The Best Australian Humorous Writing (17 page)

The unadulterated in-your-face smorgasbord of sexuality—for let us not pretend for a moment
Nigella Feasts
is anything but—is on display from the opening credits. A pair of lusty red animated lips opens up and makes good work of a glistening cherry. A curvaceous lemon is lustily sliced in two. A line of asparagus spears stand firm and erect, presumably awaiting a thorough blanching.

There's absolutely no escaping the orgiastic celebration of pulsating lust. Even in moments of idle chitchat Nigella sounds as though she's moments away from opening the door to a team of rowdy sailors looking for rumpo and giving them a full oil and lube. “I find it really …
hard
…” she breathes, gazing longingly into the lens, before throwing in as an almost whispered verbal postscript, “… to zest citrus fruit”. “OOOOH, JUICY JUICY!” she climaxes later still, when a wayward lime threatens to drench the camera crew with its pulpy innards. By the time she gets elbow-deep into kneading some raw lamb mince you'll be forced to cover the eyes of your children and lead them from the room with firm instructions to go directly to bed with a cold wash cloth. Why Nigella doesn't just cut out the middleman and strip naked while pounding the mince into submission with her buttocks is beyond me. At the very least it would lay down a not uninteresting gauntlet to Kylie Kwong.

Anyway, all that innuendo and trite “tee hee, we're so naughty in the kitchen together” business shouldn't work, it really shouldn't. It's too needy; too in-your-face and wanting to be fondled, like your year 11 art teacher who perhaps shouldn't be let loose around teenage boys after one too many rum babas at the school formal. Who among us not attending Sex Addicts Anonymous actually describes yoghurt as “voluptuous”, or employs the idiotic term “stir as if you meant it”? I wanted to write Lawson off as an oversexed dandy with a bitching shelf and leave her to her sticky, dollybird kitchen and seductively shiny accoutrements. I wanted to denounce the lame celebrity chef phenomenon and turn my back on school marm-ly British femmes with wealthy husbands and a penchant for nosh. But I couldn't.

Oh lordy, I submitted. Completely. Before 10 minutes had passed in last week's Lebanese feasting episode, I was helplessly drawn in. By all of it. Her sharp, delectable nose, the way she fondled her aubergine. I've never wanted to be a portion of aubergine
so much in my life, not counting the time I accidentally swallowed a tablet of dishwashing powder and thought my name was Vanguard the Invincible for three days. Nigella's perfect pink fingers, and the way she picked at pinenuts, or sifted “fat flakes of salt”, absolutely did my head in. By the time she took her perky woven basket and strode off to the market to buy pistachios I was ready to chase her along the street and climb on for a patootie ride like Robert Crumb. She simply reduces the viewer to the most base of emotions—lust, hunger, the urge to take a sizeable bite from her backside. I have no idea how. I can't cook to save my life and have absolutely no interest in learning, and even still I plan to tune in to
Nigella Feasts
until the day I die.

It's just that she's so deliciously
plummy
. The cool, collected kitchen, the blush of peachy V at her decolletage, the milky British sunlight setting her wicked self aglow as she artfully creates gastronomic warfare. She's prim and proper and “let's all have a jolly nice afternoon playing hockey” while simultaneously undressing celery sticks with her eyes. It's like being tied up with leather straps and flogged by Enid Blyton.

So forgive me for capitulating to what is essentially a cheap grab at the audience groin. I'm base and repulsive, I know. The question begs asking, though—if the
Nigella Feasts
producers are going to push this panting, licky-licky she-beast upon us in such blatantly rabid style, why not go the whole hog and dress her in a pair of polka-dot knickers and sequinned nipple tassels? I'd tape every episode.

God, she's fantastically obscene. Someone come and hose me down; I'm on fire like Bruce Springsteen self-immolating.

GARRY WILLIAMS

It's been a big year at Summer Heights High for Ja'mie King— but that doesn't mean she can't wait to leave the povvos behind again …

Q: How has the Summer Heights High experience been for you?

