The Price is Right. Video Village. Coles Quiz. The price is right, the price is right, you make a bid to win and you hope you might! Dat doo do dout doo, dat doo do do... And a number of further doo-doos and there we were... Deep in do-doos. Well, it wasnt the most magical of opening show jingles but the Horrie Dargie Quartet/Quintet did the best they could with it. I was still in the mail room or just out of it and onto Staging, when Price began at the Teletheater. From memory the set was staged in front of the drapes midway of the stage. It comprised a podium for the host, Horrie and then a rostrum with seating and a bench with four old ring-till cash registers and on the further side a prize area, shrouded by curtains that could be opened to reveal a sliding catwalk that was thrust forward manually, bearing the rather statuesque figure of Avril Hudson modelling the goodies. Geoff Owen-Taylor was the producer, I recall, and the husband of Avril, and Alf Potter directed. The reason I remember Alf was when Avril opened a fridge door to show the spacious interior, a lone, empty Coke can was inside. Alf stopped tape and there followed a grand inquisition on who the culprit was. No one stepped forward. Beyond the front drapes, which were the background to the set, the larger part of the hidden studio floor was awash in give-aways: there were cannisters of Lipton tea, and camphorwood chests filled to the brim with soaps and other cosmetic products, shell-inlaid dividing screens, cane ware and other Chinese artworks, most courtesy of David Wang, the Asian importer. The men who administered all these large and small goods was Mel Fisher, whos side-kick was Dennis Smith. I helped out as Gopher for them, but this truly was a payola heaven. There was so much stuff flowing in through the double rear doors that it was simply impossible to keep track of it. Guards were employed overnight to stop the crew pinching whatever they could, and often the guards went home looking considerably bulkier than when turning up for duty. There were even blues between staging and lighting when somebody discovered some one elses stash and stole it again. Talk about Spy versus Spy. Welcome to Video Village, join us, have fun. Welcome to Video Village, play times just begun! Not much better with the lyrics than Price Is Right. But of course there was the Bus song. The team was led by a very sprightly Danny Webb, the glamour was Liz Harris, and Chris Christensen was the original Nimble Number Tumbler. Later taken over by Ian Boyce. Natalie Rains was the Crawfords producer and I think Ian Jones may have been the director. On the odd occasion I manned...strike that...boyed camera four, though mostly I was on staging, setting, working and striking the show. While I was still messenger boy I was the Secret Voice, going up to Crawfords in Collins street and audio recording it, and later appearing briefly. I got along well with Lizzie and Dan, who happened to paint land and seascapes and I actually painted his portrait, an early and amateurish impression. Once again the give-aways were en masse, this time being over-seen by Bob Pascoe and Gary Conway, who was later to become a director himself. This time Grosby Jiffies were de-rigueur, as well as canisters of tea and anodised cups and flasks in phony leather cases. And when each game ended, we had the ride back to the Number Tumbler. Come ride with us on the village bus, it takes all shapes and sizes. The village bus is the bus for us, it takes us to the prizes. So sing this song as we ride along right to the terminus. Side by side, its a lovely ride on the Video Village bus! The three principles broke the shows contests with mimed songs such as Right Said Fred, and a young fellow named Lindsay Edwards and a girl named Robyn, whose surname escapes me now, entertained the audiences in breaks between shows with their own zany songs and antics. Lindsay later went home to Tasmania and compered a show very much like I.M.T. winning himself a Logie or two. The set itself was pretty hefty. There were many six inch rectangular rostrums that made up the footpath and all the flats were plywood on pine frames and had boxes with lights that lit up when a square was landed on. One night I was rostered on to set it with Graham MacNamara and Bob (Robert) Meillon. We three were the only ones in all of the Teletheater, and we were due to finish around nine. But Bob wanted to drive the Bus, which was a sort of glorified golf cart, and Macca, senior to us, held the keys to the ignition of the battery powered Bus. We worked and bickered, bickered and worked, Bob was persistent, Macca unbending, me