Do you know Mark Trevorrow? He's the man behind Bob Downe!

Bob Downe was born outside a café in Sydney's Glebe in the mid-eighties and has been Mark Trevorrow's alter ego for the past 20 years.

But in Mark's early days it was journalism that floated his boat.

"When I was eight or nine years old I was already making my own little newspapers and magazines by hand. Doing all the lettering and all that kind of stuff, and then I did the school paper.

The year that Mark edited the school paper at his high school in Melbourne suburb of Murrumbeena, he pushed through thirty editions for the year and changed the format somewhat.

"I did it in the style of a muck-raking, campaigning, huge headline British tabloid, which sure shook the place up."

Mark explained to Late Afternoons presenter Joseph Thomsen that seeing the response of seven to eight hundred students helped him understand how powerful a role the media can play in society.

It gave me a very powerful early and rather shocking lesson in the power of print and the power of printed word. And that's what really intoxicated me and that sort of confirmed that that's what I wanted to do. I had no idea that I was going to be a performer, it really was the last thing on my mind".

From a beginning in school journalism in 1975, to becoming a cadet with the Herald Sun in January 1977 took Mark a mere 13 months.

"I remember the interview panel being just speechless, leafing through these things. Absolutely speechless, because they were pretty slick… they had a good look about them. I was quite good at layout and I was quite interested in the form as well as the content, and that's something that I've carried with me into my performance work."

Going back to Marks character 'Bob Downe', Joseph asked Mark if he was based on any one host or celebrity?

"People think he is", Mark explained.

Everyone thinks he's a take on someone they know… and he's not a take on anyone… he's a genuinely generic composite character… based on all of the television I grew up with in Melbourne in the 60's".

To hear more about the life and times of Mark Trevorrow, from his time with cabaret comedy group 'Gloria and the Go Go's', to why he owns a car but not a drivers license, listen to the audio link below.

Audio

As heard on Late Afternoons with Joseph Thomsen.
Duration: 20.16 minutes

So much so, there's to be a follow-up series next year.

"The ABC is where I should be," says Trevorrow, rightly chuffed his series rated as well as its predecessor, Parkinson, in the national broadcaster's Saturday night schedule.

It doesn't mean anything to my parents unless it's on the ABC. The reaction to the series has been tremendous, people talk to me like an old friend."

Trevorrow came to comedy and performing via a circuitous route that took him from editing 30 issues of the school newspaper to doing features for the women's pages as a 19-year-old on Melbourne's Sun.

"I was obsessed with the media," Trevorrow says of his youth, but his intense interest in politics and journalism suggest he hasn't changed much.

He's the classic clown: close to the surface is a serious person who is now being allowed out - albeit under strict supervision.

"I've been very affirmed by the reaction to me as a presenter and interviewer," he says.

"My instinct was right - after years of taking the mickey out of a certain kind of presenter, I knew I couldn't be phoney.

"The only negative criticism of the show was from TV critics who said the show was pretty good, but 'pity about him and his flappy femme ways'.

"But I feel it's important these days that I'm a gay man presenting myself honestly, on a plat, out in the open.

"The public like you to be out, they don't like you to be closeted." Trevorrow is now embarking on a live tour, which is yet another departure. He'll be singing as himself and there's a new CD to prove it (should you not be able to get to the gigs).

"I've come very late to it," he says, sighing and rolling his eyes. "I am a very late developer, in lots of ways.

"But it took me a long time to not put blocks between the world and myself. And now you can come and spend the evening with me and it's jazzy, lounge, cocktail, smooth and kinda classy. It's music I love.

"Norah Jones, Silverchair, love songs, show tunes, standards. You're not ready to do those songs when you're young: at least, I wasn't

"Then suddenly you finally get it, even though you've always loved it."

Fans of Bob Downe need not be worried, however, because the man who made Murwillumbah famous returns in 2005, bigger and whatever than ever.

"Yes, there'll be a new Bob show in the new year," Trevorrow is pleased to affirm.

"For me Bob's universal - you come into his world and I have to do that too. As Mark you can go to other places, but not as Bob. It's actually going to be a 21st birthday celebration. Can you believe Bob has been with us 21 years? I'm not giving anything away at the moment but I can tell you it's going to be seriously, fabulously cheesy."

It's About Time, Mark Trevorrow in concert with the John Thorn Trio: City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Oct 22; ph: 82562222 or www.cityrecitalhall.com
Diana Simmonds

age he's 45

famous for twenty years of Bob Downe, and the recent ABC series, The Way We Were

lives in Sydney

favourite hangs the Colombian Hotel, (late afternoon/early evening), Darlinghurst and Kawa cafe in Surry Hills

status desperate (Applications gladly considered)

star sign he's an Aquarian

Tell us about your new show Mark Trevorrow in Concert with the John Thorn Trio?

After years of sending up bad singers as Bob, I'm now singing seriously as Mark. I always knew I could make them laugh - I wondered if I could move them too. John (my pianist) and I have done classy, loungey, jazz trio arrangements of everything from Noel Coward's Mad About The Boy to Lennon-McCartney classics. I'll be performing my entire album, It's About Time (ABC Music/Universal) on stage too.

Where has Bob Downe gone and can we expect to see him again?

He's having a long rest in the country after winning bronze in Athens in the 100m Run Like A Girl competition. He's furious with me for hosting my own ABC series (The Way We Were). And he'll be back with a vengeance early next year, popping out of a cake for his 21st Birthday concert tour.

How did you get your break in the industry?

Some friends and I put on a show at a party in my flat in South Yarra in 1980. It was the original Globos, and it went off. My Melbourne Sun colleague and mate Wendy Harmer was there and recommended us to her friend Ralph Kerle, who as running the Flying Trapeze cabaret in Fitzroy. We then scored a record deal with Mushroom records, recorded Tintarella di Luna and were booked by Penny Chapman to do the first late shows at Kinselas cabaret in Sydney in 1982. Bob Downe was born two years later at the Glebe Food Fair. The rest, as they say...

You've done TV and stage, would you ever consider doing a film?

I have done a film! A cameo (Bob as a fridge salesman) in Yahoo Serious's Mr Accident. I bought it on DVD for 10 bucks at Tower Records in San Francisco. Say no more. But seriously, a Bob comedy feature could be nice, eh? My fantasy, actually to make a FUNNY Australian musical comedy!

How you like to relax when you're not working?

Catching up with friends, cooking, reading the papers online, listening to music (old jazz and soul, anything from the Buddha-Bar series). Watching DVDs (which have replaced the need to watch any TV, except for ABC News and Lateline if I've missed the 7.30 Report).

Do you enjoy exercising and what do you usually do?

I walk a lot. I love the Icebergs sauna-with-an-ocean-view followed by a swim in the sea pool. And there's a fit ball on my terrace which refuses to deflate despite months of neglect.

Where would you like to be in 10 years time?

Comfortably off, not working as hard.

Your happiest moment to date?

In the wings, about to go on at the Glasgow Pavilion, a huge old Victorian music hall, as the lights went down and a mighty roar went up from a packed house of 1500. I thought "this is what it feels like to be Bette Midler!" The show was incredible, outrageous, joyful.

Are you ruled by your head or your heart?

A little bit of my head, a lot of heart and a couple of other places as well - including that old standby, the gut, which is the one you really should listen to.

What's the most important thing in the world to you and why?

My health. It's not until your mid-forties that you realise with a shock that you can no longer take it for granted.
Natasha Lee

Three years ago in a number of unadvertised performances at Fitzroy's Black Cat Café, Mark Trevorrow took to the microphone without his Bob Downe wig.

It was the beginning of what seemed a cool and calculated murder of his alter ego. Trevorrow toured the country in his own name, singing slinky Sinatra and lounge lullabies. His first album as Mark Trevorrow, It's About Time, was released earlier this year, and he hosted his first non-cable show on ABC TV – The Way We Were – as defiantly non-Bob.

At the end of this month he struts on the City Recital Hall stage in Angel Place singing songs from his album – and finally it feels natural.

"It's certainly lovely to get to a point where it's really second nature," Trevorrow said. "When I opened at the Opera House, that first night at the Studio, about 11 of the charts were the first time I'd performed them in public. And it was astoundingly difficult and took a lot of concentration …

"But I've got to that point when you can really start performing them well, because you can do your variations, change your phrasing and your attitude with them. Concentrate on how you move them," he said.

If Trevorrow has refashioned himself as a smooth operator, it's gratifying to discover he hasn't lost his sense of humour, or a sense of joy and openness about his sexuality.

In The Way We Were, Trevorrow was both host and chanteur, providing camp banter that acknowledged his gayness, but stopped short of the antics of Graeme Norton or Julian Clary. It was a deliberate move, he said.

"I wanted that to be part of it, but not the raison d'être," he said. "So in that way, I wanted to do something which was not Queer Eye: you know, let's tune in and look at the fag. So that was something that was very important to me, to have it as part of who I am and what I do and not the central part."

Surprisingly, Bob Downe is not dead. Old showbiz characters never die: they just do more corporate gigs, which is where the Murwillumbah superstar has been appearing for months now. Trevorrow never intended him to be lost forever, just asked to shut up for a while so Mark could try a little tenderness.

It's great news for fans, as is an upcoming concert celebrating Bob's 21st birthday.

"It's going to be a flashback show, but a preposterous flashback show, an anniversary concert that's a send-up of anniversary shows," he said, then sighed. The show would somehow fit into a 2005 schedule alongside a second season of The Way We Were, which he said looked likely. "I better hit that Bikram yoga," he said.

Mark Trevorrow appears in It's About Time at the City Recital Hall, Angel Place, for one night only: Friday 22 October. Phone 8256 2222 for bookings.
Tim Benzie

Which brings me to The Best Disco In Town on Sunday night at the Entertainment Centre. The posse consisted of head schmoozer Penny Tration, her doppelgänger Tora Hymen and me. We swished in like it was our concert, to applause from many of the crowd, and stood centre of the dancefloor. To say we were three career women ready to rock would have been an understatement. Now the concert was fabulous, with a line-up of Boney M, the Village People, Hot Chocolate, KC and the Sunshine Band and the goddess who is Gloria Gaynor. I have blisters and no voice left from clapping and hooting sooo loudly.

But let's fast-forward a little. From the start our goal was to meet the performers. We had an insider among us: from previous tours Penny had become a personal friend of the Village People. So by the time we got the green light for our invitations to the after-party to meet the performers, I was almost on a respirator.

With many years of experience in the ancient art of schmoozing, Penny led the way. We soon found out that all the performers could see us plain as day from the stage, one even saying we "stuck out like dogs' balls." (I am still not sure if that was a compliment or not.) As you can imagine, I was in heaven, and have many pictures to prove it.

