0:00:02 > 0:00:04Robert Hughes, firebrand art critic.
0:00:04 > 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 > 0:00:17Exiled from Australia, all of them.
0:00:17 > 0:00:20I did believe in the great Australian ugliness.
0:00:20 > 0:00:23There was somewhere else outside of Australia.
0:00:23 > 0:00:26The action was abroad and especially in Britain
0:00:26 > 0:00:30and you'd choose Britain because it was easy to get to.
0:00:30 > 0:00:34She came on dressed as a nun and she did a strip tease.
0:00:34 > 0:00:37Had he walked into the room, three nuns might have actually
0:00:37 > 0:00:38dropped their vows.
0:00:41 > 0:00:43I was a banned writer.
0:00:43 > 0:00:45Part of you might have enjoyed that.
0:00:45 > 0:00:47Most of me enjoyed it.
0:00:47 > 0:00:52Because they actually left, they were sometimes regarded as traitors.
0:00:52 > 0:00:56What a duller place and we, a thinner place, this country
0:00:56 > 0:00:59and in a sense, some parts of the English world would have been
0:00:59 > 0:01:03if those four hadn't landed on these shores and made for London
0:01:03 > 0:01:06and got it by the throat, which is what they did!
0:01:08 > 0:01:12They were four prodigiously gifted writers, critics
0:01:12 > 0:01:14and entertainers from Australia,
0:01:14 > 0:01:18a place they considered a sleepy backwater.
0:01:18 > 0:01:22They dared to take on the world, London and New York
0:01:22 > 0:01:25and they succeeded spectacularly.
0:01:25 > 0:01:29My name's Howard Jacobson and I feel that my life, strangely,
0:01:29 > 0:01:34has been intertwined with theirs for the last 50 years.
0:01:49 > 0:01:53Late in 1964, I sailed to Australia to take up
0:01:53 > 0:01:56a lectureship at Sydney University.
0:01:59 > 0:02:02I spent the next few years enchanted by the beauty of Sydney...
0:02:03 > 0:02:07..while they tried there luck in the Britain I'd been glad to leave.
0:02:12 > 0:02:15We pick their story in 1970s London,
0:02:15 > 0:02:20where their brilliance is about to burst on the British.
0:02:23 > 0:02:27England was no longer the deferential, class-bound country
0:02:27 > 0:02:29they had found when they got here.
0:02:31 > 0:02:33Change was in the air
0:02:33 > 0:02:37and they, although they never considered themselves a group,
0:02:37 > 0:02:39saw their opportunity in it.
0:02:56 > 0:03:02In 1972, Clive James landed the job of TV critic at the Observer.
0:03:04 > 0:03:06"Call no man happy," he wrote later,
0:03:06 > 0:03:10"if he has never been ordered to go home and watch television."
0:03:12 > 0:03:16I was wasting my time with a PhD that was never going to be written
0:03:16 > 0:03:19but I was publishing stuff all over the place in Cambridge
0:03:19 > 0:03:23and also in London because one of the editors,
0:03:23 > 0:03:26at least one, the editor of the New Statesman,
0:03:26 > 0:03:29invited me to write pieces for him
0:03:29 > 0:03:31and I did and they started to catch on
0:03:31 > 0:03:34and then I wrote for the Listener.
0:03:34 > 0:03:36These magazines were very powerful at the time.
0:03:36 > 0:03:40Everybody read them, everybody who you wanted to reach read them and
0:03:40 > 0:03:45then television criticism for the Observer, so by 1972 I was on my way.
0:03:45 > 0:03:48And when Clive got hold of a television column...
0:03:48 > 0:03:50A television column in those days,
0:03:50 > 0:03:52that's what you did when you retired, it's what you did
0:03:52 > 0:03:55when you couldn't really write columns.
0:03:55 > 0:03:57He got hold of a television column
0:03:57 > 0:04:00and turned it into something everybody had to read.
0:04:00 > 0:04:03He made it his power base in terms of literary London.
0:04:03 > 0:04:04Nobody had done that before.
0:04:04 > 0:04:06The ability of yours to move across
0:04:06 > 0:04:11from popular culture to serious culture, your at-homeness in both,
0:04:11 > 0:04:15it's kind of mad to say that's Australian but it's not English.
0:04:15 > 0:04:18That carelessness of the distinctions,
0:04:18 > 0:04:22that principal carelessness of distinction, isn't English.
0:04:22 > 0:04:24Popular culture was my observation point.
0:04:24 > 0:04:28I had a natural affinity to it and nothing was more natural to me
0:04:28 > 0:04:31in the world, than to say what I thought.
0:04:31 > 0:04:34It was a big advantage to come from a country where saying what
0:04:34 > 0:04:37you think is something you do all the time.
0:04:37 > 0:04:39Sometimes people bristle when they hear it.
0:04:41 > 0:04:45Clive's form of engagement was a witty penetration,
0:04:45 > 0:04:47based on serious reading.
0:04:47 > 0:04:52He wants to, you know, sort of get everybody high on words
0:04:52 > 0:04:54and thoughts and ideas
0:04:54 > 0:04:58and things that are cleverly confounding at the same time.
0:04:58 > 0:05:02'On the South Bank Show, Melvyn Bragg was extracting, drop by drop,
0:05:02 > 0:05:06'a fascinating interview from Harold Pinter.
0:05:06 > 0:05:09'It was exactly like getting blood out of a stone,
0:05:09 > 0:05:15'except that stones do not smoke. Pinter smoked all the time.
0:05:15 > 0:05:19'In the tight head shots, there was so much smoke pouring up
0:05:19 > 0:05:23'from the screen, you began wondering whether his trousers were on fire.'
0:05:25 > 0:05:29He says that humourless people, it's not just a little disability
0:05:29 > 0:05:33that affects them, means they don't laugh at jokes.
0:05:33 > 0:05:36He said, "People without a sense of humour shouldn't be trusted
0:05:36 > 0:05:40"with anything," you know? "Don't even give them a letter to post."
0:05:42 > 0:05:46He said, "People without a sense of humour have no common sense either
0:05:46 > 0:05:51"because that's all a sense of humour is, common sense dancing."
0:05:51 > 0:05:54- Common sense dancing? - Dancing.- That's fantastic!
0:05:54 > 0:05:57Yeah, and sort of, things become clear.
0:05:57 > 0:06:01It's a very sort of luminous remark there and his criticism
0:06:01 > 0:06:04is full of things like that.
0:06:09 > 0:06:12If a sense of humour is common sense dancing,
0:06:12 > 0:06:16then the book that made Germaine famous was rage cavorting.
0:06:20 > 0:06:23Part feminist tract, part literary criticism,
0:06:23 > 0:06:25The Female Eunuch was also
0:06:25 > 0:06:30a dismantling of that Australian masculinist code known as mateship.
0:06:34 > 0:06:37Only an Australian woman hardened by the encounter
0:06:37 > 0:06:40could have drawn on such reserves of scorn.
0:06:41 > 0:06:44Everybody now knows that there is something called women's liberation.
0:06:44 > 0:06:47A lot of people think they know what it is and they don't
0:06:47 > 0:06:51but a great many more people think they'd perhaps better find out.
0:06:51 > 0:06:55Germaine came and there'd been a lot of people writing about feminism
0:06:55 > 0:06:57and tiptoe, this is the way it should be.
0:06:57 > 0:06:59"Gosh, we've got things wrong," and she came in and...
0:06:59 > 0:07:02The Female Eunuch - it was one of the books you'd roar through.
0:07:02 > 0:07:06It really was an important book and it still is, historically,
0:07:06 > 0:07:09but at that time it was important for the present.
0:07:09 > 0:07:12She was a kid when she wrote this book. I mean, she was a kid.
0:07:13 > 0:07:16She was 30?
0:07:16 > 0:07:18I just... It's just unbelievable.
0:07:18 > 0:07:2133, she must have been. 32 when it came out, I suppose.
0:07:21 > 0:07:23Unbelievable!
0:07:23 > 0:07:27She was talking about the way the patriarchy was duplicated,
0:07:27 > 0:07:29even in the black power movement,
0:07:29 > 0:07:32which, you know, was nothing new, you know.
0:07:32 > 0:07:35You can't say that but she did and, you know, you sat back
0:07:35 > 0:07:38and you thought, "Yeah, how come all the guys
0:07:38 > 0:07:41"who are actually out there with the bullhorns
0:07:41 > 0:07:43"and we're in the back rooms with the mimeograph machines?"
0:07:43 > 0:07:45But she said it.
