0:00:02 > 0:00:03This programme contains some strong language.
0:00:03 > 0:00:05Robert Hughes, firebrand art critic.
0:00:05 > 0:00:08Clive James memoirist, broadcaster, poet.
0:00:08 > 0:00:11Barry Humphries, savage satirist.
0:00:11 > 0:00:14Germaine Greer, feminist, libertarian.
0:00:14 > 0:00:17Exiles from Australia, all of them.
0:00:17 > 0:00:21GG: I wanted to go to a place where there was beauty.
0:00:21 > 0:00:23I did believe in the great Australian ugliness.
0:00:23 > 0:00:27You can tow Australia out to sea and sink it, for all I care.
0:00:27 > 0:00:30I was a banned writer.
0:00:30 > 0:00:32Part of you might have enjoyed that.
0:00:32 > 0:00:34Most of me enjoyed it.
0:00:34 > 0:00:39My name is Howard Jacobson and I have a personal interest in this.
0:00:39 > 0:00:42The Australia they called a sleepy backwater
0:00:42 > 0:00:44was my brave new world.
0:00:45 > 0:00:49I'm here to meet Clive James off the Cambridge train.
0:00:49 > 0:00:51I haven't seen him for three or four years
0:00:51 > 0:00:53and I know he's been very ill.
0:00:53 > 0:00:56Hey, Clive! Clive!
0:00:58 > 0:01:00How fantastic to see you!
0:01:00 > 0:01:01How good to see you!
0:01:01 > 0:01:03And you look great! You look strong.
0:01:03 > 0:01:04I was expecting a little...
0:01:04 > 0:01:06A little old man hobbling...
0:01:06 > 0:01:08That's the way I do look, but I'm acting for you.
0:01:10 > 0:01:12Hello, possums!
0:01:12 > 0:01:14So what explains their spectacular success?
0:01:14 > 0:01:17Ladies and gentlemen, Clive James!
0:01:17 > 0:01:19Was it because they were Australian...
0:01:19 > 0:01:22that they were able to conquer London and New York?
0:01:22 > 0:01:24And why does it all matter so much to me?
0:01:52 > 0:01:54In the Australian summer of 1965
0:01:54 > 0:01:56I sailed into Sydney Harbour
0:01:56 > 0:02:01having put the frozen drabness of an English winter behind me.
0:02:02 > 0:02:05It was as though I was seeing light
0:02:05 > 0:02:08and feeling heat for the first time in my life.
0:02:08 > 0:02:10I'd say it was like a resurrection,
0:02:10 > 0:02:12except that Sydney made me feel
0:02:12 > 0:02:15I'd never previously been alive.
0:02:17 > 0:02:19This sense of Australia,
0:02:19 > 0:02:23as an illumination of the spirits has never left me.
0:02:24 > 0:02:26It's only the wildest fancy,
0:02:26 > 0:02:29but earlier on the trip here
0:02:29 > 0:02:31I passed a ship, going in the other direction.
0:02:31 > 0:02:36Calling to me from the deck of this boat of my imagination, were
0:02:36 > 0:02:39Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries,
0:02:39 > 0:02:42Robert Hughes, Clive James -
0:02:42 > 0:02:45"You're going the wrong way, mate!" they shouted.
0:02:45 > 0:02:47They were wrong. For me, anyway.
0:02:49 > 0:02:50But why were they sailing away?
0:02:56 > 0:02:59Why would Australians ever choose to exile themselves
0:02:59 > 0:03:03from such beauty and exhilaration?
0:03:03 > 0:03:07What were they sailing away to find?
0:03:07 > 0:03:10They hit London at a time when the egg was cracking open -
0:03:10 > 0:03:12with rock'n'roll,
0:03:12 > 0:03:14with people in the arts...
0:03:14 > 0:03:16It was a new England that they could help to make,
0:03:16 > 0:03:18and they did help to make it.
0:03:20 > 0:03:23They were a kind of beacon of a new kind of freedom.
0:03:23 > 0:03:26That kind of iconoclasm was the future
0:03:26 > 0:03:28and class was on the way out.
0:03:32 > 0:03:34The way Australians use humour...
0:03:34 > 0:03:37We're sceptical about a lot of things, but we're not pessimistic.
0:03:37 > 0:03:39And the humour is very dry,
0:03:39 > 0:03:42very wry, and incredibly mischievous.
0:03:44 > 0:03:47They could do actually what you were not supposed to do.
0:03:47 > 0:03:49They had this incredible range -
0:03:49 > 0:03:51encyclopaedic range - of learning.
0:03:51 > 0:03:55But they were also...outlandish.
0:03:55 > 0:03:56You know, they were...
0:03:56 > 0:03:58They were hoodlums in the playground.
0:04:13 > 0:04:17Germaine is one of the 20th century's landmarks.
0:04:17 > 0:04:19She'll go down in history.
0:04:19 > 0:04:21To have made this huge
0:04:21 > 0:04:25splash in the sort of the sea of the zeitgeist
0:04:25 > 0:04:28at 32 years old!
0:04:28 > 0:04:30We felt then, if we didn't have an orgasm -
0:04:30 > 0:04:32"Gee, we're frigid!"
0:04:32 > 0:04:34AUDIENCE LAUGHS
0:04:34 > 0:04:36But what I'm saying now is,
0:04:36 > 0:04:38"Fuck that. I'm not frigid, you're boring!"
0:04:44 > 0:04:46I am green with envy.
0:04:46 > 0:04:49In England, a writer has to be dead 200 years
0:04:49 > 0:04:50before he's remembered,
0:04:50 > 0:04:52and even then the best he's likely to get
0:04:52 > 0:04:55is a dark unvisited corner of Westminster Abbey.
0:04:55 > 0:04:58But here in the busiest part of Sydney,
0:04:58 > 0:05:00is a living Australian writer -
0:05:00 > 0:05:02Germaine Greer -
0:05:02 > 0:05:04and half the time, she disowns the place.
0:05:04 > 0:05:07But Australia reveres its writers.
0:05:07 > 0:05:08It's wonderful.
0:05:13 > 0:05:17Barry Humphries' political incorrectness was very Australian.
0:05:17 > 0:05:20He just had to use the phrase "Australian culture"
0:05:20 > 0:05:23then throw in Sir Les Patterson,
0:05:23 > 0:05:25and people were rolling in the aisles.
0:05:25 > 0:05:28Joan Collins is a personal friend of mine.
0:05:28 > 0:05:30She's a beautiful girl. Likes perfume, too.
0:05:30 > 0:05:32You wouldn't guess what she puts behind her ears
0:05:32 > 0:05:35to attract the men folk...
0:05:37 > 0:05:39Her ankles.
0:05:44 > 0:05:47And suddenly the door opened and there was an apparition -
0:05:47 > 0:05:51and, lo, he was in a full-length white linen kaftan
0:05:51 > 0:05:53with turquoise hippy beads
0:05:53 > 0:05:55and shoulder-length blonde hair,
0:05:55 > 0:05:58and I thought, "He looks like Jesus Christ Superstar".
0:05:58 > 0:06:01It's really about turning people on.
0:06:01 > 0:06:03With television, you can't see your audience
0:06:03 > 0:06:07but with this one you can see them and they can see you,
0:06:07 > 0:06:09and the whole thing is very instinctive.
0:06:09 > 0:06:11He was able to communicate...
0:06:13 > 0:06:15..the kind of meaning and sense
0:06:15 > 0:06:18and excitement about visual language
0:06:18 > 0:06:22in this way that absolutely was stirring.
0:06:22 > 0:06:24I'm sure, had he walked into the room,
0:06:24 > 0:06:27three nuns might actually have dropped their vows.
0:06:33 > 0:06:36Great lines from Unreliable Memoirs -
0:06:36 > 0:06:38"It would be churlish not to concede
0:06:38 > 0:06:41"that the same abundance of natural blessings
0:06:41 > 0:06:43"which gave us the energy to leave
0:06:43 > 0:06:46"has every right to call us back."
0:06:48 > 0:06:50I love Clive.
0:06:50 > 0:06:52He's a wonderfully witty, funny man.
0:06:52 > 0:06:56And for an academic and intellectual - which he indisputably is -
0:06:56 > 0:06:58he really had wonderful comic roots and timing.
0:07:01 > 0:07:03I used to think that the Opera House
0:07:03 > 0:07:06didn't have what it took to be the symbol of Sydney.
0:07:06 > 0:07:08I thought it looked like a portable typewriter
0:07:08 > 0:07:11full of oyster shells after an office party.
0:07:11 > 0:07:13Foolishly, I said so -
0:07:13 > 0:07:15the main reason why I had to stay out of town so long.
0:07:22 > 0:07:24There was no Opera House when I got to Sydney.
0:07:24 > 0:07:27Yes, the suburbs sprawled, the beaches broiled
0:07:27 > 0:07:29and Australians ran about in the sun,
0:07:29 > 0:07:33but that didn't mean the country was uncultured.
0:07:33 > 0:07:37Raw, hedonistic and bloody-minded it might have been,
0:07:37 > 0:07:41but weren't these the very qualities that made our famous four famous?
0:07:46 > 0:07:49Where do you think our four Australians
0:07:49 > 0:07:52got their verbal virtuosity from?