The next piece of information is sooo hot off the press, I am shaking as I type. After a lengthy chat with Eric, the leather man from the Village People, he let slip that the Village People have been asked to do a few gigs with her majesty Cher and may be touring in Australia with her. But on the same topic I also heard that maybe our own Bob Downe will also be supporting her. My god, and I thought I'd worked myself into a frenzy with Boney M. What happens if I meet Cher?

"I know I can make people laugh" says Mark, who created Bob in 1984 (and will celebrate his character's 21st Birthday with a tour in 2005). "I wanted to find out if I could move them as well". Starting in late 2001 with an informal series of unadvertised performances at the tiny Black Cat cabaret in Fitzroy, the experiment was a revelation. Mark called upon old friend and collaborator, musical director John Thorn, to co arrange and lead a superb jazz trio.

Now with a weekly TV audience equalling "Parkinson" in the same Saturday timeslot, it's time to tour! IT'S ABOUT TIME is a superb 90 minute evening of pop, jazz and show standards set to jazz trio accompaniment, and (naturally) warm, revealing and funny patter in between songs.

Mark's performing career has been built around interpretations of popular song - first with The Globos, his 60's revival cabaret group (1980-1986) and then Bob Downe (born 1984, still going strong). The songs on IT'S ABOUT TIME - Mark performs the entire album in concert - are merely a continuation of the journey, this time with the irony, pastiche and histrionics ironed out.

"Singing in my own voice allows me to explore serious emotion, in different shadings and styles for the first time" says Mark. The show features interpretations of songs from such diverse composers as Noel Coward (Mad About The Boy), Sammy Cahn (Thoroughly Modern Millie, come Fly With Me), Stephen Sondheim (The Ballad of Sweeney Todd, Being Alive) Paul Williams (Rainbow Connection), Lennon-McCartney (It's For You, Good Day Sunshine) and Randy Newman (It's Lonely At The Top). Meet the real Mark Trevorrow in a musically brilliant evening, which will entertain, move and surprise!

DATES
MELBOURNE - THE SPIEGLETENT - October 7 at 9.15pm/ October 8 at 8pm Bookings: Ticketmaster 7 Phone 1300 136 166 or http://www.ticketmaster7.com/

SYDNEY - CITY RECITAL HALL ANGEL PLACE - October 22 Bookings: Phone (02) 8256 2222 or http://www.cityrecitalhall.com/

PERTH - PERTH CONCERT HALL - October 30 Bookings: Phone (08) 9484 1133 or http://www.bocsticketing.com.au/

This is the final episode of this brilliant series. Like Barry Humphries's Flashbacks, it gently taps the early modern life of Australia, a world of curiously hammy educational films and brands such as Janome and Mixmaster. It's part chat-show, part documentary, hosted by journalist Mark Trevorrow, a comedian whose alter-ego is Bob Downe. There is no sign of Downe here, except perhaps as an occasional glint in the host's eye. Trevorrow is perfectly cast. His knowledge of cultural miscellany is vast and the passion with which he leaps into each episode is infectious.

Sex is on the menu tonight, as the series examines the role it has played in Australian society, from the sexual revolution to the present. Guests include the "father of IVF", Dr Carl Wood, sex therapist Dr Jules Black, an IVF family, the Polsons, comedian Mandy Nolan and gay sperm donor Paul Van Reyk.

However, the archival material is the real star. We see some very funny interviews from the '60s and '70s that say more about attitudes of the day than mere words can encapsulate. Then there is a startling piece of edu-porn, about a couple whose fires aren't exactly a raging inferno, featuring what appears to be a rather young Cornelia Frances. The Weakest Link, indeed.
Michael Idato

Scientists and doctors, spurred on to find cures for infertility by groups of infertile women pressuring them to continue with their research, turned to what were once treatments solely for sheep and cattle - In Vitro Fertilisation. IVF - a huge scientific breakthrough in Australia - was actually instigated by the ingenuity of vets.

In this episode we meet Dr Carl Wood, the father of IVF, who became interested in fertility while he was at a public hospital. Adoption was an alternative to infertility but there weren't enough adopted children to go around. Carl set up an IVF team at Monash University in Melbourne. Soon after, Alan Trounson, Embryologist/Vet joined the IVF effort. The idea of IVF was akin to landing on the moon.

Dr Jules Black, sex therapist as well as obstetrician and gynaecologist, talked sex all through the 70's (on ABC TV) and the 80's on the Mike Walsh Show. He says despite seeming sophistication, couples still don't know much about making babies.

We meet the Polson Family. Carla Polson was Carl Wood's third IVF baby and her brother John B was a "frozen embryo baby". Their mother, Anthea Polson, was told at 18 she would not be able to have children because her fallopian tubes were diseased. Once married, she pursued every possibility for conception. It was extremely difficult, so the family has always helped others face the issues that stem from these new ways of making babies.

Mandy Nolan is a comedian, mother of three and wickedly fertile. She guides Mark through the process of having a couple on the breast.

Paul Van Reyk is a gay father of eight. Paul evaluates being an anonymous sperm donor versus a known sperm donor. IVF has opened up conception to infertile couples, single women, lesbians.

Production Details

A GNWTV / ABC TV co-production. Executive producer Ted Robinson, Series producer Pam Swain.

Up until now, Trevorrow (aka Bob Downe) has presented topics such as "sharks", "children's television" and "sunshine" in a breezy magazine style format.

This week however, the subject is making babies, which proves much less conservative than expected. Conventional, nuclear family births are given a nod, but mostly the show is about new families, from IVF babies to lesbian parenting.

No lesbians make an appearance but Trevorrow does interview local gay man (and regular Sydney Star Observer letter writer) Paul van Reyk, who is the biological father of at least six children. He cheerily rejects the notion that being gay disqualifies one from parenthood, but the biggest endorsement comes from Anthea Polson.

Who? Polson is one of the first IVF mothers in Australia and believes everyone should have the same chance she and her husband had 22 years ago. "If my chosen partner was a female, I don't see why I shouldn't have that same right", she says.

During the panel discussion comedienne and mother-of-three Mandy Moore mentions two gay male friends who had a baby with a lesbian friend. The woman had no desire to raise children of her own so acted as a surrogate mum. "Now they have a family," she smiled.

Trevorrow hosts with caramel ease and in a sense his gayness makes especially perfect this week, given his naivete regarding childbirth.

Chatting to mothers who bore triplets he asks, "Do they come out like a line of sausages?" And when he dons a "pregnant" suit intended to engender empathy, he takes the opportunity to ape Demi Moore's nude preggers photoshoot.

The Way We Were may go down in TV history as a curious hybrid, but it remains significant in another important way. The show is a nostalgic look at Australia's past that casually and without fanfare includes lesbians and gay men – a rare creature indeed.

More please, Aunty.

The Way We Were concludes this Saturday 11 September at 9:30pm on ABCTV.

It must be hard being one of the few openly gay entertainers in Australia. Anyone would get sick of being a constant spokesperson for anything, let alone sexual orientation. But it is so intrinsic to who Trevorrow is. His alter ego, Bob Downe, burst out of his closet and hosted the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras on television, where he famously pashed Sir Ian McKellan. He has recently shed the character to present the nostalgic documentary and talk show The Way We Were but continues to camp it up. Big expressions and gestures. It is dominant in his lifestyle, workplace and personality. He may appear to be sick of the topic, but gay politics and culture colour his conversation anyway.

What's changed over the years?

We've changed astoundingly. Look at young people when they go out now. They are absolutely mixed in terms of race, religion, colour and sexual preference. We are seeing the demise of exclusively gay club and pub culture because young people are so integrated now.

What are you nostalgic for?

I miss nightclubs where there was music played with real instruments. Nothing can beat the joy and the natural ecstasy produced by '60s and '70s dance music. We have to artificially induce the high that the music used to produce by being so transcendental and positive. There were lots of gospel influences and major chords. There is not even a vocal any more. Pre-AIDS disco was a magic time. A friend of mine (joked that) she hated "fags" because you can go to a gay club anywhere in the world and find like-minded people. The Mardi Gras was under threat because the straight party people wanted to be part of it. They had the numbers - there were nine of them for every one of us. Because it's not broadcast any more, the people in the suburbs don't think it's happening. If it's not on TV, it doesn't happen. One of the reasons I like to be on TV is because television is affirmation.

The former cadet journalist and dedicated clubber (he went out every night between the ages of 18 and 35) has hit the heights as Bob Downe, pop warbler and host of the fictional Good Morning Murwillumbah since he first appeared in a borrowed wig in 1987. The next year, he was off to the Edinburgh festival and by 1990 he had moved to London to make it on British television. Although Bob Downe hosted three UK TV specials and met the Queen at a Royal Variety Show, it wasn't enough for Trevorrow and he returned after eight years. A regular television show, he agrees, has always been his dream.

You don't look back and think: Gee, the past 20 years I concentrated on one character and didn't extend myself?

Bob is the character that I found as a child. He is the clown inside of me that made friends and family laugh in the lounge room. I've been doing a Bob Downe-type character since I was five. Working with Bob all these years led to working as Mark. Taking the mask away and being who I am on stage and TV. A lot of people working are ostensibly Ray Martin or Jana Wendt - but they have a public persona. I am trying to divest that and be myself as much as I can.

Bob Downe became gayer as time went on.

He became much truer to who I was. I wasn't afraid any more. All gay people have a time in their life, especially in a public sphere, where they are very nervous that people will write them off. A lot of gay people suffer extreme rejection, humiliation, degradation and abuse. I'm sorry, but I agree with anti-discrimination legislation. I think the people who say you can't legislate people to be tolerant, they can get f----d. They can kiss my arse, because they have never been gay-bashed.

We talk about his feelings of solitude as one of the few openly gay performers. And he is clearly upset by his position. "I wish the closet gay performers and athletes would get off their arse and come out so people like me could stop carrying the f---ing can. If more people would be honest about their sexuality, there wouldn't be two people, me and f---ing (ex-rugby league player) Ian Roberts."

Well, if you are going to host the Gay Mardi Gras .

Rove McManus and Amanda Keller hosted the Gay Mardi Gras and they aren't spokespeople for the gay community. At least I'm not the son of a famous gay Australian. Boy, that would be hideous.

You wouldn't like being an outsider.

I hate being made to feel like an outsider. You have that feeling all the time. There is a constant reinforcement of your difference. Because we are outside we have an incredible antennae for changes. Gay people are always on the cutting edge of culture because they are outside. Gay men are now starting to tuck their shirts back in because straight men are wearing their shirts out, so gay men, to continue our signalling to each other, are now tucking our shirts back in.

Are you sick of camp humour?

I like all humour if it's original and comes from a real place. One thing I really loathe is straight actors doing a camp character because it often has a lot of hate in it.