0:07:45 > 0:07:46"I'm sick of the powder room,
0:07:46 > 0:07:50"I'm sick of pretending that some fatuous, male, self-important
0:07:50 > 0:07:54"pronouncements are the objects of my undivided attention.
0:07:54 > 0:07:58"I'm sick of going to films and plays when someone else wants to
0:07:58 > 0:08:02"and sick of having no opinions of my own about either.
0:08:02 > 0:08:07"I'm sick of being a transvestite. I refuse to be a female
0:08:07 > 0:08:10"impersonator. I'm a woman, not a castrate."
0:08:11 > 0:08:13Well, you can hear 18th century satire in The Female Eunuch.
0:08:13 > 0:08:16It's one of the joys of The Female Eunuch. I think you can.
0:08:16 > 0:08:19- Well, yippee! Yippee! - The swell of it.
0:08:19 > 0:08:21It's a very English literature book, I've always thought.
0:08:21 > 0:08:24Yes, but it's badly written, I'm afraid. I just...
0:08:24 > 0:08:26- Well, not to my ear. - I write better now.
0:08:26 > 0:08:29You'd want to, wouldn't you, after 50 years of trying?
0:08:29 > 0:08:32- Have you read Germaine Greer's book, The Female Eunuch?- No.
0:08:32 > 0:08:34- Do you want to read it?- No.
0:08:34 > 0:08:36Yes, I wouldn't mind reading it.
0:08:36 > 0:08:38Oh, I think so. What's it about?
0:08:38 > 0:08:42All I have to sort of go on is what people tell me
0:08:42 > 0:08:46about reactions that I don't have a chance to see,
0:08:46 > 0:08:49like someone saying that her cleaning lady has been talking
0:08:49 > 0:08:52about it or someone saying the barmaid in the pub was
0:08:52 > 0:08:53talking about the issue,
0:08:53 > 0:08:56because after all, they are interested in the issue,
0:08:56 > 0:08:58they are women and the issue has touched them.
0:08:58 > 0:09:01And my mum tells me interesting stories because she read the book
0:09:01 > 0:09:04when she was about...when it first came out in 1970.
0:09:04 > 0:09:06She got it from the library
0:09:06 > 0:09:08and she said that it totally changed her life.
0:09:08 > 0:09:13She was a teacher but she hadn't realised how suppressed she was.
0:09:13 > 0:09:16It changed her views on everything - on motherhood,
0:09:16 > 0:09:20on the workplace, on friendships, on the division of housework.
0:09:20 > 0:09:24I'm often struck when I meet you at a party at the number of people
0:09:24 > 0:09:28sort of waiting their turn to thank you for changing their lives.
0:09:28 > 0:09:30A number of women, "Thank you for changing my life."
0:09:30 > 0:09:32"Thank you for changing my mother's life."
0:09:32 > 0:09:36It's not going to be very long until they'll be thanking you for
0:09:36 > 0:09:39changing their grandmother's lives. That was a huge book for many.
0:09:39 > 0:09:41But do you listen to my answers?
0:09:41 > 0:09:45- Because I always say the same thing. - What do you say?
0:09:45 > 0:09:51I always say, "I didn't change your life. You changed your life
0:09:51 > 0:09:56"and if I was any help in that process, I am grateful
0:09:56 > 0:10:00"and touched, but I didn't change your life."
0:10:00 > 0:10:02The thing about The Female Eunuch was not the book,
0:10:02 > 0:10:08which I don't think is a terribly good book, it was the moment.
0:10:08 > 0:10:10That sense that you've done something so big
0:10:10 > 0:10:13that has made such a difference that everybody is talking about.
0:10:13 > 0:10:16I don't have that sense. I really don't have it.
0:10:16 > 0:10:18You didn't, at the time?
0:10:18 > 0:10:20And that's partly my libertarian background
0:10:20 > 0:10:24because that teaches me the way it would have taught any Marxian
0:10:24 > 0:10:29historian, that books don't change events, events create books.
0:10:31 > 0:10:33That's me on this month's POL...
0:10:33 > 0:10:37Whatever event created The Female Eunuch, Germaine knew how
0:10:37 > 0:10:39to write the crest of it.
0:10:39 > 0:10:42The world's most photogenic polemicist
0:10:42 > 0:10:44modelling feminism and frocks.
0:10:45 > 0:10:48Were you a fan of The Female Eunuch?
0:10:48 > 0:10:52Wasn't my line really, the Female Eunuch. It serves its purpose.
0:10:52 > 0:10:54It was a good title.
0:10:54 > 0:10:57Dame Edna would have been an avid reader of it.
0:10:57 > 0:10:59Dame Edna claims to have inspired it
0:10:59 > 0:11:02because Dame Edna had a small school in her house.
0:11:02 > 0:11:08It was called the DEAD, which means the Dame Edna Academy of Drama
0:11:08 > 0:11:12and various people... Mr and Mrs Crowe brought little Russell along.
0:11:12 > 0:11:17Mr and Mrs Blanchett brought tiny Cate. Mr and Mrs Minogue...
0:11:18 > 0:11:21They all went there and Mr and Mrs Greer
0:11:21 > 0:11:24brought their difficult daughter.
0:11:25 > 0:11:29And Edna gave her a few hints about how to...
0:11:29 > 0:11:31I mean, she watched the way Edna treated Norm
0:11:31 > 0:11:36and I think she got a few feminist ideas from Edna.
0:11:40 > 0:11:44Barry was on a slower boil, acting in Oliver!, getting drunk,
0:11:44 > 0:11:47forgetting which theatre he was appearing in
0:11:47 > 0:11:51and writing his Barry McKenzie comic strip for Private Eye.
0:11:51 > 0:11:56But in 1972, he tasted success with his film of a naive Aussie
0:11:56 > 0:12:00led astray by unscrupulous, degenerate Poms.
0:12:01 > 0:12:06Strike me pink! Hey, aren't we at Earl's Court yet?
0:12:06 > 0:12:08This is taking longer than the plane trip!
0:12:08 > 0:12:11- Nearly there, guv. - Stupid pommie bastard.
0:12:15 > 0:12:18I suggested to Barry that it would be good to make
0:12:18 > 0:12:21a film of his comic strip of Barry McKenzie, you know,
0:12:21 > 0:12:25the gormless Australian adrift in London.
0:12:25 > 0:12:28The comic strip, I thought, was screamingly funny.
0:12:28 > 0:12:30- Come on!- You wouldn't do me wrong, would you?
0:12:30 > 0:12:32ALL: No!
0:12:42 > 0:12:44I've been poisoned!
0:12:44 > 0:12:47Smells like piss! Stop mucking around...
0:12:48 > 0:12:51Now Barry, at the time that we made McKenzie, was not having
0:12:51 > 0:12:57a good time at all. Alcoholism was consuming him. He was more often to
0:12:57 > 0:13:03be found in the gutter somewhere or being beaten up in back lanes.
0:13:03 > 0:13:09So Bruce Beresford and I saw the Humphries films, saw Barry Mackenzie
0:13:09 > 0:13:12as a method of getting Barry on the straight and narrow
0:13:12 > 0:13:16and it did. It helped Barry focus his energies
0:13:16 > 0:13:18and he worked brilliantly.
0:13:18 > 0:13:20Also, he worked cheap.
0:13:20 > 0:13:24He played almost three quarters of the characters in the film,
0:13:24 > 0:13:27which saved us an immense amount of money on actors.
0:13:27 > 0:13:30Now listen, mate, I need to splash the boots.
0:13:32 > 0:13:35You know, strain the potatoes, water the horses.
0:13:39 > 0:13:40I think he wants to go the loo.
0:13:42 > 0:13:45Well, of course he made a fool of Australia.
0:13:45 > 0:13:49That's not a bad thing to do. All of us need to be made fools of
0:13:49 > 0:13:51and Barry did it brilliantly.
0:13:51 > 0:13:55I was also talking about British society as I saw it at the time
0:13:55 > 0:14:02and especially the trendy '60s, the swinging London,
0:14:02 > 0:14:07a moral quicksand in which this poor Australian, innocent,
0:14:07 > 0:14:09was sinking fast.
0:14:13 > 0:14:17So how was Bob Hughes surviving these moral quicksands?
0:14:17 > 0:14:21Heaven or hell, what does it matter, to the depths of the unknown
0:14:21 > 0:14:23to find something new.
0:14:23 > 0:14:27Outwardly prospering, a psychedelic lecturer, an art pundit,
0:14:27 > 0:14:29he was living beyond his means
0:14:29 > 0:14:32here in Chelsea, in a disintegrating marriage,
0:14:32 > 0:14:37consoling himself with booze and drugs and literature.
0:14:37 > 0:14:41But a single phone call is all it takes to change a life
0:14:41 > 0:14:44and the phone rang suddenly for Hughes.
