Exclusive to His Surprise, He Became the Best-Known Aussie in the World
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exclusive To his surprise, he became the best-known Aussie in the world. He loved it, yet none of this changed what was really important to Paul Hogan, as he explains to DAVID LESER. t still boggles the mind – and this New Faces show, and because tickles the fancy – more than you don’t want to sit around for 12 30 years later, to hear the story months waiting to get on, you’re of how this man, this icon going to embellish a little by sending of working-class Australian the program managers a letter machismo, conquered the world introducing yourself as a “tap dancing by making us all laugh. Just knife thrower from Lightning Ridge”. Iimagine it were you. You’re You’re also going to mention that married with five kids and hardly a you’re a former shearer and trapeze penny to your name. You’ve left artist who happens to be working on school way too early and you’re onto the Harbour Bridge. your 40th job – this time as a rigger on Three days later ... Hallelujah! the Sydney Harbour Bridge. You’re on the show, but instead of You’re sitting at morning tea with throwing knives or doing any tap your mates, 120 metres above the dancing, you’re tearing strips off the city floor, talking about a talent show judges, advising them on how they on television called New Faces and could improve their act. The judges you decide that, just like with are not particularly amused, but the Australian Idol today, there’s a fair bit audience loves it, as does the of mediocrity around – from both the producer, Desmond Tester. He contestants and the celebrity judges. invites you on again, and this time What particularly sticks in your you front up as a “shovel player” – a craw, though, is the way the judges guy banging two shovels together. TheHOGAN accidentalactor seem to take delight in humiliating The audience falls about. So, too, some of the young kids on the show. does Desmond. You win the heat and Downright cruel you reckon. It gets Desmond tells his people to make you thinking about how satisfying it sure you come back. “Doesn’t matter would be to give the judges some of what he wants to do,” he says. their own back. And so with a suck “It’ll be different to anything else on a Winfield blue and a laconic we’ve got on here.” aside, you tell your mates exactly that. You’re now in the national finals of You say, “It’d be nice if one of the New Faces, and on this occasion you Christians got up and bit the lions for enter as a “thunderbox” player, which a change.” Your mates laugh, and is slang for an old army toilet. No one then dare you to do it. working on the show has the remotest Now the thing is you’ve never idea what you’re talking about, especially been on stage before, and never even when you tell them that all you’ll need hankered for the spotlight. What you on the night is a tea-chest. “You also know is that you’re a pretty good tell them you won’t be needing to Paul Hogan, 64, has heckler and that you can provide a rehearse. I can only play the thunderbox come a long way from comedic twist to almost anything. once,” you say. being a rigger on his It’s at this point you make a fateful They think you’re unhinged, but former workplace, the choice. You decide – at the age of 30, they ask you whether you’d like the Sydney Harbour Bridge. ▲ mind you – that you’re going to go on band to back you. You shrug your TELIGA. DE JANE BY STYLED CAPOBIANCO. JASON BY PHOTOGRAPHY WILLIAMS SHIRT. AN R.M. WEARS PAUL THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY – APRIL 2004 33 PAUL ‘ shoulders. “Yeah, why not?” And so Americans start arriving here in droves. And so you find yourself set for life ... the night comes and as the band goes Then, in 1986, you release your first except for one thing. You discover there’s into full accompaniment mode, you run feature film about an Australian crocodile a flip side to fame, especially when your across the stage and drive your head hunter, Mick Dundee, an open-hearted first marriage breaks up and you end up through the tea-chest. Then you pull your bumpkin who arrives in New York sporting with the much younger leading lady from head out, talk for a couple of minutes and a smile and a knife the size of a mini your movie. Now the jackals of the press walk off. The audience is on the floor and cutlass. Suddenly, you’re walking on want you for breakfast, accusing you of you end up coming second, just behind water, although you liken it to winning the betrayal and insinuating that the woman the cello player. 100-metre Olympics sprint, unheralded you love is a “mid-life crisis” wife. That, of course, is only the beginning. and in bare feet. It doesn’t help either that the films Within a few months, you’re spotted At the London premiere, you find that follow on from your first are – to by the brilliant young producer with yourself sitting between Prince Charles put it kindly – less than resounding Channel Nine, John Cornell, who has (whom you call Charlie) and Princess successes. You’ve become tabloid target seen you interviewed on Channel Nine’s Diana (whom you call Di). Di’s got her practice. You’re pilloried for the glitzy We became almost instant blood brothers and we remain so to this day. We existed on a handshake. new program A Current Affair. house you build in Byron Bay, for “He was being interviewed by the name you give your new child, Tony Ward under the Harbour for the outdated stereotypes you Bridge,” John recalls now, “and he perpetuate about Australia, for said to him during the interview your alleged facelift, for the food ‘you better do some push-ups you feed your dog ... It’s known while I talk to the viewers’. So he throughout the country as lopping put his foot on Tony’s back and the poppy, but you insist you’re no proceeded to talk very quickly tall poppy. You’re an ironbark tree. because he saw a train coming and Little wonder though that, he didn’t know in those days that until recently, you’d choose to live you could stop and start interviews. in America. Little wonder that He thought the train would mess you’d become wary about coming the interview up. It was hilarious. home, that you’d guard your He was treating a reporter with no privacy jealously and that you’d respect at all, and I just loved it.” only give interviews when you had On the strength of this something to say. performance, John Cornell decides * * * there and then that you’re the one Paul Hogan walks into the Sydney to do a weekly three-minute hotel suite looking like ... well ... commentary on A Current Affair, a Mick Dundee and the Winfield sort of man-on-the-street send-up Man rolled into one. He’s tanned of the news. He also decides that, and lean in his cargo pants and in you, he’s found a soul mate for trainers, and there’s a packet of life. “We became almost instant Stars of The Paul Hogan Show, Paul Hogan (front), John Winfield in the top pocket of his blood brothers,” John says, “and Cornell as Strop and Delvene Delaney, in the mid-’70s. hemp shirt. Despite thinning hair we remain so to this day. We and a road map of lines (that’s existed on a handshake [through a right, not a facelift in sight!) he’s 20-year business relationship], which has knees up on the seat in front of her and not a bad specimen for a man who’ll be stood the test of time.” she’s “laughing like a drain”. In America, turning 65 later this year. Within a few months you’re causing queues are forming around the block to He holds out a firm right hand and traffic jams on the Harbour Bridge, get into the cinemas. You’re on talk fixes his interviewer with those famous because you’re now a mini national shows across the nation. Throughout Pacific blue eyes of his. “G’day,” he says, celebrity with a conspicuous – although Scandinavia, Germany, France, South just before lighting up a cigarette and often hard-to-spot – day job. You’re America, South Africa, Israel, Japan ... then proceeding to suck the life out of it. famous and poor, but within a year you’re you’ve become a number one smash “Used to get these for free,” he says going to be more famous and less poor. hit. Not to mention rich beyond your mischievously, in reference to when he That’s because, after A Current Affair, wildest dreams. At one stage, your little was paid to do ads for Winfield. “Got to you’re given your own show, which, over film becomes one of the 10 highest pay for them meself now.” the next nine years, is to become a grossing movies ever made and, together Paul Hogan, as it turns out, is a gracious phenomenon in Australian comedy. with its sequel, ends up earning a interviewee.