Do you work at people liking you?

Yeah, that's why you are a performer. My insecurity was being the little gay child wanting everybody to like me.

The last episode of The Way We Were screens on Saturday at 9.30pm on the ABC.
Chris Beck

Congratulations on your MAGNIFICENT Frances Faye website, it is just incredible. I particularly enjoyed my old friend Stephen Maclean's memories of seeing, hearing and meeting her... what brilliant, detailed and perfectly hysterical recall he has! What is it about Frances Faye that moves us so? that she was out, and proud, and LOUD - when we were all in diapers? There's that, with its inspiring cultural and historical significance, but it's more likely the musical, vocal and comedic skill of probably the greatest cabaret performer - ever.

I discovered her only eight years back, here in Sydney - like many via the CD release of Caught In The Act - but the great thing about great artists is that it doesn't matter when you discover 'em, only that you discover 'em! Frances is a legend among older queens and lesbians here, of course, having played in cabaret here over many years, right up to the late 70s. I think she loved Sydney - and Sydney adored her.

I'm an entertainer, too - a comic and singer - and I worked with a fabulous, funny old sax and flute player named Ted White, on an album project of mine directly inspired by Frances. Ted worked with Frances in Melbourne in the 60s, and he told me the first thing she did at rehearsals was to give all the players, whom she'd never met, a joint! What a way to loosen them up and snap them out of their various bags of tricks. (You can imagine how uncooperative straight white jazz players can be, especially around gay & lesbian singers.)

Cheers - MARK TREVORROW (aka 'Bob Downe') Sydney, Australia

Mark adds:

I think Frances's importance as the first out, gay mainstream artist (more than as a gay icon) cannot be exaggerated. She paved the way for Peter Allen, she (obviously!) inspired Bruce Vilanch - and through him Bette Midler and countless others - and I believe you can trace her right down to contemporary, out and mainstream gay comedians like Justin Bond (of 'Kiki & Herb'), Julian Clary and Lily Savage in the UK - all of whom I am proud to call friends - and yes, I'd like to think Bob Downe could be included in the list! ;-) another Australian is the incredible Paul Capsis.

Tonight's episode examines our changing attitudes to work and, if you can get past Mark Trevorrow's cheesy delivery and the studio audience's over-eager responses, there's some good material here. A mixed bag of guests, including Ita Buttrose, Tom Uren, Paul Fenech and Jane Flemming, mull over how we went from being the land of the long weekend to the land of the lost weekend.

The variety-show format doesn't work for me and the audience's laughter at the archival footage jars, but the guests - particularly Uren and Fenech - get this over the line.
Greg Hassall

This episode reminds us of the panic caused when computers started replacing people in jobs and examines whether the dire predictions came true.

Publishing legend Ita Buttrose reminisces about her days as a copy girl, when getting news photos from overseas meant driving to the airport to collect the film off the tarmac and wearing hats and gloves was compulsory.

Jane Flemming, Commonwealth Games Champion, talks about jobs in sport and reveals the difficulties faced by elite athletes when they need to start new careers and how money has changed sport forever.

Tom Uren a National Living Treasure, recounts what it was like growing up during the Depression and why he was up against the union movement over jobs for married women.

Paul Fenech and Tahir Bilgic, direct, star and co-write Fat Pizza. They share their varied careers and experiences of working and discuss how their parents' work ethic influenced them.

We meet Ms Megabyte Computer Whiz, Yvonne Adele. This thoroughly modern workingwoman explains how modern technology really can make our lives easier. Apparently the future includes a toaster that burns the weather forecast into your toast by laser, so how can we doubt her?

And Dr John Buchanan, Deputy Director of the Centre for Industrial Relations Research and Training at Sydney University, attempts to answer the question of what's happened to the eight-hour day. His research reveals some staggering results about the working lives of Australians, then and now.

Production Details

A GNWTV / ABC TV co-production. Executive producer Ted Robinson. Series producer Pam Swain.

The rally was a huge success with around 1000 people attending. It was an important opportunity for our community to come together to stand up for real Australian family values - equality, respect, acceptance and love. Stevie Clayton was MC and speeches were given by the Rev. Dr. Dorothy McRae McMahon, Chris Wilkinson and a joint speech by Somali Cerise and Rob McGrory. The crowd was entertained by the talented Mark Trevorrow.

The Gay & Lesbian Rights Lobby wishes to thank all those people who generously gave of their time to put the event together on a tight timeframe and, importantly, all those members and supporters who attended the rally to protest. In particular, we extend our thanks to Mark Barraket, Scott Carn, Stevie Clayton, Anthony Hillis, Damon Hartley, Megan Lewis, Adrian Lovney, Rev. Dr. Dorothy McRae McMahon, David Skidmore, Mark Trevorrow, Chris Wilkinson, Norwest Productions Pty Limited, ACON, New Mardi Gras and Sydney Pride Centre.

'The Outback' is the image often conjured up when people think of Australia - a vast expanse of red desert and kangaroos. In reality, more than 85% of the population live within an hour's drive of the coast!

Tonight on The Way We Were: Sunshine, we meet ABC broadcaster Phillip Adams who was also creator of the highly successful Slip, Slop, Slap campaign. He discusses whether the image of the sun-bronzed Aussie is outdated.

Beachwear has become gradually smaller and more revealing. Mark Trevorrow chats with Paula Stafford, inventor of a pre-bikini before WW2, who has contributed to the formative image of the Gold Coast as a place of sun, surf, sand and fun, and Al "The Suntan Man" Baldwin, a Gold Coast institution who shows how golden a tan can be.

Australia was the first place in the world to have surf lifesaving clubs. Every summer, thousands of volunteer lifesavers make our coastline safer by patrolling beaches and providing first-aid when needed. We meet surf lifesaver and iron man Darren Mercer.

Tom Carroll, World Champion surfer, now consultant to Quicksilver, has witnessed the world embrace surfing as a sport and fashion.

Writer, media teacher and passionate coast lover Craig McGregor says the beach now occupies a central place in the culture of Australia and suggests it has replaced the traditional mythical place occupied by the bush. From his home in Byron Bay Craig has observed the rush to have a piece of action at the coast.

Sue Ann Post is a comedian who finds it hard to leave her beloved Melbourne. Certainly she'd rather be miles from a beach. Does she agree that Aussies have to be sun lovers?

Production Details

A GNWTV / ABC TV co-production. Executive producer Ted Robinson. Series producer Pam Swain.

We meet the feisty Merle Thornton - yes, Sigrid's mother - who campaigned for women to be allowed to drink in public bars and risked arrest in the process. Over a middy, historian Clare Wright debates the cultural significance of the ladies lounge with Thornton and Trevorrow.

But what would any discussion on the place of alcohol in our society be without talking to a couple of sportsmen?

Cricketer Kerry O'Keeffe and former Sydney Swan Dale Lewis shed some light on the significance drinking plays within sports teams. They share some hilarious - but damning - anecdotes.

Sir James and Lady Hardy discuss our growing love of wine, but the sparkling star of the show is Trevorrow, who keeps things moving along with probing questions and an appropriate dash of high-camp humour.
Ben Wyld

Despite now knowing all the risks and health hazards we're still a nation of drinkers. Drinking is accepted but public drunkenness is not. Responsible drinking is encouraged, drink-driving laws have been introduced, and now more women drink. Has this changed the way we get intoxicated?

Tonight on The Way We Were: Intoxication, we meet Merle Thornton, author and protestor, who once chained herself to the public bar in Brisbane and made headlines around the world.

Dr Clare Wright, historian and author of Beyond the Ladies Lounge, shares some of her research undertaken with hundreds of older women - including many pub owners - and blows away many preconceptions.

After finding his fame as a footballer, Dale Lewis is now a publican. He comes from a family of country pub owners and compares city and country drinking habits.

Kerry O'Keeffe, famous cricketer and commentator and drinking record holder, talks about his love of drinking and love of sport and how the two went together.

The Hardy family has been growing grapes and making wine for more than 150 years. Sir James and Lady Hardy share a some of their family.

Production Details

A GNW TV / ABC TV co-production. Executive producer Ted Robinson, series producer Pam Swain.

His subject tonight is hair, 1960s-style, which is very big, and gets off to a grand start with Kerry O'Brien. The Thumb is itching to spring upwards, but other guests insist otherwise.
Robin Oliver

In The Way We Were: Hair, Kerry O'Brien remembers the Beatles and winklepickers and discusses politics, sexual revolution and music.

We meet Wendy De Waal, who started hairdressing at 15. She knows all the tricks and has tried all the hairdos. She now works on films like the Star Wars sequels and The Night They Called It A Day. She has also seen Mark Trevorrow's worst excesses.

John Waters talks rebellion and long hair at school, the flight to Australia, being a jackeroo and being given a part in the very radical new musical Hair, where he began his acting career - not that he knew it then.

Sue Ismiel is the woman who has followed her instincts and ingenuity to create an amazing business based on hair removal and now sexual vitality. She is known as "the NADS lady".

We also meet Kath Albury, an academic who studies porn and the penchant for shaving off body hair.

John Hall Kenney brought the passion for the Brazilian fashion to Melbourne more than a decade ago. It's given him RSI but continues to delight him.

Deborah Conway, always an individual, talks hair and closes the show with a performance.

Production Details

A GNW TV / ABC TV co-production. Executive producer Ted Robinson, series producer Pam Swain.

Mark Trevorrow, the man behind the camp comedy persona, is stepping out of character and into the limelight.

For the first time in 20 years Trevorrow is being himself. But do not fear, Bob will return.

"I'm not killing off Bob just yet," says Trevorrow. "I want everyone to know he's still got a bit of life in him yet. He is 21 next year, so he will be back for his 21st birthday tour.

"I think he will be popping out of a cake, but maybe not naked. Maybe in a nude suit."

Until then, fans can catch the man behind Bob on television as Trevorrow hosts the ABC's Saturday-night nostalgia program The Way We Were.

It's an appropriate gig for a man who has built his career on retro appeal. In the series Trevorrow delves into Australia's past and discovers some rather enlightening facts.

"You know why there are tiles outside pubs?" he asks, without pausing for an answer. "Because people can spew on them after the six o'clock swill. Pubs used to shut at six and everyone would chug down their beers and vomit outside when the pub would close."

As the series host, Trevorrow was also able to interview some of Australia's leading icons.

"To actually meet Mr Squiggle was so overwhelming. When you meet the characters from the shows you loved as a kid, it can get a little bit weird. You go a bit stupid. You sort of regress into a childhood state."

Trevorrow has also released his first album under his own name, the appropriately titled It's About Time.