A: When I look back at what I've achieved I'm SO blown away. Making friends with the hottest girls in year 11, getting a year 7 boyfriend, dumping him, being President of the SRC, the fashion parade, formal, going out with a lesbian. It's been an incredible experience. The whole school is going to be SO lost without me.

Q: Do you feel pressure to look hot all the time?

A: I have natural hotness so I don't feel pressure because I'm basically what I call “Born Hot”.

Q: Why did you pick this dress?

A: It was designed to show off my assets: arse, legs and face and enhance my boobs and make them appear bigger than they really are. I looked into getting breast implants for the formal, but there's a six-week recovery period so I couldn't.

Q: Do you have your eating disorder under control?

A: Yes. I only starve for events now. Like dates, formals, school photos. Two or three days without food prior to an event can totally improve skin and body tone.

Q: Going to the formal with a lesbian when you're straight sends a message of acceptance. Was that the intention?

A: Not really. It was more the shock factor. And lesbians are really in at the moment and I always like to be on top of fashion and trends.

Q: Do you see yourself as a role model for teenagers?

A: People always say I am and I can see why. It's so random, but I've got this secret dream that all teenage girls in the world become just like me. It would be an amazing world, wouldn't it?

Q: The girls at SHH seemed to worship you. Why was that?

A: I think public school girls are always fascinated by private school ones. It's like if you drove a crap car and like a Rolls-Royce parked next to you. You would totally want to check it out.

Q: Are you going to miss SHH?

A: As if. I don't want to be a bitch, but why would I miss sitting in a fibro classroom with a bunch of skanks and no airconditioning listening to a teacher who was too crap to get a job at a private school? Seriously.

ANDREW HANSEN, DOMINIC KNIGHT, CHAS LICCIARDELLO, JULIAN MORROW AND CRAIG REUCASSEL

We've been asked to help Channel Nine make the Logies into a high-quality, entertaining, watchable TV show.

An impossible task, but we're gonna try.

And to be fair, it's not that Nine's people are incapable of doing things well—it's just that they usually wait until they're working for Seven to start doing it.

For that reason, the first way we'd help out Nine is by simply moving the whole Logies show to Seven. After all, the basic idea of any commercial program is to take a hackneyed format with mediocre performers and miraculously turn it into a giant money-making success. David Leckie's done that with
Gladiators
, so surely he's the man to do it for the Logies.

When it comes to making the Logies night telecast enjoyable for people at home, we're looking overseas for inspiration—to awards telecasts such as the Emmys and the BAFTAs. And we realised the Logies would be far more popular if they combined the best thing about American TV awards (i.e. Eddie McGuire does not appear) and the best thing about British TV awards (i.e. they're simply not televised in this country).

But if we really must broadcast the Logies here, we have no choice but to spice things up by borrowing techniques from other, more popular shows. Taking our lead from
Gladiators
, we'll make everyone wear a lycra bodysuit—including John Wood. Viewers will be delighted to know we're also being inspired by
Underbelly
, and murdering 35 people before the show is over. Finally, we will showcase the personal side of the ceremony by filming an adaptation of
I'm a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!
, entitled
I'm a Celebrity … Get Me a Line of Coke
.

To improve the broadcast, Nine needs to use its stable of talent better. Why have Richard Wilkins turning the red carpet beige when Nine could deploy news boss John Westacott to assess the f—ability of starlets? Any disagreements about Westacott's assessments will be settled in the usual way—with Supreme Court evidence that Nine tries to suppress and Crikey publishes.

The pre-Logies red carpet is always so dreary, but remember it is red. All it would take to turn this part of the night into must-watch TV is one half-starved bull. Watching an enraged steer flat-tening Matthew Newton will be far more amusing than asking him what he's wearing. (And would provide a bit of revenge for Brooke Satchwell.)

The host needs to be someone who really understands boozy, drug-fuelled evenings—Wayne Carey. He can follow up the Logies by appearing on
Enough Rope
and denying they ever happened.