0:07:53 > 0:07:56I used to sometimes think
0:07:56 > 0:08:01that just as the pressure on coal over millions of years
0:08:01 > 0:08:04can produce diamonds,
0:08:04 > 0:08:06the pressures of boredom
0:08:06 > 0:08:08produced intellectual diamonds
0:08:08 > 0:08:12in the likes of Humphries and his collaborators.
0:08:13 > 0:08:16That they were so surrounded by stultification
0:08:16 > 0:08:20that out of it came these little glittering jewels.
0:08:20 > 0:08:25There was almost a willed torpor about Australia
0:08:25 > 0:08:29which these brilliant children wanted to escape.
0:08:29 > 0:08:32The world of the imagination seemed to be
0:08:32 > 0:08:34the world of Northern Europe
0:08:34 > 0:08:37and all the poetry we read at school
0:08:37 > 0:08:43and all the novels we read didn't have any spiritual purchase
0:08:43 > 0:08:46when applied to where we came from.
0:08:46 > 0:08:50In the sense that the locales were different,
0:08:50 > 0:08:52the flowers were different,
0:08:52 > 0:08:54the seasons were inverted -
0:08:54 > 0:08:56our world was not represented.
0:08:57 > 0:09:01What do you observe, Clive, when you come back to Australia, like now?
0:09:01 > 0:09:04- What changes do you see? - First thing you'd notice, I think,
0:09:04 > 0:09:06if you'd left Australia in the '50s, as I did,
0:09:06 > 0:09:08is the silence of the cities.
0:09:08 > 0:09:12This is to do with a change from beer drinking to wine drinking.
0:09:12 > 0:09:16Now, in the early '50s, when beer was the national drink,
0:09:16 > 0:09:18all the beer in Australia had to be consumed
0:09:18 > 0:09:21between the hours of five and six in the evening.
0:09:21 > 0:09:23And so three-quarters of the population of Australia
0:09:23 > 0:09:26crowded into the pubs which were all covered in tiles
0:09:26 > 0:09:29like a swimming pool - for reasons we will get to -
0:09:29 > 0:09:32and the glasses were lined up on the bar
0:09:32 > 0:09:35and they used to fill them with a gun under pressure -
0:09:35 > 0:09:38like fuel into a Formula One car - they fired beer into the glasses.
0:09:38 > 0:09:40Then the people would put the beer into themselves.
0:09:40 > 0:09:43And the noise that came from a pub between five and six -
0:09:43 > 0:09:45it was called the 6 o'clock swill.
0:09:45 > 0:09:48The noise was like an entire Spanish bull fight going on in a bathroom.
0:09:48 > 0:09:52And that was the sound of Australia in the '50s.
0:09:52 > 0:09:55And now you don't hear it. It's a civilised country.
0:09:57 > 0:10:00To ME it was a civilised country THEN.
0:10:00 > 0:10:04Yes, they fired beer into glasses with guns, but to a visiting pom,
0:10:04 > 0:10:06it was the noise of freedom -
0:10:06 > 0:10:09convivial, funny, egalitarian and brave.
0:10:12 > 0:10:14It was this freedom to run at life,
0:10:14 > 0:10:17to come from nowhere and aim for everywhere
0:10:17 > 0:10:20that enabled our four gifted Australians
0:10:20 > 0:10:22to make the most of their gifts.
0:10:24 > 0:10:28Of our four Australians, I think the easiest to like,
0:10:28 > 0:10:31perhaps because he'd had the fewest social advantages,
0:10:31 > 0:10:36or perhaps because he was the most eager to BE liked,
0:10:36 > 0:10:37was Clive James.
0:10:39 > 0:10:42Born here in Kogarah, you have to come here, I think,
0:10:42 > 0:10:45to realise what a modest place Kogarah was.
0:10:46 > 0:10:51It's touching to think of a man so widely loved for what he wrote -
0:10:51 > 0:10:55speaking his first words in this unassuming house.
0:10:55 > 0:10:59This is the conversation I've always wanted us to have
0:10:59 > 0:11:00as long as I have known you -
0:11:00 > 0:11:03the Australian/England conversation.
0:11:03 > 0:11:05Let's talk about the blessings.
0:11:05 > 0:11:08Those abundant natural blessings
0:11:08 > 0:11:11that gave you the energy to leave.
0:11:11 > 0:11:13I said that? That's not bad.
0:11:13 > 0:11:16Can we, as they say, unpack that?
0:11:16 > 0:11:17Yes.
0:11:17 > 0:11:20The truth is, I think all of us had reason to think
0:11:20 > 0:11:24that we came from a blessed land at a blessed time.
0:11:24 > 0:11:26We were foolish if we didn't, because it was true.
0:11:26 > 0:11:28Yes.
0:11:28 > 0:11:30Don't forget we're talking about
0:11:30 > 0:11:32not just a generation, but a whole nation
0:11:32 > 0:11:36that had been privileged not to be obliterated,
0:11:36 > 0:11:38or blasted by history.
0:11:38 > 0:11:42Somehow we came through the Second World War relatively intact,
0:11:42 > 0:11:45and there was a lot of reason to be grateful,
0:11:45 > 0:11:47and I still feel it.
0:11:47 > 0:11:49We had a chance to live.
0:11:49 > 0:11:51The big adventure is to live.
0:11:51 > 0:11:53I wonder if this explains
0:11:53 > 0:11:57what I would love to - DEARLY love - to have explained,
0:11:57 > 0:12:00how you've been able to do so much work.
0:12:00 > 0:12:03How you've been able to read so much,
0:12:03 > 0:12:06how you've been able to write so much - is it 40 books now?
0:12:06 > 0:12:09I think it's... It obviously answers some psychological need -
0:12:09 > 0:12:12the urge to get something done -
0:12:12 > 0:12:15which probably goes back to the fact that my parents
0:12:15 > 0:12:19were artificially deprived of the life -
0:12:19 > 0:12:21the useful life - they might have lead together.
0:12:21 > 0:12:24My father was killed coming back from the war,
0:12:24 > 0:12:27my mother had to spend a lot of time just concentrating on
0:12:27 > 0:12:30the difficulties of bringing me up.
0:12:30 > 0:12:33I always felt, even when I was young,
0:12:33 > 0:12:35that their lives had been -
0:12:35 > 0:12:38just by fate - truncated,
0:12:38 > 0:12:40and that I should do something with mine.
0:12:45 > 0:12:49If the father was absent for Clive James, he was,
0:12:49 > 0:12:52if anything, too present in the life of the young Robert Hughes,
0:12:52 > 0:12:56who grew up conscious of his patrician lineage.
0:12:58 > 0:13:01Like his family before him,
0:13:01 > 0:13:04he was educated at Sydney's prestigious Riverview College.
0:13:08 > 0:13:12It was here when he was 12 that he was informed that
0:13:12 > 0:13:14the great hero of his life,
0:13:14 > 0:13:16his father, had died.
0:13:19 > 0:13:22His grandfather had been the first ever Lord Mayor of Sydney
0:13:22 > 0:13:26and his father and his brothers had been here before him.
0:13:26 > 0:13:29Hughes's family had a long connection with the school.
0:13:29 > 0:13:30There's his father, who fought in
0:13:30 > 0:13:32the First World War,
0:13:32 > 0:13:34and had been a student at Riverview
0:13:34 > 0:13:36before the First World War.
0:13:36 > 0:13:38These are some of his relations,
0:13:38 > 0:13:40so the Hughes family has
0:13:40 > 0:13:45a 50-years connection with the school before Robert.
0:13:46 > 0:13:49There is a film I saw recently of you and Robert Hughes
0:13:49 > 0:13:52talking about the beatniks - wonderful, pedantic.
0:13:52 > 0:13:54I know exactly the piece of film you used.
0:13:54 > 0:13:56It's 1959, so you were babies.
0:13:56 > 0:13:58I wouldn't call Beat a creative movement.
0:13:58 > 0:14:01The thing about Beat is it's a quest for experience.
0:14:01 > 0:14:03They just like to take in raw experience.
0:14:03 > 0:14:05They like to "dig everything, man", you know.
0:14:05 > 0:14:08There's Robert Hughes in a waistcoat and a bow tie - a dandy,
0:14:08 > 0:14:11with soft, long, llama-like lashes.
0:14:11 > 0:14:16You look good, too, but you don't have soft, long, llama-like lashes.
0:14:16 > 0:14:18Dingo-like lashes.
0:14:18 > 0:14:20He was... He was...
0:14:20 > 0:14:22He was...elegant and urbane.
0:14:22 > 0:14:24You, too, were urbane.
0:14:24 > 0:14:26I can only read it in patches, it's that sort of book.
0:14:26 > 0:14:27It has no overall structure.
0:14:27 > 0:14:29< RH: A most irritating...thing.
0:14:29 > 0:14:30A most irritating thing.
0:14:30 > 0:14:33Because a novel is really an expanded poem -
0:14:33 > 0:14:35in that it must have an overall structure.
0:14:35 > 0:14:37You don't look as though you've got a lot to learn there.
0:14:37 > 0:14:39The assurance of you!
0:14:39 > 0:14:42I think Bob Hughes' sophistication was genuine.
0:14:42 > 0:14:45It was a very cosmopolitan family he came from,
0:14:45 > 0:14:47and mine was a bit put-on.