0:14:47 > 0:14:49Bob was leading a very harem-scarem,
0:14:49 > 0:14:56sort of freelance life. He was in debt and the bailiffs were after him.
0:14:56 > 0:15:00And he was also, I would say...
0:15:00 > 0:15:02More than his fair share of controlled substances
0:15:02 > 0:15:06was flowing through that cerebral cortex at that point.
0:15:06 > 0:15:09The then managing editor of Time read a book called
0:15:09 > 0:15:13Heaven And Hell In Western Art by Robert Hughes
0:15:13 > 0:15:18and he said to himself, "Why can't Time have art writing like this?"
0:15:18 > 0:15:22And Bob was spooked by the thought that somebody who hadn't identified
0:15:22 > 0:15:26himself very clearly was seeking him from the United States
0:15:26 > 0:15:31and so he'd concluded that he was being stalked by the CIA.
0:15:32 > 0:15:38He finally did get on the phone and it turned out that it was indeed
0:15:38 > 0:15:41Time magazine seeking him and he was interested.
0:15:41 > 0:15:44When I joined Time, all my friends in London like Richard Neville
0:15:44 > 0:15:47and Co sort of looked at me and said, "Hmm, well, that's enough
0:15:47 > 0:15:50"of you, Bob. You've joined the establishment now,"
0:15:50 > 0:15:52and then reflecting upon this, I flew into New York
0:15:52 > 0:15:53and walked into the Time office
0:15:53 > 0:15:56and went up to see the managing editor's secretary, who sort of
0:15:56 > 0:15:58looked at me cursively and said,
0:15:58 > 0:16:01"Ah, yes. You're the new house hippy."
0:16:06 > 0:16:11They needed to escape to flourish but paradoxically what flourished
0:16:11 > 0:16:14were the very things that made them Australian -
0:16:14 > 0:16:20Barry's high-wire scabrousness, Germaine's louche puritanism,
0:16:20 > 0:16:25Clive's voracious mastery of every medium, big and small,
0:16:25 > 0:16:28Bob's erudite thuggery.
0:16:28 > 0:16:30What are these but expressions of Australian genius?
0:16:46 > 0:16:50You know, Bob was a brave, colourful sort of magnificent man
0:16:50 > 0:16:52and carried himself with real swagger.
0:16:52 > 0:16:54When he was the art critic at Time,
0:16:54 > 0:16:57when everybody else at Time Inc was very corporate -
0:16:57 > 0:17:00they wore a certain type of tie, a certain type of suit -
0:17:00 > 0:17:03Bob wore black leather motorcycle outfits.
0:17:03 > 0:17:05He'd ride into the office on his Triumph.
0:17:05 > 0:17:08So Bob just went counter to everything
0:17:08 > 0:17:10and just made it work for him.
0:17:10 > 0:17:13He always called me Bobbie, which was fine.
0:17:13 > 0:17:15I liked being called Bobbie
0:17:15 > 0:17:20and I usually called him Robert, trying to assign to him the dignity
0:17:20 > 0:17:26he required. So this was his kind of introduction to the United States
0:17:26 > 0:17:29and he didn't know anybody so I introduced him to everybody.
0:17:29 > 0:17:33At that time I was writing for both Vogue and New York Magazine
0:17:33 > 0:17:36and then of course he was writing for Time.
0:17:36 > 0:17:40I think it's that Kris Kristofferson song, The Silver Tongued Devil -
0:17:40 > 0:17:48"He's a walking contradiction, part truth and partly fiction."
0:17:57 > 0:18:00This is SoHo, New York.
0:18:00 > 0:18:04Run down and dangerous when Bob Hughes moved here in 1970,
0:18:04 > 0:18:07not yet the epicentre of the fashionable art world,
0:18:07 > 0:18:10but he had an eye for a grander canvas.
0:18:10 > 0:18:14He knew that in Superman's New York, the art critic could be a hero.
0:18:20 > 0:18:22- Hello, John!- Hey, Howard!
0:18:22 > 0:18:24How are you? Good to see you.
0:18:24 > 0:18:27- Fanelli's! We're here. - We're here at Fanelli's.
0:18:33 > 0:18:37- Great bar.- It's pretty amazing. - And one of his favourites?
0:18:37 > 0:18:42Yeah, it was one of is favourite hang-outs early on especially because
0:18:42 > 0:18:49most of the artists we knew about in American art lived around this bar.
0:18:49 > 0:18:51So if they drank, they'd have had a drink here?
0:18:51 > 0:18:53And many of them drank here.
0:18:53 > 0:18:56Because you always imagine the art critic is aloof from the world
0:18:56 > 0:18:59of the artists themselves, doesn't want to meet
0:18:59 > 0:19:01the actual artist. It's one thing to talk about art
0:19:01 > 0:19:04but who wants to meet them? Because you might get a punch in the face.
0:19:04 > 0:19:06He must have feared that.
0:19:06 > 0:19:10Well, I think that he had no fear of that
0:19:10 > 0:19:15and I think he also kind of relished the idea that he was sitting here
0:19:15 > 0:19:21with a glass of whisky in amongst them. "Here I am. I said all I had
0:19:21 > 0:19:24"to say about you. What do you have to say?"
0:19:24 > 0:19:28If the cliche of modern sculpture used to be a piece of stone
0:19:28 > 0:19:32chewing gum with a hole in it, then the cliche of video art
0:19:32 > 0:19:37is a grainy close-up of some UCLA graduate rubbing a cockroach
0:19:37 > 0:19:40to pulp on his left nipple for 16 minutes.
0:19:42 > 0:19:45In American culture, whether you're talking about politics or
0:19:45 > 0:19:49you're talking about art, you obey sort of certain rules of decorum
0:19:49 > 0:19:53and that's why when Bob didn't in some of the Time pieces,
0:19:53 > 0:19:58it had this kind of fantastic force of detonation.
0:19:58 > 0:20:02Bob was a good hater, he was a good rager, he was a good ranter
0:20:02 > 0:20:07but the things he hated and raged against and ranted about
0:20:07 > 0:20:10were important and noble causes.
0:20:10 > 0:20:13When I became art critic at the New Yorker he gave me some good advice.
0:20:13 > 0:20:17He said, "Always remember, the art world is always the enemy of art."
0:20:19 > 0:20:24You know, Bob used to get up very early in the morning and blaze away,
0:20:24 > 0:20:29in those days at the typewriter and then later at the computer,
0:20:29 > 0:20:31and then he would have lunch
0:20:31 > 0:20:35and take a nap and these naps became notorious
0:20:35 > 0:20:38around the Time corridors because people, other writers, would make
0:20:38 > 0:20:42jokes about the fact that, "Oh, well, I suppose Bob is snoozing now.
0:20:42 > 0:20:44"It's his nap time."
0:20:44 > 0:20:47Once in a while I had to bring them up short by saying,
0:20:47 > 0:20:51"Listen, before you come to work in the morning, Bob has written
0:20:51 > 0:20:54"more words than you are ever going to write all week and better words
0:20:54 > 0:20:58"at that, so, you know, don't make fun of his naps.
0:20:58 > 0:21:00"They're well earned."
0:21:00 > 0:21:03- Did you like his art criticism? - Yes, I did.
0:21:03 > 0:21:06I mean, I read it with the greatest pleasure now.
0:21:06 > 0:21:08He was very good about artists,
0:21:08 > 0:21:14that really, long before we knew much about them, you know.
0:21:14 > 0:21:18I mean, he was there on the spot in New York where it was all happening.
0:21:26 > 0:21:29Although Germaine Greer didn't roar in on a motorbike,
0:21:29 > 0:21:32after the international success of The Female Eunuch,
0:21:32 > 0:21:34she too was ready to storm New York.
0:21:36 > 0:21:39When the American press started coming to talk to me,
0:21:39 > 0:21:43one of the women from Vanity Fair or something said to me,
0:21:43 > 0:21:46"You do realise, do you, that your life will never
0:21:46 > 0:21:50"be the same again?" and I said,
0:21:50 > 0:21:55"I don't want my life not to be the same again. I like my life."
0:21:55 > 0:21:59I like teaching, being involved in the underground,
0:21:59 > 0:22:01I like being involved with Oz.
0:22:01 > 0:22:05"I don't want to be famous," is what I could've said, but...
0:22:07 > 0:22:11I didn't really know what a bore being famous is.
0:22:11 > 0:22:15Germaine Greer did have a real voice.
0:22:16 > 0:22:20First of all it was the birth of feminism in the United States
0:22:20 > 0:22:23and she obviously is a strong person.