The album, which Trevorrow describes as "a bunch of old show tunes", features a mix of jazz, pop and musical classics, including Rainbow Connection from The Muppet Movie and Steely Dan's 1974 hit Rikki Don't Lose That Number.

Trevorrow is now planning to tour nationally performing as himself – but at the time of this interview he was still scouting for an appropriate Brisbane venue.

When told Festival Hall was no longer available, Trevorrow says he would never have been able to fill a space that large.

And he should know. In 1983 he played to a packed Festival Hall with his now-defunct cabaret group the Globos as the support act for Cliff Richard's Australian tour.

"Being on a Cliff Richard tour wasn't quite the same as other rock'n'roll tours," he says. "Cliff used to hold a prayer meeting with his band before the gig where they would pray for the lights and the PA.

"The rest of the members that weren't Christian, we would all have a bit of a quiet laugh about it."
Lucy Carne

"Whenever anyone mentions the 1970s these days, I need a few shots of antibiotics." I am telling television host Mark Trevorrow, dapper, svelte and smiling like his alter ego Bob Downe, parody of the cheesy variety turn.

We are taping episode five of The Way We Were, a crossover concept, part desk-and-sofa show with some variety thrown in and part social anthropology; in reality, what's known as a clip show, cleverly dressed up by executive producer Ted Robinson (Good News Week, The Glass House) as a kind of electronic vaudeville display of cultural history.

Really it's a way to use up all the old footage from a thousand hours of current affairs, news interviews and fading black-and-white documentaries in an era when the TV receiver is fast becoming a bottomless pit for footage.

Tonight's show is about love and marriage, focused mainly on the permissive '60s and '70s, and Trevorrow worries whether we've lost that lovin' feeling. "Do we really need that little piece of paper?" he asks the studio audience. "And I don't mean the results of the blood test."

Other guests include spiky, twice-divorced former Miss World Belinda Green ("You had to have a certain moral fibre", she says of beauty) and the urbane Lionel Bowen, attorney -general in the Whitlam government, who oversaw the creation of the Family Court and joint custody, that wonderful contradiction in terms. "We needed a more sensible way to split people up," he says, his eyes moist. "It's not an easy game."

I'm on the show as a tired veteran of the so-called permissive society and of two failed marriages in the '70s, when it seemed my acting career looped endlessly from bum jokes to body fluid jokes to tits and zipper jokes. The Alvin Purple films, raunchy TV soap The Box - and other movies and plays I need truth serum to admit to - constituted a life loaded down with opportunities for humiliation.

It was nightmarish, I tell Trevorrow; an existence spent capturing the essence of the existential dilemma of the almost regular gay caught again with his pants down.

In the '60s and '70s, the times were certainly changing and Australia was catching up fast, with the R certificate, the topless and see-through, the nude actor on stage, the porno revolution and the centrefold without staples.

The studio audience for The Way We Were is politely interested as we discuss these matters sitting up when clips of the ABC TV version of Alvin Purple are shown, astonished at the Carry On effrontery and, as producer Pam Swain says later, the meaty statuesque shape of the naked female bodies.

Shows such as this are irresistible because they emerge from the culture of TV itself, they're product fashioned from what's already been used in a period when time has taken on a new relativity and everything is coming back (or has coming-backness, as Swain calls it, built into it.)

Once TV was something you did and left behind, biodegradable and forgettable, images decomposed in huge canisters, mildewed and faded, in a cupboard somewhere - if the footage was cached. Now is a time when nothing will go away and everything will be endlessly recycled: TV digital playback machine allowing us to endlessly relive moments in our lives that once had meaning.

Comfort or nostalgia TV is clever TV at a time when the world is looking for friendly faces, comfort and reassurance, and a retreat from threats, lies and violence. The Christmas following September 11, 2001, a show called The Yule Log, a six-minute loop of a log burning in a fireplace accompanied by yuletide muzak, gathered the highest ratings that morning in New York, the most sophisticated TV market in the world. No fancy camera angles, sets or even attractive actors - just a burning fireplace, for two hours.

The Way We Were plays around with baby-boomer shadow memory, providing images that function as personal signifiers and at the same time document collective experience. Tonight's show helps explain what provoked women of a certain age to once regard a career as something they did before marriage, why so much distress attached to unbridled promiscuity, and why we all go weak at the knees when we hear the music that played during certain sexual experiences. And, why - according to younger people - "de facto is a perfectly OK new turn in the whole marriage caper".

Trevorrow is staring at me as these thoughts ricochet through my brain. I should be thinking of something funny to say. This is nostalgia as retro, hip TV entertainment after all.

Like Downe, the chisel-jawed Trevorrow was obviously born with a chuckle muscle that never stops twitching; he also has a nice singing voice, warm and unaffected when he isn't kidding, and the trademark joke-shop grin that's a prerequisite for TV personalities, newsreaders and chat-show hosts.

More urbane and tszujed than Bob Downe, Trevorrow is more of a digital remix of Jimmy Hannan, Andrew Denton and Quentin Crisp, a handsome, sometimes edgy gay man with a talent for feeding TV's appetite for titillation. The thinking man's Bernard King, his lewdness is quite disarming - though it makes it difficult to think of answers when he asks leading questions about how you once lived your life and how many people you've slept with.

Nostalgia TV, of which The Way We Were is a more thoughtful than most example, works off a kind of "What were we really thinking?" empathy that can be confronting and side-splitting in turns. The shows and commercials of the past constitute TV we know how to watch. There can't be a future without a past and evolution invariably breeds an interest in the way we used to be.

The medium is changing so fast that the days when millions of people watched the same shows day in and day out are likely to be remembered as a quaint, naive period. Rather like my first two marriages.

The Way We Were, ABC, 9.30pm, Saturdays. A DVD set featuring Alvin Purple and Alvin Purple Rides Again is available for $34.95.
Graeme Blundell

Mark Trevorrow is a consummate variety-show host. As the wide-of-mouth, shiny-of-tooth Bob Downe (Trevorrow's alter ego), he's in his element performing in front of a live audience; with a studio audience there occasionally seems to be a bit of a lag between jokes.

Still, that's really not the fault of tonight's material in this entertaining episode, which takes a light-hearted look at changing attitudes to marriage since the late '60s. Demonstrating the sexually permissive '70s, saucy excerpts from Alvin Purple are shown.

Included for their assumed personification of liberated '70s attitudes are guests Graeme Blundell (who played Alvin Purple) and former Miss World (1972) Belinda Green. Both share thoughts on their respective marriages and divorces. The introduction of no-fault divorce in 1975 by the then attorney-general Lionel Murphy also comes up for discussion.

Joining Trevorrow, Blundell and Green on the panel are CNN's Chris Taylor and director Safina Uberoi (My Mother India).
Jackie Chowns

Marriage was an institution our society was built on. Marriage meant sex, children and financial security. To live in sin or have a child out of wedlock created shame and humiliation. But then came the pill, women working, the rise of feminism and the permissive society.

In 1975, "no-fault" divorce laws were introduced. Was this a defining moment in history that changed society forever?

Tonight, twice married former Miss World Belinda Green reveals the woman's perspective in the permissive 70s, while Graeme Blundell, who once played the most sensitive and desirable of men Alvin Purple, gives us the bloke's side.

We meet Margaret and Peter Pace who have been married 34 years - and happily faced the ups and downs of wedded life.

Former Attorney General Lionel Bowen, married for 50 years with 8 children, takes up the marriage mantle. He tells us why the institution of marriage is a good thing but also argues for the necessity of the no-fault divorce laws brought in by Lionel Murphy in 1975 under the Whitlam Government.

We discuss arranged marriage with Indian/Australian film director Safina Uberoi (My Mother India), while Triple J's Chris Taylor argues for the no-marriage option.

Production Details

A GNW TV / ABC TV co-production. Executive producer Ted Robinson, series producer Pam Swain.

The only reason this isn't getting a downward thumb is that, once Mark Trevorrow gets past his initial flurry of lame, high-camp patter, it's reasonably worthwhile viewing. He interviews a marine biologist, a shark attack survivor, the fabulous Valerie Taylor and "the Steve Irwin of the sea", Ian "Shark" Gordon.

Taylor's stories about the filming of Jaws scenes off South Australia are often hilarious and the expert group provides an intelligent, informed perspective on safety issues, conservation and the shark's importance to the ecosystem. They also make the obvious point that we are encroaching upon a shark's territory by being in the water in the first place.

However, an hour is a long time to chew on this topic (if you'll forgive the pun).

The tame audience seems to lap it up.
Judy Adamson

Mark Trevorrow speaks to people whose lives have been changed forever by the shark, people who fight to save sharks and people who've had very close encounters of the other kind.

In the 70s, the film Jaws helped instil fear of sharks across the globe and many sharks were killed as a result. But today, the Great White shark is protected in some Australian waters. There is a greater push for conservation, especially as some species like the grey-nurse face extinction.

Valerie Taylor started spear fishing as a sport, then exchanged spear guns for cameras and became a recorder of sharks in the wild. Valerie relives the excitement of shooting for Jaws and shares her love of the many personalities of sharks.

Jill Hinde was a scuba diving champion in the 60s and witnessed the famous attack on Henri Bource, cameraman/musician/filmmaker, which was captured in Savage Shadows.

Ian Gordon, a passionate shark researcher and star of NHNZ's Most Dangerous Moments, believes there is still so much to learn about sharks and he delights in spending all his time pursuing those mysteries.

We meet Richard Ellis, one of an increasing number of surfers who have been attacked and lived to tell the tale, and Dr Julian Pepperell, marine biologist and commercial fishing consultant, gives a contemporary view of how we are treating sharks.

Production Details

A GNWTV / ABC TV co-producton. Executive producer Ted Robinson, series producer Pam Swain.

There were 246 disgruntled and nervous travellers wondering whether their flight to the United States on Tuesday was disrupted by a bomb threat, or a joke by a passenger or crew member. The airline, which had to dump large amounts of fuel as its plane made an emergency return to Sydney, was left with a bill estimated at $100,000.

But who or what is BOB?

A former international flight attendant who worked in Italy and Beirut said yesterday that flight stewards in his time had used the letters as a code to signify that an attractive person was present ... "Babe on Board".

The attendant, who runs a city coffee shop in O'Connell Street, said: "It could have meant 'Bomb on Board'. But it could also have been a stuff-up by a flight attendant."

On ABC radio yesterday, James Valentine replayed an excerpt from an ABC television show, The Way We Were, two weeks ago in which Mark Trevorrow joked with flight attendants who were guests on his show.

They spoke of a secret code among them, that someone was a "BOB", meaning "Babe on Board" or "Best on Board". Trevorrow - creator of the comic character Bob Downe - joked that a message might have been that "Bob is in 24D".