0:14:47 > 0:14:49I'm not making any overt criticism of it,
0:14:49 > 0:14:51I'd just like you to notice for one thing -
0:14:51 > 0:14:53the superfluity of adjectives,
0:14:53 > 0:14:55which seems to me to indicate a lack of discipline.
0:14:55 > 0:14:58It seems to me to be innate in Beat culture, generally.
0:14:58 > 0:15:00It's interesting to note that quite a number of people
0:15:00 > 0:15:03are advertising executives by day and beatniks by night.
0:15:03 > 0:15:05What interests me is - Robert Hughes is being a critic of the beatniks,
0:15:05 > 0:15:07you're being a critic of Kerouac...
0:15:07 > 0:15:09Criticism.
0:15:09 > 0:15:12And think of Barry Humphries - a great critic of language, is he not?
0:15:12 > 0:15:14Germaine, too. The four of you.
0:15:14 > 0:15:16You were all literary critics.
0:15:16 > 0:15:20You all have acumen, but you all have drive and have attack.
0:15:20 > 0:15:24Was that one of the reasons you were able to take the British by storm?
0:15:24 > 0:15:27I think it's true that we had fun expressing our opinions.
0:15:29 > 0:15:31We're not a shy, retiring people.
0:15:31 > 0:15:34Rather different from the British, in that way.
0:15:34 > 0:15:36And, especially, the English.
0:15:36 > 0:15:38The Australians were less mealy-mouthed.
0:15:38 > 0:15:40They were sometimes horrifying to hear.
0:15:40 > 0:15:42But they didn't mislead you
0:15:42 > 0:15:44by choking back their opinions.
0:15:46 > 0:15:50I've no memory of anyone choking back their opinions
0:15:50 > 0:15:52at Sydney University when I got there,
0:15:52 > 0:15:54not long after Clive had left.
0:15:57 > 0:16:00Hughes, too, had been a student here,
0:16:00 > 0:16:02and Germaine, a lecturer.
0:16:03 > 0:16:07I'd come, I thought, to teach Australians to read,
0:16:07 > 0:16:11but it was they who taught me how to scrap.
0:16:11 > 0:16:14Don't be fooled by the air of academic calm
0:16:14 > 0:16:16you see around you.
0:16:16 > 0:16:20Intellectually, I don't recall a single quiet day
0:16:20 > 0:16:22in the whole time I was here.
0:16:22 > 0:16:25We argued about everything.
0:16:25 > 0:16:27Lectures were war zones.
0:16:27 > 0:16:30Seminars were like medieval jousts.
0:16:30 > 0:16:33We fought each other over books,
0:16:33 > 0:16:35we fought each other over ideas,
0:16:35 > 0:16:39we fought each other to a standstill over Emily Bronte,
0:16:39 > 0:16:41and she wasn't even a student here.
0:16:41 > 0:16:44In this seething cauldron of belligerence,
0:16:44 > 0:16:46I came of age.
0:16:46 > 0:16:48And so did Clive and Robert.
0:16:53 > 0:16:57In those days, Clive and Bob were the big stars of the university.
0:16:57 > 0:17:00Bob especially used to hold court, he would, you know,
0:17:00 > 0:17:02there'd be a party or something in a room
0:17:02 > 0:17:04and Bob would be in the middle of the room
0:17:04 > 0:17:06and people would be gathered around.
0:17:06 > 0:17:08- To hear him talk? - To hear him talk.
0:17:08 > 0:17:11What do you do for a living, Bob?
0:17:11 > 0:17:12Well, I'm a...
0:17:12 > 0:17:15For a living, I work as art editor on a magazine downtown, fortnightly.
0:17:17 > 0:17:18I'm a painter.
0:17:18 > 0:17:22I didn't really play the role of acolyte particularly well.
0:17:22 > 0:17:24I mean, I thought he was tremendously clever,
0:17:24 > 0:17:26and he was enormously handsome.
0:17:26 > 0:17:30He was big...and a big shock of blond hair.
0:17:30 > 0:17:31Girls went crazy over him.
0:17:31 > 0:17:34Of course, as with any movement, there are a lot of hangers-on.
0:17:35 > 0:17:39Clive was editing the university newspaper
0:17:39 > 0:17:43and wrote nearly everything in the university reviews -
0:17:43 > 0:17:45which were screamingly funny.
0:17:45 > 0:17:49He was a brilliant writer, I think, even at 18 and 19.
0:17:49 > 0:17:51A tremendous amount of wit.
0:17:52 > 0:17:54And with wit, went trouble.
0:17:54 > 0:17:56A raffish group known as The Push,
0:17:56 > 0:17:59that met in smoky bars around the university,
0:17:59 > 0:18:02attracted Sydney's young bohemians.
0:18:02 > 0:18:06I think the libertarian Push in Sydney is very significant
0:18:06 > 0:18:11for the impact Clive, Germaine and, particularly, Robert Hughes had.
0:18:11 > 0:18:15There was...a sharp edge of discontent and subversion.
0:18:15 > 0:18:17There was a fringe of malcontents.
0:18:17 > 0:18:19If you look at their work in the '50s
0:18:19 > 0:18:22and particularly in the early '60s, in magazines like Oz,
0:18:22 > 0:18:25you see an embrace of cosmopolitanism
0:18:25 > 0:18:27and the great "out there".
0:18:38 > 0:18:41Of those hankering for the "great out there",
0:18:41 > 0:18:46few hankered with more impatience than a young convent-educated woman
0:18:46 > 0:18:51who described herself as "a freak waiting to be born".
0:18:53 > 0:18:57I'm in Sandringham, in Melbourne where Germaine Greer grew up.
0:18:57 > 0:18:59I love it.
0:18:59 > 0:19:02It exudes a dreamy melancholy
0:19:02 > 0:19:05as though it's always Sunday morning.
0:19:05 > 0:19:06Germaine Greer didn't love it -
0:19:06 > 0:19:09"I regard the happiest day of my life
0:19:09 > 0:19:12"as the day I ran away from home," she wrote.
0:19:12 > 0:19:15But then she was by her own confession, a bolter.
0:19:17 > 0:19:19And, boy, did she bolt.
0:19:23 > 0:19:25I wanted to go to a place
0:19:25 > 0:19:28where there was beauty.
0:19:30 > 0:19:32I did believe in "the great Australian ugliness"
0:19:32 > 0:19:38and even now, when I'm in the suburbs of Melbourne or Sydney
0:19:38 > 0:19:41I feel this terrible, dead feeling.
0:19:41 > 0:19:44This feeling that nothing will ever happen.
0:19:44 > 0:19:48That I'll just drag through day after desperate day
0:19:48 > 0:19:51and that things will be happening -
0:19:51 > 0:19:53the world will be happening - somewhere.
0:19:53 > 0:19:54It was like being under the bell jar.
0:19:54 > 0:19:56It was a bit Sylvia Plath,
0:19:56 > 0:19:58but in a different way.
0:19:58 > 0:20:01I spoke three languages besides English by the time I was twelve.
0:20:01 > 0:20:04I was preparing for Europe.
0:20:04 > 0:20:06I have a theory about why you were so clever -
0:20:06 > 0:20:08you'd had a fantastic education.
0:20:08 > 0:20:11Those nuns, and then Melbourne University,
0:20:11 > 0:20:14that was a very good preparation for the world, wasn't it?
0:20:14 > 0:20:16Yes, I s'pose.
0:20:16 > 0:20:17The nuns were Irish nuns.
0:20:17 > 0:20:20They weren't terribly good at teaching anything.
0:20:20 > 0:20:22And one of the things they were worst at teaching
0:20:22 > 0:20:24happened to be religion.
0:20:24 > 0:20:25And they completely blew it.
0:20:25 > 0:20:29They tried to teach me the proofs of the existence of God.
0:20:29 > 0:20:31And I started off believing in God,
0:20:31 > 0:20:34and by the time they'd finished I knew that God was a ridiculous idea.
0:20:34 > 0:20:36Well, there you are, you've got them to thank for that.
0:20:36 > 0:20:40Yes, indeed, but I do agree that a teacher's inadequacies
0:20:40 > 0:20:43are sometimes more important than the teacher's skills
0:20:43 > 0:20:46with an intelligent kid who just thinks,
0:20:46 > 0:20:49"Na-ah-ah! That can't be right. That CAN'T be right."
0:20:56 > 0:20:58"Ever since I was a little girl,"
0:20:58 > 0:21:02she said, "I wanted to escape from where I was".
0:21:02 > 0:21:05Interesting that she describes it as escape.
0:21:07 > 0:21:11This library in Melbourne was the place she would escape to,
0:21:11 > 0:21:13and where, with the help of literature,
0:21:13 > 0:21:16she would do battle with dullness and confinement.
0:21:34 > 0:21:38In her own words from Daddy, We Hardly Knew You -
0:21:38 > 0:21:43"When I was 14 years old, imprisoned in a bookless house,
0:21:43 > 0:21:46"bored at school and double-bored at home,
0:21:46 > 0:21:49"the public library of Victoria was my Valhalla.
0:21:51 > 0:21:55"More of my waking life has been spent in libraries with a pen in my hand
0:21:55 > 0:21:57"than anywhere else."