0:22:23 > 0:22:25Actually out of the four of them,
0:22:25 > 0:22:30the person I read was Germaine Greer and I think everybody read it.
0:22:30 > 0:22:33If I had to choose between Germaine Greer and Gloria Stein,
0:22:33 > 0:22:35give me Germaine Greer.
0:22:35 > 0:22:38I mean, she was a serious person, not a narcissist.
0:22:38 > 0:22:40She wasn't selling herself.
0:22:51 > 0:22:53'I would like to welcome you...'
0:22:53 > 0:22:55Such was the notoriety of The Female Eunuch,
0:22:55 > 0:22:59that Norman Mailer, the great male heavyweight writer of the time,
0:22:59 > 0:23:03squared up against its author in a much-publicised debate
0:23:03 > 0:23:05in New York's Town Hall.
0:23:06 > 0:23:07A documentary captured it,
0:23:07 > 0:23:11Town Bloody Hall it was called - Germaine's phrase.
0:23:11 > 0:23:13It was more a love-in than a debate.
0:23:13 > 0:23:17The novelist smitten, the young feminist flattered.
0:23:17 > 0:23:22Positively Shakespearean, it was - Antony and Juliet.
0:23:25 > 0:23:29Norman Mailer had made many statements that were anti-feminist
0:23:29 > 0:23:34and the feminists absolutely hated him, so why not put him on the
0:23:34 > 0:23:36panel with the great Germaine Greer?
0:23:36 > 0:23:40Who else could answer him, we thought.
0:23:40 > 0:23:43The young and formidable lady writer,
0:23:43 > 0:23:45Miss Germaine Greer from England.
0:23:49 > 0:23:52Germaine Greer at that time, there was a beauty and a glow
0:23:52 > 0:23:57about her and an attitude, an attitude.
0:23:57 > 0:24:01That I am having to confront one of the most powerful figures
0:24:01 > 0:24:05in my own imagination, the being, I think,
0:24:05 > 0:24:09most privileged in male elitist society,
0:24:09 > 0:24:14namely the masculine artist, the pinnacle of the masculine elite.
0:24:15 > 0:24:19And she was so brilliant and she came up with these remarks.
0:24:19 > 0:24:22Why do you think the whole event was called Town Bloody Hall?
0:24:26 > 0:24:27It's obviously a...
0:24:27 > 0:24:30Because I think it's too serious to do it just so
0:24:30 > 0:24:33I can defend myself against hecklers in the Town bloody Hall!
0:24:33 > 0:24:35APPLAUSE
0:24:35 > 0:24:38It was a bit scary, the whole thing.
0:24:38 > 0:24:42You offered to have admired him and offered to be slaying the father
0:24:42 > 0:24:45in a way, in your fight with Mailer. Did you admire him?
0:24:45 > 0:24:47Of course I admired him
0:24:47 > 0:24:52but I loved him too because quite early on, Dick Fontaine who made
0:24:52 > 0:24:56the film about the raising of the Pentagon with Mailer,
0:24:56 > 0:24:58Dick Fontaine had said to him,
0:24:58 > 0:25:01"Oh, you have to understand that Germaine's actually
0:25:01 > 0:25:07"quite vulnerable," and Mailer said, "Of course she's vulnerable,
0:25:07 > 0:25:08"she's a writer!"
0:25:09 > 0:25:13I thought, "Norman Mailer called me a writer! I'm a writer!
0:25:13 > 0:25:15"Wow! Woo!"
0:25:15 > 0:25:20Norman Mailer calls you a writer, guess what, you're a writer, damn!
0:25:20 > 0:25:23But it wasn't just for being a writer that Germaine appeared
0:25:23 > 0:25:25on the covers of magazines -
0:25:25 > 0:25:27the price for fame being condescension.
0:25:29 > 0:25:33Her refusal to lead with that kind of female, compassionate...
0:25:33 > 0:25:37I understand, especially when we talk about Germaine being surrounded by
0:25:37 > 0:25:40these giant male intellects,
0:25:40 > 0:25:44all of whom had a fierce and overconfident masculinity.
0:25:44 > 0:25:48But I thank God for the courage of the uncompromising female.
0:25:50 > 0:25:52Yes, I'm afraid the gladies are a bit wilted.
0:25:52 > 0:25:54Ah, well, look at these, look at the unusual colours.
0:25:54 > 0:25:56Have you got colour, viewers?
0:25:56 > 0:26:00Germaine wasn't the only Australian beauty exciting crowds
0:26:00 > 0:26:02wherever she went.
0:26:02 > 0:26:05They match my ocelot outfit rather, don't they?
0:26:05 > 0:26:07By the mid '70s, Edna Everage,
0:26:07 > 0:26:11once a plain Australian housewife, now a superstar,
0:26:11 > 0:26:14had been made a Dame by the Australian Prime Minister,
0:26:14 > 0:26:15Gough Whitlam.
0:26:21 > 0:26:23Hello, my darling!
0:26:23 > 0:26:26- Hello, darling.- Hello, dear.
0:26:26 > 0:26:28The joy of working with comedians, I found,
0:26:28 > 0:26:29I love working with comedians,
0:26:29 > 0:26:32the trick's always been to back off and understand the rhythm
0:26:32 > 0:26:35that they work at, and I loved doing that with Barry,
0:26:35 > 0:26:38cos again, it was in the eyes. I could see, he'd look at me when
0:26:38 > 0:26:43he needed me and I could see this, put something to shift him this way
0:26:43 > 0:26:46or that way, it's fascinating, fascinating working with him.
0:26:46 > 0:26:48That's the first time I've seen your legs.
0:26:48 > 0:26:52Well, I have very, very nice legs, though I say it myself, ladies,
0:26:52 > 0:26:54and I'm not a bit ashamed to show them off.
0:26:54 > 0:26:57I think I'm very lucky at my age to have them.
0:26:57 > 0:26:59That's true, yes, in any shape or form.
0:26:59 > 0:27:02And I have to thank Michael Parkinson
0:27:02 > 0:27:08for really giving me a good thrust forward in the early '70s,
0:27:08 > 0:27:12and I still think he was a great interviewer, because he could,
0:27:12 > 0:27:17not unlike yourself, he could submerge his own personality
0:27:17 > 0:27:22and he could take a step aside, you see.
0:27:22 > 0:27:26He didn't see himself as the star of the interview.
0:27:26 > 0:27:28There's a lesson here somewhere.
0:27:28 > 0:27:31Barry McKenzie used to chunder all over the place
0:27:31 > 0:27:33and fall down legless wherever he could.
0:27:33 > 0:27:35There's Sir Les, who we're going to meet in a moment,
0:27:35 > 0:27:36who now doubt will be sozzled,
0:27:36 > 0:27:39and you yourself are a teetotaller, aren't you?
0:27:39 > 0:27:44Yes, I am. I'm totally a teetotaller. I was, in fact, such a boozer
0:27:44 > 0:27:48that I was offered a senior job at the BBC and that shows you...
0:27:53 > 0:27:57Was he different to interview in Australia?
0:27:57 > 0:28:00No, no. I didn't find that at all.
0:28:00 > 0:28:04Sir Les might have been a little bit more vulgar in Australia,
0:28:04 > 0:28:06although that's difficult to imagine.
0:28:08 > 0:28:11I'm passionate about Sir Les, a lot of people don't get Sir Les, do you?
0:28:11 > 0:28:17Well, women don't like Sir Les, you see. Men generally get Sir Les.
0:28:17 > 0:28:21Have you seen the false dong hanging down?
0:28:21 > 0:28:23Well, he was sitting next to an actress called Jackie Weaver,
0:28:23 > 0:28:26an Australian actress, a very bonny actress
0:28:26 > 0:28:28who had a comeback very recently,
0:28:28 > 0:28:31and he shook her by the hand and put the hand on the...
0:28:31 > 0:28:33Sorry. It's a brand-new...
0:28:36 > 0:28:38Are you one of these women who doesn't go for Les Patterson?
0:28:38 > 0:28:40Oh, no, I adore Les Patterson.
0:28:40 > 0:28:44Les Patterson is such a parody of all those men I grew up with,
0:28:44 > 0:28:49those media moguls and those sexist oafs, and that sexism is still
0:28:49 > 0:28:53innate in the language, if you think about in the workplace in Australia.
0:28:53 > 0:28:56If a man is seen to be good at work, he's called assertive
0:28:56 > 0:28:59and a go-getter and, you know, boss material.
0:28:59 > 0:29:01A woman seen with the same drive
0:29:01 > 0:29:04is seen as a bitch and a ball breaker, more blatant in Australia.
