The detritus of an ill-spent life, I guess.
NZBC announcers weren’t celebrities. The NZBC controlled both television and radio, and its announcers were used to say words on both.
In my case I might start the day doing a breakfast show on 4ZB and later (having tidied myself up a bit) be sent to the Garrison Hall to read the news on DNTV2.
Then, from time to time, an announcer would be told he was fronting some television show or other as each of the four channels was expected to churn out material which would then be used in nationwide broadcasts. A photo from those days sparked memories of one of those programmes and it was the people in the picture rather than the show itself which had me reminiscing with some fondness.
The programme was called You Must Be Joking and it involved two teams of "personalities" providing explanations, only one of which was true, for the origin of pictures which would be shown on a screen at the back of the set.
The opposing team then had to guess which was the correct explanation. My job was to act as chairman or moderator or dogsbody.
The humour, such as it was, was to be provided by the false explanations and some photos, like a brass band on bicycles, gave plenty of scope for laughs.
I never saw it as no playbacks were organised at the studio, and I never watched television. Indeed, I never owned an instrument.
However, we were supplied with newspaper clippings in the hope that we might find ways to make the show more acceptable to the viewers.
Ivy Trew, the wife of a distinguished military man who contributed to Punch, wrote to the Press in appreciation of "the divinely imaginative interpretation of the pictures’ contents which would do credit to the Goons. To crown a most amusing entertainment all six competitors are easy on the eye."
In spite of Ivy ignoring the chairman’s good looks, I warmed to her and hoped for more similar verdicts. They never came. Indeed, the most memorable, and perhaps most honest verdict, came from a reviewer who simply wrote, "Last night saw the start of a new NZBC programme called You Must Be Joking. They must be!"
No copies of You Must Be Joking seem to have survived (video tape was too expensive to be wasted on archiving so it was erased and reused again and again) and thus no-one can prove it was actually that bad.
But, good or bad, You Must Be Joking gave me a chance to work with some fine people.
Eileen Cook, gracious and witty, fronted the afternoon television show On Camera and later produced arts programmes for Radio New Zealand. Charles Joye, smooth-voiced and affable, specialised in acting the fumbling frontman being taught how to do it in shows like Tricks of the Trade and Greenfingers.
Peggy Turvey (Colin Lehmann’s wife) was a Mosgiel girl for whom the phrase "bubbly personality" was invented. She rose to stage stardom with the Southern Comedy Players and by the 1970s was teaching speech and drama, a calling she has followed in recent times in Wellington. Colin Lehmann himself was 4ZB’s breakfast host (with Charlie Mouse) who included Miss New Zealand shows and Note for Note among his television repertoire. Later Radio Dunedin’s breakfast man, he was a broadcaster’s broadcaster.
Shirley La Hood, for whom "larger than life" might have been coined, produced numerous stage shows in Dunedin and Paul Savage, an epitome of the NZBC-trained announcer, later worked with the ABC to teach Australians how to speak properly. A hopeless task.
Behind the scenes were the floor crew and production team who made the Garrison Hall specifically and Dunedin generally such great fun in those far off times. Many of them, and most of the You Must Be Joking panellists are no longer with us.
It’s one photo I’ll hang on to. No joking.
— Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.