0:21:59 > 0:22:02Well, my mother was a couple of years younger than Germaine
0:22:02 > 0:22:07and I remember her talking about the extraordinary Germaine Greer,
0:22:07 > 0:22:10she was dux of Star of the Sea in, I think, 1955.
0:22:10 > 0:22:13That she was an extraordinary scholar,
0:22:13 > 0:22:14she was an all-rounder.
0:22:14 > 0:22:17Mum remembers her being fantastic in the school plays
0:22:17 > 0:22:19and other performances, and everybody...
0:22:19 > 0:22:24She said everybody knew this girl was fierce
0:22:24 > 0:22:26and going to do great things.
0:22:26 > 0:22:31When you left Melbourne, with all the frustrations of Melbourne,
0:22:31 > 0:22:33for Sydney, was that a liberation for you?
0:22:33 > 0:22:37Barry Humphries talks about the joy of meeting the raffishness of Sydney.
0:22:37 > 0:22:39Did you encounter that?
0:22:39 > 0:22:41Did you feel it was a liberation?
0:22:41 > 0:22:43Yes, I did. I did. But it's interesting...
0:22:43 > 0:22:47I think Barry is more contemptuous of the Melbourne intelligentsia
0:22:47 > 0:22:49than I am.
0:22:49 > 0:22:52Because for me, they were a liberation to start with.
0:22:52 > 0:22:54But then they began to really annoy me.
0:22:54 > 0:22:57But now you're in The Push in Sydney, are you having fun there?
0:22:59 > 0:23:01Ummmm...
0:23:01 > 0:23:03Not enough fun to keep you, obviously.
0:23:03 > 0:23:06Well, the thing is The Push was committed
0:23:06 > 0:23:12to a lifestyle of tremendous squalor, really.
0:23:12 > 0:23:15You weren't allowed to have a nice house,
0:23:15 > 0:23:17you weren't interested in art...
0:23:17 > 0:23:19You were interested in folk singing,
0:23:19 > 0:23:21but not in music, if you understand the distinction.
0:23:21 > 0:23:23I do indeed.
0:23:23 > 0:23:27But wasn't it all about just, sort of, free love and drinking a lot,
0:23:27 > 0:23:29and swapping partners, and things.
0:23:29 > 0:23:32One of the things about free love is all very well,
0:23:32 > 0:23:35but possessiveness was absolutely not on.
0:23:35 > 0:23:39And so you were always up against it.
0:23:39 > 0:23:42That your partner would probably get off with other people,
0:23:42 > 0:23:45and there was nothing you could do about it.
0:23:45 > 0:23:48I got into the usual tangle because
0:23:48 > 0:23:50the man in my life would do things like stay in the pub
0:23:50 > 0:23:52if he felt like staying in the pub
0:23:52 > 0:23:54and I would've gone home to cook him a meal
0:23:54 > 0:23:56and he'd never come home to eat it
0:23:56 > 0:23:58and I would cry and carry on
0:23:58 > 0:23:59and then, finally, I thought
0:23:59 > 0:24:02"This is rubbish. Absolute rubbish."
0:24:02 > 0:24:04"I'm not doing this, I'm out of here."
0:24:04 > 0:24:06Very hard to imagine you ever having done that.
0:24:06 > 0:24:10The picture of you at the stove, crying for a man, I have to say's...
0:24:10 > 0:24:13- Oh, well. - Takes a bit of...imagination.
0:24:13 > 0:24:16It wouldn't be the only time I'd done that, either.
0:24:22 > 0:24:26But let's leave the young Germaine pining by the stove...
0:24:28 > 0:24:31..while we catch up with another one of our brilliant Melburnians.
0:24:34 > 0:24:36Moonee Ponds.
0:24:43 > 0:24:48For Barry Humphries, too, growing up in the suburbs had been hell,
0:24:48 > 0:24:51but he chose to quit Melbourne, paradoxically,
0:24:51 > 0:24:53by plunging more deeply into it.
0:24:53 > 0:24:56Not that those who knew him always got the joke.
0:24:57 > 0:25:00My mother was a sardonic woman.
0:25:00 > 0:25:04She used to say, quite often in public, in front of people,
0:25:04 > 0:25:05at dinner - she'd say,
0:25:05 > 0:25:07"We don't know where Barry came from."
0:25:09 > 0:25:11Did you sometimes wonder where you came from?
0:25:11 > 0:25:12I took it seriously.
0:25:12 > 0:25:16I thought "Perhaps I'm like Valerie up the road - adopted.
0:25:17 > 0:25:20"Perhaps if I stand outside the house long enough,
0:25:20 > 0:25:23"my real parents might come past and pick me up".
0:25:23 > 0:25:24But they didn't.
0:25:24 > 0:25:28And my real parents would be much more interesting!
0:25:29 > 0:25:31It's terrible, isn't it?
0:25:31 > 0:25:34But then I decided early on, Howard,
0:25:34 > 0:25:39when I began to write things for myself in the theatre
0:25:39 > 0:25:43that the only place I really knew was Melbourne
0:25:43 > 0:25:47and my shows are still about Melbourne.
0:25:47 > 0:25:52It's my inspiration and when I say that it was very dull -
0:25:52 > 0:25:54EXHILARATINGLY dull.
0:25:54 > 0:25:57Heaven could live there, I would think.
0:25:59 > 0:26:04But I don't, I just drift by like a ghost.
0:26:04 > 0:26:08I love the idea of the exhilaration of dullness, that explains...
0:26:08 > 0:26:11Well, that's the beginning of the explanation of Edna,
0:26:11 > 0:26:12isn't it, really?
0:26:12 > 0:26:15And also of another character of mine, Sandy Stone,
0:26:15 > 0:26:19who's a ghostly figure in a dressing gown with a hot water bottle
0:26:19 > 0:26:21who sits in a chair and ruminates.
0:26:21 > 0:26:26I only hope and pray that when the time eventually does come...
0:26:28 > 0:26:30..as it will...
0:26:31 > 0:26:34..Beryl's the first to go.
0:26:37 > 0:26:40I wanted to see how boring
0:26:40 > 0:26:43I could make a monologue
0:26:43 > 0:26:45with no jokes,
0:26:45 > 0:26:48nothing even faintly amusing,
0:26:48 > 0:26:53what would happen to an audience who had to listen to this?
0:26:53 > 0:26:54It became popular.
0:26:54 > 0:26:59Because people laughed at the fact that there were no laughs.
0:26:59 > 0:27:02In a way I had liberated comedy
0:27:02 > 0:27:05from the necessity to be funny.
0:27:05 > 0:27:07You talk about always feeling out of place
0:27:07 > 0:27:10and then you often describe - "now I felt alive".
0:27:10 > 0:27:11When I first went to Australia
0:27:11 > 0:27:14that was my moment for feeling alive.
0:27:14 > 0:27:16It's interesting to trace yours.
0:27:16 > 0:27:19It first happens, I think, when you're still in Melbourne
0:27:19 > 0:27:22and you meet the people from Eltham and the Drift.
0:27:22 > 0:27:24Oh, yes, I meet these so-called bohemians -
0:27:24 > 0:27:29sort of middle class, wife-swappers really, is what they were.
0:27:29 > 0:27:31As early as that? They were doing it? In Eltham?
0:27:31 > 0:27:34They were doing it in a picturesque way,
0:27:34 > 0:27:38up there in a hamlet outside of Melbourne.
0:27:38 > 0:27:41Do you never wish you'd stayed up there, in that case?
0:27:41 > 0:27:46Those of us who left, were looked at askance, you know -
0:27:46 > 0:27:49"Why would you want to leave?"
0:27:49 > 0:27:51Well, they knew very well that the reason they hadn't
0:27:51 > 0:27:54was that they were too scared.
0:27:54 > 0:27:55Or doing too well.
0:27:57 > 0:27:59I started to do rather well.
0:27:59 > 0:28:03That is to say, things appeared about me in the paper,
0:28:03 > 0:28:06I got a few nice reviews.
0:28:06 > 0:28:10Some of my self-conscious eccentricities
0:28:10 > 0:28:12drew the attention of people I admired.
0:28:12 > 0:28:15- Your Dadaist days. - My Dadaist days.
0:28:15 > 0:28:17GERMAINE: Barry doesn't remember this...
0:28:17 > 0:28:19but I worked on his Dada exhibition.
0:28:19 > 0:28:22He does remember it, he's talked to me about it.
0:28:22 > 0:28:26Black stockings struck me, and a blue shift.
0:28:26 > 0:28:29I wore a felt skirt in a dreadful shade of electric blue,
0:28:29 > 0:28:30and a matching top.
0:28:30 > 0:28:34Not a mini skirt then, but a dress that ended mid-thigh.
0:28:34 > 0:28:35Blue.
0:28:35 > 0:28:37French blue.
0:28:37 > 0:28:39Black stockings, slightly laddered. Attractive.
0:28:39 > 0:28:44And I was putting on this exhibition of effrontery
0:28:44 > 0:28:47and she helped actually assemble it.
0:28:47 > 0:28:48Hang it on the wall.
0:28:48 > 0:28:51And I had to fill shoes with custard
0:28:51 > 0:28:53- I mean, boots with custard -
0:28:53 > 0:28:57and I had to take shoes to be made by a surgical bootmaker
0:28:57 > 0:28:59that were joined at the toe.
0:28:59 > 0:29:01Dada.