There was laughter, and the joke might have continued on Tuesday's flight UA840. But when the word was found written on a sick bag in a toilet on the upper deck, the fun stopped and the pilot turned the plane around.

Passengers were screened and the plane searched after it set down at 5.50pm. No bomb was found and the screening process, controlled by the police, was time-consuming.

Passengers returning for their 1pm departure yesterday on United Airlines Flight 9793 were annoyed about not having been given enough information.

Sondra Baier, from Canberra, said she was more nervous than she had been on Tuesday. "But what are we to do?" she asked. "The way we fight terrorism, this is going to be a constant issue.

Nobody criticised the captain's return to Sydney. Professor Chris Poulson, an expert in management from California, said: "I looked at what they did with a professional eye, and I think they did it well."

Patrick Weaver, public relations spokesman for United, said the matter of what "BOB" meant and who had written it was a matter for the police.

As for informing passengers, he said each emergency was a "unique situation" in which it was the pilot's call.
Malcolm Brown

Few ingredients flavour TV programming better than nostalgia. And in this docu-variety series chronicling the history of Australian popular culture, the footage from the grand final of the Countdown Xanadu Dance Competition is worth the price of admission alone.

The history of dancing in Australia is put under the microscope in tonight's episode, with footage ranging from early waltzes to postmodern jitterbugs, and some spectacular shots of stomping, a dance craze that prompted a number of local councils to impose a ban on the grounds that it might weaken and damage dancehall floors. No, that's not a joke.

Host Mark Trevorrow interviews Australian choreographer John O'Connell, whose credits include Strictly Ballroom, Romeo+Juliet and Moulin Rouge, 1960s pop icon Little Pattie, comedian Gary Eck, Six O'Clock Rock dancer Lee Nielsen, Bangarra Dance Theatre choreographer Frances Rings and "dance party diva" Tobin Saunders.

Perhaps you can take the host out of Bob Downe (Trevorrow's disco icon alter-ego), but you can't take all of the Bob Downe out of the host. Trevorrow is a great presenter, with excellent command of his material, but the twinkle in his eye is unmistakably Downe's.
Michael Idato

This week we dig up some archival film treasures: from debutantes, partners in thongs, learning to dance for an outback ball to news reports warning of shocking new dance crazes sweeping the nation. Among the highlights is the Countdown Xanadu Dance Competition, which illustrates how Australians wholeheartedly adopted lycra and disco dancing as their own.

World-renowned, home-grown choreographer John O'Connell (Strictly Ballroom, Romeo & Juliet, Moulin Rouge) not only tells us about the impact of disco on popular dancing, but how it changed his Saturday nights forever.

Little Pattie, the 1960s teenage star of Stompin' at Maroubra, reveals that her hit would have been Stompin' at Bronte if they hadn't been banned from stomping at the Bronte Surf Club.

We meet Lee Nielsen, a regular dancer on Six O'Clock Rock. Lee started as a chorus girl aged 16 at the Tivoli in 1938 after lying about her age. She's still dancing.

Stand-up comedian Gary Eck, starred as a line-dancing cop in the film You Can't Stop The Murders. Gary speaks up on behalf of all those blokey non-dancing Aussie guys who've developed a shuffle to music that they call dancing.

Choreographer and dancer with the Bangarra Dance Theatre Frances Rings gives a moon-walking demonstration after revealing that Michael Jackson was an early influence, and Tobin Saunders, aka dance party diva Vanessa Wagner, unearths some of the mysteries of dance parties and reveals his surprising introduction to the world of dancing.

Production Details

A GNW TV / ABC TV co - production. Executive producer Ted Robinson, series producer Pam Swain.

For anyone with even a mild fascination for that peculiar science where tonnes of metal crammed with people manages to defy the laws of gravity, tonight's episode is an absolute treat.

Host Mark Trevorrow takes us on a stroll down memory lane looking at flight in Australia. Among other things, we learn that Harry Houdini wasn't the first person to fly from our soil, and the code word hosties use for the best-looking customer on board. Those who cringe at any form of celebration of 1970s suburbia will be relieved that Trevorrow has mothballed his alter ego, Bob Downe, for this series.

Tonight, there is a diverse guest list. First up is journalist Jeff Watson, who, apart from having a wide knowledge about flying, does a passable impersonation of a Fokker Friendship plane. Actor Rhys Muldoon comes on to regale us with tales about being an RAAF brat, having basic flying lessons for his pilot role in the now defunct Big Sky, and crack a few gags about hijacking.

We also meet Nan Witcomb, a hostie with Ansett ANA during the '50s. Her tales of life in the air on DC3s and DC4s are enlightening, but it is the appearance of legendary aviatrix Nancy Bird-Walton that makes the show unmissable. Not only are Bird-Walton's recollections of flying solo around the outback fascinating, but she remains an amusing raconteur.

Credit must be given to Trevorrow. Where the likes of Andrew Denton and Rove McManus attempt to upstage their guests, Trevorrow treats Bird-Walton with deference. The result is a joy to watch.
Henry Everingham

Few people realise that American escape artist Harry Houdini claimed to be the first person to fly an aeroplane in Australia. This is one of many amazing pieces of archival film showcased in The Way We Were: Flying.

One of Charles Kingsford Smith's first pupils joins the stage, Nancy Bird Walton, a pioneering aviatrix and witness to the evolution of flying in Australia. In the 1930s she flew in the outback without radio or radar for back up.

Flying from Australia to England used to take a week and cost the equivalent of a house. There was only one class - first. We meet Nan Witcomb, who flew with Ansett in the 1950s, as well as some young flight attendants flying today. They have witnessed great changes in flight - not just in the aircraft but in the people who fly - and we find out what sort of mile high action really goes on.

Jeff Watson, co-creator and presenter of TV shows Towards 2000 and Beyond 2000, shares his passion for aviation and we take a sneak peak at what's to come with the new jumbos and explore whether we really do need bowling alleys and showers on planes.

Mark chats with actor Rhys Muldoon. Rhys discusses his early experiences of aircraft and flying growing up in the RAAF, and why he chose to be a pretend pilot on television instead of the real thing.

Production Details

Executive producers: Ted Robinson GNW TV, Courtney Gibson ABC TV, series producer: Pam Swain, archive producer: Wendy Borchers ABC TV Archives. The Way We Were is an ABC TV co-production with GNW TV.

Australian kids today watch on average 30 hours of TV per week, and over the years mass media has changed the experience of childhood. However, increasingly, computer technologies are absorbing children's time through interactive programs, and since the birth of Harry Potter, a resurgence of reading.

Tonight we take a journey back to the late 50s and 60s, where children once romped for hours in the land of Didley Dum Didley with Clown, Panda & Miser Meaney. Nancy Cato remembers some of the pantomime-like, slapstick comedies from the 60's like Crackerjack and Adventure Island. She tells us how she got her first job and supports the notion that children's TV should excite the viewers and teach them.

Film producer Pat Lovell shares her tale as host of one of the longest running children's TV shows in the world, Mr Squiggle, and why she thinks it was so successful - there's also a special appearance by Mr Squiggle himself.

We meet ex-Senator Susan Ryan, who sat on the inquiry into television in 1979 which was to examine the effects of prolonged television watching. The Inquiry led to the setting up of the "C Classification" and the production of child friendly programs. But has it worked?

There is a special appearance by Agro, who was part of the "C Classification" approved Wombat, before going "really commercial", and Dylan Lewis, who grew up as a late 70's, early 80's child, discusses how it may have affected him.

We have some fun with The Curiosity Show's Rob Morrison and Deanne Hutton. They're the ones who taught us all we needed to know about science, from how to fly a kite to how to make your hair stand on end with a VandeGraffe.

Production Details

Executive producers: Ted Robinson GNW TV, Courtney Gibson ABC TV, series producer: Pam Swain, archive producer: Wendy Borchers ABC TV Archives. The Way We Were is an ABC TV co-production with GNW TV

At the very least you have to admire the symmetry of this. Mark Trevorrow created Bob Downe in part to parody the smoothly insincere and glibly entertaining cabaret performers who often ended up as variety show hosts on TV. His Bob Downe stage shows were like those TV programs writ large (or small, depending on your taste).

He hosts this series as himself, not Downe, though sometimes the difference is negligible.

The territory is popular culture, beginning with tonight's look at children's TV since 1956 (in coming weeks, there'll be flying, dancing, drinking and marriage). The approach is a mix of light, very light and very slightly heavy. Trevorrow opens the show with a bit of singing and patter and has many a droll or camp (or both) line delivered a la tonight-show monologues.

The occasional serious point is made in interviews with, for example, a politician involved with the Senate inquiry into children's television in the late '70s that established the children's classification and restrictions on advertising during that children's hour. (What was that phrase you were after John? Nanny state?)

Although the stated aim - to understand how much we've changed in the past 50 years - is almost certainly beyond the show, in this format it does provide a breezy Saturday night trawl through the archives.

Tonight's resurrection of a couple of now-forgotten '60s shows, including The Magic Boomerang, which starred future Westpac CEO David Morgan, is good for several giggles.
Bernard Zuel

I MAY be a professional television watcher now but, as a child, Saturday morning TV was an almost sacred ritual. I'd get up at an hour I now think unfathomable, tiptoe to the lounge room and – ensuring the volume was turned down low enough not to disturb sleeping parentals – would switch on the TV with great anticipation.

The poorly animated adventures of Hanna-Barbera were a favourite and, despite what they say about children's TV not being educational, to this day I vividly recall a segment from a generic action cartoon that gave detailed instructions on how to get a piece of grit out of your eye.

The are other memories, of course. I'd always sit close to the screen at the end of Romper Room because I believed Miss Helena was more likely to see me through the magic mirror. Then again, I also believed that if you planted a Fruit Tingle you could grow a lolly tree, so despite being an avid Curiosity Show viewer, my grasp of science was hazy at best.

Most people born in the latter part of the baby boom onwards would have similar stories and fond memories, which is why children's TV is an inspired choice for the first episode of The Way We Were.

Hosted by Mark Trevorrow, the artist mostly known as Bob Downe, the series is a walk down memory lane, with archival material and interviews with key players at the time. This episode rounds up Adventure Island's Nancy Cato; Mr Squiggle's first co-host (Miss) Pat Lovell; ex-senator Susan Ryan, who was instrumental in the development of the "c" classification; Agro; Dylan Lewis (who once hosted the ABC's afternoon show); and the Curiosity Show's Rob and Deanne (who don't look much older, although Rob is now sans the troll beard).