0:29:04 > 0:29:07At least you can see the enemy, the battle lines are drawn
0:29:07 > 0:29:10and you can see the enemy. I find the sexism in Britain, for example,
0:29:10 > 0:29:13much more insidious and hidden away.
0:29:15 > 0:29:17He's a very good friend of mine and...
0:29:17 > 0:29:20I never got into it. This is a misconception.
0:29:20 > 0:29:22The '70s had seen our four Australians coruscating
0:29:22 > 0:29:28on the page, but there was a bigger audience waiting to be dazzled.
0:29:28 > 0:29:32By the '80s, you had only to turn on your television to see them.
0:29:32 > 0:29:35One of the things we're told women really like is oral sex.
0:29:35 > 0:29:38Oh! Do they get enough of that?
0:29:38 > 0:29:40Well, look! Look! Did you see his face?
0:29:42 > 0:29:44Need I say more?!
0:29:44 > 0:29:46Sir Les Patterson.
0:29:46 > 0:29:49You see bikes and bikers have an unfortunate image
0:29:49 > 0:29:50in the United States.
0:29:50 > 0:29:52Here's Billy Connolly!
0:29:52 > 0:29:54He's Stephen Fry!
0:29:54 > 0:29:55Michael Palin!
0:29:57 > 0:30:00Good evening and welcome to a brand series of the talk show
0:30:00 > 0:30:04that puts conversation on television, and why shouldn't it?
0:30:04 > 0:30:07Look at the way television gets into conversation.
0:30:07 > 0:30:12How, when everything was going so well in the literary sense, did I...
0:30:12 > 0:30:15decide that television career was possible too?
0:30:15 > 0:30:17And the answer is, I followed my nose.
0:30:17 > 0:30:20I got asked and I couldn't resist it.
0:30:20 > 0:30:23Because that little characteristic, that had been there
0:30:23 > 0:30:29from the beginning since I was two years old, in my memory,
0:30:29 > 0:30:33made itself manifest. I'm a performer and I was asked to perform,
0:30:33 > 0:30:36and also, of course, it paid the bills.
0:30:36 > 0:30:37We didn't like each other to start with.
0:30:37 > 0:30:41He was writing television criticism for the Observer.
0:30:41 > 0:30:45Russell Harty and I were endeavouring to do a talk show,
0:30:45 > 0:30:48and he wrote a piece once where he said of both Russell and myself,
0:30:48 > 0:30:51"Why don't they go do something useful like go and invade Russia?"
0:30:51 > 0:30:53I took umbrage of this, I thought,
0:30:53 > 0:30:55"That's a rather nasty thing to say."
0:30:55 > 0:30:59So when he took my job over, the job I had before...
0:30:59 > 0:31:03I did a talk show, Cinema Granada, which he did very badly
0:31:03 > 0:31:07because he didn't understand how to write for television.
0:31:07 > 0:31:10he wrote his column and then tried to read it. Well, it didn't work.
0:31:10 > 0:31:11So I wrote to him and I said,
0:31:11 > 0:31:13"We're nearly in Moscow, would you like to join us?"
0:31:13 > 0:31:16- and from that point on... - Revenge is sweet!
0:31:16 > 0:31:18From that point on, we became friends.
0:31:18 > 0:31:21I was persuaded, if I didn't already think so myself,
0:31:21 > 0:31:24that entertainment was the sharp edge of television.
0:31:24 > 0:31:28That if I really wanted to be of value, that's what I should do,
0:31:28 > 0:31:31and since I could do it, I did it.
0:31:31 > 0:31:35After the initial shock, I was glad to see that nudity was still
0:31:35 > 0:31:39a feature of Berlin beach life, and I resolved to try it next time.
0:31:41 > 0:31:42Perhaps at night.
0:31:42 > 0:31:47They had something like 17 million viewers when it was at its height.
0:31:47 > 0:31:50And people would be talking about it for the next few days.
0:31:50 > 0:31:54"Did you see Clive James the other night? Absolute classic."
0:31:54 > 0:31:57You'd hear that a dozen times a day after one of the shows.
0:31:57 > 0:32:01So you didn't feel that your telly career interfered with
0:32:01 > 0:32:04the other ambitions that you had? To be a serious literary...
0:32:04 > 0:32:09Yes, I did, and I knew that it would, because television is very demanding,
0:32:09 > 0:32:11especially if you write your own stuff.
0:32:11 > 0:32:14You're going to be in the office five or six days a week for every hour
0:32:14 > 0:32:18you get on air, and I was for 20 years.
0:32:18 > 0:32:21And you must have known you'd have to beat back the idea
0:32:21 > 0:32:23that you're a well-known television personality,
0:32:23 > 0:32:26you do popular things, you reach ordinary people.
0:32:26 > 0:32:30You can't be expected to be taken seriously as a literary figure.
0:32:30 > 0:32:31Yes, I'm still fighting it.
0:32:31 > 0:32:35For example, I write a serious book, say, my latest book of poems,
0:32:35 > 0:32:39but these books might suffer the fate that a serious editor
0:32:39 > 0:32:42will give them to an unserious reviewer.
0:32:42 > 0:32:44I don't think any culture is negligible,
0:32:44 > 0:32:47except possibly that of New Jersey.
0:32:47 > 0:32:51James once warned Hughes that if he did too much TV,
0:32:51 > 0:32:53nobody who mattered would take him seriously.
0:32:55 > 0:32:59"I'm glad," Hughes wrote later, "That I ignored his advice
0:32:59 > 0:33:01"and happier still that he did."
0:33:02 > 0:33:06Hughes' first great television series was The Shock Of The New.
0:33:06 > 0:33:09People said that he'd knocked the title off from somebody else...
0:33:09 > 0:33:12The series itself was all his, and the most shocking
0:33:12 > 0:33:15and the most new thing about it was Hughes himself.
0:33:15 > 0:33:19I don't think we are ever again obliged to look at a plywood box,
0:33:19 > 0:33:22or a row of bricks on the floor, or a video tape of some twit
0:33:22 > 0:33:26from the University of Central Paranoia sticking pins in himself
0:33:26 > 0:33:29and think, "This is the real thing."
0:33:29 > 0:33:32I grew up... When was Shock of the New?
0:33:32 > 0:33:341980, I think it was...
0:33:34 > 0:33:38I was a student then and it was, you know, we were riveted to it,
0:33:38 > 0:33:41Every week we watched The Shock of the New,
0:33:41 > 0:33:48and we had his sort of lyrical, aggressive, erudite...
0:33:48 > 0:33:53clear explanation of the history of modernism, really.
0:33:53 > 0:33:58We went to Houston once, to the Rothko Chapel in Houston,
0:33:58 > 0:34:02filmed there, and it was incredibly serene and quiet,
0:34:02 > 0:34:06and there were these huge, great paintings on the wall,
0:34:06 > 0:34:08these great, dark mauve...
0:34:08 > 0:34:10and we all thought they were just dark paintings,
0:34:10 > 0:34:13but actually, when you listened to what he talked about,
0:34:13 > 0:34:18they just came alive. You suddenly saw that they worked in that place.
0:34:18 > 0:34:21The world is drained out of them, now does that make them
0:34:21 > 0:34:23religious art?
0:34:23 > 0:34:26Holier men than I have thought so in this chapel,
0:34:26 > 0:34:30and if I have my doubts, it's because they're so very withdrawn.
0:34:30 > 0:34:34The horizons and storms of earlier romantic sublimities have gone
0:34:34 > 0:34:38and what is left as the soul subject of contemplation is a void.
0:34:45 > 0:34:48There was no superiority, it was absolutely...
0:34:48 > 0:34:49He was one of us.
0:34:49 > 0:34:52I suppose that's what you find about Australians, you know,
0:34:52 > 0:34:55there's no pretensions, there's nobody saying,
0:34:55 > 0:34:58"I'm sorry, I can't talk to you, you're not important enough."
0:34:58 > 0:35:00We never had any of that feeling with Bob.
0:35:00 > 0:35:04He was, of course, always late with his scripts, you know.
0:35:04 > 0:35:07He was always saying "Oh, yeah, I posted those last week,"
0:35:07 > 0:35:09and we knew he hadn't written them at all.
0:35:09 > 0:35:12So he was forever writing things at the last minute,
0:35:12 > 0:35:14and that's why they were so brilliant because he had a deadline,
0:35:14 > 0:35:16and he was doing these things.
0:35:16 > 0:35:18So he'd be sitting in his room tip-tapping away,
0:35:18 > 0:35:20minutes before we were filming.
0:35:20 > 0:35:22It was hugely influential.