0:29:01 > 0:29:04This was just part of the exotic life
0:29:04 > 0:29:07that lay outside of my home suburb.
0:29:08 > 0:29:10And then, of course, we all learnt -
0:29:10 > 0:29:12as most Australians did -
0:29:12 > 0:29:16that there was somewhere else outside of Australia,
0:29:16 > 0:29:18and it was called "overseas".
0:29:20 > 0:29:22Overseas.
0:29:22 > 0:29:25You talk so often about needing to leave, and having to leave,
0:29:25 > 0:29:27and being desperate to go,
0:29:27 > 0:29:28and there's a phrase somewhere about
0:29:28 > 0:29:31"without any trepidation or deliberation"
0:29:31 > 0:29:32you just one day upped and left.
0:29:32 > 0:29:35It even sounds almost callous in its briskness.
0:29:35 > 0:29:36Oh, it is callous.
0:29:36 > 0:29:37But you...
0:29:37 > 0:29:39It IS callous.
0:29:39 > 0:29:42I left my little sister and my little brother
0:29:42 > 0:29:44to deal with their mad mother,
0:29:44 > 0:29:46thinking that she would be less mad with them than she was with me
0:29:46 > 0:29:49and I think she was probably worse.
0:29:49 > 0:29:52There is a phrase at the end of Unreliable Memoirs,
0:29:52 > 0:29:56you talk about the abundance of natural blessings
0:29:56 > 0:29:59that gave you the courage to leave.
0:29:59 > 0:30:01That's such a powerful paradox.
0:30:01 > 0:30:04If those blessings existed in such an abundance,
0:30:04 > 0:30:06why didn't you bloody stay?
0:30:06 > 0:30:10Well, the language is self-conscious and rather grand,
0:30:10 > 0:30:14and you've put the skewer right where it belongs.
0:30:14 > 0:30:16Why didn't we stay?
0:30:16 > 0:30:19Australia felt like a little place far away -
0:30:19 > 0:30:21- it's actually huge, it's three million square miles -
0:30:21 > 0:30:23but it felt like a little place.
0:30:23 > 0:30:27It felt as if you were going to do anything in the kind of fields
0:30:27 > 0:30:29which some of us were interested in - which is writing
0:30:29 > 0:30:32and acting and movies, etc, painting -
0:30:32 > 0:30:36then the action was abroad, and especially in Britain.
0:30:36 > 0:30:39And you'd choose Britain especially because Britain was easy to get to.
0:30:49 > 0:30:52And sometimes the more beautiful the place,
0:30:52 > 0:30:55the more you have to leave it. The lotus-eater thing -
0:30:55 > 0:30:58is it Ulysses and his sailors, find themselves on this island,
0:30:58 > 0:31:00and they eat the lotus
0:31:00 > 0:31:02and that's that.
0:31:02 > 0:31:04All they want to do is lie around all day and...
0:31:04 > 0:31:06enjoy the sunshine and not do anything
0:31:06 > 0:31:09and I think many have felt that about Australia -
0:31:09 > 0:31:12it's too good. It's too good, mate!
0:31:12 > 0:31:14And if you're ever going to achieve anything
0:31:14 > 0:31:16you just have to get away from it.
0:31:18 > 0:31:21"When the moment came to leave Sydney, I hardly felt
0:31:21 > 0:31:23"a twinge of misgiving." wrote Robert Hughes.
0:31:23 > 0:31:26"Australia in the early '60s was a backwater."
0:31:27 > 0:31:30Barry Humphries spoke even more contemptuously
0:31:30 > 0:31:34of the country's "stifling intellectual torpor".
0:31:34 > 0:31:38"You had to get away," he wrote later "and prove yourself
0:31:38 > 0:31:40"where the competition was intense."
0:31:53 > 0:31:58Those immediate post-war years were awful.
0:31:58 > 0:32:00Drab, boring.
0:32:00 > 0:32:02And it wasn't until the '60s that it seemed to me
0:32:02 > 0:32:03that England was transformed.
0:32:03 > 0:32:05That was the revolution.
0:32:07 > 0:32:10When were you first aware of them?
0:32:10 > 0:32:14I suspect about 12 hours after they got off the boat, really.
0:32:14 > 0:32:17They all made for London.
0:32:17 > 0:32:20I'd made for London from only 300 miles away in the north of England
0:32:20 > 0:32:22for much of the same reason - because London was the place
0:32:22 > 0:32:25where you could do what you really wanted to do,
0:32:25 > 0:32:28which was anything at all to do with the arts, particularly.
0:32:28 > 0:32:31And they were there - they made an impact almost right away.
0:32:31 > 0:32:34Class was a huge force in those days
0:32:34 > 0:32:37in the way that you shake your head
0:32:37 > 0:32:41to think how much...how many interactions per day
0:32:41 > 0:32:43were determined by class.
0:32:43 > 0:32:45From below and from above,
0:32:45 > 0:32:48you felt these pressures all the time.
0:32:48 > 0:32:50And the Australians just weren't having that.
0:32:50 > 0:32:53It wasn't part of their consciousness.
0:32:53 > 0:32:55And so they were stepping on toes
0:32:55 > 0:32:57and pushing with their elbows,
0:32:57 > 0:33:01and establishing a new kind of freedom,
0:33:01 > 0:33:02and a sort of...
0:33:02 > 0:33:04er...
0:33:05 > 0:33:07..disrespect.
0:33:07 > 0:33:08A very healthy disrespect
0:33:08 > 0:33:11for everything that was iconic.
0:33:14 > 0:33:16This is where, in the 1960s,
0:33:16 > 0:33:21new Australian arrivals made a little Australia for themselves.
0:33:21 > 0:33:25Giving rise to the cliche of the uncouth, loud-mouthed,
0:33:25 > 0:33:26drunken Aussie.
0:33:26 > 0:33:29Of course, our Australians chose not to live here.
0:33:39 > 0:33:41The valley of the Australians.
0:33:41 > 0:33:44I used to come here when I was missing my Australian friends,
0:33:44 > 0:33:46just to hear the accent.
0:33:48 > 0:33:51AUSTRALIAN ACCENTED CHATTER
0:33:57 > 0:33:59London was full of Australian girls
0:33:59 > 0:34:02making up their minds about their boyfriends.
0:34:02 > 0:34:05Sometimes they made up their minds
0:34:05 > 0:34:08with the assistance of Austrian ski instructors.
0:34:09 > 0:34:10So was this in Earl's Court?
0:34:10 > 0:34:12Did you head straight for Earl's Court?
0:34:12 > 0:34:15I decided never to go to Earl's Court.
0:34:16 > 0:34:21Something... A very healthy instinct warned me against joining a huddle -
0:34:21 > 0:34:25an Anglophobic huddle
0:34:25 > 0:34:27in a basement -
0:34:27 > 0:34:30and there were Australians who went to London
0:34:30 > 0:34:33and burnt gum leaves and ate vegemite
0:34:33 > 0:34:36and drank Foster's lager
0:34:36 > 0:34:38and only thought about home.
0:34:39 > 0:34:42Australia House had a reading room
0:34:42 > 0:34:48and there they all went to read the Woman's Weekly...
0:34:49 > 0:34:51The Australian Woman's Weekly -
0:34:51 > 0:34:53to get the latest news about the royal family
0:34:53 > 0:34:56because there wasn't really enough about the royal family
0:34:56 > 0:34:57in the British newspapers.
0:34:57 > 0:35:02They had to go to Australia House and read what we thought about them.
0:35:02 > 0:35:06Well, you then started to hit this satire boom, as they say.
0:35:06 > 0:35:11Well, yes, I kind of was a fringe member of that group of wags
0:35:11 > 0:35:15led by Peter Cook.
0:35:15 > 0:35:19Peter Cook had a club in Soho called The Establishment,
0:35:19 > 0:35:23and Cook said "I'd like you to do something on stage in that show."
0:35:23 > 0:35:25I said "It's not political, what I do,
0:35:25 > 0:35:28"it's best described as regional monologue."
0:35:30 > 0:35:32But he was persistent.
0:35:34 > 0:35:37And I saw the person who was on at the club before
0:35:37 > 0:35:40called Frost - David Frost - and I thought,
0:35:40 > 0:35:42well, I can do certainly do better than that
0:35:42 > 0:35:45because he was pretty well howled off the stage.
0:35:45 > 0:35:49But I did my thing and it was a total disaster.
0:35:49 > 0:35:51He did his Edna...
0:35:51 > 0:35:53Excuse I?
0:35:53 > 0:35:55..and people got on with drinking
0:35:55 > 0:35:57and waited for the main act to come on.
0:35:58 > 0:36:03John Betjeman walked in - John Betjeman, English poet laureate -
0:36:03 > 0:36:05all those rollicking verses,
0:36:05 > 0:36:08saw Barry Humphries and thought "Yes!"
0:36:09 > 0:36:13And John Betjeman thought "Yes!" because he loved the language.
0:36:14 > 0:36:19It's telling that it took a poet to hear what Humphries was up to.
0:36:21 > 0:36:23Clive James heard it, too.
0:36:23 > 0:36:26For him, Humphries was rediscovering and reordering
0:36:26 > 0:36:27the Australian language,
0:36:27 > 0:36:31making poetry out of its cultural detritus.