It's a great idea but the show suffers from trying to be all things at once. Trevorrow is primarily a comedian and singer, and the show feels like too much of a vehicle for that. This is not to denigrate him, but I found the more interesting parts – the archives and interviews – too truncated to be really satisfying. Still, it did make me wonder what Mr Squiggle is up to these days, which shows that even as a grown up I can still believe in children's TV.
Kerrie Murphy

In shows like this, women in big hats walk across lawns at jerky double-speed. Biplanes flop onto airstrips beside seas of waving hankies. And those black and white bloopers from In Melbourne Tonight? In 1979, I thought they were hilarious.

All of which explains why this reviewer approached the latest take on the genre with a certain favourable bias. But bugger me, The Way We Were was fun even beyond the film clips.

Much of this success is due to the show's host Mark Trevorrow (a.k.a. Bob Downe).

Trevorrow is a snappy interviewer and is perfectly cast, bringing his own experiences (and gayness) to the show without being overbearing or egotistical. He's also very funny in a way that Bob Downe is not: with a delivery that is both knowing and warm.

In the first episode "Kids' TV", Trevorrow interviews Mr Squiggle's Miss Pat, Nancy Cato from Adventure Island and even Agro the puppet.

The clips are terrific, and include scenes from The Magic Boomerang, an adventure series about an Aboriginal weapon that stopped time when tossed. There are also priceless talking heads of TV-addicted children from the 70s scandalously confessing their love of the box on Four Corners, and a montage of experiments by Professor Julius Sumner Miller that prove that he really was completely insane.

The following week's episode "Flying" proves even more camp than "Kids' TV".

Trevorrow's question – is flying still glamorous? – provokes some twisted responses. "Nowadays you can't get into a cockpit without a Stanley knife," bemoans actor Rhys Muldoon.

Ex-1950s flight attendant Nan Witcomb disagrees, and points out that a flight from Perth to Adelaide once took 16 hours. (She also describes her first sighting of a mile-high club event, bless her.)

Somehow Trevorrow also finds time to sing a few songs, including Up, Up And Away (with TAA jingle lyrics) and Mah Na Mah Na, accompanied by Agro and Dylan Lewis on clarinet.

Part chat show, documentary and variety special, The Way We Were could be terrible, but Trevorrow holds it all together beautifully.

I didn't miss Bob Downe for a minute.

The Way We Were screens on Saturday nights at 9:30pm on ABC TV. Future episodes will feature Tobin Saunders ("Dancing"), Sue-Ann Post ("Sunshine") and Paul van Reyk ("Making Babies").
Tim Benzie

The rally was held in response to the federal government's decision to outlaw same-sex marriage and attempt to ban overseas adoption. It was organised by the NSW Gay And Lesbian Rights Lobby, ACON, New Mardi Gras and the Sydney Pride Centre.

Host Stevie Clayton told the crowd the choice to get married should be her own and not John Howard's, while Rights Lobby co-convenor Somali Cerise said the prime minister was trying to turn back time as the federal election loomed.

"Last time it was refugees, leaking boats and babies overboard. This time it's lesbian mums in wedding dresses," Cerise said.

Lesbian mother Chris Robinson, who has a 10-year-old son, spoke about the recent controversy over a same-sex couple appearing on Play School. "How is it possible that heterosexuality is so fragile that our loving families so threatens their relationships?" she said.

Retired Uniting Church minister Reverend Dorothy McRae-McMahon said the gay and lesbian community had been used and abused by both major political parties and rejected claims that same-sex marriage sent a negative message to the community about family values.

Cerise told the Star she was thrilled so many people attended the rally given only three days notice and said she had received lots of positive feedback on the event.

Rights Lobby co-convenor Rob McGrory also spoke at the rally, while entertainment was provided by singer Mark Trevorrow.
Myles Wearring

Thousands of people are expected at this weekend's gay and lesbian rights rally at Sydney Town Hall to protest in favour of equal relationship recognition before the law.

The rally will be held on Saturday 26 June at 1:30pm in response to the federal government's decision to outlaw same-sex marriage and attempt to ban overseas adoption. It has been organised by the NSW Gay And Lesbian Rights Lobby, ACON, New Mardi Gras and the Sydney Pride Centre.

"In the last few months the Howard government has made blatant attacks on our community. It has attempted to wind back our rights, entrench discrimination in legislation and has made offensive comments about our families," said Somali Cerise, Rights Lobby co-convenor. "Not even Play School has been safe from attack. It's time for our community to stand up and be heard."

Speakers at the rally will include Reverend Dorothy McRae-McMahon, Stevie Clay-ton, Cerise and Rights Lobby co-convenor Rob McGrory, while entertainment will be provided by singer Mark Trevorrow. More speakers were still being confirmed.

Meantime, the gay and lesbian community got some good news from Canberra this week, with the Senate passing the federal government's same-sex super legislation. The new legislation means a surviving partner of an interdependent relationship can claim the death benefit of their loved one and not be forced to pay a death tax on the payment.

"This is a major federal step forward in recognising both the rights and the humanity of Australia's lesbian and gay citizens," openly gay Democrats senator Brian Greig said.

However, the reform doesn't remove all discrimination against lesbian and gay people and the new definitions of interdependent relationships don't go as far as many had hoped, Greig said.

Rights Lobby co-convenor Rob McGrory welcomed the legislation but said there was a risk some same-sex couples could miss out, because recipients would have to prove both financial and emotional dependence.

Federal Labor MP Anthony Albanese said the Howard government had gone to great lengths not to specifically mention same-sex relationships in their super legislation so as not to "alienate the right-wing conservatives".

The government did mention same-sex partners in an anti-terrorism bill which was introduced into the lower house last week by Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock. In it the definition of a family member includes a same-sex partner.

This week the Greens launched their same-sex marriage campaign in Newtown, with their candidate for the federal seat of Sydney, 27-year-old Jenny Leong, pledging to fight for the rights of same-sex couples to marry and adopt children.

Gay marriage not an election issue

Same-sex marriage will not be debated in the lead-up to this year's federal election, after last minute efforts to keep the issue alive in parliament were defeated.

The ALP, Greens, Democrats and some independents voted yesterday afternoon to send the Marriage Act Amendment Bill to a Senate Committee for analysis, despite a Liberal Party call to push on with the debate. The Senate agreed to hear back from the committee on Thursday 7 October.

Democrats senator Brian Greig told the Senate it would "not be appropriate" at best, and "malicious at worst" to debate the complex issues surrounding same-sex marriage in the lead-up to an election.

"The polarised and volatile environment of an election campaign is not the place to debate and resolve such issues," Greig told the Senate.
Myles Wearring

Once a year 'the stars come out to play', throwing caution (and egos!) to the wind in a night of improvised comic competition. This year the theme is Bollywood – over-the-top, larger-than-life, Indian-style schlock!

ANDREW O'KEEFE (host of Channel 7's Deal Or No Deal and Theatresports champ in his own right) will compere the night, with the brilliant NIKKI PARRY as timekeeper and maestro GEP BLAKE as our amazing improvising musician. So who knows what challenges the teams will face... A Punjabi play? A tale of the Taj or a Mumbai musical??!! Will they have the tikka?? One thing you can be sure of: we'll be giving them curry!

Star players include Nova FM presenter Bianca Dye, Gabby "You're Terrible Muriel!" Millgate (Celeb Big Brother, Totally Full Frontal), comic and TropFest winner Gary Eck, Steve Bastoni (Matrix Reloaded, Police Rescue, Blue Murder), current impro comedy world champion Rebecca De Unamuno (CNNN, Hamish & Andy, Glass House ), Peter Berner (Backberner, The Einstein Factor), Penny Biggins (Mondo Thingo, Castanet Club), Umbilical Brothers David Collins and Shane Dundas, Rebecca Le Tourneau (Mums The Word), Josh Lawson (Home and Away, Banana TV), Mark Trevorrow (aka Bob Downe) Marty Lynes (All Saints), Christa Hughes (MGF), saddle-sore comedian John Knowles, ex-spook and funny-man David Callan, Theatresports Grand Final champs Lisa Ricketts, Tom Dunstan, Kings of Impro, International impro champs Murray Fahey, Ewan Campell (Footy Show) and Nigel Sutton (Improzac) and more!

As ever, the show will include audience suggestions plus original video challenges by Andrew Denton, Tara Moss (Author & Supermodel), Triple J presenters and comics Adam Spencer and Wil Anderson, Playschool legend Benita Collings, madcap science guru Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, Pizza star Tahir and comedian Adam Hills.

Note: Cast subject to change without notice

Celebrities line up with Australia's Theatresports® legends 29th May, Enmore Theatre. Among this cast of the best of the best, are the talented performers, producers and directors of the majority of successful ground breaking improvisational shows in this country.

Fresh out of Murrumbeena High School - where I'd edited the school paper as a muck-raking, campaigning, weekly tabloid, and set the joint on fire! - I started work as a copyboy at The Sun News-Pictorial's old Flinders Street digs. I was four weeks shy of my 18th birthday, and the pre-Murdoch Herald & Weekly Times looked like the set of The Front Page. It was also a bit of a sheltered workshop: hard-bitten journos smoking, drinking, throwing typewriters at each other, having a whale of a time. I loved it. My main duties were putting the chief of staff's bets on at the TAB and fetching people out of Lou Richards' pub, or Lindrum's pool hall. Oh yes, and forgetting to load the stationery cupboard. All I'd ever wanted to be was a journalist, and I was furious at my brother, John (now deputy editor of the Herald Sun), who'd made a late dash in 1975 and beat me to the punch. Then I saw The Rocky Horror Show. I became a Rocky regular, saw it more than 30 times, made friends with the cast - especially the late, great Max Phipps - and discovered a bohemian world, which dazzled and seduced me.

1982 THE GLOBOS TAKE SYDNEY, I FIND LOVE

Kinselas funeral parlour in Taylor Square, Darlinghurst, was converted into Australia's hottest restaurant, bar and cabaret, and Penny Chapman booked The Globos as the inaugural late-night act, along with legends like Max Gillies, Garry McDonald and Geraldine Turner. The rest, as they say, is history. We were a huge hit - four girls and two boys miming old records and TV ads in the heart of Oxford Street's drag strip - and our first single, Tintarella di Luna, was a genuine Countdown chart-buster. We were going to make a film and everything. One night during the show, a mate leaned forward to shush a hippyish woman chatting to an elegant Brit - it was Joni Mitchell and Jeremy Irons! Kinselas' bar was Sydney's showbiz HQ and we were their mascots. It was a heavenly time to be 23, Sydney was still staying up all night, and things got even gooier when I fell in love with Ludo, a Dutch barman at work and the cutest boy in town. We were together a year and we're still good friends.