0:35:22 > 0:35:26At the end of it, I mean, I quoted him in one of my lectures, I say,
0:35:26 > 0:35:29"The avant garde is now a period style."
0:35:29 > 0:35:33And he said that in 1980, and that was very close to the end
0:35:33 > 0:35:37of modernism, really, to call that shot then.
0:35:37 > 0:35:39Yes, he pronounced more or less the end of modernism.
0:35:39 > 0:35:42In some ways, I mean, you know, now it's sort of,
0:35:42 > 0:35:45there's a lot of art commentators will agree that modernism
0:35:45 > 0:35:49fizzled out mid-60s, probably, mid-70s, something like that.
0:35:49 > 0:35:51So to call that shot in 1980,
0:35:51 > 0:35:55that's a nanosecond in cultural history terms.
0:35:57 > 0:36:01Dame Edna was to endure longer than modernism.
0:36:01 > 0:36:04By the 1980s, she had outgrown Moonee Ponds.
0:36:04 > 0:36:07The world was now her playground.
0:36:07 > 0:36:09It wasn't so much that she mixed with royalty,
0:36:09 > 0:36:11as that royalty mixed with her.
0:36:13 > 0:36:17I'm curious at what point you felt that Edna began to escape.
0:36:17 > 0:36:20Novelists always talk about the fact that there's the moment you know
0:36:20 > 0:36:23it's working when the characters are determining what happens
0:36:23 > 0:36:26and you're not, and there's a moment, isn't there,
0:36:26 > 0:36:30or maybe there were stages in which Edna stops being a satire
0:36:30 > 0:36:33on a suburban housewife and becomes something altogether?
0:36:33 > 0:36:35She starts to fulfil another function.
0:36:35 > 0:36:37When did she escape you?
0:36:37 > 0:36:40It starts to be about fame, you know, and celebrity.
0:36:40 > 0:36:43The character of Edna, or Sandy, or even Les Patterson,
0:36:43 > 0:36:48they do really seem to have a life outside of me.
0:36:48 > 0:36:51I can't always decide what's going to happen to them.
0:36:51 > 0:36:56She's gorgeous - Zsa Zsa Gabor!
0:36:56 > 0:36:58APPLAUSE
0:37:05 > 0:37:07SCREAMS
0:37:11 > 0:37:14What she became is what Barry once described brilliantly to me,
0:37:14 > 0:37:17he said, "Dame Edna looks like a bird of paradise -
0:37:17 > 0:37:19"in reality, she's a vulture,"
0:37:19 > 0:37:22and I think that's exactly the right description of it.
0:37:22 > 0:37:27And I think that Barry uses Dame Edna as a licence to do things
0:37:27 > 0:37:31perhaps that he might not do when he's himself.
0:37:31 > 0:37:35A man in a dress, so it's a licence for mischief!
0:37:37 > 0:37:39No, I'm sorry.
0:37:39 > 0:37:42I'm sorry... Please.
0:37:42 > 0:37:44I had to abort her. I did.
0:37:46 > 0:37:48Is she going to be all right?
0:37:48 > 0:37:52No, she was wearing a natural fur, and I'm sorry, I'm a conservationist.
0:37:52 > 0:37:57And as for Dame Edna, she'd just become impossible.
0:37:57 > 0:38:01She's now so bizarre and far flung, she doesn't...
0:38:01 > 0:38:04she has nothing to with Moonee Ponds any more,
0:38:04 > 0:38:07but when she first appeared on the scene, she was Melbourne.
0:38:07 > 0:38:10You preferred her before she became Dame Edna, superstar?
0:38:10 > 0:38:12Oh, of course.
0:38:13 > 0:38:18Myself, I think this misses the genius of Dame Edna's evolution
0:38:18 > 0:38:22from a mere satirical portrait of a suburban housewife
0:38:22 > 0:38:27into a figure of orgiastic comedy, unrestrained and terrifying,
0:38:27 > 0:38:30a supreme affirmation of unfettered life.
0:38:36 > 0:38:40At the height of their careers, our brilliant creatures
0:38:40 > 0:38:42turned their thoughts to the Australia they'd left.
0:38:44 > 0:38:47The other side of the exhilaration of leaving home
0:38:47 > 0:38:49is a longing to go back.
0:38:52 > 0:38:56They've done great things, not least, it seems to me,
0:38:56 > 0:38:59because they have done them far from home,
0:38:59 > 0:39:04a long way from any comfortable, consoling sense of belonging.
0:39:09 > 0:39:14Let me try and put my finger on the nostalgia for Australia.
0:39:14 > 0:39:18The big challenge that Australia offers is you're there.
0:39:18 > 0:39:21You're living in a country that's quite hard to improve on.
0:39:21 > 0:39:23If you're in a lucky part of it, you're faced with
0:39:23 > 0:39:25incredible amount of beauty.
0:39:25 > 0:39:29In an Australian suburb at the age of 18,
0:39:29 > 0:39:32I played the music of Delius and Vaughn Williams
0:39:32 > 0:39:35on the gramophone and dreamt of England.
0:39:36 > 0:39:41Now, so often in reluctant exile,
0:39:41 > 0:39:45I hear Summer Night On The River...
0:39:45 > 0:39:49and it is Melbourne's Yarra I picture in my mind's eye.
0:39:54 > 0:39:56You have to answer the question,
0:39:56 > 0:39:59if I can't be happy here, where can I be happy?
0:39:59 > 0:40:02And the answer is...
0:40:02 > 0:40:04no, nobody can be that happy.
0:40:10 > 0:40:14I don't think I could've come from anywhere else. I really don't.
0:40:14 > 0:40:20I think...my impudence is Australian,
0:40:20 > 0:40:23my insensitivity is Australian,
0:40:23 > 0:40:27my lack of respect for social nuance
0:40:27 > 0:40:31and position is Australian.
0:40:33 > 0:40:35The place they once couldn't wait to leave
0:40:35 > 0:40:38was taking its revenge on their imaginations.
0:40:39 > 0:40:43Clive's first memoir was published in 1980
0:40:43 > 0:40:47to the warmest of receptions. For all its hilarity, it is shot through
0:40:47 > 0:40:51with a sort of anticipation of melancholy,
0:40:51 > 0:40:55giving readers all they normally have to go to several books to find.
0:40:55 > 0:40:58The Americans call it a break-out book,
0:40:58 > 0:41:02and that, in Britain anyway, was my break-out book.
0:41:02 > 0:41:05Unreliable Memoirs did unexpectedly well.
0:41:05 > 0:41:07Television didn't get in the road of that.
0:41:07 > 0:41:13I wrote that one as if I was breathing the air,
0:41:13 > 0:41:15it just seemed the natural thing to do.
0:41:15 > 0:41:19It didn't occur to me not to do it, and it was only later on that
0:41:19 > 0:41:21I realised I'd hit a lucky streak.
0:41:22 > 0:41:25I was writing something I should write more of.
0:41:25 > 0:41:28Unreliable Memoirs is the funniest book, besides your books,
0:41:28 > 0:41:30that I have ever, ever read.
0:41:30 > 0:41:36Don't you think? It's just a perfect little comic masterpiece.
0:41:36 > 0:41:39It's a joy. You could never tire of reading it.
0:41:39 > 0:41:43The last couple of sentences, I actually had in my brain
0:41:43 > 0:41:47since Sydney University. They were there for 20 years.
0:41:47 > 0:41:49And then I wrote the book that went in front of them.
0:41:49 > 0:41:51What is the last sentence?
0:41:51 > 0:41:56It's about the light on the bridge calling us home.
0:41:58 > 0:42:02"Pulsing like a beacon through the days and nights, the birthplace
0:42:02 > 0:42:06"of the fortunate sends out its invisible waves of recollection.
0:42:06 > 0:42:09"It always has and it always will,
0:42:09 > 0:42:12"until even the last of us come home."
0:42:13 > 0:42:16That book was written like a poem.
0:42:16 > 0:42:19I had all kinds of phrases lying around for years.
0:42:19 > 0:42:20It's not written like a novel.
0:42:20 > 0:42:24He was always very funny about Australia,
0:42:24 > 0:42:29and of course, Unreliable Memoirs and all that.
0:42:29 > 0:42:33We were on holiday and I was staying with him in Biarritz,
0:42:33 > 0:42:37where he'd rented a place, and we were walking along
0:42:37 > 0:42:40one evening and he said,
0:42:40 > 0:42:42"It's just like Australia here,
0:42:42 > 0:42:49"except that a giant, blood-sucking spider
0:42:49 > 0:42:52"hasn't just attached itself to your leg."
0:42:52 > 0:42:55He was very funny about how red in tooth and claw Australia is.