0:36:38 > 0:36:42Britain was finally emerging from it's long post-war winter,
0:36:42 > 0:36:45and if it was receptive to riskier music,
0:36:45 > 0:36:46bolder art,
0:36:46 > 0:36:47satire...
0:36:47 > 0:36:51it was also receptive to the very things our Australians
0:36:51 > 0:36:53had brought over in their luggage -
0:36:53 > 0:36:54words.
0:36:55 > 0:36:59Clive coined a term for the Australian writers'
0:36:59 > 0:37:01love of verbal acrobatics -
0:37:01 > 0:37:03Kangarococo.
0:37:03 > 0:37:06There seemed to be a lot of people around in Australia
0:37:06 > 0:37:10with a gift for writing the memorable sentence.
0:37:10 > 0:37:14Which I think is probably the basis of the Australian culture,
0:37:14 > 0:37:17and you'll still hear things from young Australians -
0:37:17 > 0:37:20sometimes children that will transfix you
0:37:20 > 0:37:23with the vividness of the expression.
0:37:23 > 0:37:26It's in the culture or it's not. I imagine some languages are dull.
0:37:26 > 0:37:29Australian English is not dull!
0:37:29 > 0:37:30Quite the opposite.
0:37:30 > 0:37:35They had a taste for
0:37:35 > 0:37:38pushing the language of hyperbole
0:37:38 > 0:37:40as far as it would go
0:37:40 > 0:37:43while holding an intellectual argument.
0:37:43 > 0:37:45And they relished it. Relished the language they were using.
0:37:45 > 0:37:49I remember meeting Clive coming out of a shop in Charing Cross Road
0:37:49 > 0:37:50reading a medical book,
0:37:50 > 0:37:52and I'd say "What's that all about?"
0:37:52 > 0:37:55And he said "The words. All these words, these wonderful words.
0:37:55 > 0:37:58"Seeing if I can use any, yeah..."
0:38:00 > 0:38:01And that was good.
0:38:01 > 0:38:05And Germaine has this flair for...
0:38:05 > 0:38:08extremism in expression,
0:38:08 > 0:38:11which holds to a very strong argument she's making.
0:38:11 > 0:38:14Australian speech is characteristically exaggerated
0:38:14 > 0:38:16and over-coloured.
0:38:16 > 0:38:19We overstate a case, if we can.
0:38:19 > 0:38:21You know, that bloke was so generous
0:38:21 > 0:38:24he'd give you his arse hole and shit through his ribs.
0:38:24 > 0:38:27Only an Australian could even THINK that!
0:38:27 > 0:38:30I mean, it's metaphysical, it's so crazy!
0:38:31 > 0:38:34And Clive can do that and Bob can do that.
0:38:34 > 0:38:37I would LIKE to be able to do that,
0:38:37 > 0:38:40I don't think I do it as well as either of them.
0:38:40 > 0:38:43And I think I'd extend that to Barry, as well.
0:38:43 > 0:38:47In the Adventures of Barry McKenzie published in Private Eye,
0:38:47 > 0:38:53Humphries' half excavated, half invented a new lexicon of vulgarity.
0:38:53 > 0:38:57I deliberately made it a sort of synthetic character.
0:38:57 > 0:39:00Sometimes inventing expressions -
0:39:00 > 0:39:02some of which actually went into the language -
0:39:02 > 0:39:04and recycling school boy slang.
0:39:05 > 0:39:09And there was a great deal about incontinence.
0:39:11 > 0:39:13Barry McKenzie drinks a lot
0:39:13 > 0:39:16but he's always looking for somewhere to urinate
0:39:16 > 0:39:20or to point Percy at the porcelain,
0:39:20 > 0:39:22or something of the kind.
0:39:22 > 0:39:24And if he's not urinating,
0:39:24 > 0:39:25he's vomiting.
0:39:25 > 0:39:29In fact, the comic strip was banned in Australia
0:39:29 > 0:39:31for several years
0:39:31 > 0:39:33because it was felt,
0:39:33 > 0:39:35not that it was indecent,
0:39:35 > 0:39:39but that it misrepresented Australia.
0:39:40 > 0:39:43So I was a banned writer.
0:39:44 > 0:39:47- But... - Part of you might have enjoyed that.
0:39:47 > 0:39:51I did. A lot of me enjoyed... MOST of me enjoyed it!
0:39:51 > 0:39:54While Barry was relishing being banned at home,
0:39:54 > 0:39:58our other Australians were acculturating to overseas.
0:39:58 > 0:40:03Clive often said that the one thing he hadn't come to England to do
0:40:03 > 0:40:05was meet the very Australians
0:40:05 > 0:40:07he'd left Australia to avoid.
0:40:07 > 0:40:10Why weren't you overawed by Cambridge?
0:40:10 > 0:40:12I was overawed by Cambridge, and I'm an Englishmen.
0:40:12 > 0:40:15- Mind you, I'd come from Manchester. - That's WHY you were overawed.
0:40:15 > 0:40:17You thought it was a class thing.
0:40:17 > 0:40:19You thought, "What a miracle I'm here."
0:40:19 > 0:40:22I never thought, "It's a miracle I'm here."
0:40:22 > 0:40:25"I'm here. I'm where I deserve to be", has always been my feeling.
0:40:25 > 0:40:28God, how I envy that. God, how I envy that!
0:40:28 > 0:40:30That's a natural Australian thing.
0:40:30 > 0:40:32What a wonderful thing, then, to have.
0:40:32 > 0:40:33What a wonderful liberation that is.
0:40:33 > 0:40:35Well, it's also an Australian fault.
0:40:35 > 0:40:38Sometimes you make yourself too at home.
0:40:38 > 0:40:40There's such a thing as good manners.
0:40:40 > 0:40:42Germaine also headed to Cambridge
0:40:42 > 0:40:45where our paths crossed for the first time.
0:40:45 > 0:40:49In 1964, I meet you in Cambridge.
0:40:49 > 0:40:51You've just come from Sydney.
0:40:51 > 0:40:54I'm leaving Cambridge to go to Sydney.
0:40:55 > 0:40:58The spot that you vacate is the spot that I fill.
0:40:58 > 0:41:00I take, anyway.
0:41:01 > 0:41:04I will never forget meeting you in Cambridge
0:41:04 > 0:41:08because you struck all of us as astonishing.
0:41:08 > 0:41:10We had never seen anybody like you,
0:41:10 > 0:41:13we'd never heard of anybody like you.
0:41:13 > 0:41:16You sat on the floor, Germaine.
0:41:16 > 0:41:19No woman in Cambridge sat on the floor.
0:41:20 > 0:41:23Weren't you at all awed by being in Cambridge?
0:41:23 > 0:41:26Weren't you frightened of us, at all?
0:41:26 > 0:41:31I had a pretty clear inkling that Cambridge was...
0:41:32 > 0:41:36..not overrated - I think that would be wrong - um...
0:41:36 > 0:41:38but stuffy and weird.
0:41:38 > 0:41:40And they're still like that.
0:41:40 > 0:41:43People in Cambridge pretend to stammer
0:41:43 > 0:41:45because they're thinking of a way
0:41:45 > 0:41:47to cap the conversation.
0:41:47 > 0:41:49So they had this "ba ba ba ba" Cambridge stammer.
0:41:49 > 0:41:52You just wanted to slap it out of them!
0:41:58 > 0:42:02And of the best of the performing arts since 1936,
0:42:02 > 0:42:05the very best was the annual Footlights Revue.
0:42:05 > 0:42:08If you wanted to make a go of your Cambridge career,
0:42:08 > 0:42:11Footlights was one of the best places to do it.
0:42:11 > 0:42:15Clive spotted his opportunity and grabbed it with both hands.
0:42:15 > 0:42:17So did Germaine...
0:42:17 > 0:42:21And I never bothered with Footlights, didn't have the nerve.
0:42:21 > 0:42:23You've got to know how to seize your opportunity.
0:42:23 > 0:42:25And those two knew how to seize it.
0:42:29 > 0:42:32The president of Footlights was Eric Idle,
0:42:32 > 0:42:34not yet a Python.
0:42:34 > 0:42:36October '64 -
0:42:36 > 0:42:40and through the door came Germaine Greer and Clive James.
0:42:41 > 0:42:43And I didn't know who they were of course,
0:42:43 > 0:42:45but they were very startling looking people,
0:42:45 > 0:42:48and in order to get into the Footlights you had to audition
0:42:48 > 0:42:51at one of the smoking concerts in the club house
0:42:51 > 0:42:53and so Germaine came on
0:42:53 > 0:42:57and she came on dressed as a nun,
0:42:57 > 0:42:58and she did a strip tease
0:42:58 > 0:43:01and she did this whole nun... stripping nun outfit
0:43:01 > 0:43:03and that got her elected, at once.
0:43:03 > 0:43:06So she was the first female member of The Footlights.
0:43:06 > 0:43:08Are the stripping nun stories true?
0:43:08 > 0:43:10You did a stripping nun routine?
0:43:10 > 0:43:12Yes, but I would take off all these clothes
0:43:12 > 0:43:14and chuck them away,
0:43:14 > 0:43:17but then we'd get down to my wet suit and my flippers,
0:43:17 > 0:43:19and I'd go off into the SEA!
