carr, Mark Vincent and Amy Meredith.

Local Seven Network personalities taking part in Telethon include Seven News’ Rick Ardon, Susannah Carr, Basil Zempilas, Natalia Cooper, Emmy Kubainksi, Sally Bowrey and Adrian Barich and Today Tonight’s Monika Kos.

Last year’s Telethon raised $6,374,775 which was distributed to over 20 charities. Since its launch in 1968, Telethon has raised around $94 million so this year should bring the grand total to over $100 million.

Telethon, being held at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre, begins tonight (Saturday) at 6.30pm (WST) and continues through to 8.30pm Sunday and will be broadcast through Seven in Perth and the Golden West Network in regional WA.

EDIT @ 14.47 AEDST 14.11.2010: John Travolta has had to withdraw from his planned appearance at Telethon after his pregnant wife, Kelly Preston, went into labour. He was intended to appear in the closing stages of Telethon tonight but is now heading back to the US to be with his wife. Seven's Perth general manager Ray Waldrop has told media: "Whilst we are obviously disappointed that John can't come to Perth to appear on Telethon, we completely understand that his family comes first. Channel Seven, and I am sure everyone in Western Australia, send our best wishes to John and his family.''

UPDATED @ 23.57 AEDST 14.11.2010: Telethon has signed off for 2010 with a record total of $9,237,539.  This now pushes Telethon’s total fundraising amount over 43 years past the $100 million mark.

Source: Telethon, PerthNow

New digital channels for Spencer Gulf, Broken Hill

Southern Cross Media has announced the digital channels that it will be launching in the Spencer Gulf and Broken Hill regions in 2011 after the shutdown of local analogue transmissions.

As part of the recent arrangements between regional broadcasters and the Federal Government in extending the commercial networks’ digital multi-channels to remote and regional areas, Southern Cross Media will be launching channels 7TWO, 7mate, GO!, GEM and One in Spencer Gulf and Broken Hill.

Southern Cross Media’s Victoria/South Australian Group General Manager Rick Lenarcic said the channels should be on air in the first half of 2011:

“With analogue TV switching off we will have the transmission capacity to
start these new digital channels in the first half of next year.  We expect to have the first of them on air early in the new year and hopefully all will be available by the end of June 2011”

Southern Cross is still in negotiation with Network Ten about carriage of the new entertainment channel, 11, which launches in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth on 11 January.

The broadcaster, which has a commercial monopoly in the Spencer Gulf and Broken Hill regions, recently launched a local broadcast of the Nine Network, exclusively in digital, to complement its existing channels Southern Cross GTS/BKN (affiliated to the Seven Network) and Southern Cross Ten.

Local analogue transmissions of Southern Cross GTS/BKN, Southern Cross Ten and national broadcasters ABC and SBS will cease on 15 December.

Source: SC Media

Digital conversion goes up slightly

The latest Digital Tracker survey for 2010, covering the period June to September, has shown that 75 per cent of Australian households have made the switch to digital television.

This is up from 74 per cent in the previous quarter and 56 per cent in the same quarter last year.

The biggest increase this quarter was recorded in Regional Western Australia, where digital conversion leapt up from 49 per cent of households to 58 per cent in this quarter – possibly inspired by the belated digital roll-out of commercial TV in parts of the state, and the arrival of a new digital-only channel, Ten West.

Regional South Australia, which is due to lose analogue transmissions in just over a month from now, recorded an increase from 77 per cent to 81 per cent of households converted, while Regional Victoria (due to lose analogue transmission in May 2011) recorded an increase from 76 to 79 per cent.

Curiously, Melbourne and Sydney both recorded drops when compared to the last quarter – both falling by 3 per cent each to 74 and 68 per cent respectively.  As the audience sample no doubt changes over time there is expected to be some fluctuations.

Mildura/Sunraysia, which was the first to lose analogue transmission back in June, is no longer surveyed but the national figure takes into account the local 99 per cent conversion rate as measured at the time of the analogue shutdown.

Outside of Mildura the highest conversion rates were recorded in Tasmania (86 per cent) and Darwin (87 per cent).

Nationally, awareness of the digital transition (across the markets that are yet to lose analogue) is at 95 per cent which is the same level as at the previous quarter.

The Digital Tracker survey, which started in January 2009, is carried out by the Digital Switchover Taskforce of the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

Source: Digital Ready

WIN says less News is more

The pending switchover from analogue to digital television has seen regional broadcaster WIN’s South Australian branch last month restructure its local news service and cut staff numbers.  This is despite the broadcaster being part of the Government’s recently-announced $34 million assistance package to help regional broadcasters in South Australia and Western Australia meet the cost of upgrading to digital infrastructure and adopting the commercial networks’ new digital channels.

WIN currently has a commercial monopoly in the Mount Gambier and Riverland districts in South Australia, where its primary channels (SES and RTS respectively) are aligned to the Seven Network, and it also provides local broadcasts of the Ten and Nine network signals from Adelaide.  The Nine-based channel, WIN9, is broadcasting exclusively in digital.

The costs associated in conversion to digital have seen some administrative staff made redundant from the Mount Gambier station – and the decision has been made to merge the separate Mount Gambier and Riverland half-hour news bulletins into a single news bulletin broadcast across both regions.

WIN South Australia Graeme Gilbertson told ABC Radio:

“An option was that we discontinue our local news altogether as some regional operators have chosen to do.

"There's no reduction in the way in which we cover our news, it just means that some of the stories may not be as long as they were.  Some of the stories in order to fill the half an hour were oddly long. If you watch news bulletins elsewhere, you'll see that the stories are more compact and there's more in it.

"The viewers will see a more compact, a racier bulletin and they're going to benefit with a better service."

Mr Gilbertson also said the network was not closing its local newsrooms or centralising the production of news to Adelaide – where WIN also owns NWS9.

More staff cuts, however, are expected with the centralisation of WIN’s on-air presentation.  WIN has entered into a joint venture with ABC to set up MediaHub, a centralised playout facility in Sydney that will ultimately co-ordinate all on-air content for both broadcasters across Australia. 

ABC has had some well-documented ‘teething problems’ with MediaHub – and the gremlins have also crept into WIN’s on-air presentation as its network gradually cuts over its regional and capital city markets to MediaHub.

Regional South Australia, which includes the Mount Gambier and Riverland markets, will lose all existing analogue broadcasts on 15 December.

Source: ABC

The Circle reunites Ernie and Denise

It was a reunion of one of TV’s most popular partnerships when The Circle co-host Denise Drysdale was joined by guest Ernie Sigley on the show.

The pair were a hit with viewers in the mid 1970s on The Ernie Sigley Show, with both of them (pictured, with Hollywood legend John Wayne) winning TV Week Gold Logies in 1975 as the most popular personalities on television.  Drysdale went on to win another Gold Logie the following year.  Their popularity also saw their cover version of the 1960s hit Hey Paula hit the top of the charts in 1974.

Their career paths have crossed numerous times in the years that followed, including several years co-hosting the Nine Network’s In Melbourne Today and sister program In Sydney Today, before both programs were amalgamated into Ernie And Denise.

Sigley then returned to radio, presenting the afternoon program on radio 3AW for over a decade, while Drysdale went on to the 1990s revival of In Melbourne Tonight before hosting her own morning show, Denise, on the Seven Network.

The appearance of Sigley next to Drysdale on The Circle – showing that they still have that comic chemistry alongside each other – leads up to a series of live shows to be performed by the duo.