1984 BOB DOWNE IS BORN, VOGUE IS IT

By 1984, the Globos had imploded, Ludo married a millionaire, I'd had a summer out of work and on the dole (it was still easy then, all you had to do was fill out a form), and I was waiting tables at a family friend's cafe in Glebe. I hustled a mean latte in my Stuart Membery checks, and Caffe Troppo was full of witty, warm, bohemian types, on both sides of the counter, who fascinated me. The one who I laughed loudest with was Cathy Armstrong and by August we were cooking up an on-the-street comedy sketch for the Glebe Food Fair - she played a Hollywood ex-addict airhead, and I played a tan-and-beige interviewer named Bob Downe. At the time, the wig was a necessity - I sported a rather fetching '80s ponytail - but it became a trademark. In the crowd that day was an ABC producer (this bit is very Lana Turner), who instantly booked us to write and perform sketches for the late, lamented radio-comedy unit. I was back in biz. But, as usual with me, there were serious conflicts and complications: in July 1984, I'd also happened to accept a full-time writing job at Vogue Australia, while still working the cafe on weekends. But when you're 25, you have energy for anything; the Voguettes were gorgeous colleagues, and I kept the balls in the air. Mostly.

1998 REALISE THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

By the age of 39, I'd been based in London for the best part of eight years. Bob Downe had been a huge hit with British audiences from that first Edinburgh Fringe appearance in 1988 - the Doug Anthony All Stars had literally pushed me, frozen with terror, on stage. I'd run the gamut: lousy UK management, hideous college gigs in dingy common-room corners, to sensational UK management, with my own UK telly shows. I stopped the show at the London Palladium with Lily Savage (in our skate-less Torvill & Dean send-up). I did the Royal Variety Performance and shook hands with her maj. But as a UK-based Aussie, you're always the outsider, no matter how well you do. So I decided I'd come home to turn 40, and I liked it so much, I stayed.

2004 LET MARK OUT OF THE CLOSET

I have the original of a Women's Weekly illustration, which I cherish. It's by Coral Tulloch, sister of my dear mate, writer and author Lee Tulloch. It's an Aussie survival-kit case, bursting open with cultural relics including Edna's glasses, Kath's poncho, Kim's hairpiece, Norman's Band-Aids - and Bob's safari suit. It's Coral's use of first names which thrills me; rightly or wrongly, she's put me in the pantheon. Incredibly flattering, and if I never again shimmy on stage, I'll be remembered - a deeply thrilling thought. Having said that, it's obvious I can't hurl myself around forever. I wouldn't want to and nor, I'm convinced, would the audience. Even polyester wears out. Of course, there's life in the old wig yet, but I'm increasingly exploring my options performing as Mark, singing seriously (in cabaret and on the new album), presenting seriously (my first ABC series, The Way We Were). Ultimately, others will decide if it's viable. Speaking for myself, it's been like taking off a heavy suit of armour - and it feels wonderful.
Melinda Houston

Featuring Sinatra medleys to Sonny Bono songs, covering Lennon / McCartney to The Muppets, Noel Coward to Steely Dan, Randy Newman and Peter Allen, the end result here is flat paced, rather dull edged cabaret, something I might have given to my great aunt had she been into jazz and not Scottish folk music.

It would be palpable if Trevorrow was an extremely gifted singer, but suffice to say that he's not, frequently falling short of the mark on some of the (not really that) high notes, he can certainly sing, but then so can a lot of people and they don't put recordings of themselves singing "The Rainbow Connection" and "Good Day Sunshine" out for public consumption.
Evan Alexander

Launching his new album with a cabaret season at Chapel Off Chapel, Mark sings jazz, pop and show standards ranging from Windmills of Your Mind and You're Moving Out Today to Mad About the Boy and Rainbow Connection.

And there'll be some Sinatra, too. Mark's first ABC TV special, The Way We Were: Frank Sinatra in Australia (2002), was the culmination of years of successful appearance on Good News Week. And now there's a 10-part 'Way We Were' series on the way, airing June/July on the national broadcaster.

After three Bob Downe albums, It's About Time is Marks's first CD singing as himself. He has co-arranged the songs with music director John Thorn, who will accompany Mark at the Chapel, leading a superb trio with Andy Gander (drums) and Philip Rex.

March 10-14 @ Chapel Off Chapel, 12 Lt Chapel St, Prahran, 8pm Wed-Sat, 6pm Sun.

When was the first time you performed as Mark Trevorrow?
- On Good News Week, during its early ABC days. I wanted to do Bob, but they wouldn't let me. I was nervous as a kitten, fussing about my clothes and my hair, and then the audiences loved it - especially when I sang with Dermo. The epiphany was when Mikey Robbins, rabbitting on as usual, said "Did you know, Paul, that dugongs are the only animal besides humans who make love face to face?" To which I jumped in with "Speak for yourself, Mikey." The reaction was huge, and it was to an observation which only Mark, not Bob, could make.

What are the differences between the two characters?
- Mark is completely Out, whereas Bob thinks nobody's guessed. Which is pretty ironic, really, as many people seem to think I'm secretly straight, married with children, just playing Gay for Pay. Really! I'm so tired of being confused with Mel Gibson.

Is MT on stage the same as MT off?
- Pretty much. I'm a bit of a WYSIWYG kinda guy. I wanted to be as unphoney as possible when it came to performing as Mark, in deliberate contrast to the ridiculous, cartoon artifice of Bob.

Bob is very public, are you?
- Not as much as I used to be, strangely. I guess the Bob thing has given me all the exposure I ever looked for. As a young cadet reporter I was very taken with the glam media life - parties, concerts, freebies, going out for the opening of an envelope. And discos! I honestly think I went out every night, unless I was sick, from about 18 to 35. I love staying at home now - especially on Fridays and Saturdays. Who in their forties doesn't? Thank God for DVDs.

Obviously, Bob can get away with outrageous stuff, do you employ the same sort of tactics, or is that left completely behind?
- Not quite, I enjoy letting the odd frill slip out on stage. Let's face it, they're waiting for it!

What do you love about being yourself on stage?
- No makeup. A nice suit. And NO WIG. Not to mention the fact that I can step off stage and have a drink with my mates. On stage, too, I love the stillness, the quietness, achieving a sad or reflective effect, without the constant pressure to deliver a laugh every 10 seconds (or less). It's been like taking off a very heavy suit of armour.

Do you want to command serious consideration as a singer? How would you classify yourself? Vocal stylist, jazz, cabaret, lounge singer???
- How about singer? I'd be thrilled with that. It is a long cherished dream to be paid to just sing in public. Was Bob was just a trick to achieve that result? No, I don't think so - I love making people laugh too much.

Do you do any original tunes?
- No. All covers. That's my bag. From the Globos to Bob to Mark, that's been the thru-line. I love playing around with a well-chosen tune that comes complete with all its memories and associations. There's nothing on the album, or in the show, newer than 1980. The CD title is partly about memories - It's About Time - and the booklet and accompanying bonus DVD is full of family home movies and images. Time to meet the person behind the mask!

Can you give me a bit about childhood, ambitions, influences, mentors?
- Childhood: as happy as it's possible to be. A copybook, 60s & 70s snapshot of Melbourne lower middle class suburban life, in Murrumbeena. Total freedom - as long as we were in for tea at six, sharp. Shows in the backyard (and on audio tape!) with my dear sis and accolyte, Claire, and neighbouring best friends Ian and Carla. Editing the school paper with Dean - still my best mate after 32 years. A wonderful, fun State school education - Murrumbeena Primary (1964-70) and High (1971-76). Take that, John Howard! ABC-loving, teetoalling, left-leaning parents (Doff and Alan) who loved music, reading, politics and comedy - and who gave all four of us a profound belief in the unlimited possibilities of life and work. And what a poofy little diva I truly was! Yet no-one seemed to be seriously troubled by it (not for long, anyway) - and I mean no-one; wider family, teachers, nor school friends. I guess being funny and confident helped!

Influences: All of the above. And particularly Graham Kennedy, Bert Newton, Norman Gunston, Monty Python, Pete & Dud, Barry Humphries, Reg Livermore, The Rocky Horror Show, Molly Meldrum. Old musicals on Saturday afternoon TV, my groovy cousins' Beatles records, and my gramophone with a huge collection of jazz 78s.

Mentors: the late Max Phipps, brilliant actor and star of the Melbourne production of The Rocky Horror Show (1975-77) - a great friend and inspiration at a very sensitive age (18). The very much alive Helmut Bakaitis - now teaching directing at NIDA, then director at St Martins Youth Arts Centre in South Yarra. I did shows there with Gina Riley, Tim Conigrave, Kaarin Fairfax, Wendy de Waal, Hugo Race, Tottie Goldsmith - and many others. The professional version of the Globos (1982-86) came from all that. And Ian Meldrum - who spotted my writing talent as a young pop columnist, made crank calls to The Sun office, and became an admired, life-long friend.

Ambitions: to continue making a decent, honest, living from Australian show business. It's a lot harder than it looks - ask anyone from John Farnham to Bert to Molly!

What is important to you? Professionally? Personally?
- Honesty, loyalty, reliability, compassion. Ambition and a desire for material and professional success is okay too - when it doesn't usurp any of the first four.

What kind of show can the punters expect for this Melbourne season?
- An evening of cool, hot, smooth, classy jazz with great arrangements and a superb trio (John Thorn p, Andy Gander d, Philip Rex b), with some funny anecdotes and stories in between. And a chance to meet and greet when you buy a CD afterwards!

How often do you produce/bankroll your own shows?
- Not often, which is a relief. But I am with this one - and very happy to do it. More than covering costs so far!

Is Bob retiring, or will you continue to be a schizophrenic showbiz boy?
- No chance. Not before a 20th Birthday tour, anyhow. I'll let Bob go to the big wheel of fortune in the sky when I sense everyone's tired of him, including me. Nothing's sadder than an old comic flogging a dead act. It's a young person's game!

Tell a little about the upcoming ABC show - when, where how why
- The Way We Were - a 10-part doco chat show suing ABC archives, interviews, music and comedy, looking at a different subject each week (eg: intoxication, marriage, making babies, flying). Airing late June/ early July. Similar format to the Sinatra special (2002). Produced by the great Ted Robinson, Pam Swain & GNW productions. I love them!

What are your greatest loves/passions?
- Music. Theatre. Cabaret. Comedy. Old movies. Books. Good periodicals - esp. the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the Guardian - and, yes, The Age! Family and friends, spread all over the world. A nice boyfriend would complete the picture. *sigh*

Your greatest dislikes/pet hates?
- Shonky, dishonest, cheating, puffed up, two-bit show folk - behind the scenes AND out front - who don't realise it's not all about this week, this month, last or next year. We all know who they are, and we have to work with them, and try to outmaneuvre them, every day. What a truly disgusting, painful Biz it can be. Ethel Merman was right - there's no business quite like it.