“Here's an idea. How 'bout we get two stars together who don't know each other, give them an awkwardly written unfunny script, make sure they don't attend a rehearsal, and then get them to
stumble through it live on air before making a lame segue to the award they are giving.”

These were the words of James Oscar in 1923, which revolutionised the awards ceremony format and are still used today as the blueprint for ceremonies such as the Logies.

What few realised is that James Oscar then uttered in late 1924: “Oh, that doesn't work, please make them stop.” Unfortunately he was ignored. It is time we listened to him.

Problem is, dispensing with the awkward banter script only makes things worse, because actors are all such boring individuals when playing themselves. The only viable solution is to appoint Chris Lilley to play every single presenter and co-presenter. Since this would make it difficult for Chris to also appear as himself (rightfully winning every category he's been nominated in) we'll get John Clarke to play Lilley when receiving his awards.

One of the major problems with the Logies is that it is only a “celebration” of Australian TV. This needs to be balanced by some castigation of those shows and stars who need to be punished and discouraged. Daryl Somers' drive to return to television, for example, has been fuelled by the row of Gold Logies lining his living room shelves. If there were a few well-deserved Golden Turds on his shelves then maybe his return would be less swift and therefore a mercy to us all.

In Norway the equivalent of the Logies, De Brunershulderfelts, effectively incorporates the carrot-and-stick approach by lashing the makers of awful TV with frozen herrings and then throwing them briefly in an ice hole. As a result, poor programming has significantly decreased there while ratings for the awards ceremony are at an alltime high. Here, if the producers of
The Resort
and
Let Loose Live
had been thrown to crocodiles during previous Logies, then we wouldn't have been subjected to
Monster House
this year.

In fact, forget the old Logies rules. Time for some rules people can relate to—schoolyard rules. Most Popular Entertainer gets to pash a looker. Least Popular gets a wedgie. And viewers would certainly tune in to watch the entire cast of
Quizmania
getting their heads flushed in toilets.

We'd also like to introduce one brand-new category, the Where Are They Now? award. This will comprise soapie actors reaccepting awards they won five years ago—only now, the actors must wear their waiter's aprons while receiving the trophy.

Each year threats are made by the organisers about winners making overly lengthy speeches. But so far they are not heeded. The Oscars approach of retracting the microphone was the most effective method, although even then it left bent-over stars thanking God into the hole in the lectern. We have a solution. If celebrities insist on giving acceptance speeches, then they will only be allowed to give a single web address where interested viewers can go to read the hundreds of names that the starlets would like to thank. This will cut the duration of the telecast by about seven hours. On their website, the celebs can also express their “complete surprise” at winning.

Ultimately, though, we've decided to forbid any actual celebrities from giving speeches at all. It works like this. Despite the fact that most Logies attendees manage to escape the horror of the show and spend the whole night outside the ballroom, the seats are amazingly never empty in the camera wide shots. This is thanks to Nine's army of “seat warmers”—extras who are hired to sit in empty seats so the room appears full to home viewers. Last year at the Logies, one member of
The Chaser
actually found himself at a table of these well-dressed extras and not a single genuine guest. Not only were the seat warmers better dressed anyway, they were far more interesting to talk to—which is why all acceptance speeches ought be given by the seat warmers.

Part of the dullness of Logies telecasts is that the cameras are trained on the most boring part of the night—the awards ceremony. We would like viewers to be given access to Bar-Cam so they can see the real highlight: the US guest star (this is usually someone relatively obscure, like Dennis Haysbert, and the fact that you haven't heard of him only proves the point—he was the President from
24
) trying to get into the pants of the nearest well-endowed publicist.

Recent Logies have featured live crosses to a smaller room outside for unguarded interviews with the winners. They should cross to an even smaller room where celebrities are far more unguarded— the toilet. There we can witness the Best New Talent still clasping her freshly won trophy while yocking up her complimentary Vodka Cruisers.