Actors - Norman Gunston

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	Actors - Norman Gunston

Norman Gunston was a satirical TV character performed by Australian actor Garry McDonald.

Early years

Norman Gunston was originally conceived by comedy writer Wendy Skelcher and first appeared as a minor character in the second series of the cult Australian TV comedy series The Aunty Jack Show in 1973, in which he was portrayed as a gormless TV reporter from the NSW regional city of Wollongong. The Gunston character made enough of an impression for him to be revived in a subsequent comedy mini-series made by the Aunty Jack team, Wollongong The Brave (1974), in which he starred in a satirical mock documentary Norman Gunston: The Golden Weeks. His segments as Norman in What's On In Wollongong became one of the most popular parts of the Aunty Jack Show, and Norman appeared on the Aunty Jack Sings Wollongong album along with McDonald's other character, Kid Eager.

National Fame

In his later and most famous incarnation, Gunston had evolved to become the unlikely host of his own national TV variety show, The Norman Gunston Show, which premiered with a live broadcast on Australian Broadcasting Corporation in May 1975. Dubbed "the little Aussie bleeder", (a play on the term "Aussie battler"), he satirised parochial Australian culture, media "personalities", and egocentric talk show hosts.

After a faltering start, the Norman Gunston show rapidly gained a huge national audience and the series became the pre-eminent Australian TV comedy program of its day, with McDonald winning a Gold Logie (the Australian equivalent of an Emmy Award) and scoring several pop hits. He is, notably, the only Logie recipient who has received the award in the name of his character, rather than in his own name.

According to McDonald, the Gunston character and his show were initially devised as a parody of an (unintentionally bad) late-night Sydney TV variety show of the early 1970s hosted by expatriate American club entertainer Tommy Leonetti.

Satirising club performers and TV interviewers of the time, Gunston dressed in an ill-fitting blue lurex tuxedo jacket (wrongly buttoned); the fly on his trousers was habitually left undone, with the shirt-tail poking out of the zip. Gunston also adopted an "up and over" Comb over hairstyle to partially cover his bald head. He also had small pieces of tissue paper applied to his pasty-pale white face to cover supposed shaving cuts. This comic device led to one hilarious exchange with visiting American actress Sally Struthers - noting Norman's apparent shaving cuts, she kindly suggested that perhaps Gunston should try an electric razor; the nonplussed Norman replied "Uh, I do" - at which point Struthers collapsed in a fit of laughter.

Gunston performed subversive TV interviews with many celebrities including Paul McCartney where he said to Linda McCartney: 'That's funny, you don't look Japanese.' (referencing Yoko Ono), Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty, Charlton Heston, and Muhammad Ali. Perhaps Norman's most well known interview was with Keith Moon at Charlton stadium in 1976. Moon famously ended his brief encounter with Norman by tipping Vodka over his head.

The "ambush" interview technique pioneered by McDonald - founded on McDonald's considerable improvisational skills and precise comic timing wherein the actor creates a fully-rounded and often highly plausible character who is pretending to be stupid to throw their otherwise media-savvy subjects off guard.

Through sheer good luck, Gunston was immortalised in Australian political history when, on the morning of 11 November 1975, McDonald and his film crew - who happened to be in Canberra at the time - found out that the Labor government led by Gough Whitlam had just been dismissed by the Governor-General Sir John Kerr. On hearing the news, McDonald and his crew raced to Parliament House, where they were able to film McDonald (as Gunston) briefly addressing the assembled crowd, only moments before Whitlam and the Governor-General's press secretary appeared for the reading of the now-famous proclamation announcing Whitlam's dismissal.

In 1976, ABC television aired a third season of The Norman Gunston Show. By this stage, increased production budgets afforded Gunston more opportunities for overseas interviews, including Malcolm Muggeridge, Michael Caine, John Sturges, Glenda Jackson, John Stonehouse, and Rudolph Nureyev. One memorable encounter with Frank Zappa ended with Zappa and Norman duetting respectively on guitar and harmonica in a spontaneous blues jam (McDonald is in fact a proficient harmonica player). As the jam concluded, McDonald threw in a witty musical quote from the well-known ABC news theme, an action which also gave a clever nod to Zappa's well-known proclivity for inserting musical quotes such as TV themes into his work.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Norman Gunston ]

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