pleading to get the night done. It was a mind battle where Bob wanted to win and ride the thing and Graham wouldnt give up the keys. I personally didnt care, just wanted to make sure I didnt miss the last bus to West Heidelberg. There was a great deal of mind against mind with Bob and Mac, to the point when, sometime around 11, Mac turned up the volume on a big transister radio playing late night music and the announcer gave a big hello to the channel seven guys working hard out at the teletheater in Fitzroy, and played us a song. Hitting midnight, mac finally gave in and tossed Bob the keys. Gleefully, Robert Meillon drove the Bus all around the back end of the stage, right down to the floorboards of the original theater. I dont recall that we were fuelled by grog. I twas just straight foolery and a kind of working out where we all fitted into a time of blokes who were on the make for girls and camp people, who had to stay in the shadows. Me. Well, I got the last bus home. Although, writing this, Im sitting here now, end 2013, scratching my head. Maybe Im still waiting for the last bus home. Goodbye from Video Village, thats it today. See you at Video Village next time youre this way. Welcome to Coles Three Thousand Pounds Question. And here is your compere Malcolm Searle. I honestly cant recall if there was a theme for Coles Quiz. Perhaps it was a voice-over from Roland Strong and a jingle or a drum-roll. When I started it was hosted by Malcolm Searle back in 1961, (I recall him coming into the mail room) and sometime after that Malcolm, a rather bright, confident man, failed to report for duty. He was reputed to have suffered a nervous break-down and Roland Strong, who was a veteran of various radio programmes dating back into the 1940s, and was already part of the production team along with Graeme Bent and Geoff Owen-Taylor, took over. The show was recorded at the Teletheater in front of the forward drapes and the set consisted of a podium for the host and the sound-proof Coles bunker, entered from the side through a door, with a clear perspex window facing the front. The format was the usual quiz with contestants answering a number of questions on the way toward the magic three thousand pound prize, similar to shows like The Hotseat. The bunker was used for questions in the higher range when the pressure was really on. Alf Potter directed and Brendan McKenna on camera one had the dubious duty of putting up a mid shot (Waist up) of the contestant. A time clock was super-imposed over this shot, and Brendan was instructed to Dolly in, man. Sounds quite straight forward, except that Brendan was using a fixed lens designed for outside broadcasts. A 16 inch lens in fact, and to hold focus and push the camera in, ending on a close-up of the contestants face was no mean feat. Both Contestant and cameraman had equally stressed expressions as the clock ran down to zero. At the change over to decimal currency Coles quiz became The Six Thousand Dollar Question. In the subsequent search for a replacement for Malcolm, auditions were held at the Teletheater and many hopefuls appeared and were rejected, notably a member of staging, who arrived in a suit and acquitted himself well. Presentation: pleasant demeanor, controlled temperament, not nervous, clean-cut, tick. Voice: projection, pronunciation, enunciation, tick, tick, tick. Height: will need to stand on box. He was considered, but Roland, with a wealth of experience, agreed to take it on himself. Wednesday was pay day for us and the wages would arrive in the afternoon for the crew. By then we were all flat broke and mostly didnt even have money for lunch, so it was very welcome that Coles put on a light luncheon for the audience out in the foyer. When the audience were seated, part of the warm-up from Graeme Bent was to invite All of you wonderful people to troop out into the foyer and sample some sandwiches and cakes and a cup of Casba coffee. Ahh! Casbah! The housewives and various dead-beats who came in off the street for a free lunch were easy to muscle aside as ravenous staging, camera and techos barged through the press to help themselves. (I hope Casbah is out of business by now, because it was, in my opinion, the closest Ive ever tasted to dish-water.) Oh, and a memo to John Gilby: Its taken many years, but I do apologise for shrouding you in masking tape and locking you inside the Coles bunker. But you were being an absolute pest, and even Graham Mac agreed. On the plus side for you, we did all the work.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 07:35:29 +0000
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