Richard Fidler, host of ABC’s Race Around the World and the Comedy Channel, will be coming along to next week’s Union Annual Dinner to be our very special keynote speaker. Last week, the Blitz crew rocked on over to Rich’s place, to ask him the most hard-hitting, no ifs or buts or maybes questions that we could think of (ie: "How are you?").
WHAT DID YOU STUDY AT UNI? I did a Bachelor of Arts degree at ANU and I majored in Politics and History, and I did a bit of Philosophy, a bit of fine arts, a bit of English. But I also did a lot of drinking and nervously hanging around the uni bar hoping girls would notice me. That was a large part of my degree. A lot of f---ing around, a lot of time wasting, a lot of pursued extra curricular activities. I think it was when I finished uni that they brought HECS in, so I had a completely free education. God, it was different. You guys are all so hard working these days, so committed to your degrees because your parents will kill you, or just because it costs you money. It was so much more social in nature in the past. I mean it still probably is pretty social now, but then it was more about getting a social education in drinking and OTHER people taking illicit substances, playing in bands and going to see bands.
HOW DID YOU GET YOUR CAREER STARTED? I did music in high school, and I was playing in a few quasi punk bands around Canberra playing drums, because I was a drummer, and I wanted to teach myself guitar, so I did and it went on from there. I moved onto busking in Canberra, really just to make a little bit of extra money, I needed to supplement my income somewhat, so I started busking with a friend of mine. Then Tim Ferguson joined us, so we started busking together as a group. Robert left, and we brought Paul in. We were very successful in Canberra, and then we moved to Melbourne for a while. We were doing gigs in pubs and comedy venues around Melbourne and not really making much headway. There was a huge comedy scene in Melbourne in the mid 80’s, it was just booming. There were so many comedy acts and the competition was hot. We found it really hard, I don’t think we were very politically adept at getting our way around Melbourne in that sense, so we thought we’d bypass it all and go to Edinburgh. We went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and we did like two shows a day and then we’d busk as well during the day to attract attention. That really worked for us, so we just gigged in any venue that would have us. We ended up with our fingers bleeding and unable to talk, but it was worth it because we made a success of it.
ARE YOU NOW DOING WHAT YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO DO CAREER WISE? I don’t know, I think what I wanted to do changes all the time. So I’m doing what I want to be doing right now, for sure. But that will probably change. I mean a couple of years ago, I was giving all this [TV] away. I was planning to be going into new media, interactive multimedia. I started playing around with the games that were around at the time: Mist and a few other ones. I was working for a company in London producing new media, and they were making CD Rom adaptations with Japanese manga cartoons. So I got myself a really powerful Macintosh, because I’ve always done graphics, and music writing of course and writing as well, and this was a way of combining all of these mediums together- being able to produce media in my own living room. That really excited me for a while and the stuff I’ve always been interested in has been CD Rom based. Recently, CD Rom has really died in the arse, and I got an offer to go back into TV so I took it (laughs)! I love TV as well, I always have loved working in TV, so I’m satisfied at the moment. I got back into TV by working on Mouthing Off, which is a show I do for the Comedy Channel on Foxtel. I got offered to do that, and at the time my wife, Khym, was working on Review, the ABC arts show, as a reporter. We knew the producer there called Paige Livingston, and Paige saw me on Mouthing Off and asked me to audition for host of Race Around the World. She showed me John Safran’s audition tape and Kim Trails’s audition tape as well and I thought "mmm".
ANY ADVICE FOR THOSE OUT THERE WANTING TO PURSUE THEIR DREAMS? "Climb every mountain, forge every stream, follow every byway, till you find your dream." That’s my advice to you.
CAREER HIGHLIGHT TO DATE? I suppose which career is the question. It’s hard to pick out a highlight. It’s all a bit of a blur in a way. I’m trying to think of anecdotes that we should have written down at the time. Tons of amazing s--- used to happen to us on tour in the Doug Anthony Allstars, which was pretty wild. It’s a very intense experience going on tour, it’s very strange. When we first started to get famous on TV, all of the sudden we had all these teenage girl fans turning up to our shows and tons of them were screaming. At first it bewildered us and then it got us really pissed off. Well, I mean we used to like to think we were the comedy Sex Pistols, and it turned out we were the Bay City Rollers. We didn’t know how to make head or tail out of that. It was hard to do jokes because there’d be screams, it was just weird and irrational. It became a performance spectacle in its own right and not much listening to what we’d written.
FAVOURITE BOOK? Oh God, lots of them. "The Chymical Wedding" by Lindsay Clarke, I like lots of books that are really boring to a lot of people. I read a lot of political biographies. "Sandy" by Ivan Klina, a lot of Czech writers I like to read. Robert Hughes, I’m a huge fan of his. This is one of my all time favourites, "Monarch" by Alasdair Kray, who is a Scottish writer. It’s the most outstanding novel, just amazing.
FAVOURITE COLOUR? Beige - first one that came to mind.
FAVOURITE FILM? Probably the Godfather Trilogy, anything by Jean Cocteau is a great film, he is a French film maker. Scorsese I really like, Fellini I’m a real fan of too. I tend to go for directors rather than films.
FAVOURITE THING TO DO ON A SUNDAY? First thing I do is hope that there is some sort of terrible catastrophe that happened so that there is something to read in the Sunday papers. So that’s what I do on a Sunday.
FAVOURITE ARTICLE OF CLOTHING? Probably a um, um that’s a good question, I don’t really have a favourite item of clothing, I don’t know.
FAVOURITE ITEM OF FURNITURE? Where are we going with this Bronwyn? Something I don’t have: a Barcelona chair but I just don’t have the money for it.
FAVOURITE ROOM IN YOUR HOUSE? I have to say this line of questioning is a bit Smash Hits, isn’t it? Favourite colour? Favourite item of clothing?
THAT’S BECAUSE IT’S FOR OUR BLACK BOX OF INEQUALITY COLUMN. Oh, well then the f---ing bathroom because I get some privacy there!
FAVOURITE HOLIDAY SPOT? I have really shockingly obvious taste in holiday spots, like Paris. I don’t like going to little getaway beach spots. I’ve tried doing that. I actually like to go instead to a big city, just a different big city.
FAVOURITE TV SHOW? It’s probably "Roy and HG The Channel Nine Show". It makes so much sense, because it’s the kind of ABC show that Richard Alston wants, that’s the point that they’re making.