0:42:57 > 0:43:00Germaine Greer wrote her own take on her childhood and family,
0:43:00 > 0:43:03Daddy, We Hardly Knew You.
0:43:03 > 0:43:06It was a very different work from Unreliable Memoirs,
0:43:06 > 0:43:09more touching than you'd expect, but also, as you'd expect,
0:43:09 > 0:43:11not funny.
0:43:12 > 0:43:16I remember my first meeting with my father. I was six years old
0:43:16 > 0:43:19and my mother and I went to Spencer Street Station.
0:43:19 > 0:43:23We walked along the station looking at all these army greatcoats,
0:43:23 > 0:43:26and they all passed and met other people and we kept on looking
0:43:26 > 0:43:29and looking, until there was one man left, and my mother walked up
0:43:29 > 0:43:33with her head on one side and said, "Reg?"
0:43:33 > 0:43:37And he, this old man said, "Peg?" That was my father,
0:43:37 > 0:43:39and I thought...
0:43:39 > 0:43:42because there is this wonderful photograph of this laughing cavalier
0:43:42 > 0:43:44on the mantelpiece, and I got this old man instead.
0:43:46 > 0:43:48It's a very interesting book and one of the things you say...
0:43:48 > 0:43:52I think it's my best book, actually, by miles. Daddy, We Hardly Knew You.
0:43:52 > 0:43:55Yes, I like it very much indeed.
0:43:55 > 0:43:58I like the sort of relentless pursuit of him.
0:43:58 > 0:44:00It's like a thriller actually,
0:44:00 > 0:44:02tracking him down and tracking him down.
0:44:02 > 0:44:04My generation grew up fatherless, at least till
0:44:04 > 0:44:06we were six or seven.
0:44:06 > 0:44:08In the case of Clive, he grew up fatherless altogether.
0:44:08 > 0:44:11Our relationships with our fathers were never quite right.
0:44:11 > 0:44:14One of the reasons why we're the way we are is because we lacked that
0:44:14 > 0:44:17- paternal element.- She's right. She's put her finger right on it.
0:44:17 > 0:44:19It's the lack of an emotional outlet.
0:44:19 > 0:44:23In my own books, it's just a glaring absence, the absence of my father
0:44:23 > 0:44:25and what my mother was faced with, bringing me up after the war.
0:44:25 > 0:44:28This is just the key subject, but it's not the central subject,
0:44:28 > 0:44:30because I really can't think of a way of treating it.
0:44:41 > 0:44:46In the Fatal Shore, Bob Hughes found a way of treating fathers,
0:44:46 > 0:44:47forefathers, anyway.
0:44:47 > 0:44:52This epic of Australia's colonisation burned with the rage
0:44:52 > 0:44:53of the disinherited.
0:44:56 > 0:45:01He speaks of the colour of the waves and the feel of the wind,
0:45:01 > 0:45:09the smells... And somehow he encapsulates all that different stuff
0:45:09 > 0:45:14in one moment where you're actually thrust back in history
0:45:14 > 0:45:15and you feel like,
0:45:15 > 0:45:19"My God, I'm on this boat with these mortal suffering fools."
0:45:19 > 0:45:22It had an enormous effect on me.
0:45:22 > 0:45:27It was one of the couple of books that made complete sense
0:45:27 > 0:45:33of my country and the total cruelty of its founding.
0:45:33 > 0:45:38And which was so continually, richly, beautifully written,
0:45:38 > 0:45:42and I thought it was a work of genius, a book for the ages
0:45:42 > 0:45:43and a book for us for the ages.
0:45:43 > 0:45:49To write The Fatal Shore, to hold Australia to look at our history,
0:45:49 > 0:45:53not through the view of, you know, a romanticism of colonisation,
0:45:53 > 0:46:01but the brutal, bloody reality, is a painful and shocking thing to do,
0:46:01 > 0:46:07and it's unsurprising that we don't celebrate Robert to the degree
0:46:07 > 0:46:10that we should, because he's made us uncomfortable.
0:46:15 > 0:46:18In fact, Australians found it hard to forgive any of them
0:46:18 > 0:46:22for having kicked their heels clear of the country years before.
0:46:22 > 0:46:26They were there, we were here.
0:46:26 > 0:46:30They weren't, in fact, central to what was happening here.
0:46:30 > 0:46:34They'd taken their energies overseas, leaving some of us here
0:46:34 > 0:46:40to try and, well, overcome the cultural cringe by organising
0:46:40 > 0:46:42a cultural binge.
0:46:42 > 0:46:46Visits from any of them were like Royal tours.
0:46:46 > 0:46:49Years went by when we all got it in the neck
0:46:49 > 0:46:52from resident Australian critics.
0:46:52 > 0:46:56It's all smoke and mirrors, surprise, surprise.
0:46:56 > 0:46:59Germaine, do you sometimes just sit in England and think,
0:46:59 > 0:47:03"I've got something crazy to say, I'll jump on a flight to Australia!"
0:47:05 > 0:47:08I think the truth was that although...
0:47:08 > 0:47:12we might not have carried the flag highest, we'd carried it furthest.
0:47:12 > 0:47:15We were part of Australia's image.
0:47:15 > 0:47:18On the whole, we've made Australia look like what it is.
0:47:18 > 0:47:21Well, we don't like people who go away.
0:47:21 > 0:47:25We don't like people who act grand.
0:47:29 > 0:47:33But it was a mighty hand in the Australian public opinion
0:47:33 > 0:47:34that cut Hughes down.
0:47:35 > 0:47:39Police say there was a head-on collision more than 100km
0:47:39 > 0:47:41south of Broome.
0:47:42 > 0:47:46In 1999, while on a fishing trip in North-west Australia,
0:47:46 > 0:47:49Robert Hughes nearly died in a head-on collision.
0:47:49 > 0:47:54"Bloodier than Banquo," he wrote later. Shakespearean to the last.
0:47:55 > 0:47:58He said several things about the...
0:47:58 > 0:48:01that four hours where he thought he was going to die
0:48:01 > 0:48:03because he thought the car was going to catch on fire
0:48:03 > 0:48:06and he was going to be burned.
0:48:06 > 0:48:10He begged Danny O'Sullivan, our guide who was there,
0:48:10 > 0:48:13to shoot him if the car caught on fire, cos he was so hopelessly
0:48:13 > 0:48:17pinned inside of it that he knew that if the car ignited,
0:48:17 > 0:48:20that he would be burned, and he just couldn't...
0:48:20 > 0:48:23And of course, Danny just kept comforting him and saying,
0:48:23 > 0:48:25"Don't worry, Bob, everything's all right," that kind of...
0:48:25 > 0:48:29You can imagine this god-awful scene.
0:48:29 > 0:48:32And the only people there were a number of Aborigines
0:48:32 > 0:48:35who had circled the car and were singing,
0:48:35 > 0:48:37doing some ancient ritual.
0:48:39 > 0:48:45And I think that that so profoundly affected him,
0:48:45 > 0:48:46he didn't know how to deal with that.
0:48:46 > 0:48:52He understood Catholicism, he understood the art
0:48:52 > 0:48:56and the history of ancient Egypt or whatever,
0:48:56 > 0:48:59but I don't think he had a grasp of Aboriginal chanting
0:48:59 > 0:49:01that would keep someone alive.
0:49:01 > 0:49:03Very interesting, seeing a cripple climb.
0:49:05 > 0:49:08Physically, Hughes never fully recovered,
0:49:08 > 0:49:11but the subsequent publicity took its toll on him as well.
0:49:11 > 0:49:14The press accused him of elitism,
0:49:14 > 0:49:17a necessary quality in an art critic, but really it was
0:49:17 > 0:49:22the silver spoon he'd been born with that they couldn't forgive.
0:49:22 > 0:49:24You did an interview in New York where you said,
0:49:24 > 0:49:27"Tow Australia out to sea and dump it, for all I care."
0:49:27 > 0:49:30Do you still struggle with a sense of bitterness about this?
0:49:30 > 0:49:33No. I don't. What I said was, as far as I'm, you know,
0:49:33 > 0:49:36after the stuff I've had from the Australian media,
0:49:36 > 0:49:41you can tow Australia out to sea and sink it, for all I care.
0:49:41 > 0:49:43That's not actually the way I feel about Australia.
0:49:43 > 0:49:47He loved Australia. He told me, you know, in Sydney Harbour,
0:49:47 > 0:49:50the manhole covers with the quotes and names of writers,
0:49:50 > 0:49:52it's called Writers Walk.
0:49:52 > 0:49:58Bob went to see his, and it was of such huge importance to him,
0:49:58 > 0:50:02and he felt so happy, deeply happy about it.