What can Mark Trevorrow do that Bob can't and vice versa?
- Mark can move people to tears. Bob can make them cry with laughter. Same but different
Lily Bragge

Well, not straight, but not comedy, if you know what I mean.

Trevorrow, who describes himself as a "show queen" recognisable by fixations on legendary songwriters such as Stephen Sondheim and Noel Coward, performs an homage to the musical greats of the 20th Century, largely arranged by himself and pianist and musical director John Thorn.

Trevorrow is a gifted entertainer and this shines through in numbers such as All That Jazz from Chicago and The Joker, now famous for its place in the opening titles of Kath & Kim.

He is not, however, a gifted singer, and his voice lets him down in more challenging numbers such as his Frank Sinatra medley and Coward's Mad About the Boy.

Trevorrow's between-track banter is witty and his anecdotes occasionally fascinating, but his voice is not enough to bring me back again.

**1/2
Cameron England

For all those who don't know Gabby, she is the "you're terrible, Muriel" girl who also did Babe – Pig In The City, Totally Full Frontal and more recently Celebrity Big Brother. And to say she is hilarious would be an understatement.

With The Muppet Show as her inspiration, Gabby has jam-packed the evening with as many different and unusual performers as she can. From a contortionist to a swing-dancing superhero, the show will have you hooting with delight and wishing you to were able to do what Al does with a squash racket.

And if you are like me and love to rub shoulders with celebrities, the special guest list is also very impressive – Dylan Lewis, Mark Trevorrow (Bob Downe) and Libby Gore (Elle McFeast), to name a few, will be all joining us onstage. Oh, shit, how could I have forgotten very special performances by Weavil, Sister Wendy and of course Xena? And trust me, if you don't piss yourself laughing, then I just don't know what to do.

Where, you may be asking, is this extravaganza? Well, it is the brand new theatre The Vanguard, near the old bookshop just as you hit Newtown. Recently renovated, the space is perfect for a huge night of laughs and good times. You are able to get tickets from the theatre, Bondi Beach Health Foods, Parfum D'Image in the Galleries Victoria and of course the fabulous Team on Oxford.

Opening night is 2 March and tickets are selling fast. You are able to get dinner and a show as well, so now you know why I am in the production. PS. Watch out for my numerous cameo appearances throughout the whole night.
Maxi Shield

Mark Trevorrow has ditched the garish costumes, big teeth and bad hair to perform songs from his first album recorded as, well, Mark Trevorrow.

"I've just turned 45 and I think there's something a bit undignified about hurling yourself around the stage at this age," he said yesterday.

Trevorrow will present five shows with the John Thorn jazz trio at the Regal in Rundle Park at 8pm from today.

The season will feature songs from his new CD, It's About Time, which arrived in stores yesterday.

Trevorrow said the compilation of jazz, pop and show tunes gave him a chance to explore "emotions I can't go to in a comedy show".

"People have been asking me to sing as myself for years," he said. "They say you've got such a great voice so I thought, damn it, I will."

Coming out from under Bob's shadow has been a gradual thing, Trevorrow said.

He has been making television appearances as Mark Trevorrow and this year will host the new ABC documentary-char show The Way We Were, about Australia then and now.

He will celebrate Bob's 21st anniversary next year but does not expect to share a wardrobe with the popular gay icon forever. "The nice thing about singing as Mark Trevorrow is that I can go out in a nice suit without make-up," he said.

"But I'm not replacing Bob just yet, he's just having a quiet rest in the country.

"He couldn't do anything at the moment even if he wanted to - I've got his wig."
Louise Nunn

He's better known as Bob Downe - one of the freshest and most entertaining comedy characters ever to emerge in Australia.

But now Bob's creator and alter ego Mark Trevorrow has slipped out from under Bob's dauntingly successful wig.

Appropriately titled It's About Time, Mark's new album is a beautifully produced collection of pop, jazz and show standards that perfectly showcases Mark's surprisingly smooth, melodic voice.

It's About Time also includes a bonus DVD, highlighting interviews with Mark, as well as studio footage and Mark's very own home movies.

Track listing:

1. Good day sunshine
2. Sinatra medley - Three coins in the fountain, Witchcraft, Come fly with me
3. It's for you
4. The windmills of your mind
5. All that jazz
6. The ballad of sweeney todd
7. Not a day goes by/ being alive
8. Rainbow connection
9. Twisted
10. The joker (theme from Kath & Kim)
11. Mad about the boy
12. Rikki don't lose that number
13. The beat goes on - featuring Bob Downe
14. This could be the start of something big
15. It's lonely at the top
16. You're moving out today - featuring Paul Capsis
17. Thoroughly modern millie
18. I'll be seeing you

It's About Time by Mark Trevorrow
Available from February 23

You'll be able to party alongside some of Australia's hottest stars and a live audience of over 20,000 people at Celebrate! Australia Day Live. What a way to kick-start Australia Day! Join Australian Idol Guy Sebastian and host Gretel Killeen of Big Brother fame and stars such as Shannon Noll, Bob Downe, comedy trio Tripod and Marcia Hines as they come out to play!

What could be more Australian than watching our Australian Idol winner, Guy Sebastian as he performs LIVE - fresh from his appearance at World Idol in London. Plus… you could be one of the first to hear Guy's new single performed live for the very first time. Now that's an exclusive not to be missed!

A spectacular light show designed to thrill live and television audiences alike will be projected onto the walls of Parliament House. Come and see the House as you have never seen it before.

As a member of the live audience, you'll be able to hear the tribal beats of Drum Café first-hand and even participate in their dynamic show! Comprising of drummers and didgeridoo players, Drum Café invites you to become part of their performance in a stunning stage act as they provide the percussion. For a sneak preview of their act, you can check-out Drum Café at http://www.drumcafe.com.au/

If you can't make it to Canberra for one of Australia's greatest free outdoor events, don't panic! From 8:30pm, you can catch all the action via a live broadcast on Network Ten. So… you'll still be able to enjoy an unforgettable concert experience.

Celebrate! Australia Day Live 2004.

It's big, it's live and it's all Australian. Enjoy the party atmosphere this 25 January, Australia Day Eve and join the celebration of a nation! See you there!

What: Celebrate! – Australia Day Live
When: 8.30pm, Australia Day Eve Sunday, 25 January 2004
Where: Lawns of Parliament House, Canberra

Bob Downe Biography

Mark Trevorrow was born on the 4th of February 1959. He attended Murumbeena State Primary and State High School and his first job was working in the window of the Grace Brothers department store in Murwillumbah. He also worked as a copy boy for the Sun News Pictorial, and later as a freelance editor for the arts end of Vogue magazine.

In the early 1980s he became interested in the Australian entertainment scene, and Gloria and the Go Gos (better know as the Globos) was formed. Their biggest claim to fame was their single 'Tintarella De Luna' in 1982. Needless to say the group split in about 1984 - the same year Trevorrow's alter ego "Bob Downe" was born. "The reason Bob works so well on stage is that I have been doing it since I was a kid", said Mark in an interview once.

Trevorrow never dreamt about becoming a comedian. Instead he had his heart set on becoming a journalist. The character Bob Downe is famous for wearing funky clothing from the 70s, claiming to drive his mother's apple green Austin Kimberly with brown upholstery, and he is said to live in Murwilliumbah with his mother. "My influence on the fashion world? In a word, profound."

From the mid-80s Trevorrow has worked the comedy scene. He gained notoriety for performing with the Doug Anthony Allstars in the late 80s, and for performing his one man shows at various comedy festivals all over the world, particularly the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. But he has also appeared at the Brighton Festival and Mayfest in Glasgow. In 1995, he sold out his first London West End theatre season at the Bloomsbury theatre.

Bob Downe, a confirmed bachelor, has been called the Prince of Polyester, the King of Kitsch and "a singing, dancing, grinning, prancing, living Ken doll." Trevorrow draws his inspiration for the character from, amongst others, Pauline Hanson, Barry Humphries, Reg Livermore, and Peter Allen.

Trevorrow divides his time between Australia and the UK. In the UK he had his own television show, Bob Downe Under, and in 2000, "The Bob Downe Show" premiered on Australia's pay-TV station TV1.

Mark Trevorrow has hosted several Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras broadcasts. "Even as a tiny child it is indicated to you that being gay is not an acceptable thing to be," (he knew he was gay at age eight). "How times change," Trevorrow says. "That's what you call a triumph over injustice and diversity." He also hosted the 1999 Aria Music Awards alongside Paul McDermott.

First off the block is The Garden of Unearthly Delights.

This self-managed venue set in Rundle Park in the East Parklands at the end of Rundle St has evolved into one of the Fringe's hot spots since 2000.

It was founded on the popularity of the Spiegeltent, the Belgian half-tent, half-tavern construction that first came to Adelaide for the 2000 Fringe.

This year, the Spiegeltent won't be there because it has had to go back to Belgium for repairs.

After making its debut at the Adelaide Fringe, the Spiegeltent has been under big demand in the official Sydney and Melbourne festivals this year.

Undeterred, the promoters of the Garden of Unearthly Delights are keen to continue with their Fringe spot.

They have created a brand new circus tent, dubbed the Regal, as a focus.

The 2004 Garden of Unearthly Delights will open on February 13, a week before the Fringe proper, and run until March 14.

It has several performance venues, three bars and a cafe.

The focus of entertainment is on music, cabaret, comedy, circus and physical theatre.

This year's stars include Fringe veteran Mark Trevorrow in his show, The Man Behind Bob Downe, comedian Libbi Gorr and singers Vika and Linda Bull.

Music ranges from rock showman Dave Graney to David Bridie's explorations of music, and classical and oblique guitar music from Slava Grigoryan.

Late on Fridays and Saturdays, the Regal will host the Melbourne Comedy Festival's hit comedy club, Spinning Wheel.

Alongside the Regal will be the Umbrella Revolution, another tent venue devoted to circus and physical theatre.

Attractions this year include the freakish Happy Sideshow returning after winning accolades in 2002.

Also there will be the children's version of Rocket and Roxy's Stunt Show, which is playing in the main Adelaide Festival at the Universal Playground.

Rocket and Roxy's children's show, Circus Inferno, will have a season, as will another popular children's entertainment from the Fringe in 2002, The Spaghetti Circus. Other attractions will include Circus Monoxide, the professional circus company out of New South Wales's Illawarra region.

There is Australia's smallest venue – The Zeitgeist Room – and The Man Who Breathes Through His Eyes makes his first appearance in The Garden.

The buskers' pitch, where buskers can attract the delight or opprobrium of the crowd, will return.

As well as three bars and new cafes this year, there are late-night cult and classic movies, and the Big Trapeze.

Bookings for The Garden are through Fringetix, but be warned: Fringetix box office does not open until January 16, when the whole Fringe program is officially launched.
Tim Lloyd