The Spare Winston
Extracts from the autobiography of the second son of a Queensland cattle farmer.
I’ve been in a complicated relationship with ‘Aunty’ since 1999. In the early days, as I was making my first steps in comedy, she was one of the first to notice that I’d let go of the coffee table and, though occasionally teetering, was making good progress towards the rumpus room unassisted.
‘TV Aunty’ let me have my first taste of national exposure in the Final of JJJ Raw Comedy & over the years I’ve done guest spots on a range of shows from Spicks & Specks to The Fat and Rosehaven to Recovery.
However, it’s with ‘Radio Aunty’ that I have the closer, but more vexed relationship. She always comes to the party, but never brings anything.
Over the years I’ve had regular guest spots on 774ABC Melbourne beginning with the wonderful Lyn Haultain on Breakfast, who offered me my first seat at the adult’s table. Stints followed with Wil Anderson and Adam Spencer (JJJ) & Evenings with Derek Guile (774ABC) However, it was when I started doing regular spots on Lindy Burns Afternoons (774ABC) that the relationship became more formal.
Lindy had been looking for someone to come on and have some fun with the World Swimming Championships, which were being held in Melbourne in 2007. John Standish, one of the producers I’d worked with on Jon Feine Conversations and the annual MICF Comedy Bites Showcase, suggested me. Lindy reached out and I pitched to her that we do fake character interviews each day ie/ aquaphobic Irish swimming coach; aggrieved merman who’d had his application to represent Atlantis rejected etc. We did 8 interviews across 2 weeks and Lindy & the listeners were hooked.
Throughout 2007 we continued to do occasional interviews, but we would schedule them on different days of the week so that the audience weren’t expecting them. I would script the piece, so Lindy knew what to ask and what was coming. I have to say, she was brilliant at making them feel authentic. Often without having had a pre-read, she always managed to convey spontaneity and would effortlessly go with the flow off script.
My identity was only ever revealed at the end of the interview after I’d signed off. Over time, the listeners became better at picking me, but certainly in the early days, the switch board would light up asking if this guy was for real. Twice, Steve Kite, the head of ABC Melbourne at the time, stormed down to the studios to demand they get that idiot off the air, only be told that it was a scripted comedy piece. On occasions listeners would ring up during real interviews to ask if it was me. One day when Victorian Premier Steve Bracks was being interviewed, and was in a playful mood, texts kept coming in asking if was doing an impersonation.
I think my favourite provocation came when I was doing a rare in studio interview with Lindy after she had moved to hosting Evenings. It was during MIFF [Melbourne International Film Festival]. I was playing a prickly New York film maker whose documentary, ‘The Making of the Film that Never Happened’, was supposedly showing at MIFF. The premise was that he had cast an intricate period drama and placed huge demands on the actors in preparation for their roles ie/ equestrian showjumping lessons, learn German, lose 10 kilograms etc. What he didn’t tell the actors was that there was no film in the can. However, another crew with actual film in their cameras were making a behind the scenes doco. Eventually the cast got wind of the subterfuge and everything blew up. On air, my character was being wilfully bellicose and heaping scorn upon his actors, and the craft in general. The phones lit up. Towards the end I turned on Lindy, when she revealed that she hadn’t seen the film, despite having free tickets sent to her. Lindy began reading out the best of the belligerent text messages. People were still calling the station an hour later to make sure she was OK.
At the peak of this relationship, Steve Kite called me and my agent in for a meeting with a view to put me on a retainer to do various comedy projects across their suite of programs and train me a presenter. It was vague, but it was something and, for the first time ever, being paid for my work was being discussed.
We waited for an offer, but it never came. I continued to work for free, until my agent finally said … ‘you need to stop working, otherwise they’ll just keep taking advantage of your goodwill’. Eventually a modest stipend was offered, and I resumed the segments. At the beginning of the following year however, budgets were cut and they could no longer pay but wondered if I might go back to not being paid.
Despite all of this, I still love my Radio Aunty. Look, she still turns up to my BBQ’s without so much as a bottle of wine and helps herself to my good stuff, but she’s good company and makes me feel wanted. It can be very frustrating when she rings at the last minute, demanding I drop everything and pick up her dry cleaning and spend 3 hours working on a piece, offering to mention my upcoming tour by way of payment.
Over the last 3 years, I’ve returned to doing fake character pieces for The Friday Revue on 774ABC Melbourne with Brian Nankervis and Jacinta Parsons. I don’t get paid, the tour plugs are never quite substantial enough to make any impact and I have to battle to have the clips sent to me, but they are lovely and Brian is a dear friend.
The current arrangement is much more collaborative. He rings me with an idea, we bounce it around, I put my spin on it and send them a script. The most popular segment we did was when I personified the Superb Fairy Wren after it had been named the 2021 Bird of the Year. You can listen to the interview here.
Bird of the Year - 774ABC Melbourne Friday Revue
A couple of weeks ago Brian rang asking if I’d consider doing some sort of Australian parody of Prince Harry’s ‘Spare’ biography. He suggested we play it as an ‘Audible’ style reading, rather than an interview. We threw some ideas around the woolshed, and this is what we came up with.