0:50:02 > 0:50:07He was our Dante. He did take us on a guide into our hell,
0:50:07 > 0:50:10the hell of the beginning of the country,
0:50:10 > 0:50:17and it would have been really nice...before in his last years,
0:50:17 > 0:50:22for people to have that more in mind than their desire to slaughter him.
0:50:27 > 0:50:29They woke us up,
0:50:29 > 0:50:32made us laugh, made us think, made us question,
0:50:32 > 0:50:34made us see Australia differently,
0:50:34 > 0:50:39and made England a richer place too, and now for themselves, what?
0:50:40 > 0:50:42Is there a last frolic in them?
0:50:43 > 0:50:47I've set up this charity called Friends of Gondwana Rainforest,
0:50:47 > 0:50:50because Gondwana Rainforest is the most threatened in the world.
0:50:50 > 0:50:52It's a sub-tropical rainforest.
0:50:52 > 0:50:56This is a very different voice one hears now from the voice
0:50:56 > 0:50:58of The Female Eunuch.
0:50:58 > 0:51:01Yes, and so it should be.
0:51:02 > 0:51:04Because you're older
0:51:04 > 0:51:08and you've been on the Earth longer, or because... do you regret anything
0:51:08 > 0:51:10- about the you of The Female Eunuch? - No, no.
0:51:10 > 0:51:12- Was that a necessary thing to you? - No, no, no.
0:51:12 > 0:51:14Women are all change, as you know.
0:51:14 > 0:51:19We change and change and change. We have seven climacterics in our lives,
0:51:19 > 0:51:23and I'm in the last one. Well advanced in the last one.
0:51:23 > 0:51:26And in the last climacteric, you're the sleepless people,
0:51:26 > 0:51:31you're the guardians, you're the watchers on the house top,
0:51:31 > 0:51:34and that's what you do.
0:51:34 > 0:51:38Dame Edna - is she now truly about to hang up her frock?
0:51:38 > 0:51:44Well, I personally am sick of trailing her around and touring.
0:51:44 > 0:51:46DAME EDNA: ..as the show wears on and on,
0:51:46 > 0:51:50I will glance up there from time to time, I will, I will.
0:51:50 > 0:51:55In strict proportion to the amount that you have paid.
0:51:57 > 0:51:59Goodbye!
0:52:02 > 0:52:06I'm calling it a day, but I think I'm presenting a very good show now.
0:52:06 > 0:52:10It's tried and tested in my homeland of Australia,
0:52:10 > 0:52:15and I can always say in England, "World Premier in Milton Keynes
0:52:15 > 0:52:18"after a provincial tryout in Melbourne, Australia."
0:52:18 > 0:52:21- Too cruel. - Or the other way around.
0:52:21 > 0:52:22But you're going to miss her.
0:52:23 > 0:52:26Oh, I think she might be doing the odd television spot.
0:52:29 > 0:52:33And Clive has crowned a career of astonishing versatility
0:52:33 > 0:52:37with a translation of one of the greatest of all epic poems.
0:52:37 > 0:52:42Your translation of Dante, is there no end to the man's ambitions?
0:52:43 > 0:52:47I thought, maybe I've learnt enough about poetry in 50 years
0:52:47 > 0:52:51of writing it, 60 years, that I can bring this off,
0:52:51 > 0:52:53a verse translation of the verse masterpiece.
0:52:54 > 0:52:57So I set out to do it, and it took years.
0:52:57 > 0:53:00Tutta tremble... What's that wonderful line about...
0:53:00 > 0:53:02Tutto tremante. Trembling.
0:53:02 > 0:53:06The lovers kiss each other, tutto tremante.
0:53:06 > 0:53:08Really, I'm clearing my desk,
0:53:08 > 0:53:13and resigning myself to the fact that I can't do anything big.
0:53:13 > 0:53:17The idea of writing the perfect poem still attracts me.
0:53:17 > 0:53:19The perfect poem? Wow.
0:53:29 > 0:53:33This is Lavender Bay on Sydney's north shore.
0:53:33 > 0:53:36I came to live here in 1965.
0:53:36 > 0:53:41When I first arrived, I had a little flat over there
0:53:41 > 0:53:45from the balcony of which I watched the Opera House go up.
0:53:46 > 0:53:49What I looked out on was beauty.
0:53:50 > 0:53:55And beauty, like boredom, is highly conducive to the making
0:53:55 > 0:53:57and the appreciation of art.
0:54:08 > 0:54:11Robert Hughes died in 2012.
0:54:11 > 0:54:15He called me "mate" once. You treasure something like that.
0:54:15 > 0:54:19But these films have been a sort of requiem for all of them.
0:54:19 > 0:54:23Clive, very ill, writing exquisite poems of remorse,
0:54:23 > 0:54:28Barry, indulging Dame Edna one final demonic act of comic cruelty,
0:54:28 > 0:54:33and Germaine, concentrating her energies on one small
0:54:33 > 0:54:36Garden of Eden, instead of the great battlefield of ideas
0:54:36 > 0:54:38she once audaciously commanded.
0:54:40 > 0:54:42Can I ask you, where would you want to be buried?
0:54:43 > 0:54:46Would I want to be buried? I might want to be eaten.
0:54:48 > 0:54:50Where would you want to be eaten?
0:54:50 > 0:54:53Wherever it happens. Wherever I'm felled.
0:54:53 > 0:54:57And you know, I broke my leg in the forest one day
0:54:57 > 0:55:02and I realised that if I hadn't have been able to get back up the stairs,
0:55:02 > 0:55:06one of my goannas would have eaten me. Bones, hair, teeth, eyes,
0:55:06 > 0:55:07spectacles and all.
0:55:09 > 0:55:11Germaine talks about being eaten by goannas.
0:55:11 > 0:55:13I can't see you fancying that.
0:55:14 > 0:55:19No, the goannas I know would not tackle a task like that.
0:55:19 > 0:55:26Outside my parents' house, the grassy verge was called the nature strip,
0:55:26 > 0:55:27an American term, I think.
0:55:29 > 0:55:32And I think there might be nice,
0:55:32 > 0:55:36if there was enough room for people to leave bouquets of flowers.
0:55:36 > 0:55:39There could be a fight over this in Australia.
0:55:39 > 0:55:41Various people in Moonee Ponds might want to...
0:55:41 > 0:55:45Yes. There might be a state funeral, perhaps.
0:55:45 > 0:55:51Strangely enough, I'm not afraid, and to die in your own time,
0:55:51 > 0:55:57having lived a full and rewarding life, is a great privilege.
0:55:57 > 0:56:00It's bad manners to complain.
0:56:00 > 0:56:01I've chosen the music.
0:56:02 > 0:56:07- Delius?- Bit of Delius, little bit of Cole Porter.
0:56:09 > 0:56:14A song by Leonard Bernstein from On The Town called Some Other Time.
0:56:14 > 0:56:15Do you know the song?
0:56:16 > 0:56:21Um... It was calculated to make people cry, you see.
0:56:21 > 0:56:22I'm crying already.
0:56:24 > 0:56:27So it'll be a nice event and I think I may stay alive for it.
0:56:28 > 0:56:31At the end of my present show, which is advertised
0:56:31 > 0:56:34as a farewell show, and is, I say to the audience,
0:56:34 > 0:56:38"Thanks for coming, and promise to come to my next farewell show!"
0:56:46 > 0:56:50They called Australia a culturally stagnant country,
0:56:50 > 0:56:54but don't they prove that you can come from a rough house
0:56:54 > 0:56:56and be the more civilised for it?
0:56:58 > 0:57:02Australia taught them to mistrust "can't".
0:57:02 > 0:57:03It's convulsively funny.
0:57:05 > 0:57:06To question authority.
0:57:06 > 0:57:09It means the battle is beginning.
0:57:09 > 0:57:14To nose out self-righteousness, and to imagine on an epic scale.
0:57:15 > 0:57:19And was it not for these qualities that we have admired and loved them.
0:57:23 > 0:57:25Ladies and Gentlemen, Clive James.
0:57:29 > 0:57:30BARRY HUMPHRIES SINGS
0:57:30 > 0:57:32# I was down by Bondi Pier
0:57:32 > 0:57:35# Drinking tubes of ice cold beer
0:57:35 > 0:57:39# With a bucket full of prawns upon me knee
0:57:39 > 0:57:41# But when I swallowed the last prawn
0:57:41 > 0:57:44# I had a technicolor yawn
0:57:44 > 0:57:49# And I chundered in the old Pacific Sea... #
0:57:49 > 0:57:51The song is entirely about vomiting,
0:57:51 > 0:57:55I don't think there was much in that genre at that time.