0:43:19 > 0:43:24So that was it, and it was, really, a send-up of...um...
0:43:24 > 0:43:26lechery, really.
0:43:26 > 0:43:29I was a very nerdy undergraduate,
0:43:29 > 0:43:32saddled with the job of editing something called the Cambridge Review
0:43:32 > 0:43:34And I was looking around for people
0:43:34 > 0:43:36to do occasional reviews -
0:43:36 > 0:43:38film reviews, art reviews -
0:43:38 > 0:43:41and there was...particularly Clive James, actually.
0:43:41 > 0:43:44Even though it was "The '60s"
0:43:44 > 0:43:50somehow the satirical edge was kind of soft and understated and gentle.
0:43:50 > 0:43:57But there was nothing soft or gentle about either Clive or Germaine.
0:43:57 > 0:44:01The Australians had this incredible kind of intoxication of happiness
0:44:01 > 0:44:04about what language could do.
0:44:04 > 0:44:06Did you frighten the English when you came?
0:44:06 > 0:44:09I don't think I had the personality for that.
0:44:09 > 0:44:12I would like to have thought that I was a bit daunting,
0:44:12 > 0:44:14but I don't think I was daunting at all.
0:44:14 > 0:44:17- Germaine was terrifying. - She's terrifying even now.
0:44:17 > 0:44:21And she was terrifying when we were all in Australia.
0:44:21 > 0:44:23First of all, she has a formidable intellect
0:44:23 > 0:44:28and I think it is true to say of her that she's not...
0:44:30 > 0:44:31..a miracle of objectivity.
0:44:31 > 0:44:33She talks for victory.
0:44:33 > 0:44:35Didn't they used to say that in the 18th century?
0:44:35 > 0:44:38I think Samuel Johnson said it - "I talk for victory."
0:44:38 > 0:44:41She talks for victory. She doesn't talk any other way.
0:44:41 > 0:44:42You like institutions, don't you?
0:44:42 > 0:44:45I remember the two passions come out very clearly -
0:44:45 > 0:44:48the passion for reading and for libraries,
0:44:48 > 0:44:52You speak very warmly of Melbourne Public library,
0:44:52 > 0:44:55and also the passion for... if not the nuns,
0:44:55 > 0:44:58then some academics, and High Table.
0:44:58 > 0:45:00You're wistful about High Table.
0:45:01 > 0:45:04Oh, I'm a bit wistful about my academic gown.
0:45:04 > 0:45:06I loved my academic gown.
0:45:06 > 0:45:09And I flew around Cambridge on my bike with my gown,
0:45:09 > 0:45:12which was a masters gown, so it had closed sleeves,
0:45:12 > 0:45:15and the closed sleeves would fill up with air like zeppelins,
0:45:15 > 0:45:17and there I'd be... nyarrr nyarrr nyarrr...!
0:45:17 > 0:45:21With these two out-riders behind me.
0:45:21 > 0:45:23Be nice to have a photograph of that.
0:45:23 > 0:45:26Oh, I've never been interested in photographing myself.
0:45:26 > 0:45:28- You don't like photographs. You've said somewhere...- I hate them.
0:45:28 > 0:45:30You've said somewhere that
0:45:30 > 0:45:32"A photograph is the prelude to a goodbye."
0:45:32 > 0:45:34Interesting line.
0:45:34 > 0:45:35Do you remember saying that?
0:45:35 > 0:45:37Oh, goodness, did I?
0:45:37 > 0:45:39I might have.
0:45:39 > 0:45:42I think...I think on one of the last times you see your father,
0:45:42 > 0:45:44you're photographed with him,
0:45:44 > 0:45:46and I think maybe you don't see him again after that
0:45:46 > 0:45:48and you look back and you think, maybe that photograph
0:45:48 > 0:45:51was a way of saying goodbye and since then you've...
0:45:51 > 0:45:53Because it went away in his uniform pocket, yes.
0:45:56 > 0:45:58He came back, but when he came back he...wasn't there.
0:46:07 > 0:46:10There's an orphan feel about our Australians.
0:46:10 > 0:46:12An absence of fathers.
0:46:12 > 0:46:15Clive's died when he was a little boy.
0:46:15 > 0:46:17Robert's when he was 12.
0:46:17 > 0:46:20Germaine's father was a mystery to her,
0:46:20 > 0:46:22and Barry was a mystery to his.
0:46:24 > 0:46:26I've noticed that
0:46:26 > 0:46:28I bond very well with people
0:46:28 > 0:46:30who have lost their fathers,
0:46:30 > 0:46:31or their fathers went off to the war
0:46:31 > 0:46:34and both Germaine's father went off to the war,
0:46:34 > 0:46:36Clive's father went off to the war,
0:46:36 > 0:46:39and I think, in a sense, this generation of Australians
0:46:39 > 0:46:42were orphans in the sense they were...
0:46:42 > 0:46:46coming to Europe to find out why their fathers were killed
0:46:46 > 0:46:47or put in the army.
0:46:47 > 0:46:50And so for that first generation,
0:46:50 > 0:46:53I think they're reclaiming something.
0:46:58 > 0:47:01I think there's a degree in all the people we're talking about...
0:47:01 > 0:47:03in getting their own back, in a sense.
0:47:03 > 0:47:05I think there's a great degree of that.
0:47:05 > 0:47:08We're funnier than you are, we're brighter than you are.
0:47:08 > 0:47:09And I think that there's a lot of...
0:47:09 > 0:47:12That that's the impetus in a lot of those people.
0:47:14 > 0:47:16Bob Hughes got his own back
0:47:16 > 0:47:19by making himself more at home in European culture
0:47:19 > 0:47:21than most Europeans.
0:47:31 > 0:47:34This is what he left Australia to find.
0:47:34 > 0:47:36Civilisation,
0:47:36 > 0:47:39or imperial loot, as he later called it.
0:47:39 > 0:47:41Refined, he might've been,
0:47:41 > 0:47:45but he never lost his rough colonial seditiousness.
0:47:47 > 0:47:50He was like...a rugby team had come into your office.
0:47:50 > 0:47:54You thought, "This is an intellectual rugger player,
0:47:54 > 0:47:57"letting you have it between the eyes about...art".
0:48:01 > 0:48:03He spoke as he wrote,
0:48:03 > 0:48:07with the air of an aristocrat who'd just stumbled out of a bar,
0:48:07 > 0:48:09but with his syntax intact.
0:48:11 > 0:48:15You have to realise, of course, that no painting that's of any quality
0:48:15 > 0:48:17is really very easy to understand,
0:48:17 > 0:48:20because the function of a painting is always to expand one's experience
0:48:20 > 0:48:22and so if it were easy to understand
0:48:22 > 0:48:24it would fall within what you already knew.
0:48:27 > 0:48:30While Germaine and Clive were making things happen for themselves
0:48:30 > 0:48:31in Cambridge,
0:48:31 > 0:48:34Robert Hughes was wondering around Italy
0:48:34 > 0:48:36finally taking in the great art
0:48:36 > 0:48:38he hadn't been able to see with his own eyes
0:48:38 > 0:48:40in Australia.
0:48:46 > 0:48:48Seeing the devastation caused to Florence
0:48:48 > 0:48:51when the Arno burst its banks in 1966,
0:48:51 > 0:48:55convinced him of the irreplaceability of the past.
0:48:57 > 0:49:01The great centre of Renaissance art and patronage
0:49:01 > 0:49:05was now in real danger of being destroyed.
0:49:07 > 0:49:10I went to help with the salvage.
0:49:10 > 0:49:12I realised that, once lost,
0:49:12 > 0:49:16this rich history - so fragile and delicate -
0:49:16 > 0:49:18could never be brought back.
0:49:21 > 0:49:24And this confirmed a belief that art had to be my life.
0:49:27 > 0:49:30In Italy, Hughes stayed with the expatriate Australian writer,
0:49:30 > 0:49:32Alan Moorehead,
0:49:32 > 0:49:35who had been instrumental in getting Hughes to leave Australia
0:49:35 > 0:49:39and was now both a father figure to him, and instructor,
0:49:39 > 0:49:42in the hard discipline of writing.
0:49:43 > 0:49:45And then into your life comes Robert Hughes,
0:49:45 > 0:49:49whom your father has often described as his mentor.
0:49:49 > 0:49:51Tell us about Robert.
0:49:53 > 0:49:55Bob appeared in Porto Ercole
0:49:55 > 0:49:58which is where we have our house in Italy -
0:49:58 > 0:50:01and I must have been, I suppose, about 16.
0:50:01 > 0:50:05And he was this unbelievably glamorous figure -
0:50:05 > 0:50:08very, very talkative, very articulate,
0:50:08 > 0:50:10never drew breath,
0:50:10 > 0:50:12and what I particularly remember...
0:50:12 > 0:50:15My mother was not at all prim, but she was very English,
0:50:15 > 0:50:17and...every second word of Bob's
0:50:17 > 0:50:20was some expletive of some kind.
0:50:20 > 0:50:22And I remember this clash of two cultures.
0:50:22 > 0:50:25I mean, my mother loved Bob, and it was perfectly OK,
0:50:25 > 0:50:28but I remember Bob erupting into our lives.
0:50:28 > 0:50:30He seemed to be able to do everything -
0:50:30 > 0:50:33he wrote, he knew about art, he painted pictures, he talked...