‘The Spare Winston’ – an autobiography by Gary Winston, the second son of a Darling Downs cattle farmer.
This is what went to air on Friday, January 20th, 2023
The Spare Winston - 774ABC Melbourne Friday Revue
This is the full-length unedited version
The Spare Winston - 774ABC Friday Revue [Full Edit]
Below is the script. The wording alters slightly during the recorded read. The written word tends to metamorphose as it is adapted to speech. I deliberately avoided going back to re-edit the script, so you can see the subtle changes.
The Spare Winston - Original script
‘I heard the story of what dad said to mum the day I popped out. We’ve got a back-up plan now – in case Billy turns out to be a dud & couldn’t tell a Hereford from a Murray Grey. He was jokin’ … probably. Apparently, he then went down to the bottom pub for a few 4 x’s to ‘wet young Gary’s head’ he reckoned … & ends up snogging his old girlfriend in the beer garden.’
‘Nana ran the place. The old man couldn’t bang in a fence post without bein’ told which end of the mallet to hold. So, he’d sulk off down the dam with his easel and do a water colour painting of the woolshed, a windmill, one of the 47 broken-down holdens. Sometimes he’d paint yabbies wearing Queensland state of origin jerseys. She’d tell him they were good, so that he kept out of her hair, but they were genuinely rubbish.’
‘Billy & I got on alright when we were little, but as we got older, we started to blue … usually over whether Wally Lewis or Johnathan Thurston was the better league player. It’s JT every day by the way. As we were exchanging blows, he’d always remind me that he’d take over the farm from dad when he took over from nan and that I was just the back-up, on stand-by, for use only in an emergency, the auxiliary generator, the added bonus, the optional extra, the unused interchange player, surplus to needs, the supernumery, the superogatory, pleonastic excess. He might have been a rubbish in a punch on, but he knew his way around a thesaurus.’
8938. It wasn’t a number that gave me any satisfaction. But I wasn’t ashamed either. For sure, I’d have preferred not to have to shoot cane toads, but by the same token I’d have preferred to live in a country where some idiot thought bringin’ here was a good idea. Bastards of things.
When mum died, I had to walk down the old tip road behind the holden ute with the coffin in the back … cos there weren’t enough seats in the ute. Dad got out and I tried to hold his hand, but he got swooped by a magpie and started swearing.
He and mum had split up well before that. She’d been seeing Nathan for a while. His family owned the abattoir, so it was a big deal. Gus from The Mutton Gully Chronicle wouldn’t leave em’ alone. He was buzzing ‘em with his drone out at the weir when their jetski hit a snag and flipped.
The first time I saw Peg was on Snap Chat. She was knocking back tequila shots at the Goondiwindi B&S and threw up in some cowboy’s hat … then had another shot. Right then I just knew I had to meet her. I finally met her at the Stanthorpe Campdraft. Watching her cut and draft a heifer in a figure 8 is one the sexiest things I’ve ever seen. We finally met in the Bundy tent that night and I let threw up in my hat. We were engaged by the time the Lions Club had fired up the barby the next mornin’
Meeting the family was always going to be dicey. No-one in our family had ever dated anyone from NSW. I didn’t want to make a bad situation worse, so I said it was best that we took my car, but she insisted on driving. Said she had nothing to be ashamed of. Turning up in a Ford to meet my family was bad enough, but when they found out her mum owned a Ford dealership … in Grafton, that tipped things over the edge.
We got nanas Cattle Korgis when she died. She was the only farmer in the district who herded cattle with Korgis. For good reason. They were rubbish at it.
Billy & Kylie went on a holiday to Bali with us early doors. Peg & Kyles got on alright at first but then one night they both turned up to the pool bar wearing the same sarong. Kylie pulled rank and told Peg she should go back to the villa and change into a different sarong. Peg wouldn’t have a bar off it. She told Kyles that the heat had got the better of her. Reckoned she had Bali Brain. Did not go down well at all.
It was her idea to sunbake in the nude. I should have said no: I’m a blood nut for goodness sake. We’d had a few mojitos, so inevitably we nodded off. By the time I woke up the damage was done. The rest of my body settled down after a few days, but my old fella was a mess for weeks. It looked like a prawn that been left in the weber too long.
Once we did that double page spread in the Weekly Times, we both knew we needed to move away from my family. Living in NSW took some adjusting. The daylight savings messed with my head at first. We’re happy here … but I’m not lookin’ forward to the State of Origin series. Might have to slip back over the border in my Holden for a bit.
This is magnificent, and thanks Damo for expressing the complicated relationship many of us have with providing free segments to the ABC. We used to get paid - something measly like $100 - but something to cover petrol and parking and a nod to the fact you'd write off half your working day. But then some bean counter decides, no more paid segments, and overnight, it's just over. I tried 3AW for a while, but you have to listen to the callers crapping on about there being snow on Mt Buller in November, and 'tell that to Greta Thunberg' and the presenter not having a proper chat about the differences between climate and weather. So I went back to Aunty. And I love Sammy J, and my segment, which I get up for at 5.45am every third Wednesday morning.
Your fairy wren piece is legendary at our house.