0:50:33 > 0:50:35Above all he talked.
0:50:35 > 0:50:38He sat at that table and he talked and talked and talked.
0:50:38 > 0:50:41As far as I can remember, the first original work of art
0:50:41 > 0:50:44that I ever saw, that actually affected my imagination
0:50:44 > 0:50:46was by Norman Lindsay.
0:50:46 > 0:50:49I was 13 and I found it behind a stack of trays in the pantry.
0:50:49 > 0:50:52It was an etching from the late '20's.
0:50:52 > 0:50:54A very white and ample lady
0:50:54 > 0:50:56and a very tanned and muscular Pan
0:50:56 > 0:51:00and all around them was this jungle of faces and bodies.
0:51:00 > 0:51:03Great seething masses of them - satyrs and death's-heads and nymphs
0:51:03 > 0:51:07and shepherds and dwarves and Bacchuses and demons - the lot!
0:51:07 > 0:51:09What a world.
0:51:09 > 0:51:10What a pagan fantasy.
0:51:10 > 0:51:13Perhaps nobody can be corrupted by Norman Lindsay any more,
0:51:13 > 0:51:16but he certainly corrupted me.
0:51:16 > 0:51:18But although for a while I was left with the vague impression
0:51:18 > 0:51:21that one had to be surrounded by dwarves in 17th century costume
0:51:21 > 0:51:23in order to really get it on,
0:51:23 > 0:51:25I'm still profoundly grateful.
0:51:27 > 0:51:28Corrupted or not,
0:51:28 > 0:51:32Hughes hit London full frontally in the late 1960s.
0:51:33 > 0:51:35He came to see a sheila.
0:51:38 > 0:51:42And he borrowed a little car from my lodger.
0:51:43 > 0:51:48He was very good at making the most of any opportunity.
0:51:48 > 0:51:50HE CHUCKLES
0:51:52 > 0:51:55A long way from suburban Melbourne now,
0:51:55 > 0:51:58Germaine Greer was discovering there was nothing she couldn't do.
0:51:58 > 0:52:00# ..to me
0:52:00 > 0:52:07# Come on and pour it to me...#
0:52:10 > 0:52:12With a PhD from Cambridge,
0:52:12 > 0:52:14a lectureship at Warwick University
0:52:14 > 0:52:17underground magazines to write and pose for,
0:52:17 > 0:52:19Led Zeppelin to play super-groupie to,
0:52:19 > 0:52:22she had only to breathe to be subversive.
0:52:25 > 0:52:28Germaine, whom I got to know very well,
0:52:28 > 0:52:29I liked her very much,
0:52:29 > 0:52:32she was very funny and quite a naughty girl at the time.
0:52:32 > 0:52:36She bet me that she could sleep with every single member
0:52:36 > 0:52:37of the tour.
0:52:37 > 0:52:40And I took the bet and off we set off on the road
0:52:40 > 0:52:42and she got stuck on the band.
0:52:42 > 0:52:44She didn't get past the horn player,
0:52:44 > 0:52:46that was it for the rest of the tour.
0:52:46 > 0:52:49So she rather let the side down on her naughty behaviour!
0:52:52 > 0:52:55Further naughtiness was exported from Australia to Britain
0:52:55 > 0:52:59in the pages of the infamous underground magazine, Oz.
0:53:00 > 0:53:04In late '60s London, Bob and Germaine contributed to it.
0:53:04 > 0:53:06He on art, she on sexual politics,
0:53:06 > 0:53:09if you could call such pieces politics.
0:53:10 > 0:53:12Were you impressed with Robert?
0:53:12 > 0:53:16Yes, but it was difficult to be Bob's friend.
0:53:17 > 0:53:20And whenever Bob met me, he would patronise me
0:53:20 > 0:53:22and sort of present me to people as...
0:53:22 > 0:53:25And I'd think...
0:53:25 > 0:53:27"All right, I'll let you get away with it this time."
0:53:30 > 0:53:32If you wanted to get attention in 1960s Britain,
0:53:32 > 0:53:34print was your medium.
0:53:35 > 0:53:39And it was through print that our Australians made their first assault
0:53:39 > 0:53:41on the national consciousness.
0:53:42 > 0:53:44They're assuming the entitlement
0:53:44 > 0:53:47to comment on the host country,
0:53:47 > 0:53:50rather than saying, "Please like me.
0:53:50 > 0:53:52"Or please accept me."
0:53:52 > 0:53:55They are accepted because... Into the establishment itself...
0:53:55 > 0:53:59as principle literary scholars,
0:53:59 > 0:54:01film scholars, art scholars -
0:54:01 > 0:54:04because they take no prisoners.
0:54:06 > 0:54:09Clive James arrived in Fleet Street with a reputation for hard work
0:54:09 > 0:54:11and quick wit.
0:54:11 > 0:54:13If he could play the hack,
0:54:13 > 0:54:15he could play the man of letters, too.
0:54:15 > 0:54:17A combination that would soon make him
0:54:17 > 0:54:20the most read critic in the country.
0:54:20 > 0:54:23Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens -
0:54:23 > 0:54:24both friends of mine -
0:54:24 > 0:54:26Hitchens is dead now, alas -
0:54:26 > 0:54:28they both said, "Go back to Australia",
0:54:28 > 0:54:30when they'd disagree with something I said.
0:54:30 > 0:54:33But there was a smile on their face
0:54:33 > 0:54:35and anyway I would have ignored them.
0:54:35 > 0:54:39I don't think there was ever any problem with acceptance.
0:54:39 > 0:54:42If anything, there was a sort of exotic appeal.
0:54:42 > 0:54:48And I started becoming a junior member of the London literary world
0:54:48 > 0:54:53and I confess that for years, that's when I really did feel
0:54:53 > 0:54:55that I'd left Australia.
0:55:01 > 0:55:04I'm was slightly influenced, as everyone was, by Clive,
0:55:04 > 0:55:07to such an extent that my father would,
0:55:07 > 0:55:09at breakfast on Sunday mornings,
0:55:09 > 0:55:11read out a review, if I had a review in The Observer,
0:55:11 > 0:55:15he would read it out in an Australian accent
0:55:15 > 0:55:16to show the influence.
0:55:16 > 0:55:20An influence of which he disapproved?
0:55:20 > 0:55:21Which he disapproved?
0:55:21 > 0:55:24He had a lot of respect for Clive.
0:55:24 > 0:55:27It was some...cliches, but...
0:55:27 > 0:55:30it was just very fresh, his voice.
0:55:30 > 0:55:33In both senses - cheeky and new.
0:55:42 > 0:55:44Loaded with words,
0:55:44 > 0:55:46fastidiously hypercritical,
0:55:46 > 0:55:49armed intellectually to the teeth -
0:55:49 > 0:55:53our four Australians could clean up any opposition.
0:55:53 > 0:55:55But you aren't always liked for that.
0:55:57 > 0:56:01They brought a sense that the world was not divided between us and them.
0:56:01 > 0:56:04That it was full of people more like them.
0:56:04 > 0:56:07They became the poster boys and girls for Australia.
0:56:07 > 0:56:10In many, many ways, they did a huge service to their own country.
0:56:10 > 0:56:14Now, it's strange, that in their own country because they actually left,
0:56:14 > 0:56:17they've sometimes been regarded as traitors.
0:56:24 > 0:56:29Well, I just don't think Australian humour is, as yet, well enough known.
0:56:29 > 0:56:33And I think it's the duty of the practitioners of Australian humour
0:56:33 > 0:56:37to make Australian humour as known abroad as it is in Australia.
0:56:37 > 0:56:41And I hope that the time is not far distant when Australia will become
0:56:41 > 0:56:44the laughing stock of the world, as it fully deserves to be.
0:56:44 > 0:56:46GERMAINE: I'd like to go home.
0:56:46 > 0:56:48Certainly, I still love Australians
0:56:48 > 0:56:51better than any other people in the world.
0:56:52 > 0:56:55But I don't know whether...
0:56:55 > 0:56:57whether they want me. Yet.
0:56:57 > 0:57:00Or whether they ever will, or whether I'll ever be any use to them.
0:57:02 > 0:57:03But if I should see one day,
0:57:03 > 0:57:07clearly what it is I have to do for my country and my people,
0:57:07 > 0:57:09I guess I'll do it.
0:57:14 > 0:57:15So where was home now?
0:57:15 > 0:57:19And how was Australia reacting to news of their success?
0:57:19 > 0:57:21With pride you'd think,
0:57:21 > 0:57:25but Australians are suspicious of tall poppies.
0:57:27 > 0:57:30So had our brilliant creatures outgrown the country
0:57:30 > 0:57:32that had made them brilliant?
0:57:32 > 0:57:34We shall see.
0:57:34 > 0:57:39'And you're working on something associated with....
0:57:39 > 0:57:41ROBERT: 'I'm doing a Time essay on Jagger, yeah, yeah.
0:57:41 > 0:57:43'You know, it sort of interests me a great deal -
0:57:43 > 0:57:46'the sort of principle sex object of the Western world
0:57:46 > 0:57:48'should now be a man rather than a woman.
0:57:48 > 0:57:51'You see, I hear a lot of men say now
0:57:51 > 0:57:55'this has brought a sort of unrest into my household.'